Infobuttons are context specific links, placed in clinical information systems, which retrieve context-specific information from on-line health resources. Infobutton Managers are systems that match context information to potential information needs and provide users with a selection of links to relevant resources. Several Infobutton Managers exist, serving a variety of institutions, and an HL7 standard for Infobutton Managers is in development. Current Infobutton Managers are maintained and tailored by systems personnel. The goal of the proposed project is to increase the use of the Infobutton Manager. We propose to develop a Librarian Infobutton Tailoring Environment (LITE) that will allow institutional librarians to apply their expertise to specify to the Infobutton Manager the information needs of their users, determine appropriate on-line resources to address those needs, and construct appropriate queries for retrieving answers. We envision each institution charging someone with the responsibility for establishing, maintaining, and monitoring the questions and resources provided to the users of their clinical information systems.
Our specific aims are to: 1. Conduct a community assessment of the infobutton management functions needed by institution librarians 2. Refine the planned features of LITE (as envisioned above) to address needs of institution librarians 3. Establish a forum for collecting feedback from institution librarians as LITE is developed 4. Develop LITE in an iterative manner, based on feedback from institution librarians 5. Develop a user manual and tutorial for training institution librarians in the use of LITE 6. Evaluate the usability of LITE by trained institution librarians 7. Evaluate the use of LITE at institutions that integrate the IM into their clinical information systems 8. Disseminate the results of the project 9. Promote the use of the IM and LITE The result will be a resource that will help health care institutions address the problem of unresolved clinician information needs. We exploit existing information technology infrastructure to empower informatics professionals to leverage it for translating and disseminating research information. We seek to create and make available a more usable tool that will facilitate use of the IM by ours and other institutions.
