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left image University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center
IAIMS Progress Report
April 2004

"The future of education and healthcare will be mandated by how we manage information." — R. Philip Eaton, MD
Vice President for Health Sciences, University of New Mexico

After three years of dedicated efforts, the Integrated Advanced Information Management System (IAIMS) Planning Grant project drew to a close in early 2003. During that time, IAIMS became an integral part of the technology planning process on campus.

A Planning Office was created and staffed in 2001 to foster the growth of IAIMS on the Health Sciences Center (HSC) campus. With enthusiastic assistance from the Planning Office, the IAIMS Planning Grant team encouraged and offered support campus-wide to witness the successful participation and collaboration among HSC leadership, faculty, and staff about a wide variety of technology planning and implementation issues. Some of the achievements during 2003 and 2004 have been:
  1. Information Technology Planning
    The HSC continues to develop technology standards and to collaborate in major initiatives, as evidenced by:
    • Expansion of the faculty workstation project to include HSC staff. The faculty workstation project, highlighted as a poster at the May 2003 IAIMS Consortium meeting, is gearing up for an additional 220 standardized machines to be delivered to faculty and staff in early 2004.
    • Implementation of an electronic grant submission and information management system (InfoEd) at the HSC and a new UNM-wide ERP system (SCT Banner) and implementation of a HSC-wide document management and collaborative authoring system (Work2Gether). These implementations required the creation of project teams and plans, and frequent and regular communications among a wide constituency.
    • Campus-wide planning for wireless with standards developed in conjunction with main campus computing.

  2. UNM Information Technology Infrastructure Plan

    In the Spring of 2003, a UNM-wide study of the information technology needs to support UNM new buildings and building renovations was completed. This year-long study, undertaken by Vantage Technology Consulting Group, resulted in the identification of design guidelines for IT infrastructure facilities and a five year projection of infrastructure needs and costs.

  3. The LibQUAL+ Survey

    The Planning Office helped administer and analyze results of the LibQUAL+ Survey, which was available online for library patrons during a two week period in April 2003. Results of this national survey indicated that the mean scores for HSLIC were higher than the mean for health sciences libraries nationally. Respondents also gave Library staff kudos in certain activities, and offered insights in customer improvements. Later in 2004, HSLIC will survey customers about technology services.

  4. Speakers
    Under the auspices of the IAIMS planning grant, the Planning Office continued to coordinate planning for the Vice President's Leadership Forum. This forum brings speakers or topical presentations to all members of the HSC. Speakers in 2003 and 2004 have included the following:
    • Engaged nationally recognized speaker Stewart Mennin, PhD to share his thoughts on "Through the Lens of Complex Adaptive Systems: The Emergence of Learning, Individually and Collectively" (March 7, 2003).
    • Hosted the "Got Sustainability? Plan for It!" videoconference sponsored by the Society of College and University Planning (October 9, 2003).
    • Hosted Stuart Nelson, MD, chief of MeSH of the National Library of Medicine who gave a series of seminars on February 17 & 18 and April 6 &7 on “Information and Medicine: A Bloisian View of Medical Informatics.

  5. Informatics

    As the latest step in our institution’s commitment to the IAIMS mission and philosophy, the HSC recruited its first full-time informatics faculty member. On March 1, 2004 Philip Kroth, MD, MS, joined HSLIC as Assistant Director of Health Sciences Informatics Program Development, with a joint appointment with the Department of Medicine. Dr. Kroth’s background is in Computer Engineering and Internal Medicine. In addition, he recently completed a three year Medical Informatics Training Fellowship as well as a Master’s degree in clinical research. One of his first projects is to continue to build our Medical Informatics Training program, begun in the Fall of 2003 with our first fellow, Randy Stewart, MD. Other educational activities Dr. Kroth will be working on include informatics components for the curriculums in the School of Medicine, College of Nursing, and College of Pharmacy. In addition, Dr. Kroth has joined our university hospital’s clinical information system implementation team. Dr. Kroth’s own research interests are centered on database research. He is actively working on a proposal for creating an open-source, web-based, clinical information system query tool. This tool will allow research, managers, and physicians to utilize our hospital’s clinical database for research, quality control, and patient panel management purposes where this capability did not exist before.

  6. Advisory Council for Knowledge Management and Information Technology
    In the Fall 2003, an orientation process was established for new and continuing members of the Advisory Council, thus completing one of the remaining outstanding tasks in the IAIMS planning grant action plan. An orientation packet included Council charge, membership roster, role descriptions for Council chair and Information Systems Planner, election process for chair/chair-elect, HSC-wide policies developed and under development by the Advisory Council, and selected readings in knowledge management and information technology.

  7. Associate Vice President for Knowledge Management and IT

    In January 2004, HSLIC Director Holly Buchanan was named Associate Vice President for Knowledge Management and IT.

Summary
With the initial planning stage of IAIMS completed, the team has begun to focus on new project proposals to put our HSC IAIMS lessons into practice. Ultimately, the success of IAIMS planning has made a lasting impact on the UNMHSC community and promises us even more successes in the future.

For more information, contact Sally Bowler-Hill: sbowler-hill@salud.unm.edu
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