Although I have not posted about Pharmacists and the use of the Internet and I have not found many research on this topic,  it’s clear that these health professionals are playing an important role in healthcare. Therefore, they also have a role in relationship with the Internet, specially Community Pharmacists, who are probably the most accessible health professional and are daily dealing with all kind of patients. Health promotion, Health prevention, Health Literacy, patients’ education,… are just some of the fields where Community Pharmacists can encourage patients to become more engaged in their own health care or their relatives health care.

Following our analysis of the integration of Information and Communication Technologies into medical practice and into nursing practice, we have analysed Community Pharmacists. The specific objectives were to develop and characterise a typology of CPs based on their ICT utilization and to identify factors that can enhance or inhibit the use of these technologies.

Cluster one consists of CPs whose information needs place a greater emphasis on international and national information; on activities related to professional education and information from the Pharmacists Association as well as workplace and pharmaceutical industry. This group also emphasizes ICT use for activities such as information search, communication and the dissemination of information as well as for corporate activities. This group is thus referred to as representing ‘integrated Community Pharmacist’. The label is used descriptively in order to capture the sense that for this group ICT are a mundane and valued resource. Cluster two is characterised by notably different features to the previous one. The second profile represents those CPs placing less emphasis on ICT so are consequently labelled as ‘non-integrated Community Pharmacist‘.

Statistical analysis of the relationship between these profiles  revealed that ‘integrated Community Pharmacist‘ are more likely to start using Internet at an earlier stage, to consider it very useful, to use this tool on a daily basis, to have a blog and to consider Internet health information very relevant. No significance association related to age, gender or pharmacy ownership was found.

Further analysis of the relationship between the two profiles and the pharmacist-patient relationship resulted in ‘integrated Community Pharmacist‘ being more likely than ‘non-integrated Community Pharmacist‘ to recommend that patients go online to find health information and to have more patients that discuss such information during a consultation. ‘Integrated Community Pharmacist‘ are also more likely to believe that patients going online for health information improve their autonomy and their quality of life as well as improving both the health professional/patient relationship and  the pharmacist/patient relationship. Finally, ‘integrated Community Pharmacist‘ are more likely to be found on the Internet searching or providing advice on professional forums. Additionally, drivers for ICT use such as improving communication with other health care professionals and improvement in work productivity are likely to have a higher impact on ‘integrated Community Pharmacist‘ while barriers such as lack of training or lack of time are less likely to challenge them.

It was observed that factors related with ‘intensive use of Internet’ (every day), ‘emphasis on Internet for communication and dissemination’ as well as information needs from the Pharmacists Professional Association play a positive and significant role in the probability of being an ‘integrated Community Pharmacist‘. Recommending patients going on-line for health information and discussing or sharing patients’ Internet health information findings also have a positive and significant role.

Acknowledgements

The research reported is part of a broad study supported by Departament de Salut de la Generalitat de Catalunya (Catalonia Health Department) and directed by Prof. Manuel Castells. Survey launched is a result of collaboration between the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute at Open University of Catalonia and the Pharmacist Association of Barcelona (Col.legi Oficial de Farmacèutics de Barcelona).

We are planning to launch again our survey to Physicians, Nurses and Pharmacists with the collaboration of their Professional Associations of Barcelona. Therefore, we are redesigning the questionnaires and checking our multivariate analysis. Following the published paper entitled “The integration of Information and Communication Technology into medical practice”, we have send to a peer-review journal another paper focused on Nurses. Below you can find the main figures:

Table 5 revealed that cluster one (4.58%) is composed of those nurses who make greater use of ICT and the Internet for access to clinical and scientific information. The nurses within this cluster are also more likely to use ICT as a resource for publishing and international contact on national and international information. This first profile represents those nurses who place high emphasis on ICT in that it forms an integral part of their practice. This group is thus referred to as representing ‘Integrated nurses’. In other words, ICT and the Internet has become an important tool to be used in the delivery of care for the ‘integrated nurse’.

Cluster two (95.42%) is characterised by a distinctive set of features. The second profile represents those nurses who place less emphasis on ICT so that it is used to support their daily work only when required. This group are consequently labelled ‘Non-integrated nurses’.

Statistical analysis of the relationship between the two profiles (see Table 6 of the presentation) revealed that ‘Integrated nurses’ are more likely than ‘Non-integrated nurses’ to carry out research activities, to consider the Internet is ‘very useful’ to their nursing practice and to recommend that their patients use online health information. ‘Non-integrated nurses’ are more likely than ‘integrated nurses’ to be only engaged in delivering nursing care and to believe that patients use of online information will have little impact on their treatment their or understanding of their condition.

Finally, it was found that all the variables included have a significance explanatory power regarding the integration of ICT within nursing practice (see Table 7). It was observed that an ‘emphasis on international information’, performance ‘research activities’ and ‘the perception that health information available on the Internet’ was relevant to nursing played a positive and significance role in the probability of being an ‘Integrated nurse’.

Acknowledgements

The research reported is part of a broad study supported by Departament de Salut de la Generalitat de Catalunya (Catalonia Health Department) and directed by Prof. Manuel Castells. Survey launched is a result of a collaboration between the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute at Open University of Catalonia and the Nurses Association of Barcelona (Col·legi Oficial de Infermeres de Barcelona).

On March 15th to 18th the Ministerial High Level Conference on eHealth and the World Health IT Conference and Exhibition were being held in the same week in a joint initiative called “e-Health Week 2010”. First of all, I would like to congratulate the organizers, specially TICSALUT Foundation and ehealthweek2010, for the very well organized conference and their social media coverage.

The conference was divided into five themes:

• eHealth for Sustainable Healthcare Delivery
• eHealth Addressing Global Challenges through Local Actions
• eHealth works: Here is the Evidence
• eHealth Market: Past and Prospects
• eHealth User Platform

Furthermore,  Paralel sessions and Plenary Sessions were coveraged by @ehealthweek2010 using Twitter #hastag as follow:

Paralel Sessions

• eHealth Governance
• How can IT Help Fight Pandemics
• Is Sustainability of Healthcare Possible without eHealth?
• When Telemedicine does Deliver!
• Embedding eHealth into New Professional Curricula
• Ageing - A Global Challenge
• Empowering the Patient through Information Delivery
• Beyond Technical Interoperability
• eHealth for the Economy
• ICT for a Global Infraestructure for Health Research
• eHealth and Healthcare Org The Chiken and the Egg
• Standards for a Global Scene
• eHealth Procurement
• eHealth for Mental Health

Plenary Sessions

• The ehealth Agenda in the UE
• The right information, at correct place and at the right time
• 2.0 Health care in practice
• EU-US cooperation in eHealth: facing common challenges
• EHealth for urgent public health challenges
• How contributes eHealth in health and well being
• The impact of eHealth in organizations and health personnel
• The dangerous decade. Challenges for system builders national health information
• European market of e-health: dream or reality?

I also had the opportunity to tweet some of the sessions. On one hand, it was a wonderful opportunity for networking and for watching in action how policy-makers, practicioners (specially Hospital managers and IT managers) and the ICT Health industry work together. On the other hand, there was a lack of analytical/empirical presentations so it was remarked by most of the participants that more research is needed. Furthermore, there are many eHealth, mHealth, Health 2.0,…. Health has been always related to technology so probably it is time to delete all the letters and just talk about HEALTH. Nowadays, HEALTH could not be understood without Information and Communication Technologies and these technologies could not be understood without economic, organization, social and cultural changes.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to spend four hours teaching  in the Master of  Health Promotion with the postgraduate students at Universitat de Girona.  I have integrated Towards Health Mass-self communication within the framework of Health Promotion and have mixed some theoretical approach, empirical data and two case studies. Here goes the presentation. I hope they enjoyed as much as I did.  Finally I would like to thank the direction of the Master for their invitation (it is the second year).

I have finished to check the proof of my article entitled Opportunities and challenges of Web 2.0 within the health care systems: an empirical exploration for Informatics for Health and Social Care (An International Journal of Informatics in Health Care).

Here goes the abstract:

The Internet has become one of the main drivers of e-health. Whilst its impact and potential is being analysed, the Web 2.0 phenomenon has reached the health field and has emerged as a buzzword that people use to describe a wide range of online activities and applications. The aims of this article are: to explore the opportunities and challenges of the Web 2.0 within the health care system and to identify the gap between the potential of these online activities and applications and the empirical data. The analysis is based on: online surveys to physicians, nurses, pharmacist and patient support groups; static web shot analysis of 1240 web pages and exploration of the most popular Web 2.0 initiatives. The empirical results contrast with the Web 2.0 trends identified. Whereas the main characteristic of the Web 2.0 is the opportunity for social interaction, the health care system at large could currently be characterised by: a lack of interactive communication technologies available on the Internet; a lack of professional production of health care information on the Internet, and a lack of interaction between these professionals and patients on the Internet. These results reveal a scenario away from 2.0 trends.

The article has been done with Miquel Angel Mayer and Joan Torrent, colleagues from Interdisciplinary Research Group on ICTs (i2TIC), and will be published on September 2009.

I would like to thank indeed Ruslan David, eHealthNews.EU Portal Administrator/Editor, for his help to disseminate the results of the research project E-Health and Society: An Empirical Study of Catalonia and also for his wonderful job as Editor of eHealthNews.EU - the First European eHealth News Portal.

During this month I have been working on my wiki site. I have organized the items by these categories:

• Articles
• Books
• Institutions
• People
• Research Centers
• Surveys and Indicators

As I have said in another post this space is just a personal notebook. But of course comments will be welcome. I will appreciate them.

You can also visit ICTconsequences Bibliography. Now there are 311 records available.

Finally I have decided to star ICTconsequeces Wiki. I will use it as a personal notebook to share the comments about resources I am working with and it also helps me to order my personal notes.

Again it is just a working web project so I hope I will improve its integration with the rest of the site and I will fill it with more notes and resources.

Like most of the researchers I have to manage references and bibliography. Since I started the Phd courses I had tried some of the software available. During the last year I also have tried Refbase,   Bibciter and other open source tools.
The result is ICTconsequences Bibliography and the aim is to arrange and share the bibliography I use. As the blog, this is a work web in progress.

Thanks anyway to Ismael Peña

My name is Paco Lupiáñez and I am a lecturer at the Open University of Catalonia, Information and Communication Science Studies.

In my first post I would like to thank indeed Ismael Peña for his support and for sharing many of his ideas and knowledge with me. He is one of the reasons why I have this blog.

I`m still not clear about what this blog means. I guess in the beginning it’s just a tool to try to put in order and share some resources, ideas, references… about things I am working on. It’s just a work in progess web project.

You can contact me: flupianez [at] ictconsequences.net