9:00 am - 10:00 am "Veterinary Informatics--The Best Kept Secret"
Dr. Ronald D. Smith, University of Illinois
10:00 am - 10:45 am Break
10:45 am - 11:45 am "Multimedia for the Masses"
Dr. Harmon Rogers, Snohomish, WA
11:45 am - 1:00 pm Lunch Break
1:00 pm - 2:00 pm "Grateful Med, Easy Access to the Veterinary Literature in MEDLINE"
Ms. Dena K. Plaisted, National Network of Libraries of Medicine
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm "Life-long Learning"
Dr. Robin Starr, Hershey Medical Center
3:45 pm - 4:45 pm "The Internet Revisited"
Dr. Kenneth R. Boschert, Washington University
http://netvet.wustl.edu/avi.htm.< /BLOCKQUOTE>
VETERINARY INFORMATICS:
THE BEST KEPT SECRETAbstract of a Paper Presented at the
Second Annual Richard B. Talbot Informatics Symposium
133rd Annual Meeting of the American Veterinary Medical Association
Louisville, KY
by
Dr. Ronald D. Smith
College of Veterinary Medicine; University of Illinois; Urbana, IL 61801
<rd-smith@uiuc.edu>
The author would like to acknowledge the assistance of Ms. Mitsuko Williams,
Veterinary Medicine Librarian, in performing the bibliographic searches.
ABSTRACTINTRODUCTION
Veterinary informatics is defined as "...the discipline concerned with the application of information science, engineering, and computer technology to support veterinary teaching, research, and practice" <http://netvet.wustl.edu/info.htm >.
Although computers and information science have "infiltrated" all facets of the veterinary profession, veterinary informatics has largely escaped detection as a recognizable discipline. This paper reports on a study conducted by the author to define the veterinary informatics knowledge base and assess the level of activity in the field. The appropriateness of current veterinary informatics sub-specialties was also examined.
METHODS
Grateful Med was used to search NLM's MEDLINE bibliographic database for articles which shared one or more MeSH keywords from the VETERINARY and MEDICAL INFORMATICS subject headings, covering a 30 year time period from 1966 to June 30, 1996. References were downloaded and imported into EndNotereg. Plus 2.1 for analysis. MeSH MEDICAL INFORMATICS keywords were mapped to sub-specialties defined by the American Academy of Veterinary Informatics (AAVI) <http://netvet.wustl.edu/aavi.htm > and the number of articles retrieved by each MeSH keyword indicated. Each MeSH keyword was assigned to only one AAVI category.
RESULTS
A total of 611 articles were retrieved by the combined search strategy, representing the contributions of 1338 authors published in 153 journals. Based on the number of veterinary informatics articles published per year, the field experienced slow growth over the 20-year period from 1966 through 1985. In the past decade the cumulative number of veterinary informatics articles has almost tripled, and the percentage of veterinary-related articles that included an informatics component increased almost 2 1/2 fold. A small but statistically-insignificant increase in veterinary informatics articles as a percentage of all medical informatics articles was also observed. These findings support the hypothesis that veterinary informatics is a growth area in veterinary medicine that is keeping pace with the field of medical informatics in general. Despite this recent growth, the number of veterinary-related articles with an informatics component has never exceeded 1% of either the veterinary or medical informatics literature over the past 30 years.
The MeSH medical informatics hierarchy differs considerably from the functional categories developed by the AAVI. Sixty of the 95 MeSH medical informatics terms were assigned to a corresponding veterinary informatics sub-specialty. The remaining 35, which describe the tools of informatics rather than their application, were assigned to a new "hardware and programming" category. In cases where the content of retrieved articles was highly complementary, corresponding AAVI categories were combined.
The resulting veterinary informatics sub-specialties, ranked by the number of articles retrieved for each (in parentheses), follows:* Information and bibliographical retrieval (135)
* Decision support (47)
* Clinical Research/Epidemiology (40)
* Radiology/imaging (40)
* Education (computer-assisted instruction; CAI) (21)
* Medical record systems (12)
* Patient monitoring (8)
* Hospital information/practice management systems (5)
* Laboratory information systems (1)
* Pharmacy systems (0)
* Systems evaluation & validation (0)
General category:* Hardware and programming (434)
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
The MeSH-based search strategy provided a rapid, systematic and reproducible way of building a veterinary informatics knowledge base. Activity in the field is diverse and increasing, but representation in the veterinary literature is very low. Mapping MeSH terms to veterinary informatics sub-specialties was imprecise. Many MeSH terms could not be assigned to any particular sub-specialty as they described the tools of informatics rather than their application. These terms were useful, however, for retrieving informatics articles.
Some sub-specialties, such as information and bibliographic retrieval, were well represented in the literature. Others, such as educational computing, medical records nomenclature, and hospital information systems yielded relatively few articles, despite extensive experimentation at most veterinary colleges. It is unfortunate that user experiences in such important areas is not being reported.
The veterinary informatics knowledge base described in this report documents the contribution of veterinary informatics to all aspects of veterinary medicine. However, most of the 1338 authors of the 611 articles retrieved would probably not consider themselves to be informaticians, or to be conducting informatics research. However, ALL of these authors have applied veterinary medical informatics concepts and methodology to accomplish their work.
INTERNET RESOURCES
Computerized Patient Records
From: Jim Case <JCASE@CVDLS-E201.UCDAVIS.EDU& gt;
There is a new medically oriented WWW site athttp://www.pmrinc.com
that deals with computerized patient records as well as custom software for school nurses. You can download a demo of the SOAP computerized patient record software atftp://ftp.pmrinc.com/pub/sdemo.zip
QD-POP: Web-Based POP Mail Client
From: Michael Hogarth <mahogarth@ucdavis.edu>
We have written a simple web-based cgi POP mail client in PERL. A demo and the source code are available on our web site-->http://www-ucdci.ucdmc.ucdavis.ed u; follow links to QD-POP. It allows you to check POP mail accounts through a web browser.
It comes in handy when you are at a conference where browsers are plenty, but nobody lets you configure and use a POP client. Now you can simply walk up to the computers with browsers and indeed check+respond to mail.
Feedback is welcome.
Michael Hogarth, MD; Div. of Medical Informatics; UC-Davis School of Medicine
C-EDRES - Educational Resource Mailing List
From: Lynn Thomas <d616@unb.ca>
C-EDRES on c-edres-server@unb.ca
C-EDRES is a moderated educational resource mailing list for educators. We provide announcements and reviews three times a week on a variety of sites of interest to educators. We review all levels of sites from all subject areas. The reviews are written by you the subscribers and the owners so we can assure that you are recieving some of the best sites on the World Wide Web (WWW).
Our reviews give a brief, but accurate description of the site, as well as, an evaulation of the naviagation, graphics, grammer, and usefulness of the site for educators in particular.
To subscribe to our C-EDRES mailing list send the following message to c-edres-server@unb.ca :subscribe C-EDRES *your name*
Once you send this message, you will receive confirmation of your request. Check out our website at http://cnet.unb.ca/c-edres
WELLPET-L - Holistic/Natural Pet Care
From: Katrina Ritchie <katrina@cia.com.au>
WELLPET-L on MAJORDOMO@CIA.COM.AU - Holistic/Natural Pet Care Discussion
WELLPET-L IS an unmoderated list, specifically for the discussion of Holistic or Natural Pet care and is open to all those with a sincere interest in alternative methods of animal care. Topics could include the use and application natural diets and nutrition, homeopathic remedies, the use of vitamin and food supplements, herbal medicine, flower remedies, massage therapies and accupuncture. Anti Holistic posts are not welcome.
To subscribe to WELLPET-L, send the following command to majordomo@cia.com.au in the BODY of e-mail all in lower case: (LEAVE THE SUBJECT LINE BLANK):subscribe wellpet-l
(or to receive the digest version)subscribe wellpet-l-digest
The latest version of the info file for WELLPET-L, can be obtained by sending the follwing command in the body of a message:info wellpet-l
Owner: Katrina Ritchie Katrina@cia.com.au or owner-wellpet-l@cia.com.au
NEWS AND COMMENTARY
Industrial Classification of Veterinary Medicine
From: Gerald E. Schluter <schluter@MAILBOX.ECON.AG.GOV& gt;
The North American Industry Classification System Committee has proposed moving the classification of SIC 0741 Veterinary Services for Livestock and SIC 0742 Veterinary Services for Animal Specialties (under group Ag. Services) to Veterinary Services under Other Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services. under the Group - Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services.
Additional information and instructions on filing comments on the proposed move can be found in the Tuesday, May 28 Federal Register, pp 26558-26668.
To obtain this document via WWW browser connect to http//www.census.gov, then select "Economy", then "Economy-wide Programs", the "NAICS Documents"
Year 2000 Issue: Public Health Information/Surveillance Systems
From: <jack.woodall@wadsworth.org>< BR>
The Year 2000 Issue: Implications for Public Health Information and Surveillance Systems
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
White Paper - May 1996
Source: http://www.cdc.gov/year2000.htm
"It is vital that the public health community begin aggressively addressing this issue to avoid serious negative programmatic effects across public health."
Background
A phenomenon exists in the Information Technology (IT) industry because historically many computer programs make use of dates represented by only two digits (for example, 95 rather than 1995). However common this practice might be, it causes programs (both system and application) that perform arithmetic operations, comparisons, or sorting of date fields to yield incorrect results when working with years outside the range of 1900-1999.
The scope of the Year 2000 challenge spans the entire IT industry. A data mismatch can exist in any level of hardware or software from microcode to application programs, in files and databases, and is present on ALL platforms. In recent years, the IT trade press has given ever greater attention to this phenomenon with increasingly ominous predictions.
However dramatic all this may sound, consider the following scenarios to help put the phenomenon and its business ramifications into perspective. Imagine if in the first quarter of the year 2000 your company cannot process its 1999 end-of-year billing or end-of-year payroll properly; your corporate credit card holders are refused most transactions because their accounts appear delinquent; your 1999 year-end profit data cannot be calculated properly; and your utility companies cut off their services due to your apparent late bill payments. Similarly, your household and personal financial situation could encounter a similar dilemma if your creditors do not also strive to meet this challenge.
Although referred to as the Year 2000 issue, this is really a 2-digit-year problem. Your IS [Information Systems] organization needs to plan for and address the date changes well in advance of 1 January 2000. This is not only a future challenge; it has existed in the banking industry since as early as 1970 when application programs encountered problems with amortization and interest table calculations for the standard 30-year mortgage. Consider also, a 5-year automobile loan, a 15-year mortgage, a long-term insurance policy, a data base that retains birth dates (which includes an ever increasing set of dates over 100 years). Now, as each month passes, more applications are uncovered that have to start immediately handling dates with the Year 2000 or beyond.
Implications for Public Health
All organizations are affected by this issue from a business and administrative perspective. However, public health information and surveillance systems at all levels of local, state, federal, and international public health are especially sensitive to and dependent upon dates for epidemiological and health statistics reasons. Date of events, durations between events, and other calculations such as age of people are core epidemiologic and health statistic requirements.
Moreover, public health authorities are usually dependent upon primary data providers such as physician practices, laboratories, hospitals, managed care organizations, etc., as the source of original data upon which public health analyses and actions take place. CDC, for example, maintains over 100 public health surveillance systems all of which are dependent upon external sources of data. This means that it is not sufficient to make internal systems compliant to the Year 2000 to address all of the ramifications of this issue. To illustrate this point, consider the following scenario: in April 2000, a hospital sends an electronic surveillance record to the local or state health department reporting the death of an individual who was born in year "00"; is this a case of infant mortality or a geriatric case?
For further info see CDC's web page: http://www.cdc.gov/year2000.htm
MEETINGS AND EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES
See the informatics section of NetVet for a more complete and current list of informatics-related activities at <http://netvet.wustl.edu/info.htm >
August, 1996
Risk Analysis and Animal Health; Switzerland
(See the Mar-Apr, 1996 AVI Newsletter for details)
August 7-9, 1996
12th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching & Learning; Madison, WI
(See the Jan-Feb, 1996 AVI Newsletter for details)
August 26-30, 1996
Stanford Medical Informatics Short Course; Stanford, CA
From: Larry Fagan <fagan@CAMIS.Stanford.EDU>
The Section on Medical Informatics at Stanford University will once again be presenting its well-received Short Course on Medical Informatics. This course provides an introductory overview of the key issues and topics in the field of medical informatics. Lectures are augmented by hands-on labs and overviews of major research projects at Stanford. This material is presented from the academic perspective.
Lectures include: Networking, Clinical Information Systems, Electronic Medical Records, Imaging, Monitoring, Computers in Education, Decision Making, Bibliographic Retrieval, Biomedical Resources on the Network, and Medical Vocabulary Issues.
Labs include: Networks (including World Wide Web), Electronic Medical Records, Computer-Aided Instruction, Decision Support (including medical diagnostic programs), Bibliographic Retrieval and the Unified Medical Language System.
Enrollment in the course is limited--a few positions are available in the June course; more positions are available for August.
Dates: Monday, June 17, 1996 to Friday, June 21, 1996 and again from Monday, August 26, 1996 to August 30,1996.
A brochure for the course is available on the World Wide Web at:http://camis.stanford.edu/ shortcourse.html
To obtain the course description automatically via email, send a messageTO: short-course-request@c amis.stanford.edu
withSUBJECT: send course
or contact course staff at: short-course@camis.stanford.ed u (415)723-6979
September 25, 1996
Conference: The World-Wide-Web in the Academic Medical Enterprise; New York, NY
The World-Wide-Web in the Academic Medical Enterprise (First Announcement)
25th September, 1996 at NYU Medical Center
550 First Avenue, New York, NY 10016.
The purpose of this conference is to provide attendees an opportunity to inspect progress made in implementing the WWW in the Academic Medical Enterprise. Sessions will explore progress in areas including development of medical information resources, medical education, the management of confidential patient information and the legal implications of some of these activities. Round-table discussions and questions from the floor will allow attendees to obtain accurate, practical advice to make appropriate investments in this new technology with confidence.
Continuing Medical Education credit will be offered for qualified attendees. For information look at the URL:http://rcr-www.med.ny u.edu/rcr/web_conf.html
October 14-17, 1996
European Congress of the Internet in Medicine; Brighton, UK
(See the Jan-Feb, 1996 AVI Newsletter for details)
October 13-16, 1996
Society for Medical Decision Making (SMDM); Toronto, Ontario, Canada
The Westin Harbour Castle Hotel; Toronto, Ontario, Canada
(See the Mar-Apr, 1996 AVI Newsletter for details)
October 26-30, 1996
AMIA Fall Symposium; Washington, DC
(See the Mar-Apr, 1996 AVI Newsletter for details)
October 28-30, 1996
AMIA 1996 Fall Symposium Computer Lab; Washington, DC
From: gmalet@surfer.win.net (Gary Malet)
The following is the AMIA sanctioned announcement of the 1996 Fall Symposium Computer Lab. It will be available in hypertext athttp://www -informatics.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/Amia/homepage.htmAmerican Medical Informatics Association
Internet Working Group
Medical Internet Skills Computer Lab
Resources, Utilities, Authoring Tools, And Advanced Applications
AMIA Annual Fall Symposium
Washington Sheraton, Washington, D.C.
October 28 - October 30, 1996
Introduction
The American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) Internet Working Group will sponsor a hands-on computer laboratory at this year's AMIA Fall Symposium to be held October 28-30, 1996 in Washington, D.C.
Participants will learn how to take advantage of a wealth of Internet multimedia documents that will support patient care into the 21st century. Resource developers will share their knowledge about emerging hardware and software that is creating a global information network for hospitals, clinics, companies, and universities.
The Medical Internet Skills Computer Lab will provide a unique environment that will encourage group participation and collaborative problem solving. Authors of significant medical Internet projects, experts in Internet HTML composition, and innovative programmers will share their expertise.
The Symposium And Internet Working Group
Each fall AMIA brings together greater than two thousand of the world's foremost informatics specialists for academic sessions at its Fall Symposium. This year the Symposium's theme is "Beyond the Superhighway: Exploiting the Internet with Medical Informatics."
AMIA, http://www.amia.org, is the premier organization in the United States dedicated to the development and application of medical informatics in the support of patient care, teaching, research, and health care administration. AMIA's Internet Working Group,
http://www -informatics.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/Amia/homepage.htm, is an interest group within AMIA that is responding to a global medical community's urgent need for networked medical information. The group is composed of medical professionals, university based medical resource developers, computer programmers, and publishers.
Call For Speakers And Presenters
Developers of medical Internet resources and masters of authoring programs and utilities are invited to submit projects and topics for presentation at this Computer Lab. Facilitators to monitor and assist participants at workstations are also needed. Please contact the 1996 Internet Working Group Program Manager Dr. Beverley Kane, bkane@apple.com, to contribute to this important project.
Schedule
Sunday, October 27 Noon to 5 PM
Monday, October 28 8:30 AM to 8 PM
Tuesday, October 29 8:30 AM to 8 PM
Content
1. Basic tools for networking on the InternetAccessing information via WWW, FTP, Gopher. Communicating via mail and newsgroups.
Internet protocols.
Add-On Applications - Using Video, Audio, and Sound.
2. How to find medical information on the InternetAccessing medically orientated networked information related to teaching, research and administration.
Search Engines/Indexes.
Retrieving inexpensive or free software. Searching the Internet to find relevant medical and clinical science information
Web based electronic medical records programs.
3. Authoring Internet ResourcesThe newest authoring tools and techniques. HTML authoring utilities.
Features of web browsers.
JAVA, PERL, and CGI Scripts.
HTML facilitated database access.
4. Maintaining Internet Hardware and ToolsServer programs and installation and maintenance. Listserv operation.
Creating and maintaining firewalls.
Privacy, confidentiality, and intellectual property. Installation of Internet over networks.
Presentation Format/Facilities
Two meeting rooms with Internet connectivity will offer a mini-theater and 10 fixed computer workstations for academic hands-on demonstrations of Internet software and resources. In the mini-theater (seating approximately 50), invited presenters will demonstrate Internet applications at scheduled intervals. Workstations will have preloaded software that addresses topics covered in the academic presentations. An usher will control room access. The Computer Lab will be staffed by four facilitators to assist people at the workstations.
Lab Access
Access to the computer lab will be limited to attendees of the 1996 AMIA Annual Fall Symposium. Admission tickets will be distributed during the Symposium.
Symposium Registration
The preliminary program and registration materials for the 1996 AMIA Annual Fall Symposium will be available in August. This information will be on the AMIA website at http://www.amia.org. If you are not on AMIA's mailing list and would like to receive a printed copy of the preliminary program, please contact:
Sharon Jadrnak
Director of Information Technology and Systems American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) 4915 St. Elmo Avenue, Suite 401
Bethesda, MD 20814
Voice: 301-657-1291
Fax: 301-657-1296
E-mail: sharon@amia2.amia.org
http://www.amia.org
April 23-25, 1997
1997 Computers in Healthcare Education Symposium; Philadelphia, PA
From: "Cindy A. Pitchon" <PITCHON@SHRSYS.HSLC.ORG>
INVITATION
The Health Sciences Libraries Consortium encourages the sharing of resources among health sciences institutions and towards that end sponsors the annual Computers in Healthcare Education Symposium. The Symposium is a national forum for sharing ideas and expertise about the use of technology in healthcare education. Each year, hundreds of attendees--medical school faculty, computer services personnel, librarians, and practitioners--come to Philadelphia for this continuing education event.
We invite you to submit proposals for the 1997 Symposium. While any topic related to Computers in Healthcare Education will be considered for inclusion, we are particularly interested in proposals related to the theme "Re-engineering Healthcare Education."
SCOPE
The Symposium includes two full days of paper presentations, panel discussions, software demonstrations, poster sessions, and one day of pre-conference workshops. To review several past programs, visit the Symposium's World Wide Web site at:http://jeffline. tju.edu/CWIS/OAC/hslc/symposium.html
Four tracks are planned. (Examples of possible topics are provided):
Issues for Educators/Faculty (Computer-based learning systems, Ensuring educational quality at multiple sites, Teleconferencing, Distance Learning, etc.)
Issues for Librarians (Electronic journals, Creating the Virtual Library, Remote Access, Problem-Based Medical Curriculum, etc.)
Issues for Healthcare Practitioners (Telemedicine, Medical Information Systems, Public Health Care, etc.)
New Technologies in Education and Research (Advances in Health Sciences Informatics, Telemedicine, Distance
Learning, Designing the Virtual Lecture Hall, etc.)
For further information contact:
Cindy Pitchon <pitchon@shrsys.hslc.org>
Health Sciences Libraries Consortium
3600 Market Street
Suite 550
Philadelphia, PA 19104-2646
September 10-14, 1997
Veterinary Informatics at the 5th World Equine Veterinary Association; Padova, Italy
From: milo luxardo <mluxardo@mbox.vol.it>
The organizing committee of the Congress invites authors to submit scientific abstracts for oral presentation or poster presentation . Papers relating to recent research into any aspect of clinical equine medicine and surgery and all fields of veterinary informatics will be considered. The presentations will run within the main scientific program or within the Veterinary Informatic workshop on 10th,11th and 12th of September 1997. Abstracts should be written in English.
Visit our WebPage <http://www.finsystem.it/weva97>
For further information e-mail:
mluxardo@mbox.vol.it
milo.luxardo@altair.it
How to Build a Popular Web Site
CLOSING BITS
From: Edupage Editors <educom@elanor.oit.unc.edu>
Companies such as A&B Studios of Salt Lake City have figured out how to generate more hits on their Web site -- they've incorporated the words "Barney," "fun," "sex," and numerous dirty words into the border of their home page, thus generating hits from search engines such as Webcrawler and Alta Vista. (Wall Street Journal 27 Jun 96 B1)