Collaboration Technology for Real-time Treatment of Patients
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July 1 - September 30, 1996
The objective of this task is to demonstrate the usefulness of computer-assisted collaboration technologies in patient care, where the general practitioner in charge of a patient's care is not physically collocated with an appropriate expert consultant. This task will demonstrate remote consultation in two specific instances: 1) between a primary care obstetrician and a tertiary care perinatologist and 2) between a primary care provider and a tertiary care radiologist.
The most recent version of the Meeting on the Network (MONET) system is being tested on PCs with the Windows95 operating system. The current system supports a completely functional whiteboard with support for image capture and display as well as an intuitive user interface. The system also supports multicast in addition to some limited versions of the H.323 standard for desktop conferencing. Work continues on improving audio quality over telephone lines. The entire system has been compiled under Solaris 2.5 and is being tested. Some tools are being developed in Java to support the easy creation of user interfaces for transcription system. A prototype system was tested to work as a Netscape plug-in.
During this phase, the major work included:
Community health care primarily involves preventive and primary health care for community residents through the participation of individual practices, group practices, federally-funded clinics, community centers, and hospitals. Collaboration and cooperation among these multiple parties is essential for effective healthcare delivery. Limited resources and medical staff, coupled with the lack of proper health education and awareness among the population, make it difficult to provide healthcare in rural areas. The objective of this task is to develop a community care network (CCN) that will allow a community of healthcare professionals to provide quality care to a rural population.
We made progress this quarter in fine-tuning the dictation and transcription systems. We downloaded the patient database from the VHS billing system in preparation for use with the dictation and transcription systems. We also demonstrated access at the clinics to discharge summaries from St. Mary's Hospital. We still need to tweak some process issues before the current deployment is operational. We expect Dr. Bruce Merkin to begin using the system by the end of October. The hiring of the new system administrator last month was critical for helping the project move forward.
In addition, we hosted a visit by Dr. Charles Sneiderman at the clinic and hospitals in Huntington in September.
The following work was completed in this reporting period:
The objective of this task is to develop a domain-specific reference architecture for statewide collaboration in the health care domain that can serve as a model for promoting the use of such technology. Through direct experience with the experimental tasks, Tasks 1 and 2, we expect the architecture to evolve in its construction over the course of the project.
This task manages the planning and installation of infrastructure elements, networks, computers, etc., in the community care network. It also contributes to the overall effort to evaluate the effectiveness of the network and its individual elements.
We continue to be actively involved in a number of activities related to the overall architectural frameworks for healthcare. One such activity is the CORBAMed effort, jointly sponsored by OMG and MRI. We also cosponsored and attended the second in a series of workshops in the Master Patient Index area to define a common framework for developing such indices. This successful workshop, held in Washington, DC, in September, is producing a positive collaboration among government agencies and corporate and academic researchers.
The simulation work at Arizona State University was completed during this period. We are awaiting the final report.
The major work during this period included:
The objective of this task is to demonstrate open and easy access to patient information from legacy hospital information systems. This task is now focusing on integration at Cabell Huntington Hospital (CHH).
The open systems administration position at Valley Health Systems (VHS) was filled during this period; Stephen C. Jones began work in early September. After evaluating the amount of effort required at the clinics and hospitals in Huntington, the VHS team decided to add an additional full-time technical staff person at VHS to share responsibilities with Mr. Jones.
Initial plans were that much of the hospital systems integration effort would be done by a person hired by CHH under their subcontract. CHH, however, was unable to hire this person. As a result, CERC canceled their subcontract during this quarter. Their interest in cooperating with the project has not diminished, however, and we have formulated a plan to achieve significant integration results by the end of the first quarter of 1997.
The major work for this period included:
http://www.cerc.wvu.edu/nlm/artemis/project_reports/p2q8.html
September 3, 1997, by Mary Carriger
Copyright © 1997 Concurrent Engineering Research Center