MLA/NLM Joint Electronic Personal Health Record Task Force

Ja, die amerikanischen Bibliotheken, uns mal wieder etliche Jahre voraus… Die Electronic Personal Health Record Task Force (nur für Mitglieder) hat die folgende Aufgabe:

Electronic personal health records (PHRs) are being developed and promoted to encourage individuals to record their health histories with the goals of enhancing the quality of health care and reducing associated costs. There are many groups looking into PHRs‘ feasibility, technical development, application and acceptability. The Medical Library Association (MLA) and the National Library of Medicine (NLM) are jointly charging an Electronic Personal Health Record Task Force with reviewing the current state-of-the-art of PHRs with a main focus on examining how linkages to high quality health information and medical librarians can be provided from within these records.

The charge to the Task Force is to:

* Determine the key players and providers of the various types of electronic personal health records (PHRs) including ones that are independent and/or associated with electronic clinical health systems and make a list of these providers including their contact information.
* Create an inventory of health information resources and provide descriptions and links for PHR developers to include within their record templates. This material should encourage the public to view medical librarians as a source of personal assistance and to use the pre-defined quality Web-based health information resources, especially those offered by the NLM.
* Define what assistance medical librarians can offer PHR users and provide an assistance qualification statement so users know what services to expect when they contact a medical librarian.
* Identify training needs of medical librarians to enable them to support the health information resources contained within PHRs.
* Work with the MLA Health Information Literacy Research Project to implement a modest current awareness/training program for medical librarians. This program should include training on the skills needed to understand the needs of PHR users and provide them with customized support.
* Prepare a final report to be presented to the MLA Board of Directors and the administration of the National Library of Medicine.

Was hat die Taskforce bisher getan:

– Created a working definition of an electronic PHR Gathered information on electronic personal health record products
– Entered the information in a database created at NLM
– Submitted an abstract for a poster presentation at the MLA ’08 Annual Meeting
– Drafted a plain-language assistance statement to be used in PHRs that willpoint consumers to the services of medical librarians and to sites selected bymedical librarians to help them find quality health information
– Published anupdate in the June/July 2007 issue of the MLA News. For the remainder of the association year, the task force will explore ways to train librarians regarding PHRs, prepare the poster for presentation, analyze the data collected on PHRs, and identify PHR partners willing to adopt the assistance statement and work with medical librarians.