Oliver
There were two other modest IMIT contributions to the GP & PHC conference.
1) I presented a small project on training GPs to search the Internet to
find evidence-based clinical information. I made the point that GPs had
very little if any training in this field.
2) I also 'promoted' (by poster) a book which I have just had published
by McGraw-Hill titled "Computing and Information Management in General
Practice". It has chapters on: computers, GPs and patients; practice
management; clinical care; electronic resources; computer security; and
promoting quality and safety in GP computing. Again, I made the point
that training GPs based on a comprehensive computer 'curriculum' is
extremely patchy. GPs are apparently supposed to pick things up 'on the
fly'.
If anyone is interested in purchasing a copy of the book, email
[EMAIL PROTECTED] ($39.95 plus postage).
There was discussion at the conference about GPs not entering sufficient
data, and the lack of a common clinical terminology. These are some of
the reasons why BEACH has remained paper-based. Further training, most
likely through the divisions, and with the colleges setting minimal
standards, remains essential.
Peter
Oliver Frank wrote:
Chris Hogan wrote:
I am up at the GP & PHC Conference where naturally the topic turned to
Health Informatics.
Yes, informatics and Australia's slow progress in improving electronic
management of clinical information kept coming up in many of the 236
papers and posters, and plenary sessions and workshops. Despite this,
the Conference had no specific sessions on informatics other than a
fascinating workshop run by Prof. Teng Liaw and his colleague in
Shepparton Dr. Douglas Boyle, a Scottish computer scientist who set up a
very powerful nationwide diabetes database in Scotland, which enables
users to look at all of the diabetes-related information of every
diabetic in Scotland. Douglas showed us some of what is available in
that system and it is mind-blowing. Doug's details are at:
http://www.findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/researcher/person142641.html
The actual purpose of the workshop was to do some research! A table of
GPs, another of allied health professionals, another of health service
managers and a fourth one of researchers (acknowledging that some people
had multiple roles) independently wrote down what kind of information
about patients should be shared in order to facilitate and maximise the
person's long term health care. There was a structured voting process
(the exercise apparently used something called the nominal group
technique) and then the results were collated by Teng Liaw working hard
at his laptop machine in real time. What came out was that the
different professional groups had quite different ideas about the
information that they thought should be shared, but it turned out that
each group called the same types of information by different names, so
some of the differences did not really exist. I understand that Teng
and Doug will be publishing the results.
Apart from my paper about GPs' experiences of receiving opportunistic
reminders for preventive activities, the only other informatics-specific
presentation that I was able to attend was a very interesting and
challenging paper that compared the quality of care with and without
computers and found no obvious difference. The abstract is at:
http://www.phcris.org.au/elib/render.php?params=3700
and the slides of all the presentations will be on the Conference Web
site http://www.phcris.org.au/conference/2007 within a few days.
I have suggested to PHCRIS who run the GP&PHC conferences that in view
of the vital role of informatics in health care they should actively
seek to invite and involve people working in health informatics to
attend next year (it will be in Hobart early in June 2008) and that they
make informatics one of the themes of that Conference.
--
Associate Professor Peter Schattner
Chair, Scientific Committee
WONCA - RACGP Conference, Melbourne, October 2008
Department of General Practice
Monash University
867 Centre Rd EAST BENTLEIGH Vic Australia 3165
Phone (03) 8575 2252
Fax (03) 8575 52233
Email [EMAIL PROTECTED]
_______________________________________________
Gpcg_talk mailing list
[email protected]
http://ozdocit.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/gpcg_talk
