Biomedical subjects

Anne Adams

Publications and source records attributed to Anne Adams.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

HDLalert - a healthcare DL alerting system: from user needs to implementation.

In the health domain, there are many circumstances where clinicians (i.e. doctors, nurses, allied health professionals) and patients wish to track changes in medical knowledge. However, existing 'news' or 'alert' services provide relatively limited means for selecting which information to receive. The result is that clinicians and patients often receive information that is inappropriate, irrelevant or simply too much. In this paper, we detail alert-relevant findings from several international user studies (e.g. UK, Germany and New Zealand) incorporating both clinical staff (across several hospitals) and patients' perceptions. These findings demonstrate the importance of context, in terms of both the user's task and immediate environment. We introduce a novel alerting architecture that can provide a finely tailored stream of alerts to the user, and provides further support to assist the interpretation of received material.

Consumer Behavior↗

PubMed2006

Patient information needs: pre- and post-consultation.

This paper presents findings from a study of information seeking behaviour by National Health Service patients which explored motivational triggers for infor- mation needs. Previous research has highlighted the importance of contextual elements in users' changing information needs. This paper highlights how those needs may centre on specific events: in particular, a patient's consultation with their doctor. Patients initiate information seeking to assess whether they need clinical intervention, in preparation for the patient-doctor consultation and to verify the diagnosis or treatment stemming from that consultation. The study has revealed that having confidence in health practitioners is one key motiva- tion for information seeking. Another is a desire to use health service resources judiciously, efficiently and effectively.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Implementing digital resources for clinicians' and patients' varying needs.

This paper presents an overview of several evidence-based medicine and patient information studies conducted across the UK health service over a 4 year period, investigating clinicians', managers', and patients' perceptions of digital resources (primarily digital libraries) in hospitals, Primary Care Trusts, NHS Direct (patient call centre) and patient groups. In-depth interviews and focus groups are analysed using grounded theory methodologies and through content analysis used to produce quantitative finding. The perceived impacts of three different methods employed for delivering health informatics are presented. The findings highlight some generic issues relevant for health informatics in the UK health sector as well as some specific issues for medical digital libraries. This paper reviews in more detail the issues of medical technology implementation (traditional implementation, on the wards, and intermediaries within in communities). A breakdown of the clinicians' and patients' information journey (information initiation, facilitation and interpretation) is also presented with regard to medical digital libraries and online resources. Broad guidelines derived from these findings are provided for health-informatics deployment.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Exploring the benefits of user education: a review of three case studies.

This paper builds on Leslie Morton's vision of enabling users through education and training. It describes three different approaches to mediated training for medical students and clinicians provided by peers, juniors (i.e. medical students) and information specialists (i.e. clinical librarians) and considers the benefits to the participants. The training was provided either on a one-to-one basis or within teams in their work environments (e.g. offices, wards, team meetings). The first two projects (peer tutoring and reverse mentoring) suggest that contextualized training, using intermediaries, provides the direct benefit of cost-effective IT skill development and the indirect benefits deriving from the interactions between the trainers and the target groups. The third project, the outreach librarian study, provides evidence of both direct benefits (i.e. time saved, quality of service, skills acquired, financial savings and improved evidence-based medicine implementation) and indirect, long-term benefits relating to more social issues (e.g. perceptions of the library, clinical teams, job satisfaction and patient interactions). The general conclusion to emerge from this review of case studies is that the concept of educational benefits is very broad and that empirical studies need to look at both obvious and less obvious benefits.

Famous Persons↗