Sunday, April 5, 2009

Taking a Break - Starting a Wellness and Health Care IT blog-filing cabinet

I've decided to slow down the pace of my blog entries on this blog. I'll post here from time-to-time, and I will continue to use the information and resources I've posted here over the past 6 months for a interactive multimedia time-line project.


My father has experienced a variety of health problems over the past two-three years, and has been in a hospital setting over a month. This experience has open my eyes to the complicated situation of our health care situation. It has reinforced my belief that there is a need for more user-centered, efficient IT solutions, developed with input from all stakeholders - medical professionals, support staff, patients, family members of patients, and the wider circle of people that make up communities of wellness and care.

I will be starting a new filing-cabinet blog, Wellness and Health IT. As a school psychologist, I serve a wide range of students. In addition to my work in a high school, I work students who have multiple special needs (medically fragile, severe autism, significant cognitive delays, traumatic brain injury, etc. ).

In the school setting, I spend quite a bit of time consulting with teachers and collaborating with school nurses and special education/related services professionals such as other psychologists, speech and language therapists, occupational therapists, and physical therapists. One of our biggest problems is the way IT is implemented in the public school setting. The state of affairs in the electronic student & educational records arena is sad. Issues that impact health care IT are similar to those that impact education & special education IT. I hope to write about these issues share successes, and discuss potential solutions on my new blog.

Coordinating with medical professionals who work with the same set of students outside the school setting is difficult.