With the growing number of emerging infectious diseases and global threats such as HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria and bio-terrorism, a firm understanding of infectious diseases and microbiology is critical for all healthcare professionals. However, gaining this knowledge is difficult given the vast amount of information in the field and the limited training resources available to trainees and practicing physicians. We propose to address the difficulties through a digital library called eMicrobes designed for use by healthcare providers and trainees.
The aims of this grant proposal are: 1) To create an extensive and easily searchable digital library of interactive case studies and images that strengthens and facilitates the teaching of infectious diseases and microbiology to health care providers;2) To enhance the value and effectiveness of this digital library by a) developing a robust resource metadata schema compatible with NLM and other medical electronic databases and applications, and b) leveraging this metadata schema to dynamically integrate relevant information from medical on-line resources such as PubMed to enrich case information;and 3) To broadly disseminate the digital library resource data and provide customizable options for storing and viewing the data so that health care practitioners and trainees can access digital library resources on a local computer or hand-held device when not connected to the Internet, which will make the tool more useful in underserved areas. The eMicrobes digital library will be developed by a collaborative team of physicians, an information scientist, a medical librarian and a medical education specialist. This initiative is consistent with the health-related goals of the application organization since training of health care providers is part of its core mission.
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