Reaching out Medical College library services to patients through E-Health libraries: An ongoing work in progress


Review Article

Author Details : Rajesh Kathane

Volume : 1, Issue : 1, Year : 2016

Article Page : 1-6


Suggest article by email

Get Permission

Abstract

Introduction: Library information science has traditionally existed in libraries but with evolution of digital online literacy the traditional role of a librarian can be expanded to healthcare through trained patient-information-managers or E-health-librarians delivering information and knowledge to rural and urban patients unable to access traditional health-care resources in hospitals or health centres.
Methods: LN Medical College, Bhopal, E-Health libraries are managed by interested and trained library and information science as well as other background volunteers designated, ‘patient information communication managers.’ These E-health library volunteers typically reside in the same community drained by the E-health library and their job is to create detailed electronic health records of de-identified patients (after signed informed consent), share the records across an online-global, participatory-healthcare, learning-ecosystem, contact the ‘local-doctors’ in their area and share inputs from the Global doctors on each patient thus obtaining conversational and evidence based clinical decision support input to benefit those patients with the records.
Results: This is a pilot intervention of an open-online-health-record system, de-identified as per HIPAA guidelines, that has enabled one hospital unit managed by a physician team to regularly engage in informational continuity of their patients, through a patient-information-manager (aka E-health-librarian) supported online-network of 1500+ physicians and patient-information-communication managers working both in the hospital as well as rural and urban communities. A qualitative thematic analysis of insights from selected cases over one year of starting this system was assessed. Almost all the online-records shared over the physician's social network received multidisciplinary inputs from multiple specialists and generalists toward facilitation of a valuable informational support for the physicians managing the patients in the online-records. Most of the patients with online-records generated during hospital stay were able to maintain better continuity of care with their hospital physicians through the patient-information managers.
Conclusion: A gratifying response from the pilot users of the system indicates that this model can be scaled by many more physicians in hospitals globally through larger in-hospital pilots and also utilized for continuing evaluation of patient-care not only in the hospitals but also in the community through patient-information managers (aka E-health librarians) working both in the hospital as well as E-health libraries in rural and urban communities.


How to cite : Kathane R, Reaching out Medical College library services to patients through E-Health libraries: An ongoing work in progress. IP Indian J Libr Sci Inf Technol 2016;1(1):1-6


This is an Open Access (OA) journal, and articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License, which allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon the work non-commercially, as long as appropriate credit is given and the new creations are licensed under the identical terms.







View Article

PDF File  


Copyright permission

Get article permission for commercial use

Downlaod

PDF File    






Article Access statistics

Viewed: 2269

PDF Downloaded: 647