Access to health information is a major dilemma facing rural physicians and other health care workers in medically underserved and critically underserved areas in Kansas. Those involved in teaching medical student preceptor programs, those teaching residents and those rural hospitals which are trying to retain and recruit physicians are acutely aware of the importance of access to current and relevant medical information.
The aim i s to develop remote site access to libraries and create learning resource centers in rural areas, with the physician as primary liaison. Local hospitals and physician offices will be provided with computer and FAX work stations to create a library without walls environment. Resource sharing and an avenue for professional dialogue through an electronic forum will be promoted by establishing a health information network. Instruction is to be provided by Grateful Med, Loansome Doc and other software chosen specifically to facilitate data management of data retrieved via Grateful Med and other electronic methodologies, such as UMLS extensions. These computer programs are identical with those used in current student curricula at the University of Kansas of Medicine at Wichita and will provide rural physicians and health care workers with state-of-the-art technology necessary for patient care and medical education. Instruction, interlibrary loan and on-call support will be provided by the Farha Library. The goal is to provide individualized and personalized support and training. Valuative statistics relating to training, recruitment or retention of physicians, use of computers, and online searching will be maintained to monitor the success of the project, as well as written surveys regarding satisfaction of information identified and of program support. Reports and presentations on this Kansas pilot project will be forthcoming.
