MEDNET'99

4. WORLD CONGRESS ON THE INTERNET IN MEDICINE

in Heidelberg (Germany)

Congress Programme - keynotes

Keynote presentations

Internet Research: Implications for The Future of Health Care	Prof. Ted Shortliffe Professor for Medical Informatics, Stanford University
	Ted is one of the leading scientists in medical informatics and has been (among other activities) a member of the US Presidential Information Technology Advisory Committee and the Advisory Committee on Internet-2 (University Consortium for Advanced Internet Development). He will hold visionary keynote speech on the "Future of the Internet" - what are the possibilities that are just out of reach, in part because of limitations in Internet technology today, what effects will the Next Generation Internet efforts have on medicine?	"The phenomenal growth in Internet usage, largely due to the success of the World Wide Web, has stressed the international networking infrastructure in ways that were never contemplated when the early ARPAnet emerged from research laboratories in the 1970s. Some of the challenges are logistical and legal, and have to do with management of domain names, intellectual-property agreements, and international business activities. Others are technical, resulting both because we are envisioning applications that the current Internet cannot support, and because the existing infrastructure cannot scale to a world in which a huge portion of the world’s population is online and individual homes and businesses may have IP addresses for tens of electronic devices, such as appliances, heating systems, or security alarms. In this presentation, I will discuss some of the US research and testbed activities that are currently underway in an effort to respond to the technical challenges. These include the Internet-2 testbed created by a consortium of academic institutions, and the federal government’s Next Generation Internet research initiative. I will explain the difference between these two programs and identify some of the technical requirements other than a simple increase in bandwidth that have been identified for the evolving Internet. This will lead to a discussion of the limitations of the current Internet that have constrained its use in health care and that accordingly help to define the networking research agenda that is of greatest importance to the biomedical community. Policy and regulatory issues that arise because of health care’s use of the Internet will also be discussed, as will those technical requirements that may be unique to biomedical applications. One goal of the discussion will be to motivate an international discussion of the ways in which the medical informatics community should be engaged in both basic and applied research in the area of networking and the future of the Internet."

2001: A global health odyssey	Prof. Ron LaPorte Professor for Epidemiology, University of Pittsburgh, School of Public Health
	Ron is the driving foce behind the Global Health Network (GHNet), an alliance of experts in health and telecommunications who are actively developing the architecture for a health information structure for the prevention of disease in the 21st century. The professionals involved in GHNet bring together expertise from the essential areas of government, international organizations, business, and academia. Represented are experts from the World Bank, NASA, AT&T, IBM, the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), and the World Health Organization (WHO) and from the field of epidemiology.	"The year 2001 and the next millennium will soon be upon us. The major gains in health in the 20th century were primarily the result of improvements in public health including sanitation and immunization. Global health improvements will occur in the 21st century through improvements in information (in particular health training). We will describe a new paradigm for transnational training, the supercourse. In the next century global lecture-shareware training will take place, with Deming based quality control systems on the Internet. Faculty will thus share their best, most passionate lectures on the internet. This will help the beginning teacher, who is just preparing lectures, the experienced teacher who have 1-2 "dog" lectures that s/he want to improve, and those in developing countries who do not have access to the literature. We have established this new paradigm for epidemiology/global health/and the Internet with 1023 faculty from 98 countries, and 110 lectures. We will argue that a similar "lecture of library" should evolve across all of science, using open standards, and copy left systems so that we seamlessly share our knowledge with our peers world wide."

Consumers and the Internet	Prof. Alejandro Jadad Professor for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, McMaster University, Canada Co-Director, Canadian Cochrane Centre
	Director, McMaster University Evidence-based Practice Center / Chief, Health Information Research Unit Editor, Cochrane Collaborative Review Group "Consumers and Communication" Alex' current research interests focus on the study of the information needs of different decision-makers and their barriers to the use of best available research evidence; the development of strategies to promote interaction and communication among decision makers operating at different levels in the health care system; the role of the Internet as a source of information for providers and consumers during health care decisions; the design and execution of empirical methodological studies to improve the design, conduct, reporting and dissemination of individual studies and systematic reviews; the use of systematic reviews and randomized trials as tools to gather new knowledge in health care; and the development of strategies (with members of the public as co-investigators) to transfer health research information to clinicians, patients, managers, policy makers, journalists and other lay decision makers, and its use in conjunction with their values and circumstances. He is Chair, Consumers and Health Informatics Working Group, American Medical Informatics Association; Editor, Cochrane Consumers and Communication Review Group; Associate Editor, Health Expectations, a new peer-reviewed journal that focuses on patient participation in health care decisions. In 1997, Dr. Jadad received the National Health Research Scholars Award, by Health Canada, to support his program "Knowledge synthesis and transfer, consumers and evidence-based health care." In April of 1999, he received one of ‘Canada’s Top 40 Under 40’ awards, in recognition for the achievements and leadership in his multiple areas of interest, and his contributions to society.	"Although it is impossible to predict its evolution, recent developments and trends indicate that the Internet will have a profound effect on the role of patients and the general public in health care decisions and on how they interact with clinicians and other groups of decision-makers. The Internet is providing extraordinary opportunities to build strong partnerships between consumers and any other group involved in health care decisions. It has also the potential to create unprecedented division. In this session, I will focus on key challenges that we must meet to develop optimal partnerships between consumers and other groups of decision-makers. Some of these include the need for: meaningful collaboration with consumers, efficient strategies to monitor patterns of Internet use among consumers, preparation for upcoming technological developments, balance between connectivity and privacy, better understanding of the balance between face-to-face and virtual interactions, and equitable access to technology and information across the globe. The presentation is expected to motivate discussion and debate around issues that require immediate attention if we are to maximize the benefit of the Internet in health care."

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