September 1, 2000 UNT Inhouse publication: Clinical Library gives doctors information online

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Clinical Digital Library gives doctors information online

Dr. Martha Dodson draws most of her patients from a transient and low-income population in Tarrant County.

For many of them it's difficult to make even a single visit to the doctor, so to expedite diagnoses, Dodson uses the Clinical Digital Library (CDL) at UNT. The Internet database provides quick access to medical diagnosis, treatment and prevention information.

"Sometimes researching a set of symptoms can take weeks or even months," says Dodson, a graduate of the UNT Health Science Center at Fort Worth who is doing her residency at the Seminary Drive Family Practice Clinic in Fort Worth. "With our patient population, delays can be disastrous because after a certain time, I may never see a particular patient again."

The CDL offers links to nearly 50,000 web sites approved by a panel of experts in medicine and public health. The site provides diagnostic information for an array of symptoms as well as detailed explanations of drugs and preventative medicine. It also provides access to both public and subscription-based medical journals with the latest updates.

UNT's School of Library and Information Sciences constructed the CDL, and the health science center familiarizes residents with the database so that it can become a useful tool in their future practices.

Recently, the University of Alabama joined the CDL under the supervision of Steven MacCall, an assistant professor there who helped establish the digital library as a UNT graduate student.

"The CDL contains data you can't find in a textbook or in class because by the time information makes it into a book it can already be outdated," Dodson explains. The CDL also provides easily referenced breakdowns of diagnostic and treatment procedures in manageable bites so that participating physicians can quickly access what they need, says Ana D. Cleveland, the UNT professor of library and information sciences and graduate faculty member at the health science center who organized the site.

Originally, the CDL was created to offer a medical resource for rural doctors across Texas, Cleveland explains.

According to the Texas Department of Health, as of May 2000 there were 176 medically underserved counties in the state, most of them in rural areas. These are places where the distribution of doctors is grossly inadequate for the population. Federal officials say the rural doctor shortage is a growing national problem.

According to Cleveland, the CDL provides a way to connect rural practitioners with the same quality of information that is available to their non-rural peers.

The CDL was created in 1995 with a grant from the federal Health Resources Services Agency. Doctors like Dodson learn to use this resource while earning their degrees at the health science center and working in places like the Seminary Clinic so they're familiar with it when they go to rural counties, says Dr. Irvine Prather, director of the family practice residency in the health science center's Department of Family Medicine and a key writer of the grant.

For Dodson, who plans to open her practice in a rural county, using the CDL is more comfortable than referencing a printed medical textbook.

The site is organized for quick access, and each year a group of more than 30 UNT students constantly updates links in the digital collection, upgrading or deleting old sources.

"We've done studies and found that doctors have a five-minute window with each patientto offer medical care information during a visit," says Cleveland. "We have worked to create a tool that will give information within that timeframe."

The library is an expanded source of information for hospitals, area health education centers, HMOs, medical clinics and other health care providers.Currently there are 10 CDLs, but UNT's was the first and remains the prototype.

UNT hopes to expand the digital library beyond family medicine and to increase its size and content. The clinical digital library is located at www.cdlp.org.