Another couple of fun links for healthcare folks!

Ves Dimov posted these on his Clinical Cases and Images Blog

http://casesblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/music-video-enzyme-what-are-you-doing.html
http://casesblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/video-neutrophil-chasing-bacteria-set.html

"Whose on first?" updated

http://akipta.blogspot.com/2009/04/your-my-documents-funny-tech-training.html

I can just imaging Abbott and Costello doing this!

Zotero

Along the same lines as Evernote, Zotero is a web based application that works with Firefox only. Create an account at http://www.zotero.org/, download the application, and it installs itself to work with Firefox. What can you do with it? Here is the feature list directly from the website:

• Automatically capture citations
• Remotely back up and sync your library
• Store PDFs, images, and web pages
• Cite from within Word and OpenOffice
• Take rich-text notes in any language
• Wide variety of import/export options
• Free, open source, and extensible
• Collaborate with group libraries
• Organize with collections and tags
• Access your library from anywhere
• Automatically grab metadata for PDFs
• Use thousands of bibliographic styles
• Instantly search your PDFs and notes
• Advanced search and data mining tools
• Interface available in over 30 languages
• Recommendation engine and RSS feeds

The ability to export citations in APA format is a tremendous asset for student and faculty publications. For me, this one of the biggest distinguishing features and one that would make me more likely to recommend it to students.

I had previously put the USB version of Firefox on my flash drive, so I downloaded and installed Zotero on the drive as well. It works very well and you can synchronize the flash drive documents and citations with the web version.

While it works only with Firefox it is compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux platforms. Evernote has versions for both Windows and Macs and works with both IE and Firefox.

Both Evernote and Zotero would be excellent tools to create a repository for a Personal Learning Environment.

Evernote

David Rothman's recent posting "Screencast: Evernote as a Medical Student’s Peripheral Brain" at http://davidrothman.net/2009/03/02/screencast-evernote-as-a-medical-students-peripheral-brain/ prompted me to look more closely at this tool. Offered in both a free and fee based version, it is a personal notebook that you can fill with documents (pdf), video, audio and links. While Google notebook and Zoho notebook offer similar features, Evernote adds synchronization between computer and cloud storage as well as the ability to run the application from a flash drive.


There is also apps for both the iPhone and iTouch to get to public folders.


There are other healthcare professionals who have been using this application for a variety of tasks. The Efficient MD blog posted a 3 part series that suggested several uses for Evernote including how it could be used as a "hybrid electronic health record" The Efficient MD - Life Hacks for Healthcare How Doctors Can Use Evernote As A Professional Memory Accessible Anywhere (Part 1 of 3) (http://efficientmd.blogspot.com/2008/08/how-doctors-can-use-evernote-as.html).


I downloaded and installed the application, created a flash drive version and saved several sites during the day. From my home computer I logged into the application and everything I had worked on from a different computer was synchronized with my home desktop.

In previous posts about Personal Learning Envirionments I have used PageFlakes (http://www.pageflakes.com/) as an example application which could serve as a repository of information and links for a variety of sites. Evernote is a serious tool to add the collection.

Here are the differences between the free and fee ($45/year) versions:

PHR security and usability

In my informatics course we have been discussing PHRs. There seems a consensus that PHRs are a good idea, but security and reliability are items of concern. I believe this technology will only increase in the future and healthcare professionals need to be aware of the issues surrounding PHRs.

Here are a few references for review and reflection:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/personal_health_records_lots_of_interest_no_users.phpThis article talks to the number PHR users and suggests that consumer motivation may also be a significant factor for relatively low rate of adoption.

http://geekdoctor.blogspot.com/2008/12/privacy-framework-for-personal-health.htmlDr Halamka describes security standards being considered at a national level for PHRs.

http://www.usercentric.com/publications/2009/01/phr/This post compares Google Health and Microsoft Health Vault. While Google has a bit of an edge, both companies have a lot to lose if their records are not secure. The partnership of Google Health with Cleveland Clinic and Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital as well as the partnership between Microsoft and Kaiser Permanente seem good indicators that the systems have undergone rigorous review.

Medicare has started a PHR pilot project in Arizona and Utah. Google Health is one of the options. http://www.medicare.gov/PHR/PHRChoice.aspI'm not very concerned about the security issues, particularly if the PHR owner chooses a strong password as we discussed in class. I think motivation and consistency will be a greater problem for many who choose to create a PHR. Is some information better than none? Willl a partially completed or maintained PHR be any different than the current fragmented documentation of health issues for people who visit multiple providers?

Learning opportunities and a new find...

Over the last couple of months there has been a course in Connectivism at the University of Manitoba Extended Education and Learning Technologies Centre (http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/connectivism/) and a course in Work Literacy (http://workliteracy.ning.com/). I signed up for both and following them has been an abysmal failure. I tend to take a buffet approach in my personal learning environment and there has been too many choices and time conflicts to thoroughly enjoy the banquet. Hopefully the resources will continue to be available after the course has formally completed. A free online event "Corporate Learning Trends and Innovations" begins 11/17/2008 at http://www.learntrends.com/. I hope to be able to look in from time to time and I believe there will be online archives. The list of presentation speakers and topics looks fantastic.

Last month my facility conducted an excellent 1 day program on Evidence Based Practice which was attended by well over 100 nurses. Over the past couple of weeks I've taught a couple of "guerilla informatics" classes on using PowerPoint and Excel. For both of the topics I tried to key in on simple and hopefully useful techniques that were also practical. I'd like to plan a joint class with our medical librarian on using RSS to keep up with the healthcare literature That session could be followed by one on using either Netvibes (http://www.netvibes.com) or PageFlakes (http://www.pageflakes.com) as a tool to collect resources in a single area as an approach to creating a personal learning environment.

A potentially useful and fun site called Popfly (http://www.popfly.com) can produce mashups, games and web pages. It's a Microsoft application and it requires the user to install the free Microsoft Silverlight browser plugin (http://Microsoft.com/silverlight). According to the Microsoft website "Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform, and cross-device plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web. By using Silverlight's support for .NET, High Definition video, cost-effective advanced streaming, and unparalleled high-resolution interactivity with Deep Zoom technology, businesses can reach out to new markets across the Web, desktop, and devices."

Lots of opportunities to learn, explore and share!

Everyone knows....? Caveat Emptor

There are many oft-repeated phrases about computer literacy, information competency, and the value of Interent resources. How many times have you heard about "digital natives" and made an assumption that youth=computer literacy=information literacy, or heard the term "wisdom of the crowds"?

"Caveat emptor" might be a saying well worth following. Here are a couple of interesting blog posts that question some assumptions. This posting is somewhat of a follow-on an earlier one http://digitalhornbook.blogspot.com/2008/08/digital-natives-attitude-or-competence.html.

Michelle Martin writes in Masters of Technology? from Work Literacy about "A new report, sponsored by the British Library and the Joint Information Systems Committee, debunks the myth that young people are “masters of technology,” finding that while teens may have the basic technology skills to use tools like search engines, they lack the information processing and higher order thinking skills necessary to really use them effectively. "

On the Mashable! blog, Mark Hopkins writes Wisdom of the Crowds Isn’t the Answer for Everything where he questions the validity of the phrase and gives some good examples of where it fails miserably (remember the "Emperor's New Clothes"). Wikipedia's section on Wisdom of the Crowds lists four elements required to form a wise crowd as:

• Diversity of opinion: Each person should have private information even if it's just an eccentric interpretation of the known facts.
• Independence: People's opinions aren't determined by the opinions of those around them.
• Decentralization: People are able to specialize and draw on local knowledge.
• Aggregation: Some mechanism exists for turning private judgments into a collective decision.

How many times do we have that combination?