Technology Forum 2010

The GMR Technology Forum was held in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Midwest Chapter of the Medical Library Association in Madison, WI on September 27, 2010.

The speakers discussed different aspects of mobile technology and their application in the medical and medical library environments. The second part of the program was an open forum with technological questions taken from the audience and answered by the panel.

Judy Brown
Judy Brown is an Education Technology Consultant who retired as the Emerging Technology Analyst in the Office of Learning and Information Technology (OLIT) at the University of Wisconsin System Administration in 2006. In early 2000 she founded the Academic ADL Co-Lab with the U.S. Department of Defense at the University of Wisconsin System and became involved in e-Learning SCORM standards as the Executive Director of that Co-Lab. Brown has been involved in technology for learning for over 25 years and with mobile learning since 1996. Since retirement she has worked entirely in the mobile learning area with corporations, schools and the government. Judy served as a MASIE Fellow for the MASIE Consortium on mobile learning and is a frequent presenter at industry conferences and mobile learning workshops. Currently Judy has returned to ADL on the Immersive Learning Technologies Team as the mobile learning lead. She serves on the Army Education Advisory Committee and coordinates the mlearnopedia.com and cc.mlearnopedia.com sites. Judy's presentation can be found here.

Bart Ragon
Bart Ragon is Associate Director for Library Technology Services and Development at the Claude Moore Health Sciences Library at the University of Virginia. He is co-chair of MLA's Technology Advisory Committee and former chair of the Social Networking Software Task Force. Bart speaks regularly on topics concerning the social web, mobile and emerging technologies, web application development, and technology planning in academic health sciences libraries. Bart's presentation can be found here.

Melissa Rethlefsen
Melissa Rethlefsen is currently working as an education technology librarian at the Mayo Clinic Libraries. She is lead author of the book, Internet Cool Tools for Physicians, and frequently writes articles on social media for Library Journal and other publications. She is a member of MLA's Social Networking Software Task Force and MLANET Editorial Board, and maintains the Web 2.0 resources page on MLANET. She's been a co-instructor in six Learning 2.0 programs, including MLA's Web 2.0 101 course and the series of Dig Deeper with Social Media. Melissa's presentation can be found here .

Abstract
Today's mobile devices, whether iPhones, Android-based phones, or even iPads, have a wealth of features that application designers can use: GPS, gyroscopes, cameras, accelerometers, compasses, pressure sensors, and more. Health, medical, and lifestyle applications taking advantage of these features abound for mobile devices. Consumers who want to maintain their own healthy lifestyle can monitor their fitness, their eating habits, their blood sugar, and much more. Consumer-oriented first aid applications, symptom checkers, and medical reference texts enable patients to take charge of their own health and collaborate more closely with their doctors. Health professionals have a wealth of their own applications, including some that can send real-time updates on patients' vitals directly to their physicians to anatomy applications and even medical simulation games. Phones have even been turned into microscopes and other diagnostic tools for resource-poor areas, as well as radiology image viewers for remote diagnosis. As mobile technology use increases, medical libraries will need to find ways to integrate services into these new environments. Developing for devices that often have different screen sizes, operating systems, and software capabilities is challenging. In the near future, more people will access the Internet through a mobile device than will through a personal computer. Libraries should be investigating, experimenting, and developing today to meet the changing information needs of health professionals, consumers, and educators.

Check out the Twitter archive for #midwestmla10 for a play-by-play of the Tech Forum.