9317894 Newbould Methodist Medical Center of Illinois (Methodist), a 420 bed teaching medical center affiliated with the University of Illinois at Chicago, proposes to connect the campus-wide ethernet Local Area Network to the NFSNET. This will be done by consultation with and assistance from netIllinois, an affiliate of CICNet, a regional NFSNET network. Methodist's ongoing development and full implementation of an Integrated Advanced Information Management System (IAIMS) requires a data repository that reaches external databases and information exchanges. The absence of this capability can be solved by means of Internet access. Methodist will provide Internet access to a variety of professional staff and adequately equip the users through education and support services. Further, this project will examine medical center professionals' use of resources available through the Internet and the impact of subsequent use. Three groups of 12 will be formed, each group representing a different category of professional staff: clinical/research, ancillary and administrative. Participants will be trained in proper uses of the Internet. During participation they will keep a structured journal of Internet usage. The Methodist Research Section will conduct periodic structured interviews of the participants. Bimonthly, the journal entries will be copied for review and analysis. Also, electronic records will be kept on usage. At the beginning of the second year another cohort of groups will repeat the process. Content analysis and descriptive statistics will be performed on the journal, interview, electronic record and support services call data.
