health sciences online and physician health:

democratizing health science knowledge

Erica Frank, MD, MPH

Founder and Executive Director, Health Sciences Online

Professor and Canada Research Chair

UBC – School of Population and Public Health

Health Sciences Online andphysician health:

HSO’S VISION – Phase I

A world where health professionals in training and practice access comprehensive, easily-found, high quality, free, current courses, references, and other learning resources to improve health.

HSO’S VISION – Phase II

A world where health professionals in training and practice continue to have free access to www.HSO.info -- a comprehensive, easily-found, high quality, free, current website, with courses, references, and other learning resources to improve health AND

A world where anyone can become and remain a well-trained health professional in any discipline where they are qualified and there is need.

Purpose of today’s presentation

•To identify how HSO can be useful for you, and how we might work together to use HSO as a tool to improve physician health.

What is www.HSO.info ?• HSO is the first website to deliver authoritative, comprehensive, free, and ad-free

health sciences knowledge.

• Search any health sciences topic from over 50,000 courses, references, guidelines, and other learning resources – in medicine (basic and clinical sciences), public health, pharmacy, dentistry, nursing, and other health sciences disciplines.

• Materials are selected from accredited educational sources including universities, governments, and professional societies, by knowledgeable staff at HSO.

• Resources can be searched and retrieved in 42 languages.

Founding Collaborators and Funders

American College of Preventive Medicine

Annenberg Physician Training Program

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

NATO – Science for Peace

University of British Columbia

World Bank

World Health Organization

World Medical Association

“Health Sciences Online is a visionary undertaking.” – Jeffrey P. Koplan, MD, MPH, Former Director, U.S. CDC

“HSO.info will help globally democratize health science knowledge.” -Carmen Carpio, Knowledge Mgmt Officer, World Bank

"HSO is an incredible resource for health professionals all over the world. Open access to health information should literally save millions of lives and lead to important new discoveries.” -Anne Margulies, former Executive Director, Open Course Ware, MIT

“HSO is expected to make a considerable contribution to the advancement of e-learning worldwide.” -WHO, Building Foundations for E-Health, 2006

“The internet at its finest… a bonanza… a boon… an incredibly worthwhile enterprise… a model of what Health 2.0 and Science 2.0 can be… one of the most altruistic and honorable health service resources on the planet.” -Online reviews, 2009

HSO Home Page

Diabetes

Diabetes Management

42 Languages Available

• Albanian• Arabic• Bulgarian• Catalan• Chinese (Tr)• Chinese (Si)• Croatian• Czech• Danish• Dutch English• Estonian

• Italian• Japanese• Korean• Latvian• Lithuanian• Maltese• Norwegian• Polish• Portuguese• Romanian

• Filipino• Finnish • French• Galician• German• Greek• Hebrew• Hindi• Hungarian• Indonesian

• Russian• Serbian• Slovak• Slovenian• Spanish• Swedish• Thai• Turkish• Ukrainian• Vietnamese

Diabetes Search in French

Diabetes Search in Chinese

Diabetes Search in Japanese

Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis Search in Spanish

Content Team

• Defining, identifying and obtaining appropriate

content

• Researching and contacting potential

collaborating universities, accredited specialty

societies, and governmental organizations for

content

Content Criteria GuidelinesGuidelines are based upon the following models/articles:

1. Association of American Medical Colleges Peer Review Task Force. Digital and Educational Peer Review. AAMC, 2004.

2. Health Summit Working Group. Criteria for Assessing the Quality of Health Information on the Internet. Available at: http://hitiweb.mitretek.org/docs/policy.pdf. Accessed 10/8/05

3. Kim, P. et al., Published criteria for evaluating health related web sites: review. BMJ, 1999. 318(7184): p. 647-9.

4. Knight, C.L., et al., Developing a peer review process for web bases curricula: minting a new coin of the realm. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 2004. 19(5 Pt 2): p. 594-8.

5. Medlineplus.gov http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/criteria.html

6. Wyatt, J.C., Commentary: measuring quality and impact of the World Wide Web [see comment]. BMJ, 1997. 314(7098): p.1879-81

Content Criteria Checklist

The 8 HSO Revolutions

• Health sciences education• Disease surveillance• Needs assessments• Telemedicine • Funding • Public health ethics• CME Integrity• Local professional opportunities

The 8 HSO Revolutions

• Health sciences education• Disease surveillance• Needs assessments• Telemedicine • Funding • Public health ethics• CME Integrity• Local professional opportunities

A community-based model for a more knowledgeable/plentiful health workforce

• We propose using community-based education to enormously and rapidly expand the number of well-trained health workers, combining the best aspects of a 19th century apprenticeship with the 21st century’s most powerful, high quality, and efficient educational tools.

The Need for Health Care Workers

• According to WHO, the world needs over 4 million additional health care workers, and needs innovation to educate them more efficiently. It is clear that the 20th century’s painstaking approach of building and conventionally-expanding one new, relatively autonomous training center at a time is not solving this problem.

Methodology: Preparatory phase

• Perform a needs assessment of the target population.

• Identify curricula (consensus document with intellectual and practical competencies or published medical school approaches) that fulfill the training goal, identified from relevant organizations (eg: CEPH, CDC, UNICEF, WHO, PAHO, ASPH).

• Create an advisory committee with experts in the field including experts from co-sponsoring organizations.

Methodology: Preparatory phase

• Populate curriculum (find materials to fulfill the goals of the curriculum) with HSO resources (and other resources that will be included in HSO)– Each curricular item should ideally have >=2 HSO

resources as options, and ideally one resource can cover multiple curricular needs.

– Resources have to be recent (since 2000, ideally since 2004) and fulfill HSO content criteria.

– All categories should be covered in sufficient depth, with mixed media (i.e., some lectures by world-class speakers, some guidelines, textbook chapters, interactive modules, atlases, etc.).

– Find quizzes/tests for the end of the training.

Methodology: Preparatory phase

• Circulate the proposed curriculum and resources to the Advisory Committee for discussion and approval

• Build the certificate in Moodle

• Identify trainees and mentors to pilot the certificate

Methodology: Training phase

• The certificates will be built to be the equivalent of a fulltime one-month rotation, based on a 60 hour work week.

– Learners will be expected to take part in approximately 160 hours of didactic study, using learning objects offered through HSO.

– The rest of the time for their rotation will be spent on practical, hands-on work as directed by their mentor, and other learning from their mentors, and peer-to-peer learning.

– Once a month trainees will have a teleconference (1hr) with an expert in the field.

Methodology: Certification

• Objective testing with a final exam

• Self, peer-to-peer, and mentor assessment

• Certification/degrees will be given by HSO in collaboration with local institutions and international collaborators.

Examples of Educational InitiativesProgram Probable institutional collaborators

Certificate in Climate Change and Public Health UBC/PSR/Hopkins

Certificates in Public Health (epidemiology, biostatistics, env health, social and behavioral sciences, health policy and management)

UBC

Certificate in Population-Based Global Health Research Emory University, NATO

Emergency Medicine Residency Training Emory University, Tbilisi State Med Univ

Certificate in Physical Activity and Health CDC, ACSM, Colombia

Certificate in Vector-Transmissible Diseases PAHO

Certificate in Dermatology for Primary Care Providers Tbilisi State Medical University

Certificate in Women’s Health Tbilisi State / U of T / Stanford

Certificate in Immunology UBC

Certificate in Genetic Epidemiology BC Cancer Agency

Certificate in Basic Nutritional Sciences UBC

Certificate in Addiction Medicine Annenberg/Betty Ford

The 8 HSO Revolutions

• Health sciences education• Disease surveillance• Needs assessments• Telemedicine • Funding • Public health ethics• CME Integrity• Local professional opportunities

So now, let’s discuss what we can next do together?

So now, let’s discuss what we can next do together?

=Additional HSO resources=Certificate in addiction medicine =Certificate in physician health=Fellowship in physician health=Residencies in FM, EM, PM

Erica Frank, MD, MPH erica.frank@ubc.ca or efrank@emory.edu

Professor and Canada Research Chair, University of British Columbia

School of Population and Public Health, Faculty of Medicine

Founder and Executive Director, Health Sciences Online