The amount of medical information and evidence available to physicians is growing exponentially, but it's of little use if they can't gain access to it. Finding ways to provide that access is the goal of a Mar. 27–28 workshop in Vancouver (see Commentary, page 710), whose intended outcome is a report on “technology enabled knowledge translation.” And while that sounds complicated, a member of the workshop's advisory committee says the concept isn't.
“You need current information available at your fingertips because you can't have it all in your head,” says Dr. Mamoru Watanabe, a former dean of medicine at the University of Calgary. He says new technology is starting to make this possible, and the workshop's goal is to determine what technology Canadian physicians will need to achieve this.
Dr. Kendall Ho, the workshop organizer, says the technologies to be discussed will change the way physicians practise. “We no longer line up at a bank to do our banking — we use the Web or bank machines instead,” he said, and a similar transformation is occurring in the way physicians access information.
“As our next generation of health professional trainees emerge, they will demand technologies that will help them get the information they need when and where they need it — just-in-time information on demand. And the question is not when we will see this technology materializing, but how this will unfold.” — Barbara Sibbald, CMAJ