LRC Network Web Site

Since 1995 AIHA established more than 150 LRCs in 22 countries of Central and Eastern Europe and Former Soviet Union, and 3 LRCs in Africa (Uganda and Zambia). Currently AIHA supports 3 centers in Africa and 9 in Russia. Several similar centers in the countries of the FSU were opened without any financial support from AIHA. LRC Network of graduated LRCs includes 60 participants from 19 countries (list of all members at http://lrcnetwork.org/en/views/lrcnml). LRC mailing list (lrcnetwork@googlegroups.com) includes 350 subscribers. 20 respondents from 12 countries participated in this survey.

List of respondent organizations:

• Gjakova Family Medicine Training Center (Kosovo)
• Maina Soko Military Hospital, Lusaka (Zambia) (AIHA funding)
• St. Petersburgh AIDS Center (AIHA funding)
• Western-Kazakhstan State Medical Academy, Aktobe (Kazakhstan)
• Armavir Medical Center (Armavir, Armenia)
• Tashkent Medical Academy (Uzbekistan)
• Tomsk Region Central Regional Hospital (Russia)
• Kharkiv Oblast Student Clinical Hospital (Kharkiv, Ukraine)
• Kyrgyz State Medical Academy Medical Center (Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan)
• Odessa State Medical University (Ukraine)
• Sarov Medical Unit (Russia)
• Korsakov Central Regional Hospital (Sakhalin, Russia)
• Ganja City Health Administration (Azerbaijan)
• Ozurgeti Primary Care (Georgia)
• Gori Primary Care (Georgia)
• Institute of Public Health, Tirana (Albania)
• Postgraduate Medical Institute (Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan )
• Center of medical prophylaxis (Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, Russia)
• Zadar General Hospital (Zadar, Croatia)

Content

1. Does LRC still exist in your organization

• Yes - 16.
• As a separate unit - 7.
• As part of another department - 6.
• Other
• What helped/helps you to sustain?
• What are the major activities/ functions of you LRC now?
• If NO (LRC doesn’t exist in an institution – 4):
• What was the reason for closing LRC?
• Are any other departments/specialists providing services that were previously provided by LRC (access to information, training in computer and Internet literacy, evidence-based practice support, etc)?

2. Do you benefit from subscribing to LRC mailing list lrcnetwork@googlegroups.com?

• Yes - 18
• What are the benefits:
• How do you use this information:
• What information you would like to see (won' t like to see) on the mailing list and LRC Network web-site (lrcnetwork.org)?
• Any other comments

3. Suggestions, ideas.

1. Does LRC still exist in your institution:

Yes - 16.

As a separate unit - 7

As a part of another department - 6

• Family Medicine Training Center
• Information and Communication Technology (ICT) (2)
• Library (2)
• As part of Information Resources Center of IT Department

Other -

• As a part of funded international projects
• We are preparing for work as a separate unit
• LRC served as a basis of a new Health promotion and information resources hospital Department

What helped/helps you to sustain?

• LRC team enthusiasm, good relationship with health administrators and above all good relationship and support from local NGO
• Financial support of the administration (local, regional, institutional)
• Participation in new regional and local health care programs
• Participation in new international projects
• For-fee services and donations from users
• Knowledge and skills gained by LRC staff through participating in AIHA LRC project
• Development if IT structure of our organization
• Understanding and support from administration
• We got the status of a clinical hospital which means more activities in research and innovation
• Initiative of former LRC staff
• Understanding and support from the colleagues
• Teamwork of LRC staff
• Medical professionals’ interest in new information
• Need in gaining computer and Internet literacy
• Personal interest in gaining new skills, prestige and possibility of communication with colleagues

What are the major activities/ functions of you LRC now?

Training (staff, medical specialists, students, residents)

• Basic Computer and Internet literacy training
• PC basics
• Internet
• Internet search for medical information
• EBM principles and search of EBM-based literature
• Host trainings
• Organizing short seminars on EBM practice
• Internet and computer use for professional purposes
• Best retrieval practices
• Much less than earlier direct work with medical staff (training and help with information search)

Developing and support of information space

• Our main task – to provide individual access to information resources from work place to as many specialists as possible: PC on every working place, corporate network, Internet access, access to DBs in different format
• Keeping the hospital information space at the proper level
• Providing free Internet access for hospital staff, schoolchildren and staff of the local library system
• LAN development and support

Information dissemination and access

• Sending out the digests, lectures, news, reviews, and clinical protocols for the family physicians of the whole country by mailing lists
• Reviewing medical Internet resources and compiling monthly collections of resources based on these reviews
• Disseminating all materials provided by the LRC mailing list to all interested specialists organized locally (LAN) in profiles
• Providing access to HINARI, OVID, other electronic libraries

Information search

• Health information retrieval
• Much less than earlier direct work with medical staff (training and help with information search)
• Help with complicated searches
• Searching the up-to-date information on various equipment, drugs, methods of therapy

Technical support

• E-mail
• Consulting colleagues on statistical program use
• Maintaining web-site
• Designing web-sites for other organizations

Research support

• Supporting research activities
• Writing research reports, articles, translations
• Translating medical term trees and other terminology/concepts work
• Conducting health surveys

Medical Education Suppor

• Collecting information on international medical education systems
• Collecting information on medical education management
• Collecting information on Bologna process (new European higher education system)
• Information support for all activities of Methodology Department of educational facility
• Developing electronic educational resources
• LRC training room is used for CME activities according to an established curriculum
• I help those members of the staff who participate in AIHA EBM distant learning courses
• Assisting the Medical Academy staff by teaching
• Assisting in training of family physicians
• Participating in CME
• Preparing educational presentations for CME

Evidence-based practice support

• Designing evidence-based protocols
• Support for Evidence-Based Practices and Standard Practice Reviews
• I help those members of the staff who participate in AIHA EBM distant learning courses
• Support in developing national standards of health care (including information support, LRC technique, technologies and LRC staff)
• Organizing short seminars on EBM practice
• Developing and delivering training workshops on EBM for primary health care practitioners in the region (together with Medical University faculty)
• Developing and delivering training workshops on EBM for cardiologists and specialists in internal medicine in the region (together with Medical University faculty)
• Providing information on EBM resources to medical academy staff, students, and health care practitioners

Health care quality support

• Participating in hospital infection control activities
• Organizing and delivering clinical training workshops for health care practitioners (together with Family Physicians Association and American volunteers)
• Developing and delivering training workshops on EBM for primary health care practitioners in the region (together with Medical University faculty)
• Developing and delivering training workshops on EBM for cardiologists and specialists in internal medicine in the region (together with Medical University faculty)

Disease prevention and health promotion

• Participating in primary disease prevention
• Regular publication of articles on most important disease prevention in local mass media (twice a month as a special supplement to two regional newspapers)
• Developing and distributing educational materials for patients (brochures, leaflets, posters)
• Organizing health fairs
• Conducting health surveys

Organizational activities support

• Physicians prepare their reports in LRC
• Prepare answers to different inquiries to medical facility
• Prepare medical statistics on one of LRC PCs
• Use LRC PC for medical statistics of local (city) population
• Marketing of Medical Center services
• Fundraising
• Organizational support of health education of patients and general population
• Preparing grant applications support
• Information and methodology support of all projects

Telemedicine

• Providing telemedical consultations for patients and physicians
• Tele-education

If NO (LRC doesn’t exist in an institution – 4):

What was the reason for closing LRC?

• It did not satisfy our needs any more - all doctors and nurses could not come to one place to use information and resources

Are any other departments/specialists providing services that were previously provided by LRC (access to information, training in computer and Internet literacy, evidence-based practice support, etc)?

• I am working as a specialist in EBM in Post-diploma Medical University (Chair for Obstetrics and Gynecology). Our training sessions are based on a standard curriculum, and are very popular among medical professionals. They have to sign beforehand to participate in those training courses. I don’t teach computer literacy/Internet search, but do help regularly with their information searches. Another of my tasks – to provide information for inclusion in our educational publications, and to participate in developing of clinical practice guidelines and protocols. I am also maintaining the web-site on EBM for Central Asian region.
• On the one hand - the hospital library and librarian
• On the other hand - now every doctor has access to resources from their working place (at their department)
• Government provided fast Internet access and free access to useful DBs from Ovid
• No need in basic training (PC and Internet), but we are planning training for advanced users in the future - it will be provided by governmental organization (CARnet) - that provides connection and DB access
• we are also planning redesign of a hospital web-site - to provide update information to hospital staff through it

2. Do you benefit from subscribing to LRC mailing list lrcnetwork@googlegroups.com?

Yes - 18

What are the benefits:

• Mailing list provides review information, and informs about projects and grants
• Mailing list is a very important source of information – we learn through it about useful web-sites
• It provides daily and current information which makes access to it much easier
• We would never manage to get this amount of useful information ourselves
• Mailing list is one of the most important sources of information – it provides about 30% of medical electronic information that we get, its brief style is very helpful – it makes it easy to look through all posting and choose most important – so it saves a lot of time, we don’t need to browse Internet ourselves
• We are getting a lot of useful and interesting materials – but it takes time to look through them. It is a convenient source of concentrated information that helps to save time and be updated about the last news and trends in EBM and IT in medicine
• We really benefit from subscribing to LRC mailing list as the information is very valuable and helpful.
• The mailing is very helpful and fulfilling our needs. It takes time to look through all and choose material for posting on our site. You provided a tremendous amount of links.
• We benefit by asking questions to colleagues and sharing our ideas

How do you use this information:

• We use the information from the mailing list for our electronic library and some researched material is posted there as well as Medical Journals and Digests.
• Information we get from the list is distributed to different departments , where it is used in their practical work

What information you would like to see (won' t like to see) on the mailing list and LRC Network web-site lrcnetwork.org?

• We would like to see more clinical evidence based medicine information
• We need more information on grants and funding
• It is always useful to look through EH bulletins and digests
• Information regularly sent by Dr. Binishi sometimes includes too specific topics, is taken from well-known sources that we use otherwise, or is forwarded from other lists without explanation what is particularly interesting about it.
• We would like to get regularly information about Russian Society of EBM.
• We'd like to receive any clinical protocols for general practitioners or family physicians, if possible
• We would like to see more information in Russian
• We need more multimedia materials on healthy lifestyles and disease prevention issues
• We would like to see more information about international conferences and grant opportunities.
• The amount of information is enough
• We are interested in information on healthy lifestyles and would like to thank Yuri Medyantsev from Tomsk for sending links to such materials
  
• We would like to see more information about solving problems in implementing information systems, experience from colleagues
  

Any other comments

• Please continue supporting the Least Developed Countries in this area of Information Communication Technology in terms of training, support in the provision of knowledge base resources such as CD-ROMS, Books etc
• LRC project should be continued – maybe in a new format – to sustain Internet access and LRC activities
• we would like to have access to electronic journals on medical education
• we would like to participate in AIHA workshops on EBM and others
• we need help in our cooperation with Moscow Central Medical Library (Electronic Document Delivery Services)
• It’s a pity that LRC Network Association never started active work
• We also appreciate the possibility of getting full-text articles from the US National Medical Library [FreeForAll project]
• This year we will not be able to have an access to the InfoPoems web-site (http://www.InfoPOEMs.com ) which we used to have for the last three years. There is a very helpful EBM database InfoRetriever on that web-site. We had that subscription thanks to the courtesy of Van Durme Daniel - the AIHA partner from the South Florida University. We are really missing this powerful database
• As a whole we are very thankful to the AIHA for the LRC project as the knowledge we had gained there helps us in our everyday activities
• We would like to meet again with colleagues from other LRCs – as live communication provides a lot more and helps to generate new ideas and solutions
• I wish new achievements to all LRC staff, and hope we could develop our activities and share our experiences.

3. Suggestions, ideas

• It would be nice to update LRC ToolKi (online and CD-ROM versions)t - including there new IT standards (HL7, EHR) , information about new technologies
• I think it could be useful to compile a reference guide with links sent through mailing list, similar to one, compiled by Irina Shumilova in 2004 [http://www.eurasiahealth.org/eng/health/resources/81647/]
• We would like to see all materials sent through mailing list in one DB