Winter 2004 edition of UK Health Informatics Today
The latest edition of UK Health Informatics Today (PDF) the newsletter of the UK Health Informatics Society includes several interesting papers on the use of handheld/palmtop/pda applications for medical practitioners ranging from access to pubmed and other evidence sources to virtual clinics and data management tools.
International Council of Nurses [Countdown to ICNP� Version 1]
The ICN today released plans for the release of Version 1 of the International Classification for Nursing Practice (ICNP®), which will officially be “launched” at the ICN Congress, in May 2005, in Taipei Taiwan.
I wonder how much influence this will have as many countries are developing their own thesauri and classification systems, often based on multidisciplinary approaches to both patient care and the recording of interventions.
Screening Internet websites for educational potential in undergraduate medical education
This paper by Andrew Burd, Tor Chiu & Carmel McNaught in the current edition of Medical Informatics and the Internet in Medicine used students to identify and "score" educational materials on web sites for plastic surgery and then compared these with the opinions of final year medical students.
Their conclusion was that "it does not seem possible to construct any objective system of medical website evaluation", and suggests possible ways forward which may include "formally organized consortia involving agreements between medical schools may evolve".
Education Guardian| Higher | This is an emergency
There is an interesting speculative piece in today's Guardian by Donald MacLeod, about the possible future role, function and purpose of the NHSU once the report of the review conducted by Sir William Wells is released.
Much of the piece concerns the "University" aspiration balanced against the need to correct identified deficits in functional literacy and numeracy skills amongst the staff. It includes quotes from Bob Fryer (NHSu chief executive) and senior labour politicians supporting the vision of an NHSu and a confidential Strategic Health Authority submission questioning the money already spent on "glossy brochures".
As the article suggests, it will be interesting to see whether the NHSu is in the next labour manifesto or whether it will receive a similar fate to the UKeU.
Some random updates on my life & work, with a focus on health informatics and elearning in the UK. I'm sort of planning to use this for my PhD. It may also include updates about family & social stuff. If you want to join the membership so that you can post comments - just let me know rod@rodspace.co.uk
