SINI 2009

Just returned from the Summer Insitute in Nursing Informatics at the University of Maryland in Baltimore http://nursing.umaryland.edu/sini/index.htm. It is a great conference with an outstanding group of people and I had a wonderful time networking with longtime and new colleagues as well as learning from the presentations.

The conference is being tweeted by Peter Murray, Margaret Hansen, and Scott Erdly (#sini2009) or http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23sini09 and blogged a thttp://www.hi-blogs.info/

My presentation "What is RSS and What Does it Have to do with Nursing" is below:

Sini2009 Rss Nsg

View more presentations from wfperry.

While reviewing my favorites list one resource I should have included was MedWorm (http://www.medworm.com/) with its 6000 healthcare related RSS feeds!

Impressive Microsoft Offerings for Schools

Microsoft is bringing its widely adopted Live@edu collaboration suite to Moodle, the open source learning management system (LMS) that's installed at more than 35,000 registered, validated sites worldwide. Microsoft also unveiled today its new Education Labs site, which will serve as a repository for education software developed on an accelerated cycle.
From: http://campustechnology.com/Articles/2009/07/21/Moodle-Links-with-Live-edu.aspx?p=1

Also see: http://www.microsoft.com/liveatedu/free-hosted-student-email.aspx

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?