Providing Electronic Information
Resources to Rural Hospitals

Presented by:

Michael G. Kienzle, M.D.
Principal Investigator, National Laboratory for the Study of Rural Telemedicine
Associate Dean for Clinical Affairs and Biomedical Communicaitons
College of Medicine, The University of Iowa
Iowa City Iowa, 52242

From an article written by:

 
Edwin Holtum, MS, Project Director,
Enhanced Access to Library Services
Hardin Library for the Health Sciences
The University of Iowa
Iowa City, IA 52242 

and

Susan A. Zollo, M.A., Director
Telemedicine Resource Center
211 HLHS
The University of Iowa
Iowa City, IA 52242

Contact Person: Susan A. Zollo susan-zollo@uiowa.edu

Summarized with permission from: Holtum E, Zollo SA. The Healthnet project: extending online information resources to end users in rural hospitals. Bull Med Libr Assoc 1998 Oct;86(4):569-74.

Supported provided by Contract N01-LM-6-3548 from the National Library of Medicine

Abstract

The importance of easily available, high quality, and current biomedical literature within the clinical enterprise is now widely documented and accepted. Access to this information has been shown to have a direct bearing on diagnosis, choices of tests, choices of drugs, and length of hospital stay. However, many health professionals do not have adequate access to current health information, particularly those practicing in rural, isolated, or underserved hospitals. Thanks to a 3-year telemedicine award from the National Library of Medicine, The University of Iowa (UI) has developed a high-speed, point-to-point telecommunications network to deliver clinical and educational applications to ten community-based Iowa hospitals. One of the services offered over the network allows health professionals from the site hospitals to access online health databases and order articles via an online document delivery service. Installation, training, and troubleshooting support are provided to the remote sites by UI project staff. To date, 1,339 health professionals from the ten networked hospitals have registered to use the Healthnet program

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