The Rural Hospital Electronic Library of Michigan (RHELM) Project was conceived in February 2002 and brought to fruition in October 2002 with IADL funding. Synergy Medical Education Alliance (formerly Saginaw Cooperative Hospitals, Inc.) partnered with three rural hospitals to provide them with electronic resources to search for medical, nursing, and consumer information online. Synergy Medical is a health care provider and medical education corporation that provides undergraduate and graduate training to medical students and residents in our on-site clinics and acute care affiliated hospitals. We provide continuing medical education (CME) to physicians locally and within the region. Our outreach program is the primary source of medical information for 15 rural hospitals and health departments in the East Central Michigan Region. Information is requested by a contact person at each rural site and forwarded to the outreach coordinator at Synergy Medical. The request is processed within 24-48 hours of receipt and faxed or mailed to the requestor. The goal of the RHELM Project is to provide access to electronic resources at the point of care, thus eliminating the 24-hour + time factor from the equation. With IADL funding we received in 2002 we have provided three of the rural hospitals in our region with computer equipment and have completed the web site for electronic resources. We began training staff and employees in PubMed searching in May 2003, and will cover MedlinePlus, Toxnet, StatRef and CINAHL over the next few months. We are applying for another IADL grant so we can partner with two additional hospitals and a public health department and add them to our group of RHELM users. To attain this goal, Synergy Medical will purchase and install the necessary computer equipment and make the RHELM web site available to the new users. We will train the medical staff and employees to search online, and conduct follow up in the form of user satisfaction surveys. RHELM web address: www.rhelm.org.
