Guidelines for Navigation and Retrieval


	Updated: May 24, 99
Guidelines for Navigation and Retrieval

Tuesday, April 23, 1996

Updated from Apr 23, 97 document by RAMIT

1. General Introduction

The European Health Telematics Observatory is a support measure funded by the E.C. Health sector of the Telematics Applications programme and the Industry. The aim of EHTO is to set up an observatory that collects, analyses, and makes available, in a user-friendly and multilingual manner, information in the field of health telematics. It contributes to the deployment of health telematics applications and health informatics standards in Europe. The information held by EHTO will be structured into categories corresponding to the needs of the different sector actors.

The European Health Telematics Observatory is a service to the health telematics sector, offering a co-ordinated approach to the dissemination and visibility of project results, allowing a more efficient integration of telematics within the different health systems in Europe. It will contribute to the deployment of health telematics technologies, applications and standards. The key objective is to become a bridge between supply and demand.

On the demand side it will enable decision-makers to choose appropriate telematics solutions, and help user groups to define their requirements. Suppliers, industry and, specifically, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) will benefit by delivering more appropriate products. To both, EHTO will offer well-structured and up-to-date information acting in synergy with other support actions, especially those at the overall telematics programme level.

2. Introduction to the EHTO WWW - Site

The EHTO WWW site is an electronic market place where users and providers working on, or interested in, telematics applied to health care can meet, deposit and find information.

The EHTO server will be fully interactive and will enable:

users and decision makers: to get all information they need for understanding the issues and making qualified choices of telematic solutions for their problems
providers: to inform interested parties of their products and services
national, international and regional authorities: to inform of their priorities and activities
standardisation bodies: to gain visibility
all to benefit from discussion fora where users and user-groups have the opportunity to express, discuss and compare their requirements, thus enabling industry to deliver more appropriate products.

3. The purpose of these guidelines.

These guidelines give a short introduction of the main navigation tools and of the information you can find in the Information/Knowledge Base. WWW (World Wide Web) is also briefly introduced. The development of the Information/Knowledge Base and of the navigation tools is still in evolution. Updates of these guidelines will be made regularly.

4. Guidelines

4.1 Getting started

When you are familiar with the Internet and WWW applications you only have to know EHTO's URL: http://www.ehto.org. Furthermore you need to know that the site is Netscape enhanced. All other graphical WWW browsers can be used, as long as HTLM3 is supported.

Hints for beginners.

First step : install a WWW browser that supports graphics.
It is not difficult to install a browser. Nearly all browsers have a setup utility. You need a connection to the Internet and the necessary software to run a browser, e.g.: trumpet Winsock.

Second step : visit a site.
Once the browser is installed your are able to visit information locations on the Internet. A few examples :

http://www.ehto.org        EHTO's Site
ftp://nlmpubs.nlm.nih.gov/        (The National Library of Medicine Publications)
gopher://cedr.lbl.gov/11/         (The CEDR2 gopher Server)

The URLs mentioned here use three kinds of protocols : http, ftp, and gopher. At this stage the first one is the most useful to you. To learn more about the Internet and its applications consult the following list with a few URLs where you can find more information.

http://www.webcom.com/~iol/internet/ http://w3.fwn.rug.nl/itbeheer/nwdoc/netware_info/introduction_to_internet.html http://dodo.crown.net/crown/intronet.html

Surf around
Once the EHTO Home Page is downloaded you can start exploring the EHTO-Site (and the Internet). A Home Page is the entry page of a site, a collection of pages related to a topic, often but not always stored on the same computer. Besides information, pages contain links to other URLs which can be found on the same computer or other systems, located geographically elsewhere.

We advice beginners to consult some books about Internet and WWW :

Physicians' Guide to the Internet, Lee Hancock, Lippincott - Raven
Medicine and the Internet, Bruce C. Mckenzie, Oxford

4.2 Information which can be found on the EHTO WWW Server

The following broad categories of information will constitute the base of EHTO's information/knowledge base:

Information on Market Innovation and Watch Activities :

this complex analytical activity has a number of key elements:

the emergence of new informatics technologies including specific multimedia solutions, technical standards and interoperability;
developments in telecommunications - the operators' infrastructures and the related solutions and complementary technologies;
regulation with regard to the telematics sector in the context of information super highways and how such regulation relates to public policy both at national and international level;
industrial strategy in the telematics sector.

Information from Health Telematics Projects:

it is intended to include the most relevant Third Framework Programme results within the Observatory's information base together with all public deliverables from the Fourth Framework Health Telematics Programme projects. Systematic information will be collected on the objectives of the projects and on their development. The information obtained will be carefully analysed against certain identified criteria, for example in relation to medical, health policy, technological, industrial, economic, societal, quality, adaptability, ethical and standardisation aspects.

Information from Horizontal Actions:

a number of health telematics projects are in the process of developing specific expertise in areas of key interest for health telematics users and service providers. These include technology assessment, developments in education, legal and ethical aspects and quality issues. Complementary activities are taking place within the Member States; the Observatory will establish close links with these projects, and with teams working at national level to ensure appropriate inputs to the Observatory, and with a view to promoting the dissemination of their findings.

Information from Other Related Commission Programmes:

a number of other Directorates General of the Commission (for example III, V and XII) or programmes (such as ESPRIT, ACTS, ENS,IDA and BIOMED) have links with the field of health telematics. Additional information, related for example to EUREKA and COST, or concerning funding available under European Structural Funds, The European Regional Development Fund or the European Investment Bank, can be of importance both to users and to service providers, and will form another useful aspect of the Observatory Information service.

State of the Art in Health Telematics in Europe:

building on work already carried out by a number of projects under the Third Framework Programme, quantitative and qualitative information will be collected on health telematics development in the countries of the European Union. A comparative assessment of the situation at the beginning and the end of the Health Telematics Programme will be carried out in order to evaluate progress.

Information on Standardisation:

information on all existing standards and on standards in the course of development will be deposited with the Observatory. A link will be established with the CEN TC 251 WWW server. Through CEN, liaison will be ensured with the United States (ANSI HISPP), Japan(MEDIS-DC), Canada and Australia.

Information from Industry :

companies are invited to give their input to the Information/Knowledge Base. Besides their company profile, information on their products and services may be found at the Observatory, this enabling users of the Information/Knowledge Base a complete and direct understanding of product and services available in the domain.

Dissemination
Most of the information of the EHTO's Information/Knowledge Base will be visualized on the EHTO's WWW Pages. Besides this, links will be made to off-site (Home) Pages (e.g.: of Projects, Companies, etc.), demos and documents (e.g. Deliverables of European Projects). To optimize the exchange of information an Interactive Space is also foreseen on the EHTO WWW Site. The F.A.Q. (Frequently Asked Questions) Page and Discussion Fora will be integrated.
The F.A.Q module keeps a list of the questions that are frequently asked by the users. These questions and their answers will be shown on the EHTO WWW Site.
The Discussion Forum allows the users to discuss at a distance. In a later stage, depending on the needs, different discussion groups related to specialised topics will be created.

4.3 Your Profile

Due to the heterogeneity and the huge amount of information that will be available on the EHTO Site, we advice you to define your User Profile at the beginning of your visit. This allows us to guide you more efficiently to the relevant data.

Three groups will be constituted (The same groups who ensure that the information collected and disseminated by the Observatory corresponds to the real needs of the health care sector).

Health Policy Makers
will consist of representatives of national/regional health authorities and social insurance organisations. A few examples :

Health authorities
Health insurance organisations
Various other groups related to the European Union, including European Commissioners and Parliamentarians, Commission staff and participants in Commission programmes also require information on health telematics developments.
Standardisation Bodies

End Users
will represent the health professions. A few examples :

Health service managers and health Care professionals
Universities
Scientific societies
Professional associations
Consultants

Industry
including small and medium enterprises and the telecom operators. A few examples :

European industry including hardware and software manufacturers
System integrators
Information system vendors (including SMEs)
Telecom operators
Value Added Network Service Providers

4.4 A few utilities on the EHTO WWW-Site

Home Page
Via the Home Page you can start your exploration on the EHTO Site. At the moment this page, which is not the entry Page, consists of the following entries (see Figure 1): Tutorial, How to disseminate your information, Links with European initiatives, Summary of Health..., Discussion Forum, Health Care Telematic related Links and EHTO related pages.
For the next 'version' of the EHTO Site we will add more topics, such as information coming from the industry.

Search Utility
This tool allows for going directly to the pages containing the requested information. A search will be based on the following input parameters:

user profile (described above)
your search string

Your search string.
In the beginning the search tool will accept only a few expressions. These expressions can be :

your own key-words
a selection made from a given list, containing key-words from the area of Health Telematics and Informatics.

The search utility will become very user-friendly : More facilities will be added in the future in order to obtain a powerful search engine.

More information about the Information/Knowledge Base and the WWW Site can be obtained at the Observatory:

Webmaster
EHTO
Pç. Marquês de Pombal, 15, S/L
1250 Lisboa
Phone: +351 1 319 32 13
Fax: +351 1 315 94 30
webmaster@ehto.org
http://www.ehto.org



	Copyright 1997 © EHTO All rights reserved This server is the only official EHTO WWW knowledge repository. Mail suggestions to: webmaster@ehto.org