Studies in health technology and informatics
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2004
Distributed interactive virtual environments for collaborative experiential learning and training independent of distance over Internet2.
Medical knowledge and skills essential for tomorrow's healthcare professionals continue to change faster than ever before creating new demands in medical education. Project TOUCH (Telehealth Outreach for Unified Community Health) has been developing methods to enhance learning by coupling innovations in medical education with advanced technology in high performance computing and next generation Internet2 embedded in virtual reality environments (VRE), artificial intelligence and experiential active learning. Simulations have been used in education and training to allow learners to make mistakes safely in lieu of real-life situations, learn from those mistakes and ultimately improve performance by subsequent avoidance of those mistakes. ⋯ The ability to make mistakes in a safe environment is well received by students and has a positive impact on their understanding, as well as memory of the principles involved in correcting those mistakes. Bringing people together as virtual teams for interactive experiential learning and collaborative training, independent of distance, provides a platform for distributed "just-in-time" training, performance assessment and credentialing. Further validation is necessary to determine the potential value of the distributed VRE in knowledge transfer, improved future performance and should entail training participants to competence in using these tools.
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2004
A tale of two hospitals: a sociotechnical appraisal of the introduction of computerized physician order entry in two Dutch hospitals.
We compared the implementation of computerized physician order entry (CPOE) in two Dutch hospitals, one being an academic medical center and the other a large regional non-academic hospital. Both implemented the TDS7000 system that was running on the same computer, located in the computing department of the academic medical center. ⋯ An appraisal of the different outcomes is possible when we consider the implementation of information as a thorough social process in which the technical and the social are closely interrelated. Our findings suggest that organizational change associated with CPOE implementation should not focus on individual physician behavior but on medical work as a collaborative professional effort
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2004
Telepresence and telemedicine in trauma and emergency care management.
The use of telemedicine is long-standing, but only recently has been applied to the specialties of trauma, emergency care, and surgery. Subsequently the concepts of teletrauma, telepresence, and telesurgery have evolved and are being integrated into modern care of trauma and surgical patients. This chapter will review the current applications and future endeavors of telemedicine and telepresence to trauma and emergency care as the new frontiers of telemedicine application.
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2004
Electronic medical records in solo/small groups: a qualitative study of physician user types.
There is growing recognition that physician use of electronic medical records (EMRs) is critical for improving quality of care in outpatient settings. ⋯ Incentives and comprehensive support services for facilitating complementary process changes could be important for moving physicians from one user group to another. Additional research is needed to verify this user typology and to further define the relationship between user types and EMR-generated financial and quality benefits.
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The work program of the French Language Virtual Medical University started about 2 years ago, and entered into a real active phase of development and implementation in 2002. Various national programs and organizational initiatives should accelerate and facilitate further appropriation of modem pedagogical approaches by knowledge providers and all users of the FSVMU, so as to advance on the way of virtual education. The French Language Virtual Medical University under the auspices of both the National Conference of Deans of Medical Schools and the International Conference of Deans of French-Speaking Medical Schools has been developed to create a major Internet portal for French-speaking distance medical learning and teaching. ⋯ To build a virtual space where individual patients, their families, patient associations as well as the general public, can obtain medical information of good quality for the purposes of both education and prevention. Providing such categories with reliable and validated sources of information, and offering an ethical basis for the increasing practice of e-medicine, represent in today's and tomorrow's world one of the great modern challenges for the medical community. Beyond the sole medical domain, the model offered by the FSVMU should be useful for the French-speaking Universities in all the fields of knowledge and training which are candidate to benefit from new educational means and methods.