Newsletter #19
MedBiquitous Consortium
Newsletter #19
3 November 2004
Published by the MedBiquitous Consortium
Contents:
- MELD: the MedBiquitous E-learning Discourse
- Save the Date -- April 6 and 7, 2005
- MedBiquitous and OHSU Receive NLM Grant
- Finding Health Images and Other Assets
- Single Sign-On Guidelines Released
- Bob Galbraith named to Board of Directors
- Collaborating with HL7
- Membership Update
1. MELD: The MedBiquitous E-Learning Discourse
MedBiquitous is pleased to announce the launch of MELD, the MedBiquitous E-Learning Discourse. Located at http://meld.medbiq.org/, MELD is a community of practice, a place where professionals involved in online healthcare education can share knowledge and develop best practices to solve real-world problems. MELD offers a range of original articles, strategic reports, online discussions, and a glossary for those interested in learning more about standards and online healthcare education. Current highlights of MELD include “What's the Pathophysiology of E-learning in the Medical Community?” and “The Who, What, Why, and How of E-learning Standards.” Read the press release at: http://www.medbiq.org/news/press_releases/pressrelease9.html
Or stop in and join the discourse at: http://meld.medbiq.org/
2. Save the Date – April 6 and 7, 2005
Mark your calendars! The next MedBiquitous Annual Conference is scheduled for April 6 and 7, 2005 in Baltimore, Maryland. The conference is open to all MedBiquitous member organizations. We look forward to seeing you there!
3. OHSU and MedBiquitous Receive NLM Grant
Oregon Health and Science University and MedBiquitous have received a grant from the National Library of Medicine for Discovering Standards-based Learning at Point of Care. The overall goal of the project is to design, implement, and test an information technology system that allows physicians to discover online continuing medical education (CME) that fills identified gaps in their knowledge at the point of care. To achieve this goal, the project team will map content and competencies into the MedBiquitous Healthcare Learning Object Metadata model and implement a Web services architecture that allows discovery of content based on those competencies.
4. Finding Health Images and Other Assets
High quality healthcare images are enormously important in enabling effective educational content, but often these valuable resources are spread out across multiple locations with no easy way to discover or access them. To address this problem, MedBiquitous is working with the Centers for Disease Control, and the Veterans Administration, and HEAL (the Health Education Assets Library, http://www.healcentral.org/) to define standards for describing health images and other media assets, including animations, interactive multimedia, and text. The elements for describing health media will be incorporated into the Healthcare Learning Object Metadata (Healthcare LOM) standard currently being developed by the MedBiquitous Education Working Group.
5. Single Sign-On Guidelines Released
Often websites require different log-ins to access different resources within a single website. For example, when a clinician moves from a professional association Web site to the association’s journal web site, there is often a need to log in with a different user ID and password. For readers, this is at least a nuisance and potentially a barrier to important information. To alleviate this problem, the MedBiquitous Technical Steering Committee, working with the MedBiquitous Journal Working Group, has released its Single Sign On Guidelines. The committee recommends using Security Assertions Markup Language (SAML) version 1.1 for projects that are being completed in 2004 or first quarter 2005. For more information, see: http://www.medbiq.org/technology/tech_architecture/ssoguidelines.pdf
6. Bob Galbraith named to Board of Directors
MedBiquitous is delighted to announce the addition of Dr. Robert Galbraith to its Board of Directors. Dr. Galbraith is the co-director of the Center for Innovation at the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME). The Center (http://www.nbme.org/research/ci.asp) develops new products and services and explores new ventures that facilitate the NBME’s strategic vision and mission.
7. Collaborating with HL7
MedBiquitous has renewed its Associate Agreement with HL7 (http://www.hl7.org/), a standards development organization that develops standards for the exchange, management, and integration of clinical and administrative data. The agreement enables MedBiquitous to work with HL7 on joint projects and to harmonize the MedBiquitous information model with the HL7 Reference Information Model. We look forward to working with our colleagues at HL7 to create standards that bridge educational and clinical systems and bring learning to the point of care.
8. Membership Update
MedBiquitous is pleased to welcome the U.S. Veterans Administration (VA), the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME), Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU), University of Miami, and Medsn as its most recent members.
The VA (http://www.va.gov/) provides a broad spectrum of medical, surgical, and rehabilitative care to its customers and has been a leader in leveraging healthcare information technologies to support care delivery. The NBME (http://www.nbme.org/) protects the health of the public through state-of-the-art assessment of health professionals while conducting research in evaluation and development of assessment instruments. OHSU (http://www.ohsu.edu/) educates health and high-technology professionals, scientists and environmental engineers, and it undertakes the indispensable functions of patient care, community service and biomedical research.
University of Miami (http://www.miami.edu/) is one of the largest private research universities in the southeastern United States. It’s School of Medicine serves Miami, South Florida, South America, and the Caribbean in education, research, patient care, and community service. Medsn (http://www.medsn.com/) is a premier medical education and marketing company that designs and implements balanced media marketing, sales training, and educational programs for pharmaceutical, medical device, biotechnology, and healthcare organizations.
