Health Sciences Library At UB Receives Federal Grantto Fund Planning For Online Medical-Information System

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- The Health Sciences Library at the University at Buffalo has received a two-year, $283,000 Integrated Advanced Information Management System (IAIMS) Grant from the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to fund strategic planning for a projected integrated, online medical-information environment to serve the educational, research, patient-care and administrative needs of UB's dispersed, multi-institutional, health-care network.

The Health Sciences Library will collaborate on the project with the UB schools of Health Related Professions, Dental Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy and Medicine and Biomedical Sciences and their affiliated health-care organizations in Western New York

Local institutions involved in the IAIMS process include those affiliated with KALEIDA Health and the Catholic Health System of Western New York, as well as two dozen other hospitals and health-care centers throughout the eight counties of Western New York and several health-care payer corporations, including Health Care Plan, Independent Health and Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Western New York.

Gary Byrd, Ph.D., director of the Health Sciences Library and the project's principal investigator, said the projected system will offer ready access to a virtual, knowledge-based library, as well as clinical care, research and educational information resources.

"The goal is to provide health-information resources that are organized and available across an electronic infrastructure that will enhance the processes by which health-care professionals teach and learn, conduct biomedical research, administer health organizations, provide patient care and offer consumer health information," he said.

The project's co-principal investigators are Bruce A. Holm, Ph.D., associate dean for research and graduate studies in the UB medical school, and Francis J. Meyer, Jr., vice president for information systems and technology at KALEIDA Health.

For institutions, the project is expected to optimize and integrate information-technology goals and strategic priorities, help make effective use of shared expertise and technology, and offer an adaptable, sustainable, high-quality and cost-effective medical-information network with links to many sources of health-care data. IAIMS also will develop and evaluate advanced information technologies and provide programs and tools to educate and train users.

Individuals will benefit from easy-to-navigate, convenient and timely point-and-click workstations and the availability of information independent of the constraints of time, physical location, organizational affiliation or workplace technology. Planners say the network will be adaptable to changing circumstances and a variety of individual roles and skill levels.

Resources already available online include the medical information databases provided by the NLM through the hospitals and University at Buffalo Health Information Network. These include searchable indexes of current research reports and a large number of medical and health-care journals and other specialty databases.

The IAIMS program was initiated by the NLM, a division of the National Institutes of Health, in response to a report published in the early 1980s by the Association of American Medical Colleges on the role of libraries in information management. It recommended that academic medical centers develop information networks to help integrated medical units communicate better with those interested in using the information they produce.

A number of other IAIMS systems have been developing throughout the country over the past decade. Byrd said one reason the NLM funded the UB project is because it would link the information resources of so many disparate institutions.

"Epidemiologists, medical instructors, nurses, pharmacists and family practitioners, for instance, will all find pertinent information to assist them in their work, whether that is data analysis, educational information or material that will inform their diagnoses and treatment plans."

The planning process "will help us to articulate a clear overall plan for the development of the system," Byrd said. "Second, it will force us to consider overall information needs. We'll assess existing information systems, devise ways in which to make data available to and usable by different audiences, plan how to best link our various human and technological resources and establish methods to protect patient privacy," he said.

"Finally, throughout this process, we'll be educating the entire health-sciences community and the public about what we're doing. That way, they can make effective use of the information resources available to them via all of our linked entities."