Use of Web-Logs and RSS for Information Retrieval and Communication
Joseph G. Lonner, M.D.; Scott R. Springman, M.D.
University of Wisconsin Medical School, Department of Anesthesiology, Madison, WI

Introduction: Over the past decade, “hypertext transmission protocol” (HTTP) and email have emerged as an important source of timely and relevant clinical information over both intranets and Internet. However, the ever-increasing flow of data can pose tremendous logistical challenges to both the information purveyor and the information end user. The information “provider” must rely on media that is often “lost” in the background: paper memos or notices (discarded/lost), email (filtered as “spam”, discarded), or web pages
(must actively be “visited” regularly to be useful, new content may sit unnoticed). For the information“user,” there often is limited ability to interact with and provide rapid feedback to other users and to the people initiating the electronic contact. Keeping track of multiple email “threads” is difficult and often provides a confusing trail that is not easily accessed as an archive. So-called “electronic bulletin boards” are too complex to set up and maintain for individuals or smaller clinical groups. Fortunately, emerging software technologies offer both educators and clinicians powerful tools to organize and retain incoming
Internet information. Further, these developments also provide a way to make meaningful contributions to online content in a very simple and inexpensive way.
RSS as the Information “Funnel”: The recent development of so-called RSS “feeds” allows anyone to“syndicate” or distribute information electronically. RSS is an acronym for RDF Site Summary, Rich Site Summary, or Really Simple Syndication. In concrete terms, it is a data-sharing technique that allows for the use of specialty programs (called newsreaders or aggregators) to collect tables of contents from electronic journals, web site headlines, and other sources without having to visit each individual web site or to sift through multiple emails. With RSS, the user “subscribes” to an RSS XML URL which points the newsreader to information sources (or “feeds”) of particular interest to that user, and it collects, updates,
and notifies the user of what’s changed as often as desired. A summarized display shows each feed with links to detailed content – all within a single interface.
“Blogs” Provide for Individual and Group Discussions: Web-logs (“blogs”, for short) initially developed as a means of online individual self-expression. Newer software and free or subscription services offer inexpensive ways for clinicians, medical departments, or special interest groups to engage in easily organized and archived on-line discussions. These sites also offer all the advantages of regular web pages, with user-defined links to other sites, download files, or multimedia. Newer log-on methods ensure security and privacy for the group. Web-based or desktop client software allows reading, posting and editing blog messages from desktop client or browser.
Educational and Clinical Opportunities for RSS and Blogs: Amazingly, almost nothing has been written about the use of RSS and blogs in medicine. At our hospital-based outpatient surgery center, we recently created an “AnesthesiaBlog” demonstration project (through a public subscription service) as a centralized clearinghouse for intra-departmental communication. This site was set up in less than 5 hours with secure login settings and minimal web knowledge. User-defined style, content, and management allow initiation and categorization of topics ranging from policies and procedures to department newsletters to
clinical scenarios. Easy ability to comment on postings allows the views of individual clinicians to be heard by all. One-on-many educational opportunities for residents were a consequence of postings about daily clinical issues. Policies, notices, and “how-to-do-it” links are also organized at this site. Learning from this experience, a multidisciplinary quality improvement project on outpatient preoperative assessment and preparation elected to use a separate blog site to coordinate all information and communication. Enhanced interaction over the usual “meetings & email” technique were reported by all the participants. The
outpatient surgery center is exploring the use of a patient-centered blog that allows patients to share information about their surgical experience in order to help prepare other patients about to undergo procedures. It also may serve to help providers to improve the quality of service and identify patient satisfaction and safety issues.
In addition to setting up the clinical blogs, newer software easily allows clinicians to develop and “publish” RSS feeds on blog topics, departmental and outpatient surgery center news, and general medical journal table of contents. Clinicians are using a newsreader client aggregator to assemble multiple “headlines” and keep track of postings almost immediately. Anesthesiology personnel in our outpatient surgery center were
introduced to RSS and have come to rely on it. Clinicians are realizing why many say that RSS is the most important Internet development since email and browsers.
Conclusions: RSS feeds are relatively new developments, even by Internet standards, and are best regarded as a work in progress. However, they represent important progress toward making the vast (and growing) array of online resources easily accessible and manageable for clinicians. Blogs have the potential to improve communication and organize information so easily that clinicians can build one from scratch without arcane programming skills and maintain it through a subscription service without a local web server. Using blogs to communicate with, and learn from, patients about their anesthesia and surgical experience deserves continued exploration.

TOP

© SOCIETY FOR AMBULATORY ANESTHESIA
520 N. Northwest Highway Park Ridge, Illinois 60068-2573
Tel: (847) 825-5586 Fax: (847) 825-5658
E-mail: samba@asahq.org