For More Information Contact:
Lori Elliott-Bartle, (402) 280-2607 [email protected]
NEW SERVICE OFFERS VAST INFORMATION FOR MEDICAL PROFESSIONALS
For Immediate Release, Aug. 9, 1999
OMAHA, Neb. -- Creighton University and colleagues at Stanford University and the University of Southern California have created a partnership to offer a vast new source of information to health care professionals via the Internet. Additional universities are slated to join. The company formed to direct and manage the effort is known as the University Pathology Consortium, LLC, and it is headquartered at Creighton.
The new knowledge source is called Critical Inquiry Series. A demonstration site will be available in two weeks. The first two services will focus on transfusion medicine and disease-oriented testing. These services, intended for medical professionals and students, will be available early next year.
The transfusion medicine section, which will be available in January, will provide comprehensive information about human blood products and their use as well as detailed information about the possible adverse reactions associated with transfusions. Disease oriented testing, available in April, will offer recommendations and information about diagnostic testing in more than 1,000 diseases. Additional services will be directed toward pathologists who specialize in the diagnosis of cancer using tissue sections and studying individual cell preparations such as the pap smear.
The creator and developer of the idea, Kenneth L. Sims, M.D., chair and professor of pathology at Creighton, says the new site will provide up-to-date detailed information that couldn't be contained within the covers of a reference book.
"We have 40,000 to 60,000 pages of unique custom text organized with hypertext links so that it is easy to navigate. You can get to any part of it in 30 seconds," said Dr. Sims. "The Internet is the perfect distribution system for this type of knowledge. Medical knowledge develops so rapidly that books contain outdated information soon after they are published, but it's nearly impossible to know which information is outdated. There also is a limit to the amount of detail books can contain, and with our starting amount of approximately 50,000 pages, this is the equivalent of at least 15 large medical textbooks. Our goal is to make our information available to clinicians as they do their work.
"Physicians now practice by using the knowledge they have in their heads," Dr. Sims said. "It now takes time to look up something they don't know while they are seeing a patient. We want to provide the specific kind of information a physician might need while they are taking care of the patient. It has to be available very quickly -- in 15 to 30 seconds. The information also must be presented in a way that they can use it quickly."
For example, by subscribing to the service, physicians unfamiliar with Lyme disease could find out what the recommended screening test is for the disease, the confirmation test recommended and any monitoring tests that should be used. If they want more detail, they can learn more about the disease, alternative tests, and why the recommended tests are those preferred by experts in the field. The information will be updated every six months.
"The source from which knowledge originates is the prime determinant of its credibility," Dr. Sims said. "The reputations of these universities and their pathology departments are stellar. Our reputation and integrity is important to this endeavor. We do not accept advertising as subsidy by health care companies. We're pooling our intellectual capital as well as the capital investment of each institution to provide this new service."
Dr. Sims hopes the service will be available to patients investigating health problems by accessing the site in physician offices or libraries. Another important use Dr. Sims imagines is by practitioners in developing countries.
"The Internet is the most common technology in many developing countries," Dr. Sims said. "In some places it is easier to log on to the Internet than to find a telephone. We can make information available, particularly about infectious diseases, in places where books are both expensive and very hard to get."
Creighton is an independent Catholic university operated by the Jesuits. It recently was ranked No. 1 for the third consecutive year among Midwestern universities in the U.S. News and World Report magazine's 1999 "America's Best Colleges" edition.
Creighton enrolls approximately 6,200 students in the Colleges of Arts and Sciences and Business Administration, the Graduate School, University College and schools of Nursing, Medicine, Law, Pharmacy and Allied Health Professions, Dentistry, and Summer Sessions.
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