The Assisted Electronic Communications project recently hosted its first nursing communications workshop here in KMi. A team of senior nurses from Kettering General Hospital worked on the AEC prototype in the Clutch Masterclass facility of the Centre for New Media in KMi on the 30th November, 2000.
The AEC project is funded by the UK Department of Health, under the Information and Communications Technologies Research Initiative. The project is looking at the application of media and knowledge technologies in a medical context. Initially, it has been working with digital discourse systems to enable heath care professionals within an acute NHS Trust to access and contribute to threaded, asynchronous discussions and themed information. The nurses in this workshop were exploring and testing the first prototype of this system.
In later work the team are also aiming to pilot the use of ‘shared social contexts’ and server side information assistants for information exchange. Currently such applications have been explored in educational and business settings where they have significantly contributed to an increase in access to relevant information and have also facilitated a more participative and efficient decision-making culture.
The AEC project is a joint initiative of the Centre for New Media in KMi, the Institute of Health Service Research in Luton, and Kettering General Hospital.
