Compiled by:
Assoc. Prof. Martin Rusnak, MD, PhD, Dr. Vladimir Panik, Dr. Karol Hamala
from Foundation for Prevention of Civilization Diseases, Bratislava, Slovakia
February, 1996
The report attempts to describe the first year of the HealthNet-SR project in Slovakia. The project itself developed in an era being characterized by booming developments and changes in the Internet technologies and policies. Therefore it had no aspirations to reflects the most up to date developments and be exhaustive in offering everything, which is currently available. However, the ultimate goal all through the project is to offer the best, the most useful and stimulative information for health professionals through out Slovakia, to let them be connected within the country as well as outside of the country in order to support quality of health care as well as ideas of the Open Society. Members of the project as well as authors are very much in debt for support of Mr. Soros, Open Society Institute, NY, namely Dr. Jonathan Peizer and Mr. Noah Simmons, Open Society Fund, namely Dr. Alena Panikova and Rachel Tritt. We all appreciated the generosity and kindness of all people involved.
Prior to selecting participants several attempts to inform professionals on the project were made:
This activity has led to replies received from 44 different institutions from around the whole Slovak Republic. The selection of participants was done by the Medical Committee in Open Society Fund, Bratislava. The selection was based on following criteria:
an institution is visible in Slovakia for its educational, research or other professional activities;an institution is active in health care reform process;there are people within an institution who speak English and German;an institution is willing to co ntribute to the HealthNet-SR development;distribution on territory of Slovakia.
Following institutions were selected for the participation:
Faculty Hospital of L. Pasteura, Kosice - one of the major hospitals in Eastern Slovakia, with teaching and research responsibilities;
Trnava University, Faculty of Nursing, Trnava - newly established institution with teaching assignments;
Institute of Preventive and Clinical Medicine, Bratislava - major research institute;
Hospital with Polyclinics in Poprad - hospital with many activities in health care reform;
Hospital with Polyclinics in Levoca - institution active in quality and cost - effectiveness of care;
State Health Institute in Povazska Bystrica - institution active in public health research;
Hospital with Polyclinics in Ruzomberok - active in Hospital Association activities;
Hospital with Polyclinics in Sahy - active in third sector;
Hospital with Polyclinics in Trencin - various activities in quality of care;
Faculty Hospital in Bratislava - major hospital with many educational and research activities;
Health Management School - nongovernmental school of management, influential in health care reform process;
Slovak Medical Library, Bratislava - an important resource of health and medicine related information;
Slovak Chamber of Physicians, Bratislava - important for the reform development;
National Institute of Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases, Podunajske Biskupice - major hospital with many educational and research activities;
Institute of Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases, Vysne Hagy - specialized institution active in research;
Psychiatry Hospital of Philipp Pinel, Pezinok - specialized institution active in research;
National Center for Health Promotion, Bratislava - leading institution in health policy development.
The connectivity itself is provided by SANET (Slovak Academic NETwork) with nodes in several cities through Slovakia. SANET offered larger scope of services than EUNET, however, some people may argue, that the quality of services is lower in academic networks. Relative drawback of SANET stems from a condition, that it provides strictly non for profit usage. A decision was made to select SANET as a backbone for HEALTHNET operations. For a prize of 800 Sk per month an institution received 3 logins/passwords .
Each of the Institution selected received three logins for the nearest SANET node, ZYXEL U-1496 E Plus SK modem with ZMODEM software, installation, Internet handbook in Slovak, PaperChase login, training and assistance. Installation, training and assistance was provided by members of the Foundation for Prevention of Civilization Diseases (Foundation PCO) realization team.
A contract was signed with each of the participating institutions (see Annex 2).
An extensive training followed by repeated information on services was provided to those participants, who required. There were several visits payed to partner institutions to give them an advice or to help them to overcome some connectivity issues.
A WWW server was created. The server is based on a PENTIUM machine with 1 Gb HDD. The operating system is UNIX.
WWW documents are created by WEB Publisher from Novell Word Perfect.
| LIST OF DOCUMENTS CURRENTLY AVAILABLE on WWW HEALTHNET-SR | |
IN SLOVAK |
IN ENGLISH |
| List of the Project Members | List of the Project Members |
| Quality of Care | Project Description |
| Open Society Fund | Quality of Care |
| Books donated from US AID | Books Donated |
| Statistics | Statistics |
| Description of Health Care Institutions: Poprad | Description of Health Care Institutions: Pezinok, Poprad, IPCM,... |
Connectivity statistics is provided on daily basis. The WWW server started its operations since July 31st, 1995. Since that time following data were transmitted:
TOTALS FOR SUMMARY PERIOD: JUL 31 1995 TO FEB 27 1996 |
|
| Files Transmitted During Summary Period | 12082365 |
| Bytes Transmitted During Summary Period | 2851 |
| Average Files Transmitted Daily | 27 |
| Average Bytes Transmitted Daily | 113985 |
As it could be seen from the monthly statistics operations increased from summer 1995 every months. The first few months were among others influenced by moving the center from one location to other, by consecutive increase of information on the server being distributed within the country as well as abroad. We tried to distribute WWW HealthNet-SR address in as many sites as possible. Those activities are continued. Public relation activities contribute to increased number of connections, too. We understood the information on connectivity as crude indicator how useful the WWW performance is found, in other words, there are probably more and more customers who found it useful to connect to this server several times, not only single browsers.
Public relations were understood as an important tool to increase awareness of :
a) the activities of Open Society Fund in Slovakia;
b) basics of Internet;
c) HealthNet-SR accomplishments and services.
Several ways how information was distributed were applied:
a) newspapers and journals
- announcement of the HealthNet-SR project in Slovak Medical Weekly;
- announcement of the HealthNet-SR project in DSQ Newsletter;
- paper on Internet and HealthNet-SR in Slovak Medical Weekly;
b) presentations
- for 3 groups of physicians during their managerial training in Health Management School;
- for physicians during Levocsky Lekarsky Den;
- for nurses in School of Nursing, Trnava University;
- for librarians during a workshop AzaS'95;
- for health care institutions managers during US AID workshop;
- for students of Public Health in School of Public Health, Institute for Continuous Education of Physicians.
It could be generalized, that the interest in Internet and its applications to health care is increasing. Health professionals receive more general information on Internet then real insight into what Internet offers for them specifically.
The project has had to modify some of its original assumptions, such as:
a) there is suitable telephone connectivity all over Slovakia. Over some time it has been shown, that this assumption is not true for every location. We have found out, that locations such as Sahy, Poprad, Vysne Hagy have serious difficulties to connect to the nearest SANET node. In one region (Povazska Bystrica) the telecommunication company has invented so many obstacles to allow a modem to be connected, that it has taken us half a year to overcome all the bureaucracy.
b) the interest proclaimed by participants is real. We have found out, that in several cases when revealed that certain personal time investment is unavoidable for using Internet, the interest was lost. We worked hard to overcome that problem and perhaps in some cases we will have to reconsider connectivity of some of our customers.
c) information provided from our members. Original assumptions that members will be keen to provide their own information was not fulfilled mostly because of facts mentioned above.
d) PaperChase. Some of the institutions have already an access to MEDLINE, therefore the need for PaperChase was lower. Some of them did not find the usefulness of this kind of information source. We have to work on this issue more extensively, since from some of our users we have very positive replies. It is mostly useful for practicing physicians when treating rare diseases or atypical cases as it was indicated from Sahy hospital and elsewhere.
Consecutive year of operations will be crucial for HealthNet-SR future since external financial resources are to be identified and utilized for securing sustainable operations. Therefore authors prepared a proposal for the second year continuation of the project. The activities envisaged in this project are oriented mostly to disseminate information on rational use of Internet in the specific area of health and medicine. In the same time to offer services such as WWW pages for institutions and companies, which are able to share costs.
The project in spite of difficulties is successful in general. It has generated certain interest in Slovak health professionals and started to fulfil the main goal: to connect people.
Type or print your replies
IDENTIFICATION |
||||
| Full Name | ||||
| Address | ||||
| street: Postal Code: City: State: tel: fax: |
||||
| Employment Position | ||||
| Name of the Institution | ||||
| Type of the InstitutionIndicate your preference: 1. Hospital 2. Polyclinics 3. Hygiene 4. Research 5. Education 6. Other | ||||
| Ownership of the Institution 1: 1. Government 2. Nongovernmental | ||||
| Yearly budget in Thousands Sk : | ||||
CHARACTERISTICS of the INSTITUTION |
|
| Number of Employees | |
| teaching (university, high school, other): | |
| involved in research: | |
| was on a business trip abroad for more than 2 weeks in the last 5 years: | |
| use a computer daily: | |
| Number of Professional Journals Subscribed: | |
| out of that journals in other than Slovak or Czech lang uage: | |
| Number of PCS: | |
| out of that with processor 386, 486 or PENTIUM: | |
| out of that with WINDOWS: | |
| out of that in LAN: | |
| Number of direct telephone lines available: | |
| a possibility to use a telephone line for 2 hours daily Indicate the suitable option: YES NO | |
| An employee who will be responsible for the networking YES NO | |
| assign an employee a responsibility to distribute information received YES NO | |
IDENTIFICATION of NEEDS and INTERESTS |
|
| We are only interested in Slovak language informationIndicate your preference YES NO | |
| In English, German or French language, too YES NO | |
| We plan to use the E-mail in Slovakia only YES NO | |
| < td> | Abroad, too YES NO |
| We will use professional information from the network YES NO | |
| We will contribute to the network with our information YES NO | |
| We need to translate the documents fr om English and other languages YES NO | |
| We are able to share costs in future YES NO | |
| If we will be not awarded with this grant, we are still able to cover costs YES NO | |
| We need training in networ king for .... people | |
| We can offer a room and overhead projector for the training YES NO | |
Date: Signature
Please send your replies to the following address:
Annex 2
CONTRACT
on using the donation
Donator: Open Society Fund
Staromestska 6, 811 03 Bratislava
represented by
Foundation for Civilization Diseases Prevention
Smrecianska 29, 811 05 Bratislava
contracts himself
a) to provide needed technical assistance until 28th February 1996 in using the donation;
b) to provide information on new HealthNet-SR services until 28th February 1996;
c) to provide access to documents in the central HealthNet-SR database;
d) to facilitate contacts with SANET association in a frame of HealthNet SR services.
RECEIVER xxxxxxxxxxx
Address
Address
confirms receipting
a) of a modem ZYXEL U-1496 Plus;
b) a manual on HealthNet;
c) 3 logins from SANET for following people:
1. Name and login
2. Name and login
3. Name and login
d) an installation of the technology and its functionality;
e) 3 passwords for PaperChase with manuals
: name password
: name password
: name password
connectivity: telnet pch.bih.harvard.edu or telnet 134.174.118.3
acknowledges that
a) SANET membership fee has been covered until August 1st, 1996 and after this time he will not require further coverage from the donator;
b) this donation does not cover compensations for telecommunications;
contracts for
a) not to require compensation of any harms caused by donated items;
b) fulfill General rules for using SANET network primarily the rule on noncommercial and nonpolitical character of SANET services;
c) not to require donator to repair modem after guaranteed time, i.e. after June 4th, 1996;
d) not to require donator to repair modem if it was misused;
e) to contribute free of charge information relevant for other SANET users (primarily medical and health);
f) in the end of 1995, not later than January 1st, 1996 prepare a short report on experience with using the donation.
For recipient: For donator: