PROCEDIMIENTOS DE EVALUACIÓN Y CRITERIOS DE CALIFICACIÓN

In healthcare domain information availability is not an issue anymore, thus information seekers can retrieve information instantly with minimum efforts. Gregory the editor of physical therapy in sport highlights the importance of healthcare information dissemination across the internet. Hence, the use of advanced technologies on the internet eased the process of offering users on the internet with plethora of journals and other published media easy to access. However, searching for information can be a tedious task to most academics. Furthermore, searching in the wrong direction can make us face a great deal of irrelevant information. (Gregory S. Kolt, 2006).

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In scientific communities IO manifests through the non-stop publications and new additions of previously published books. (Baez et al., 2010). Many researches in healthcare investigated the symptoms of IO for almost 4 decades even before modern IO manifestation. Thus, indicated that IO in healthcare is the consequence of the lack of time management and continuous increase of information volume.

Healthcare is one of the crucial environments on the internet where information is published rapidly and is used by a wide range of information seekers from different background and educational level. Hence, this section discusses IO in healthcare environment and its influence on healthcare information seekers. of high priority. In our research, we would like to highlight some of the published work in healthcare IO.

Therefore, IO in healthcare can be divided into two categories: first, traditional IO problems caused by (i.e. books, published conference and journal papers, medical reports, handouts, and healthcare technologies). Second, role of technology and ISs in the available of healthcare information on the internet.

Lock work investigate the problem of publication avalanche that exceeds the ability of the enthusiastic reader, inferior papers buries vital ones and explore methods to raise awareness to set a limit to the frequency of articles or journals publications.

Hence, lock emphasise to focus on quality rather than quantity pointing out few techniques such as (scanning relative journals, supplementing review articles citation lists, printouts, and conversations with colleagues) (Lock, 1982). These techniques were also suggested by Bernal and Fox to control exponential growth of publications and apply better divisions of journals and archival methods. Thus, suggested the replace traditional journals with distributing systems that would provide an abstract form of the article. IO in healthcare also prevented information seekers from crossing the boundaries of on discipline to another. This therefore, restricted information seekers from enriching their knowledge with research outcome from cross disciplines (Lock, 1982).

Another interesting attempt to minimise IO in healthcare was to control research publication through peer reviewing. This attempt aimed to prevent the avalanche of inferior papers and give change to vital ones. Hence, enforcing strict evaluation criteria, academics manged to temporarily control IO (Lock, 1982).

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The progression of IO continues, and information seekers are still struggling with floods of publications in both forms (hard/soft copies). In the editorial message, Faber highlights his dilemma of not being able to keep informed with current research and findings his own discipline but also general knowledge in healthcare literature. Furthermore, Faber complains that information seekers in healthcare data will never be able to keep current with floods of information unless they are retired. Faber concluded his discourse by sharing his experience in coping with IO; thus, says that he only keeps records of three important journals of healthcare and gives out the other journals or throws them away (Faber, 1993).

In the next addition of BMJ, Westerman et al., revisits Faber article (Faber, 1993) and reopen the discourse on IO in healthcare domain. Although technology can solve some of IO problems in healthcare, the digital age it is very difficult to try to stay current. The rapid publication of knowledge in periodical timeline in parallel with one’s responsibilities makes it difficult if not impossible to stay current.

Westerman came up with two possible solutions to IO. Information seekers in healthcare can use remote access to a DB that contains an abstract of all articles. Alternatively, use “Mentor” a decision support system that allows access to information sources and provides a summary of a summary, prioritise/ filter results into top five important topics to minimise time sent on information seeking (Westerman et al., 1993).

Information seekers in healthcare can range from being doctors, nurses, patients, insurance companies, pharmaceutical industry, equipment suppliers, medical students and so forth. Mikulencak and Turner in their investigation focused on the impact of IO on nurses who are bombarded with information from multiple sources (newspapers, journals, postal and electronic mail, and the internet). Therefore, the American Nurses Association (ANA) suggested to collect data of its users to create a profile that will help improve services and provide better techniques and research topics based on interests and preferences (Mikulencak and Turner, 1997).

On the other hand, Lyons and Khot in their investiagiton highlighted the problem of General Practitioners (GP) who complains about their inability to access accurate information sources to support clinical practices; thus, affects daily tasks progress. Therefore, Lyons and Khot suggest to develop an electronic directory which would consist of organized data of healthcare services for GPs and based on the WAX Active

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Library software (www.medinfo.cam.ac.uk/wax) that will allow access to shared information (Lyons and Khot, 2000).

which was created for primary care in the first place. The tool uses a combination of multiple existing repositions and mostly newly created data. Some of the issues the authors complained about are: an abundance of poor quality information, lack of awareness of the importance of quality of information in healthcare, lack of trust from beneficiaries, hesitation of recipients to share information among themselves, and lack of computerization of information in general. The system was examined among a group of users and, according to the authors, the testing was successful and the users were satisfied with the services and contents of the system. Using the directory helped in improving shared information among its users (Lyons and Khot, 2000).