This is my first blog entry on the ICMCC website.
And I would like to start by expressing my joy about the large number of visitors to our site during the last couple of months (see here).
As I have expressed at various occasions during the last years, I would like to see the ICMCC site as a repository of information on medical and care ICT, with a strong emphasis on patient related aspects (compunetics).
The ICMCC Portal on Record Access is an important example of a small knowledge centre, where an overview is given of the various aspects of (patient) record access.
The ICMCC news page, which gives an up-to-date overview of news and science articles as well as reports related to medical and care ICT has become an important source of information. It is used as the main news supplier of the HoIP page. It is painstakingly updated on a daily basis. However, we realise that much information is missing, especially at national and local levels. This is partly due to language, but also because it is very difficult to keep an even larger overview than we already have.
Here are my New year’s wishes:
- We would like to invite you, wherever you are in the world, to send us links to interesting articles (news as well as scientific) concerning medical and care ICT in your region or country or in your professional area.
- Much research is done all around the world especially by university institutions and their students. However, outside their own faculty community, hardly anybody knows what they are doing. This is one of the main causes of the reinvention of the wheel as far as research is concerned. ICMCC would like to offer its website as a presentation platform for these university schools to tell us about their past, present (and maybe future) work.
- Create “knowledge centres” like the one on Record Access, on the use of compunetics in other medical and care areas.
Today a very interesting explanatory document on Summary Care Records by Dr. Gillian Braunold MB BS FRCGP, Clinical Director Summary Care Record & HealthSpace Programmes, NHS has been added.
Another exciting addition to the site is a video by Dr. Amir Hannan, on the use of Record Access in his own practice. Although in the first place aiming at his own patients, this video shows a clear insight in the benefits and the consequences for both patients and practitioners of access to electronic health records (EHRs). The video is a nice addition to the paper he wrote together with one of his patients for the 2007 ICMCC conference (”Towards a Partnership of Trust“). It shows the power of the use of new media to reach out to the patient and offers a great incentive for those who want to convince their GP to implement the Right of Access independently of where you are in the world.
As you may have noticed, the ICMCC website has greatly changed over the last few months. To phrase it in contemporary terms, it is entering Web 2.0, as it offers its visitors the possibility to comment and share his view on any aspect. This brings me to one of the key concerns that I would like to address in this first blog. What differentiates Web 2.0 from the “old” web is fact that the user can join his experience to the information that was the essence of what is now called Web 1.0. In health this is now rapidly evolving into Health 2.0, which can be defined as “individually generated content in healthcare”. (see here)
Another aspect I have been talking about a lot is the relationship between data, information and knowledge (see here). If we define knowledge as information combined with experience, Health 2.0 deals with the experience part of the knowledge equation. Individuals bring their experiences to the forefront in various platforms and other Health 2.0 fora, often focused on a particular disease or condition. But in my opinion there is a clear and obvious lack of (access to) information to support these experiences and really turn them into knowledge. ICMCC offers the platform containing (links to) that information.
At the same time, there is a need for a discussion on the relationship between data, information and knowledge. To stimulate this discussion, ICMCC will start a working group on this subject. If you are interested in taking part in it, please inform us.
Lodewijk Bos
