Anaesthesia, Intensive Care and Pain Medicine - St Vincent's ...

Department of Information and Communication Te c h n o l o g y
St.Vincent’s Healthcare Group
Library & Information Service
Allied Health Professional and Support Services
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developed systems for Occupational Therapy and Speech and
Language Therapy.
We are currently prototyping our recently developed Intranet
in a number of departments e.g. Pathology, Pharmacy, Personnel
and Occupational Health prior to a general rollout across the
Group.This system will improve communications,allow
departments to share information, reduce and eliminate paper
and provide access to policies and procedures,manuals and
forms online.The Intranet will incorporate links to current
systems for enquiry, reporting and result reporting.
The Nursing Personnel System records information on nurses
relating to their demographics, nursing registration, nurse
contacts,external and internal career history, education,staff
development activities,research,membership, skills and some
details relating to leavers.A nurse-scheduling module will also
be incorporated which will aid staff management and skill mix
on the wards.The scope of this system has been extended to
include Personnel and Medical Administration.
We are currently implementing a Management Information
System and Data Warehouse drawing and purifying information
from clinical and non-clinical systems into a single repository
incorporating systems integration tools,on line analytical
processing (OLAP), business intelligence software and desktop
decision support. The system will also contain a data-mining
tool capable of providing comprehensive reports and ad hoc
queries.The solution will therefore enable the hospital to
maximise the value of data already stored in our current
computer systems,and build an infrastructure that will help us
meet the current and increasing demands for management and
clinical information.
We will continue to enhance our existing network while
tendering for the active network equipment for the new
hospital project.
We have initiated a project in conjunction with the Healthlink
project team to provide data such as pathology and radiology
data to GP’s.
We are currently preparing a requirements specification for an
Order Communications System which will provide for the
electronic raising / transmission of orders and the gathering /
receipt of results between patient based departments or
locations and ancillary departmental systems e.g. pathology,
radiology etc.
We are also hoping to implement a document scanning system
for the Emergency Department.
The Library & Information Service (LIS) facilitates all staff of the
three hospitals in St Vincent’s Healthcare Group. It serves all
students from its affiliated university, University College Dublin,
who are resident in the hospitals and also GPs working in the
vicinity, upon registration.It does not provide services to
patients,other students or the general public.
The Library & Information Service attends to the information
needs of its users and therefore the clinical practice, education
and research activities of the Healthcare Group.
Staff
The Library employs 2 full time and 1 part-time staff members.
Head of Library
& Information Services
Senior Library Assistant
Niamh Lucey
Greg Sheaf
Library Assistant (evenings) Paula Maher (to June 2003)
Dearbhla Sheridan
Saul Lugoye is employed by UCD as Computing Support
Officer to the ERC.
Service Developments/Activities
Informatics
Early in 2003 a group representing members of the Library and
Information Service Committee and UCD Computing Services
was formed to try to speed up the delivery of electronic
services from the university to the hospital, but the pace has
been disappointingly slow to date.Towards the end of the year
Saul was co-opted onto a Faculty of Medicine Users’Group and
the hospital was further represented in the IT planning process
in the university so it is hoped to make progress in 2004.
for the Library including a PC, a scanner, and printer hardware
for the digital photocopier.
Collection
This year the Group Executive approved a collection
development policy, which outlines the scope of the collection
of books and journals held in the Library. Copies are available
upon request or can be viewed on the premises.Additional
shelving was added to the existing room at the end of the year
but lack of space continues to be a problem.
Journals:The LIS subscribed to 103 journal titles in 2003 in the
areas of medicine, nursing and allied health,at a cost of
€42,582.47. Over 60 titles were also received on donation.
Books: Thanks to the efforts of Professor Diarmuid
O’Donoghue, a fundraiser was launched in May, which
generated almost €7000 for books for the Library. In addition,
Professor MX FitzGerald provided funding for some much
needed medical undergraduate textbooks. Finally, Fannin
Healthcare Ltd donated a very substantial number of textbooks
to the Librar y.The department is indebted to the consultant
staff,Prof FitzGerald and Fannins for their generosity.
Heritage IV: For most of 2003 staff members were engaged
in retrospectively cataloguing the existing collection of
books onto the new electronic library management
system,Heritage IV. By the end of the year all of
the loan collection had been added to the
system and a record for all registered
borrowers had been generated.All
loan transactions now take place
electronically and users can
use the online public
access catalogue
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Yet again the Postgraduate Medical and Dental Board provided
some welcome funds for the purchase of IT equipment