Through its four professional schools (Medicine, Dentistry, Pharmacy, and Nursing) and its continuing education (CE) and other outreach efforts, the West Virginia University Health Sciences Center (WVUHSC) is committed to improving the quality of WV's health care and the ongoing training of its health practitioners. In recognizing the importance that timely, up-to-date information has on good patient care, the WVUHSC also acknowledges that the State's practitioners face three identified barriers to ready information access; inadequate local resources, the predominantly rural nature of the State, and the limited computer literacy of its health care community. The WVUHSC seeks to overcome these barriers with the establishment of a computer based health information network, West Virginia CONSULT. While this network will be charge with meeting the information needs of the State's health care professionals, it will be especially geared to the needs of the rural health care community. CONSULT's foundation is the collaborative efforts of a variety of information resources, including several Health Sciences Center Units, community hospitals, and health professional state associations, CONSULT's goals are: 1. To provide professionals with efficient, effective access to current health information for patient care, research, and administrative decision making; 2. To facilitate the exchange of information among professional colleagues, and between practitioners, health care institutions and organizations: 3. To increase computer literacy and usage among health care professionals. It is anticipated that CONSULT will expand significantly both the variety and accessibility of information resources through cost effective telecommunications: varied end-user and librarian-run database searches; enhanced reference and referral capability: more efficient document delivery; computer literacy training and development and expanded CE support. The total cost of this program is $974,437,27 Of this $275,870.98 has already been committed by the various collaborating agencies. This request is for the balance needed of $698,566.29
| Jacknowitz, L (1992) West Virginia CONSULT: enhanced information access for health care practitioners in a rural environment. Ann N Y Acad Sci 670:163-70 |
