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The Experience of HISS: a powerful metaphor At
Campus Bio-Medico University of Rome we introduced at the beginning of
2003 wireless networks and portable devices starting a number of
projects for assessing the use of this technology. In
the HISS project 110 students used wireless devices to collect data
concerning more than 1500 patients in the Campus Hospital. Besides
learning the use of this new technology and applying it for free access
to teaching resources from any place in the Campus, the students
involved were able to design new user interfaces for accomplishing
daily tasks. Medicine students gave suggestions to software developers for the creation of a mask to enter clinical information at the bedside. Nursing students
gathered records concerning entrance evaluation, medical diagnosis,
collaboration problems, nursing diagnosis, calculation of entrance and
exit fluids. The construction of an order entry system for diets was a
topic dealt by the students of the Dietetics curriculum. After
designing the interface, the main problem was content adaptation
depending on mobile devices features and the frequent changes in the
interface definition. The possibility to rapidly change the contents
through an XML schema, without varying the code, allowed us to improve,
day by day, the application. But the issues of the project were not only technological and pedagogical...
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Besides being the acronym of a system for students, HISS became a powerful metaphor: the hiss, i.e. the whisper, the buzz, spread itself and involved more people and more tasks than expected. The
positive effects of the project went beyond our hopes. Two companion
projects started, following the enthusiasm of some members of the
staff: the first one, for the surgery department physicians, has
changed completely the way of rapid data entry at bedside, which was
previously done on a sheet placed on a wooden tablet. The second one,
carried out in collaboration with the Campus Information System
software developers, converted all dieticians activities (such as
bedside-kitchen communication) to an electronic version.
Learn more on the HISS project
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MoPS: Learning Off the University
Problem Solving is a core course of Bio-Engineering curriculum: it
involves all the knowledge that students have so far acquired,
representing the first chance to test all their theoretic formation on
the field and to get in touch with the Hospital reality at various
level: physicians, nurses, trainees, IT department, etc. The
fundamental learning and teaching issues that the project addresses are
both ethical and technological. The focus is on enabling the students
to learn through teaching something useful for the entire Hospital
community (physicians, nurses, other hospital workers, patients). The
main stress is on the connection among different disciplines and on
communication: the students learn to interview users or to observe
directly problems and to find and communicate solutions. Instructors
can test students ability to solve problems and to react to users
difficulties. If they can constantly keep in touch with students
equipped mobile devices, they could better monitor students behaviour
and help them troubleshooting.
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Implementation (pedagogy)
Problem Solving is a compulsory course for all students attending the
first year of the master in Bioengineering. The course includes both
activities in the classroom and observation/intervention on the field.
After the introduction of the teacher, that illustrates the
methodology, students are sent in the different wards to take notes of
both technological and organization problems. The possible solutions
are discussed in classroom; after the development of an implementation,
students will monitor users’ feedback and evaluation. HP
technology will help to achieve a fundamental goal of this course:
immediate interaction for faster problem solving. Students equipped
with Tablet PCs can participate in periodical briefings held in the
classroom, then go to the hospital for observation, taking notes and
images of the problems, and sending them to the tutors when needed. We
will examine the effects of introducing a mobile computing
data-acquisition and analysis tool into problem-solving laboratory. To
determine the effects of the computer tool, two groups will be
selected: the test group will use a computer tool to collect and
analyze data in the hospital , while the control group will use
traditional equipment (pen, paper, telephone). The curriculum will be
kept as similar as possible for the two groups. The groups will be
examined for effects on performance on conceptual tests and grades,
attitudes towards the laboratory and the laboratory tools, and
behaviours within cooperative groups.
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Implementation (technology)
The granted HP technology will contribute to resolving the fundamental
problem or opportunity this project addresses: immediate interaction
for faster problem solving. The use of wireless technology will ensure
fast localization (with VoIP on the WLAN, or by instant messaging) and
immediate access to useful information. For
this project, we are not going to develop any software, as we did for
HISS. We want to test already existing software:Project Management
instruments, Chat and Cooperative environements (MS NetMeeting, Sun
Forum etc.)
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Impact on Teaching First
of all we aim at preparing Bioengineering students to their future
profession, not only giving them the opportunity to play an active role
in the hospital, but also giving them the instruments which they will
encounter in their future profession. Using mobile devices they will be
able, in future, to develop better solutions for this kind of
instruments and to create new ways of interaction among users. Both
tutors and students will work in Moodle, a course management system
that allows different kind of interaction: chat, forum, newsletter,
video lessons, on-line resources, virtual interaction. It is basically
a software package designed to help educators create quality online
courses. One of the main advantages of Moodle over other systems is a
strong grounding in social constructionist pedagogy.
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The Impact of MoPS: changes in student learning One Year Ago - Wireless technologies were introduced in our Campus Today -
Every student can use wireless devices to access the Hospital
Information System or to look for didactical resources on the
University database One Year From Now
- Teacher, students and Hospital personel (physicians, nurses and
dieticians) will communicate with wireless devices in a cooperative
environment. In HISS
we tried to monitor whether the students using handheld computers were
achieving better results in their examinations. We soon realized that
there was a better (and easier to evaluate) indicator of performance
related to their future profession: speed and accuracy. The progress of
the students using the devices was measured through the increasing
number of tasks they used it for. Nursing tutors found more accurate
the forms edited via PDA than those on papers; dieticians calculated
that the use of PDA allowed them to save up to 30of their time. During the MoPS project
we will examine the effects of introducing a mobile computing
data-acquisition and analysis tool into problem-solving laboratory. Two
groups will be selected: the test group will use a computer tool to
collect and analyze data in the hospital , while the control group will
use traditional equipment (pen, paper, telephone). The curriculum will
be kept as similar as possible for the two groups. The groups will be
examined for effects on performance on conceptual tests and grades,
attitudes towards the laboratory and the laboratory tools, and
behaviours within cooperative groups.
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Access
to the Hospital Information System will be improved. Students of
Bioengineering will access the system as trainees/doctors assistants.
The advantage of mobile devices is that this task can be performed
everywhere, not only in the medical cabinet, always crowded with people
and where there is normally only one desktop PC for both nurses and
physicians. In
this way they will be able to overcome one of the main obstacles in the
diffusion of new technologies in our Campus University: users’
resistance. More enthusiastic users can change the attitude of the more
reluctant ones, by showing them how easy and helpful is, for example,
to use mobile devices for recording patients’ data or to
retrieve useful information at bedside. In this way we think we could
persuade even health care professionals, excluded from the previous
project, which was specifically addressed to students. The access the
Hospital Information System will be warranted not only for problem
solving, but also to give explanations on the interface, to perform
presentations of new applications etc. Another
future scenario can be patient information. Patients can have
diagnostic, treatment and educational (such as diet habits) data
displayed in their own room, so that they can get more consciousness of
their health situation.
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Quick Facts Dept: Courses Impacted: Besides
the Problem Solving laboratory, many other courses will be impacted
both in Bioengineering Department (courses of Informatics and
Telematics) and in Medicine Department (students of the 3rd, 4th, 5th
and 6th year of Medicine practising in the wards; students of Nursing
and of Dietetics). Problem Solving laboratory is a course for
Graduates. The other ones are courses for Undergraduates. # Students Impacted: 50 in Bioengineering Department and 200 in Medicine Department # Faculty Involved: The professors directly involved in this project will be eight, of both Bioengineering and Medicine Department. This project is funded in part by an HP Technology for Teaching grant.
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Contact Us Prof.
Giulio Iannello: g.iannello@unicampus.it; Prof. Michele Crudele:
m.crudele@unicampus.it; Dr. Maria Cinque: m.cinque@unicampus.it Tel: 00390622541260 Projects website for more information: http://research.unicampus.it/Hiss/; http://research.unicampus.it/Mops/
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References & Publications Crudele
M., Iannello G., HISS - Hospital Information System for Students,
Workshop on Ubiquitous and Mobile Computing for Educational
Communities: Enriching and Enlarging Community Spaces, Amsterdam, The
Netherlands, Sept. 19, 2003. Cacace
F., Cinque M., Crudele N., Iannello G., Venditti M., The impact of
innovation in medical and nursing training: a Hospital Information
System for Students accessible through mobile devices, MLEARN
2004,Bracciano, Italy, July 2004. Bernaschi
M., Cacace F., Cinque M., Crudele N., Iannello G., Venditti M.,
Interface Design and Mobility in Ubiquitous Access to HIS, Medicon 2004
Health in the Information society, IFMBE Proceedings, Vol. 6, July 31
– Aug. 05, Ischia, 2004. Cinque
M., Crudele M., Iannello G., The Results of the HISS Project: an
Upside-Down Revolution, Workshop on Learning Communities in the era of
Ubiquitous Computing, Milan, Italy, June 13, 2003. Cinque
M., Crudele M., Gagliani Caputo L., Iannello G., PpMC (Pocket PC
Mediated Communication) in Catering School, Workshop on Learning
Communities in the era of Ubiquitous Computing, Milan, Italy, June
13,2003. Cinque
M., Cacace F., Crudele M., Iannello G., Bernaschi M., Mobile Learning
in a Hospital Environment, Proceedings of Mobile Learning 2005, Qawra,
Malta, 28-30 June 2005. Alloni
R., Cinque M., Coppola R., Crudele M., Iannello G., Valenti R.,
Handheld computing devices in a surgical ward: Advantages on clinical
information sharing, Workshop on Personalisation for
e-Health,Edinburgh, UK, July 29, 2005.
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