Association for
Veterinary Informatics
NEWSLETTER

January - February, 1997


Harmon Rogers (Lake Stevens, WA) - President; - President-Elect; James T. Case (UC-Davis) - Secretary Treasurer; Ronald D. Smith (Illinois) - Newsletter Editor

IN THIS ISSUE


ASSOCIATION NEWS


From the AVI Newsletter Editor

The 14th annual North American Veterinary Conference was held January 11 - 15, 1997 in Orlando, Florida. Almost 11,500 registrants participated in the event. Veterinary informatics applications were a relatively small but highly visible (at least to me!) contingent of the 243 exhibitors on the exhibit floor, and are the focus of this issues' feature article.

The Veterinary Information Network (VIN) and Network of Animal Health (NOAH) booths were strategically located at the entrance of the main exhibit area. Both stations provided ample opportunity for NAVC participants to explore online information resources. Hospital information/practice management systems were abundant. The focus of these systems was on small business management rather than capturing medical aspects of the patient encounter.

We are unlikely to see any significant adoption of the "electronic medical record" in veterinary practice until the mechanics of capturing this information become trivial. One interesting step in this direction was ImproMed's hand-held bar code scanner being marketed to food animal practitioners who need to capture client/patient information and services on site. This technology could be easily incorporated into hospital-based sysems.

Finally, students from St. Petersburg Junior College provided information on the college's distance learning program leading to an Associate in Science degree in Veterinary Technology. Two- and four-year colleges around the country are getting serious about computer-based distance learning programs, which is viewed as a "survival strategy" in the not too distant future.

 

 

 

Paul Pion has fun surfing VIN's site.

Jim Brewer has just as much fun on NOAH.

Craig Burnett holding ImproMed's bar code scanner.




How to Contact AVI

Applications for membership, accompanied by a check for $35 payable to the AVI, should be sent to:

Dr. James T. Case; Secretary Treasurer, AVI; 1590 Augusta Ct., Dixon, CA 95620
Phone: 916/752-4408; FAX: 916/752-5680; e-mail: JimCase@aol.com

Dr. Case is responsible for distribution of the hardcopy version of the AVI Newsletter.


Newsletter items can be sent to:

Dr. Ronald D. Smith, Newsletter Editor, AVI; UI College of Veterinary Medicine; 2001 South Lincoln; Urbana, IL 61801.
Phone: 217/333-2449; FAX: 217/333-4628; e-mail: rd-smith@uiuc.edu

If you are an AVI member and would like to be on the AVI Newsletter electronic distribution list, send an e-mail message to the Newsletter Editor. Although the electronic version is only an ASCII (text) file, it's faster, searchable, easier to store and retrieve, and environmentally friendly.

Current and past issues of the AVI Newsletter are also available on the Web at the following URL:

http://netvet.wustl.edu/avi.htm

CORRESPONDENCE


CD-ROM's for Learning Technology Delivery
From: Marco Coronado <MARCOA@AOL.COM>

I am a private practicioner in CNY I think multimedia and audiovisuals could be of great importance for everybody. We at our clinic are working on the possibility of producing client education videotapes or CDROMS. Please send me info about your products and services that involve multimedia.

Marco A. Coronado DVM
1812 Rt 20 W
Cazenovia NY 13035
315 655 8070
315 655 4961 FAX
MarcoA@AOL.COM

Computer-Based Learning Tools for Veterinary Educators
From: Fred Smith <SMITH.F@CALC.VET.UGA.EDU>

http://www.var.vet.uga.edu/

Every year for the last eight years we have had a computer-based learning workshop in the Spring here at the UGA College of Veterinary Medicine. In the early years the focus was on the videodisc as a tool. In the last couple of years the focus has been on the World Wide Web.

This May we will host the ninth such workshop. Please drop by our departmental home page (listed above) and click on the top menu item to look over the agenda and registration details. I will be happy to answer any questions you have and I would appreciate it if you would pass this on to anyone you think might be interested.

Thanks,
Fred

AN INFORMAL SURVEY OF COMPUTING TECHNOLOGY
FEATURED IN EXHIBITS AT THE 14th ANNUAL
NORTH AMERICAN VETERINARY CONFERENCE

Ronald D. Smith

College of Veterinary Medicine
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
2001 South Lincoln Ave.
Urbana, IL 61802
<rd-smith@uiuc.edu>


The July-August, 1996 issue of the AVI Newsletter included an abstract of a paper which I presented at the Second Annual Richard B. Talbot Informatics Symposium, 133rd Annual Meeting of the American Veterinary Medical Association, in Louisville, KY. The paper, "Veterinary Informatics - The Best Kept Secret" reviewed informatics activity in the veterinary literature over the past 30 years. A total of 611 articles were retrieved representing the contributions of 1338 authors published in 153 journals.

To facilitate data analysis I assigned articles to one or more of the following sub-specialties (numbers in parentheses indicate how many articles fell into each category in decreasing frequency):

  • Information and bibliographical retrieval (135) - Computer-based systems for the storage, retrieval, and sharing of biomedical information locally or over networks.

  • Decision support (47) - Computer-based systems that assist practitioners in making decisions about patient care.

  • Clinical Research/Epidemiology (40) - The use of computers to assist in the collection and analysis of animal health/production data from individual patients or populations which can be used to improve the diagnosis, management, control and prevention of disease

  • Radiology/imaging (40) - A computer-based information system for the acquisition and analysis of medical images, including X-ray imaging, computed tomography, echosonography, and magnetic resonance imaging.

  • Education (computer-assisted instruction; CAI) (21) - The application of computer technology to education to assist in the delivery of factual knowledge, problem-solving experiences, and for student assessment.

  • Medical record systems (12) - Computer-based information systems for the capture and manipulation of patient data for the purpose of facilitating patient care, meeting legal and financial requirements, and aiding clinical research.

  • Patient monitoring (8) - A computer-based system for repeated or continuous observation or measurement of the patient, physiological parameters, and the function of life support equipment for the purpose of guiding and assesing therapeutic management.

  • Hospital information/practice management systems (5) - Computer-based information systems which integrate both medical and administrative functions of medical facilities and services including patient information from all contributing services, scheduling and staffing, inventory, accounting and other fiscal functions.

  • Laboratory information systems (1) - Computer-based information system that support laboratory functions for collecting, verifying, and reporting test results.

  • Pharmacy systems (0) - Computer-based information systems for the management of medical information systems related to drugs and to the use of drugs in patient care.

  • Systems evaluation & validation (0) - Issues related to the design, development, and evaluation of medical information systems.


An additional general category, hardware and programming (434), was also included. This category doesn't shed light on computer applications in veterinary medicine, but it does indicate the extent to which different types of informatics tools are used.

Some sub-specialties appeared to be very active, whereas others, such as hospital information/practice management systems, appeared to be relatively inactive. Since this study reflected literature reports only, I thought it might be useful to conduct a similar survey of veterinary informatics activity in the commercial sector.

In order to accomplish this I systematically visited every one of the 243 exhibitors listed in the program of the 14th annual North American Veterinary Conference held in Orlando, Florida January 11-15, 1997. At each exhibit station I interrogated the exhibitors to learn whether computers were being used as an integral part of the service or product being marketed. If so I tried to assign the service or product to one or more of the above veterinary informatics sub-specialties.

Twenty-one exhibitors (4.8% of the total) offered services or products that relied upon computer technology. The number of exhibitors whos product(s) fell each veterinary informatics sub-specialty, in decreasing frequency, follows:

  • Hospital information/practice management systems (9)

  • Information and bibliographical retrieval (8)

  • Radiology/imaging (6)

  • Education (computer-assisted instruction; CAI) (5)

  • Decision support (2)

  • Patient monitoring (1)

  • Clinical Research/Epidemiology (0)

  • Medical record systems (0)

  • Laboratory information systems (0)

  • Pharmacy systems (0)

  • Systems evaluation & validation (0)

As one might expect at a practitioner-oriented meeting, more than 40% of informatics-related exhibitors offered hospital information/practice management systems. Other practice-related sub-specialties represented on the exhibit floor were radiology/imaging, decision support, and patient monitoring. It was interesting to note that information/bibliographic retrieval was the second most frequent sub-specialty represented, followed closely by computer-assisted educational programs.

In summary, most commercial applications of computers in veterinary medicine appeared to fall into one of three broad categories: practice management, education, and signal processing. Computer-based applications for information/bibliographic retrieval, radiology/imaging, and education are prominent in both the published veterinary literature and in the commercial sector. On the other hand, if one wants to learn about hospital information/practice management systems, it is better to spend time on the exhibit floor than in the lilbrary. Although computer databases are important resources for clinical and epidemiologic studies, comprehensive medical records systems are not a significant component of commercially-available hospital information systems.

PRODUCT AVAILABILITY/REVIEWS/COMPARISONS


HACCP Manager
From: icon@ne.com.au (Icon Software)

Good News!

The demo version of HACCP Manager is now available to download at our web site

http://www.ne.com.au/~icon

Please feel free to download and examine our demo. An order form can also be found at the site. To prepare the demo, place the file hacpdemo.exe in the directory of your choice and run it. The file will unzip all of the program files in that directory. Then run setup.exe to install the demo and create program icons.

Scott Popovic B.Com
Richard Noggler B.Sc

STUDVET for Windows 95
From: Michael Shaw <mshaw@GIL.COM.AU>

Just to let you know the Windows 95 version of STUDVET, the program for the management of equine stud operations, has been released in demonstration form. The program is a substantial upgrade on the Dos version previously seen

You can download a copy from...

http://www.gil.com.au/comm/karavet/studhome.html

Hope you like it, comments always welcome.

Michael.
Michael Shaw B.V.Sc.
mshaw@gil.com.au
Karalee Karana Veterinary Surgery
304 Mt. Crosby Road Chuwar
Queensland
Australia 4306
Ph: +61 7 32827888 Fax: +61 32827899

INTERNET RESOURCES


Pig Disease Information Centre

The Pig Disease Information Centre has launched the first web-site, making up to date information relating to many aspects of pig diseases and breeding available 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Information cannot only be viewed, but also printed out. There is a vast pool of knowledge and experience now at the fingertips of vets and pig specialists around the world. The website will grow constantly and draw contributors from around the world.

Information is available on:

-Diseases information
-Breeding, genetics and infertility
-News items, both UK and International
-Search facilities-a database of Internet information resources on pigs
-An up to date list of relevant books, videos and magazines
-Background information about PDIC people and services.
-Pig welfare
-Discussion page for vets


This web-site is also an excellent "jumping off" point to pig and veterinary information Internet sites around the world. Simply click on any description of more than 100 selected and categorised sites and you will be connected to them in an instant.

The URL (Internet address) of this site is: http://www-pdic.vet.cam.ac.uk/

--For further information about this web-site please contact Dr. Michael Meredith.
U.K. fax: 01223 330886; international fax: +44 1
e-mail: <mjm10@hermes.cam.ac.uk>

INNO-VET (C.A.) on the Internet-World Small Animal Veterinary Association

World Small Animal Veterinary Association (WSAVA) <http://wsava.org/inno-vetca>
Consumer forum for the companion animal veterinary practitioner

**new products,new services and innovations
**therapeutic evaluations
**diagnostic evaluations
**equipment evaluations
**consumer questions and comments

Dr.Ray Markus

E-mail: raym@wsava.org

Weekly Epidemiological Record

http://www.who.ch/wer/wer_home.html

The Weekly Epidemiological Record (WER) serves as an essential instrument for the rapid and accurate dissemination of epidemiological information on cases and outbreaks of diseases under the International Health Regulations, other communicable diseases of public health importance, including the newly emerging or re-emerging infections, non-communicable diseases and other health problems. The WER is distributed every Friday in a bilingual English/French edition. The electronic edition is free of charge. For information on subscription to the printed edition, click here <wer@who.ch> or use the mail address: World Health Organization, Distribution and Sales, 20 Avenue Appia, CH-1211 Geneva 27, Fax: (+4122) 791 48 57

An E.Mail subscription service exists, which provides by electronic mail each week the table of contents of the WER, together with a short epidemiological bulletin. To subscribe, send a message to majordomo@who.ch. The subject field should be left blank and the body of the message should contain only the line subscribe wer-reh

Issues of the WER are in AdobeTM AcrobatTM portable document format (.pdf). To view the WER, the programme AcrobatTM Reader is required.

EuroSurveillance - European Communicable Disease Bulletin

http://www.b3e.jussieu.fr:80/ceses/eurosurv/

EuroSurveillance is a European bulletin on communicable disease, coordinated by CESES (Saint-Maurice) and PHLS CDSC (London). You can consult or print each article or download the whole bulletin (pdf). Full text available in French, English, Spanish, or Portuguese.

ISSN: 1025 - 496X

The electronic version of this bulletin is prepared by frsceses@b3e.jussieu.fr and ddceses@b3e.jussieu.fr.

Web66 - Web use in the Classroom
From: "Stephen E. Collins" <Web66@web66.coled.umn.edu>

Web66 on Listserv@tc.umn.edu

Web Use in the Classroom

After a year-long absence, the Web66 Mailing List has been revived! The Web66 mailing list is for discussion of web use in the classroom, primarily focused on schools that are implementing and supporting their own web sites.

To subscribe to Web66 send E-mail to Listserv@tc.umn.edu with the BODY of the mail containing the command

SUB WEB66 yourfirstname yourlastname

For Example: sub web66 Horace Mann

http://Web66.umn.edu/List/

Owner: Stephen E. Collins Web66@web66.coled.umn.edu

--- Additional Information ---

Web66 Collaborative Community http://Web66.umn.edu/Community/
Join the Web66 Collaborative Community! The Web66 Collaborative community helps to link students, teachers, and schools for communication and collaboration over the Internet.

Web66 International Registery of School Web Sites http://web66.umn.edu/
Web66 features the Internet's oldest and most comprehensive list of School Web Sites. The Web66 Registry now lists over 5,500 schools from over 50 different countries.

You are invited to register your school if you aren't already included in the Web66 Registry:

http://Web66.umn.edu/Register/

Visit the Web66 home page for more info: http://Web66.umn.edu/

AHEAD Web Page Inaugurated
From: Dorothy Preslar <dpreslar@fas.org>

The web page of AHEAD (Animal Health/Emerging Animal Diseases) component of the FAS ProMED project is inaugurated with the first Internet publication of the Canadian Cooperative Wildlife Health Centre Newsletter, Winter 1996 issue.

Many thanks to Dr. Ted Leighton and Jacqui Brown of the CCWHC.

The page remains under construction. Contributions are solicited.

The URL is: http://www.fas.org/ahead/

Or you may also access it through the ProMED page at: http://www.fas.org/promed/

Dorothy B. Preslar; Washington ProMED Officer; AHEAD Program Officer; Federation of American Scientists
Voice: 202-675-1011; Fax: 675-1010
http://www.fas.org/promed/
http://www.fas.org/ahead/
<dpreslar@fas.org>

CONSULTANT - Veterinary Diagnostic System on the Web
From: Dr. Maurice White <mew6@cornell.edu>

Cornell is proud to announce the availability of it's web-based diagnostic support program that allows users to search for diagnoses based on one or more signs. The URL is...

http://www.vet.cornell.edu/consultant/consult.asp


Online Journal - Computers and Biomedical Research
From: owner-newjour@ccat.sas.upenn.edu

Computers and Biomedical Research <http://www.apnet.com/www/journal/co.htm>

This online version of the print journal of the same name is published by Academic Press, Inc. through a program titled IDEAL (International Digital Electronic Access Library). Computers and Biomedical Research provides researchers with up-to-date information concerning the use of computers in biomedicine.

Research Areas Include:

  • All areas in which computers and biomedicine intersect

  • Automated classification of single and multidimensional patterns (diagnosis)

  • Computer-based hospital communication

  • Development of special techniques and devices for applying computer technology to biomedical systems

  • Mathematical models of biological systems

  • Physiological data acquisition

  • Use of computers for automated control of biomedical environments


Some articles appearing in the August 1996 issue of the Journal include: Geometric Properties of the Fractured Tibia Stabilized by Unreamed Interlocking Nail: Development of a Three-Dimensional Finite Element Model', 'A Computer Method to Model the Dose Distribution of High Energy Photon Grid Therapy in Three Dimensions', and 'Probabilistic Rule Induction from a Medical Research Study Database'.

Subscription to this electronic journal involves licensing agreements with academic and industrial networks or consortia of libraries and can not be done on a personal or even title by title basis. However, the table of contents and article abstracts for each issue are available online free-of-charge. Articles are provided to members of subscriber institutions in Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format.

ISSN 0010-4809

Editor: T. Allan Pryor
Email: apsubs@acad.com

Online Journal - Computer Speech & Language
From: owner-newjour@ccat.sas.upenn.edu

Computer Speech & Language <http://www.hbuk.co.uk/ap/journals/la.htm>

This online version of the print journal of the same name is published by Academic Press, Inc. through a program titled IDEAL (International Digital Electronic Access Library). Computer Speech & Language publishes papers of original research related to quantitative descriptions of the recognition, understanding, production, and coding of speech by humans and/or machines.

The speech sciences have a long history, but it is only relatively recently that experimentation with complex models of speech processes has become feasible. At present such research is carried out somewhat separately by practitioners of artificial intelligence, computer science, electronic engineering, linguistics, phonetics, and psychology.

The journal provides a focus for this work, and encourages an interdisciplinary approach to problems in the speech sciences. Thus contributions from all of the related disciplines are welcomed in the form of reports of theoretical or experimental studies, tutorials, and brief correspondence pertaining to models of speech communication and their implementation, or reports of fundamental research leading to the improvement of such models.

Research Areas Include:

  • Algorithms for pattern analyses

  • Computer simulations

  • Establishment of models of human performance

  • Syntactic and linguistic structures

  • Use of computers in measurements

  • Use of constructive mathematical analyses

Some articles appearing in the October 1996 issue of the Journal include: 'Modelling of the interframe dependence in an HMM using conditional Gaussian mixtures', 'Mean and variance adaptation within the MLLR framework', and 'Stochastic automata for language modeling'.

Subscription to this electronic journal involves licensing agreements with academic and industrial networks or consortia of libraries and can not be done on a personal or even title by title basis. However, the table of contents and article abstracts for each issue are available online free-of-charge. Articles are provided to members of subscriber institutions in Adobe Acrobat Portable Document Format.

ISSN 0885-2308

Editors: S.E. Levinson and S. Young
Email: apsubs@acad.com

NEWS AND COMMENTARY


USDA Proposes to Accept Digital Signatures
From: Questa Glenn <qglenn@aphis.usda.gov>

WASHINGTON, Jan. 9, 1997--The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is proposing to accept electronic digital signatures from accredited veterinarians as an additional option for official certificates, forms, records, and reports.

"We believe that accepting digital signatures may benefit accredited veterinarians and the industries they serve by saving time and money," said Joan M. Arnoldi, deputy administrator of veterinary services with APHIS, a part of USDA's marketing and regulatory programs mission area.

Accredited veterinarians are approved by APHIS to perform certain regulatory tasks to control and prevent the spread of animal diseases in the United States and internationally. These tasks include preparing and submitting official documents to APHIS. Currently, APHIS requires a handwritten signature.

"Allowing accredited veterinarians the option to sign and transmit documents electronically will provide them with more flexibility and allow them to choose the method that is most efficient for them," Arnoldi said.

Notice of this action was published in the Jan. 6 Federal Register.

Consideration will be given to comments received on or before March 6. An original and three copies of comments should be sent to Docket No. 96-075-1, Regulatory Analysis and Development, PPD, APHIS, Suite 3C03, 4700 River Road Unit 118, Riverdale, Md. 20737-1238.

Comments may be reviewed at USDA, Room 1141, South Building, 14th Street and Independence Avenue, S.W., Washington, D.C., between 8 a.m. and 4:30 p.m., Monday through Friday, except holidays. Persons wishing to review comments are requested to call ahead at (202) 690-2817 to facilitate entry into the comment reading room.

NOTE: USDA news releases, program announcements, and media advisories are available on the Internet. Access the APHIS Home Page by pointing your Web browser to: http://www.aphis.usda.gov

and clicking on "APHIS Press Releases." Also, anyone with an e-mail address can sign up to receive APHIS press releases automatically. Send an e-mail message to: majordomo@info.aphis.usda.gov

and leave the subject blank. In the message, type subscribe press_releases

Job Opportunity - Director of Learning Resources Center, Ross Univ. CVM
From: "Livija I Carlson (Livija Carlson)" <l-carl@MAROON.TC.UMN.EDU>

Is anyone interested, or knows someone qualified and interested, in a wonderful job opportunity in the balmy West Indies.

The position is the Director of the Learning Resources Center, School of Veterinary Medicine, Ross University, on the island of St. Kitts.This is an excellent opportunity to work with the faculty in developing the newly built LRC to fit the needs of the School of Veterinary Medicine.

The LRC is in the early stages of development. Currently there are 18 pentium computers connected to a Compaq file server via Windows NT network. Ross University has established a computer development center for the purpose of creating educational software for the LRC. In addition, the university is actively acquiring educational software from both academic and commercial sources. A campus wide Internet connection is projected to be installed in 1997.

The School of Veterinary Medicine consists mainly of students from the United States. The faculty come from all parts of the world, some of them are visiting faculty from major U.S. schools. For the clinical part of the curriculum, Ross students come to the U.S. schools in their senior year.

To apply, or for more information, contact:

Warren Ross; School of Veterinary Medicine; Ross University; 460 West 34th St; New York NY 10001; phone:212-279-5500 ext. 140

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>


April 20 - May 2, 1997
First International Virtual Conference on Infectious Diseases of Animals
(See the November-December, 1996 AVI Newsletter for details)

April 23-25, 1997
1997 Computers in Healthcare Education Symposium; Philadelphia, PA
(See the July-August, 1996 AVI Newsletter for details)

May 28-31, 1997
1997 AMIA Spring Congress; Fairmong Hotel; San Jose, CA

The conference theme for the 1997 AMIA Spring Congress is "Information Technology in Community Health". For more information, visit AMIA's Web site, http://www.amia.org, send e-mail to mail@mail.amia.org, or call the AMIA office at 301-657-1291.

Visit the Call for Participation directly: http://www.amia.org/s97.html

June 16-20 and August 18-22, 1997
Stanford Medical Informatics Short Course

The Stanford Medical Informatics Short Course will be June 16-20, 1997 and again from August 18-22, 1997 and will be taught on the Stanford Campus.

The Stanford Section on Medical Informatics offers a one-week introductory course on Medical Informatics. The course includes lectures, computer labs, and research project descriptions/demos. One day concentrates on decision-support: starting with three hours of lectures by Ted Shortliffe, followed by lab exercises with QMR and Iliad, and then presentations of SMI research on decision-support.

The course is described in more detail on the web at:

http://www-smi.stanford.edu/shortcourse.html

Or you can obtain a copy of the brochure by sending email to:

short-course-request@smi.stanford.edu

and put:

send course

in the subject field of the message.

Here's a short summary of the course:

COURSE ORGANIZATION

Each day will be devoted to a specific topic in medical informatics. Lectures will take place from 8:30-12:00 (3 one-hour lectures). The afternoons are divided into two events: 1) hands-on computer laboratory sessions on topics covered in the morning lectures, and 2) project presentations and demonstrations of medical informatics research at Stanford.


LECTURE TITLES

> Introduction to Medical Informatics
> Internet, Networking and Distributed Computing
> Clinical Data and Patient Record Systems
> Wide-Area Networking and Telemedicine
> Medical Imaging Systems
> Computers in Education
> Decision Making (3 lecture series)
> Bibliographic Retrieval
> Electronic Publishing
> Clinical Vocabularies
> Unified Medical Language System (UMLS)
> Molecular Biology on the Internet
> Computer Security and Java

LAB EXERCISES

> World Wide Web
> Electronic Medical Record
> Computer-Aided Instruction
> Decision Support
> Bibliographic Retrieval

For more information, call (415)723-6979, or send email to short-course@smi.stanford.edu

--- Larry Fagan <fagan@smi.stanford.edu>,
---Course organizer

August 23-29, 1997
15th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence; Nagoya, Japan

For up-to-date workshop information please check:

http://www-ai.ijs.si/ailab/activities/idamap97.html


September 4-6, 1997
GEOMED '97; Rostock, Germany
From: Mathias Bull <mathias.bull@MEDIZIN.UNI-ROSTOCK.DE>

International Workshop on Geomedical Systems - Foundations, Systems, and Applications -
Rostock, Germany, September 4-6, 1997

Motivation
==========
During the recent years many national and international (EU) projects on geomedical systems have been established. These projects mostly include the different views of geographers, epidemiologists and computer scientists and to some extent the requirements of the potential users. We consider that a workshop presenting these different views and the possible achievements of geomedical systems in the future is highly desirable. The slides offered by the CDC in the INTERNET illustrate the dramatic situation of emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases, health risks and resistant pathogens. The ProMED-Proposal (Global Program to Monitor Emerging Diseases), which was circulated for commentation last year to more than 300 experts around the world, specifies the needs and the technical demands of public health surveillance systems. These examples highlight the need of information regarding the spread of diseases, outbreaks, epidemics and distribution patterns by means of geography, time and age- or riskgroups. Monitoring systems providing those information valuable for pharmacists, the pharmaceutical industry, physicians, public health care providers, etc. can be valuable tools for any reaction and control mechanism. The current national and international information systems monitoring human and animal infectious diseases have to be improved in order to elicit the present and future challenges.

Aim
=======
GEOMED '97 offers a forum for presentation and discussion of new directions and interesting work in progress in the field of geomedical systems and closely related domains such as epidemiological models. The workshop will attempt to bring together researchers on theoretical foundations of epidemiology as well as on practical requirements and experiences from the development of geomedical applications. The workshop will be organized as a combination of invited talks, paper presentations, poster sessions and panel discussions.

For further information contact Professor Bull at the e-mail address above.

September 10-14, 1997
Veterinary Informatics at the 5th World Equine Veterinary Association; Padova, Italy
(See the July-August, 1996 AVI Newsletter for details)

Training in Medical Informatics at Oregon Health Sci Univ
From: William Hersh <hersh@ohsu.edu>

Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU) is seeking qualified applicants for its training programs in medical informatics. OHSU offers two programs: a postdoctoral fellowship for those who hold doctoral degrees (M.D., Ph.D., or others) and a master of science degree for individuals at any post-bacclaureate level.

The postdoctoral fellowship is a full-time program with funding options from both the National Library of Medicine (NLM) and Veterans Administration. Individuals spend 2-3 years pursuing an individualized plan of study that culminates in a research project. Fellows can optionally enroll in the master of science of program as well as take courses from other Portland-area institutions, such as Portland State University and Oregon Graduate Institute.

The fellowship program pays a stipend and covers a portion of tuition costs for coursework. Individuals are provided a workspace and computer with a connection to the campus network. Those with a clinical background are allowed to pursue clinical practice on a part-time basis. A Web page providing more details about the fellowship program is available at:

http://www.ohsu.edu/bicc-informatics/fellowship/

The master of science program is offered through the OHSU School of Medicine. The goal of the program is to train individuals to find employment in the development and management of health information systems. Individuals can pursue the program on a full-time or part-time basis. The required coursework spans four areas -- medical informatics, health and medicine, computer science, and quantitative methods -- and culminates in a masters thesis. Students can also obtain practical experience in hospital and industry settings. A full-time student can complete the program in 4-5 quarters.

A World Wide Web page describes admission requirements, the curriculum, and other details of the masters degree program at:

http://www.ohsu.edu/bicc-informatics/ms/

An application form for the program in PDF format is available from this Web page (though electronic submissions are not yet allowed).

OHSU is a leading center of medical informatics. It is one of the largest recipients nationally of funding from the NLM, the main funder of medical informatics research in the United States. Its Division of Health Informatics contains 12 core faculty, along with affiliates from prominent local HMOs and medical software vendors. Faculty interests include:


- The electronic medical record
- Information retrieval
- Clinician information needs
- Consumer health informatics
- Medical decision making
- Telemedicine
- Artificial intelligence and machine learning
- Clinical epidemiology
- Outcomes research

For more information on the postdoctoral fellowship program, contact:
Kent Spackman, M.D., Ph.D.
Director, Division of Health Informatics
Oregon Health Sciences University
3181 W Sam Jackson Park Rd.
Portland, OR 97201
email: spackman@ohsu.edu
voice: 503-494-4502

For more information on the master of science program, contact:
William Hersh, M.D.
Director, Master of Science in Medical Informatics Program
Oregon Health Sciences University
3181 W Sam Jackson Park Rd.
Portland, OR 97201
email: hersh@ohsu.edu
voice: 503-494-4563

SUGGESTED READING


A History of Medical Informatics in the United States: 1950 to 1990. Collen, Morris Frank. American Medical Informatics Association; 4915 St. Elmo Avenue, Suite 401; Bethesda, MD 20814. $35.00 AMIA members; $40.00 non-members.
Ph 301/657-1291; FAX 301/657-1296; e-mail mail@amia2.amia.org

CLOSING BITS


Better Than Average
From: Edupage, 17 December 1996

U.S. News & World Report says that one poll of university professors found that 94% of the respondents thought that they were better at their jobs than their average colleague. (U.S. News & World Report 16 Dec 96 p26)

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