Current research in health information literacy research

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Isto, Noora and Heidi from HIBA project participated in the 5th European Conference in Information Literacy in Saint-Malo, France. All were a part of the Health Information Literacy Special Session organised by Anne-Kathrin Mayer (ZIPD, Leibniz Institute for Psychology Information) and Maija-Leena Huotari (University of Oulu).

In the session, Veronika Kuhberg-Lasson (ZIPD) discussed the health information literacy knowledge (HILK) of students from vocational schools in Germany. According to the study, lower education lead to lower HILK with no significant differences between vocations. However, when tested for personality differences, the authors suggested that instead of the level of education, the use of untrustworthy information sources might be related to higher levels of extraversion.

Heidi presented a paper on the Relationship between Everyday Health Information Literacy and Attitudes towards Mobile Technology among Older People, a cooperation between researchers participating in the HIBA project, Oulu Deaconess Institute and the University of Oulu. The study investigated how everyday health information literacy (EHIL) was related to the use of traditional and advanced mobile information technologies, and how older adults felt about the use of advanced mobile technologies (i.e. smart phones, tablet computers). Regarding their EHIL, only 28% felt that it is easy to access reliable health information from the Internet. A minority had used advanced mobile information technologies, but the attitudes in the group of respondents were generally rather positive. The findings showed that confidence and positive opinions on EHIL had more positive opinions on mobile information technology. The study suggests that older adults with different levels of EHIL should be engaged in the development of new mobile information technologies.

Noora presented a paper related to EHIL together with Teija Keränen and Maija-Leena Huotari titled Examining the Applicability of the Everyday Health Information Literacy Screening Tool in the Context of Energy. In the study, The factorial structure of the EHIL screening tool modified for energy information was similar to the original tool. The tool can be used to find individuals who lack motivation or have difficulties in finding or evaluating information.

Anna-Maija Huhta (University of Oulu), who has previously worked in HIBA project, presented a co-authored paper Concepts Related to Health Literacy in Online Information Environments: A Systematic Review. Huhta and her colleagues had conducted a review of how information is approached in various health related literacy concepts. Majority of the analysed texts were written in medical and health sciences. The most common concepts were health literacy, ehealth literacy, health information literacy, and (everyday) health information literacy. Similar to all definitions was that all focussed on the ability to understand, comprehend and use information but also to use information as a tool. Differences related to the role of prior knowledge, information needs, critical evaluation of information and types of information considered.

Sigríður Björk Einarsdóttir and Ágústa Pálsdóttir had investigated the health information literacy of parents of children with a disability or long-term illness using qualitative interview study. The authors conclusion was that information seeking takes time and especially with information that should be easily available, takes time and effort.

Finally, Anne-Kathrin Mayer (presented by Veronika Kuhberg-Lasson) investigated the different approaches to measuring information literacy skills. The authors had found discrepancies between objective and subjective measures, and suggested further research on their causes and relations to other factors.

As a whole, the presentations show that it is not uncomplicated to measure and study health information literacy and to say what should be measured and how. Appropriate practices, confidence and good outcomes depend on multiple factors — as their lack of. At the same time, it seems that it is possible to develop scales that can be useful as proxies of certain constellations of practices to understand better how people interact with health information.

2017-09-20 at 2 58 pm: Sheila Webber live blogged the session at http://information-literacy.blogspot.se/2017/09/health-information-literacy-session-pam.html

ZPID Symposium – Health Literacy Across the Life Span

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Leibniz Institute for Psychology Information, ZPID organized a one day symposium “Health Literacy Across the Life Span” at 10th of March 2017. The day included interesting speakers from Germany and Finland from multiple backgrounds. The symposium was intentionally kept as small-scale and the aim was to sustain discussion and possible future collaboration.

Renate Soellner from University of Hildesmein, Germany told about research project ”Health competence – model building and validation”. They developed, tested and validated a qualitative structural model (so called concept-map) on health literacy. The main questions were: Which skills and abilities build the health literacy construct? How do health competent persons behave? An article has been published on the model (Soellner, Lehartz & Rudinger 2017). Central concepts of the model are self-control and self-regulation.

Sonia Lippke from Jacobs University Bremen, Germany started her talk by telling about the HAPA model (Schwartzer 1992) In this health behaviour change model self-efficacy is one central factor and the goals turn into  plans that turn into behavior. Non-intender becomes intender and finally actor. Health literacy can be seen as part of this model. According to Lippke the main deficiency on this model is that is focuses only on one behaviour at time. Therefore she has been involved in developing a new ”lifestyle change model” called Compensatory Carry-Over Action Model (CCAM).

Sonia Lippke

Maija-Leena Huotari from University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland told about the research project conducted at Information Studies in University of Oulu and Åbo Akademi University. She talked about the everyday health information literacy (EHIL) screening tool (Niemelä et al. 2012) and about the new research project, CogAHealth, that is funded by Academy of Finland and has started in Autumn 2016. In this project the concept of cognitive authority is central and Huotari spoke also about it´s connection to EHIL.

Anne-Kathrin Mayer and Maija-Leena Huotari

Cristiane Firnges from Robert Koch Institute, Berlin, Germany pointed out the need to develop health literacy measures for younger populations, i.e., age-specific assessment tools. She belongs to Health Literacy in Childhood and Adolescence (HLCA) Consortium: https://www.hlca-consortium.de/

Firnges and her colleagues have been developing of MOHLAA-measuring instrument. HLS-EU-Q47 (e.g., Sorensen et al. 2013) measure was used as a blueprint. Not all tems and items contents of the HLS-EU-Q47 were well understood by adolescents or they might have answered them based on hypothetical estimations/lack of experience. There was found to be a need to adapt particular items for adolescents´cognitive abilities and to their lifeworld and experiences. Limited experiences with navigating the health care system and managing diseases was obvious among the teenagers. Critical thinking is still challenge and they might be overly confident about their skills. Adolescents, especially younger ones, have strong trust to their parents.

Anne-Kathrin Mayer and Cristiane Firnges

Orkan Okan from University of Bielefeld, Germany presented the childhood perspective. Measuring health literacy of primary school-aged children (MoMChild study). He started by telling about a systematic literature review on health literacy instruments and what of them have been used for children. Okan and his colleagues has been adapting HLS-EU-Q for this age group and they are now collecting large-scale data among German children.

Orkan Okan

Anne-Kathrin Mayer Research coordinator of Leibniz Institute for Psychology Information, ZPID told about the health information literacy knowledge test (HILK) they have developed and tested. The test includes 24 items and at the latest stage it has been tested among 144 students. They have also worked on validating the test.

Veronika Kuhberg is a doctoral student at ZPID. Her presentation focused on determinants of health information literacy (HILK) in vocational school students and especially to the role of locus of control and personal beliefs. Especially external health locus of control seems to be an independent factor affecting health information literacy among this population group.

Papers will be written based on the presentations and they will be published later as a book. The day was very fruitful and I thank for Anne-Kathrin Mayer for inviting me to participate!

Heidi

HIBA at Information Studies Days 2016

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HIBA researchers were present at Information Studies Days (Informaatiotutkimuksen päivät) held in Tampere at 3rd and 4th of December 2016.

Information Studies days is a national, biennial conference arranged by the National Association of Information Studies ITY ry (Informaatiotutkimuksen yhdistys) and the three departments that provide education in the field of information studies in Finland, namely, Information Studies at the University of Oulu, Information Studies and Interactive Media at the University of Tampere, and Information Studies at Åbo Akademi University. In 2016 the days were organized at the University of Tampere with around 150 participants.

As the Chairman of ITY, HIBA researcher Heidi Enwald opened the days. Her welcoming words were followed by Kai Halttunen’s talk about the history of these days and Professor Erkki Karvonen’s keynote speech on how information and communication technologies shape society and culture.

I myself hosted a session labeled Health infomation behaviour, health information literacy and e-health with four presentations:

Heidi Enwald presented preliminary results of our systematic review on previous research on the views of older adults of the contents of eHealth services. It seems that relatively few studies have focused on the content of these services the main interest being in the acceptance of used technologies.

Jonas Tana talked about infodemiology which refers to the study of the determinants and distribution of health information in an electronic medium with a goal to improve public health. In his doctoral study Jonas is going to investigate how infodemiological data can be used to increase understanding of online health information seeking behaviour.

Anna-Maija Huhta

Anna-Maija Huhta explaining her research at Information Studies Days 2016. Picture: Heidi Enwald

I presented the framework of the project CogAHealth that has just started at the University of Oulu. In this project we are focusing on young people’s conceptions of cognitive authority in the context of health, that is, who and what do young people believe in health issues and how these beliefs are constructed. This joint project with Information Studies and Educational Sciences at the University of Oulu is funded by the Academy of Finland. In connection to this, doctoral student Anna-Maija Huhta, who is part of the CohAHealth research group, talked about her research concerning young people’s new health literacies. In particular, Anna-Maija is interested in studying young people’s literacy practices in social media.

HIBA researcher Kristina Eriksson-Backa hosted a session Information behaviour and information practices among minority and special groups with four presentations:

Ari Haasio talked about sharing information in a “small world” by prensenting a study of a discussion group called Hikikomero. Based on his analysis of the discussions, Ari presented a model of interaction in discussion group posts. Nahla Hewidy spoke about the service needs of asylum seekers. She and her colleagues had studied the needs of this group of people in order to formulate guidelines to develop and improve library services.

A doctoral student at the University of Oulu, Aira Pohjanen, presented her study concerning the information seeking of gender minorities. The study focused on the importance of peers in information seeking. At the end of this session, J Tuomas Harviainen presented an interesting and perhaps a bit unusual study on the information practices of Finnish sadomasochists.

In a parallel Knowledge management session HIBA researcher Helena Känsäkoski presented her study on information and knowledge processes in health care. In her presentation, Helena introduced a model of information and knowledge processes in health care and presented results of an empirical study on the role of the patients and families in these processes.

Audience

Audience listening to a presentation at Information Studies Days 2016. Picture: Heidi Enwald

Overall, this year there were 32 presentations at the Information Studies Days the topics ranging from information behaviour to digital humanities and data management. Extended abstracts for all of the presentations were published in Informaatiotutkimus 35(3).

New article: Taking Health Information Behaviour into Account in the design of e-health services

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The HIBA project approach and rationale for studying health information behaviour and health information literacy as a premise of developing successful e-health services is discussed in a new article just published in the Finnish Journal for eHealth and eWelfare vol 8, issue 4.

Abstract

The aim of this article is to bring forward the benefits of a better integration of a comprehensive understanding of individuals information behaviour in the design and development of e-health services. This study is a descriptive review based on a non-exhaustive selection of literature that describes the state-of-the-art, problems and opportunities identified in e-health, health information behaviour and health information literacy research. By focusing on how to tailor the information provided and the technological devices to fit the information behaviour, the approach has also potential to uncover new insights into how to adequately implement and integrate ICTs into everyday life practices of other hard-to-reach groups in society. We presuppose that it will be possible to give practical recommendations based on a combined understanding of individual differences in health information behaviour and users expectations and experiences, acquired through empirical studies focusing on older adults. Moreover, the usefulness of health information literacy as an indicator of the patterns and competences related to health information behaviour is highlighted.

Full text of the article at FinJeHeW site.

Learning about information literacy at ECIL and participating ASIST

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The European Conference on Information Literacy (ECIL) took place at Prague, Czech Republic at 10.-13.10.2016. Straight after ECIL the Annual Meeting of the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIST) gathered researchers all around the world to Copenhagen, Denmark. Timing of the conferences provided me a great opportunity to join both of the conferences.

ECIL is initiated and organized by the Department of Information Management of Hacettepe University and Department of Information and Communication Sciences of Zagreb University. The main theme this year was Information Literacy in the Inclusive Society. IMG_9144_ECIL_blogiin

The keynote speeches were given by Tara Brabazon and Jan Van Dijk, and futhermore, invited speakers were Ole Pilerot, Vít Šisler and Annemaree Lloyd. Especially the keynote speeches raised discussion as Tara was intentionally very provocative in her speech and Jan´s perspective was from outside of the information and library science field.

As a member of the HIBA project I presented some of our results relating to older adults health information literacy skills. The study presented was part of the GASEL study.

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Heidi´s PechaKucha presentation on “everyday health information literacy of older people in Finland”.

ECIL focused strongly on libraries and information literacy teaching, but there was always also a more theoretical and/or general paper or panel sessions to attend for.

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Example of the interesting panel discussions in ECIL.

The abstract book of ECIL can be found here: http://ecil2016.ilconf.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/ECIL2016_BoA.pdf and selected full text papers will be later published in a ECIL’s Proceedings Books are  published by Springer (agreement with the publisher is on yearly basis) under Communications in Computer and Information Science series (CCIS).

ASIST´s theme was Creating Knowledge, Enhancing Lives through Information & Technology. Plenary speeches were given by Greg Welch from University of Central Florida and by Markus Bundschus from Roche Diagnostics.

The topics of ASIST presentations and panels covered all from health information behaviour to digital data curation and the science of games. In addition to sessions relating to information behaviour I found myself listening sessions about e.g., multiculturalism of LIS education, digital sociology and information science research, open peer review and lifelogging. Examples of the panels in ASIST: IMG_9862_ASIST blogiinIMG_9811_ASIST blogiin

ASIST included not only paper presentations and panels but also several poster presentations. Again I was there presenting the results relating HIBA and GASEL projects. This time the topic was “opinions and use of mobile information technology around older people”.

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Heidi with the poster.

The ASIST proceedings and information of the previous conferences can be found here (free view for ASIST members): https://www.asist.org/publications/annual-meeting-proceedings/

Older people were present also in the street view of Copenhagen with a campaign “Do we ever stop dreaming?”

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Next ECIL will be organized in St-Malo, France and next ASIST at Washington DC. Shall we meet there?

(Post blog written by Heidi Enwald)

Focus on health information behaviour

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Heidi, Noora and Isto from HIBA participated in this year’s ISIC – The Information Behaviour Conference in Zadar, Croatia. Also Anna-Maija who worked in the project in autumn 2015 was with us in Zadar.

Heidi Enwald, foto: Mate Juric

Heidi reported findings from an earlier GASEL project in a paper titled Health information behaviour, attitudes towards health information and motivating factors for physical activity among older people: differences by sex and age together with coauthors, Noora  and her coauthors presented a poster Validating the factorial structure of the everyday health information literacy screening tool in three different populations, and we all from HIBA presented the project in a poster, imaginatively titled Taking health information behaviour into account in the development of e-health services.

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Prof. Ian Ruthwen

There were also several other interesting papers relating directly to the themes of HIBA. Prof. Ian Ruthwen discussed in his opening keynote information behaviour during significant life events. The talk gave much food for thought as health related events are a major category of these types of major episodes in life but also because it is not always the case. Much of the everyday health and health information practices are not experienced as significant events that apparently also affects how we react to them and what kinds of information practices stem from these mundane events and how they differ from more significant episodes of life.

Of other interesting papers, you could mention the two other papers in Heidi’s session. Ina Fourie and Valerie Nesset reported of an exploratory review of research on cancer pain and information-related needs, and Theresa Anderson and Ina Fourie discussed about information interactions related to empathetic care for the dying.

ITY spring seminar 11.5.2016 – Health information and eServices

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This year the spring seminar of the National Society of Information Studies (Informaatiotutkimuksen yhdistys, ITY) was conducted in collaboration with the HIBA-project and with Information Studies, University of Oulu on 11th May at Oulu University. About 30 people participated the event and remote connection was also provided. The title of the seminar was Health information and eServices introducing multidisciplinary aspects on the topic.

Chair of ITY Heidi Enwald presenting wellcomin words

Chair of ITY Heidi Enwald presenting wellcoming words to the seminar

Senior lecturer Kristina Eriksson-Backa (Åbo Akademi University, Information Studies) presented the HIBA project, its research questions, methods and current stage of the research. The practical contribution of the HIBA project aims at understanding human information behavior to provide evidence-based recommendations how consumer health information technologies and their information contents could be designed and tailored to meet consumers’, in particular older adults’ (born 1946-1960), needs and preferences.

 University lecturer Heidi Enwald (University of Oulu, Information Studies ) presented some findings of the recently ended multidisciplinary GASEL (Gamified services for elderly) project. The project was funded by National Technology and Innovation Agency TEKES from 1.1.201 to 30.4.2016. Increasing ageing population’s use of information technology related to health was studied with a population-based questionnaire survey. The questionnaire was posted to 1500 home dwelling people aged 65 or more living in Oulu area. The return rate was 61 percent. The findings indicated that 74,5 % of the respondents had Internet connection at home. The Internet was most frequently (65 %) used for multiple e-Services (e.g. bank, tax services, tickets etc.) and the second popular activity (55,5,%) was to find information for example about timetables, health related aspects etc.  The next popular activities were reading news (49,8%) and using different communication channels  (41,7%, e.g. e-mail, Skype etc.) Regarding to health information there were some gender differences, for example men were more likely to consider that health related stories and articles are too long.

Noora Hirvonen

Noora Hirvonen

University lecturer Noora Hirvonen from Oulu University Information Studies spoke about studies of everyday health information literacy (EHIL) in different groups. Everyday health information literacy refers to competencies to find, to evaluate and to understand health-related information in everyday life situations. An EHIL screening tool (designed by Niemelä et al. 2012) is based on the Medical Library Association’s definition of health information literacy (2003). The EHIL tool is based on self-assessment and aims at identifying people with limited everyday health literacy. The EHIL tool has been piloted with a survey (n=217) in an upper secondary school in Finland in 2012 and further applied in a population of Finnish young men in 2012 and 2013 (n= 1870), with Finnish individuals with high risk for metabolic syndrome in 2013 and 2014 (n= 571) and with Namibian students (n= 271) with an English version of the tool. The comparison of the results indicates that different factors of EHIL seem to be important in different populations. Terminology and reliability of health information sources were important for people with high risk of metabolic syndrome and for Namibian students whereas lack of motivation was important with young Finnish men.

Pasi Karppinen (University of Oulu, Department of Information Processing Science) presented the eHealth service Onnikka which was designed for people with overweight or obesity (BMI 27-35) in a randomized lifestyle intervention study (PrevMetSyn). The study subjects were working-age males and females from the Northern Ostrobothnia Hospital District. The study groups A and B had eight (group A) or two (group B) group counselling visits  and the study group C was a control group which used the Onnikka service with no counselling visits. The Onnikka service was designed according to the Persuasive Systems Design (PSD) model (see Oinas-Kukkonen & Harjumaa 2009) containing the elements of primary task support, dialogue support, credibility support and social support. 43 users of Onnikka were interviewed after one year about their user experiences. The results showed that for example self-monitoring, reminders and tunneling were perceived as a beneficial persuasive features among the users. The credibility of the service was perceived high (the institutions behind the service were well known and highly respected) but the need and use for social support was somewhat contradictory. The discussion forum was perceived useful, but it was not actively used by the participants.

Pasi Karppinen

Pasi Karppinen

Hai Nguyen presentation

Hai Nguyen presentation

After the lunch break Hai Nguyen (HIBA researcher at Åbo Akademi University, Information Studies) presented findings from a study of Health Information Technology implementation and success factors in Nordic countries. Health Information Technology (HIT) systems store and retrieve information to support patient care activities, support administrative and financial activities (e.g. patient accounting, payroll, materials management etc.) and provide information and analytical tools to executive decision support systems for purposes of managerial decision-making. Success factors of implementing HIT systems were identified with a literature review and tested with a survey of 91 health care IT managers in the Nordic countries (Denmark 14, Finland 32, Norway 25 and Sweden 20). Some similarities in the Nordic comparison indicate that a more general instrument to define success factors for HIT implementation could be designed.

Associate professor Samantha Adams from Tilburg University Law School (Netherlands) spoke about online rating and recommendations sites in health care. This phenomenon is not yet familiar in Finland, but in USA and some European countries sharing opinions and experiences about hospitals and health clinics is in use. The basic idea is to improve quality of care and patient-centeredness by increasing transparency. However, the usefulness of the sites, ethical issues and true impact on the quality of care are not simple issues and need to be discussed further.

Samantha Adams, Tilburg Law school

Samantha Adams, Tilburg Law school

The slides of the presentations will soon be available at the webpages of  the National Society of Information Studies (Informaatiotutkimuksen yhdistys, ITY)

References

Niemelä, R., Ek, S., Eriksson-Backa, K. & Huotari, M.-L. (2012). A screening tool for assessing everyday health information literacy. Libri: International Journal of Libraries and Information Services 62(2): 125–134.

Oinas-Kukkonen, H & Harjumaa, M (2009) Persuasive Systems Design: Key Issues, Process Model, and System Features. Communications of the Association for Information Systems. 24(1): 485-500.

 

Seminaari: Health Information and eServices 

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Informaatiotutkimuksen yhdistyksen (ITY ry) kevätseminaari

KE 11.5.2016, klo 9.15-13.30 Oulun yliopisto, TellUs Innovation Arena, Stage-tila

Seminaari järjestetään yhteistyössä Åbo Akademin HIBA-hankkeen ja Oulun yliopiston Informaatiotutkimuksen oppiaineen kanssa. Tilaisuuteen on vapaa pääsy, myös muille kuin ITY:n jäsenille, ei etukäteisilmoittautumista. Tilaisuutta voi seurata myös etänä (ilmoita tästä kiinnostuksesi Heidi Enwaldille viimeistään ma 9.5., heidi.enwald@oulu.fi ). Seminaari on englanninkielinen. Seminaarin jälkeen samassa tilassa järjestetään yhdistyksen kevätkokous (suomeksi).

First part 9.15-11.00
Welcoming words, Heidi Enwald
Introduction to HIBA-project, Kristina Eriksson-Backa (20 min)
GASEL project: eServices for healthy ageing, Heidi Enwald (20 min)
Everyday health information literacy in different populations, Noora Hirvonen (20 min)
From all the presentations 10 min discussion
Pasi Karppinen: Health Behavior Change Support Systems – Case of Preventing Metabolic Syndrome (20 min + 10 min for discussion)

11.00-11.15 Break

Second part:11.15-12.30
Hai Nguyen: Exploring Health Information Technology implementation success factors – a comparative investigation in Nordic countries (20 min + 10 min for discussion)
Samantha Adams: Questioning the rise of online rating and recommendation sites in healthcare (30 minutes + 10 minutes for discussion)
Closing of the seminar, Heidi Enwald

Pieni tauko ja n. 12.40 alkaen ITY:n kevätkokous samassa tilassa (kesto noin 1 h). Kaikki yhdistyksen toiminnasta kiinnostuneet ovat tervetulleita kokoukseen!

Nordic eHealth 2016 The 21st Finnish National Conference on Telemedicine and eHealth

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The participants of Scandinavian Nordic eHealth 2016 conference and the seminar of Finnish Society of Telemedicine and Health cruised onboard of M/S Mariella on the Baltic Sea at 14th to 16th of April 2016.

Finnish Society of Telemedicine and eHealth has been promoting the use of information and communication technology in health care since 1995. This year’s conference theme was digitalisation and experimentation culture that describes quite well ongoing

transformation where digitalisation is challenging health services.
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The conference lectures covered topics from EU’s eHealth strategy, and presents the Nordic case studies on the development of digital services.
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Head of Unit Tapani Piha, Cross-Border Healthcare & eHealth, EU

The future of Finnish My Kanta and personal health record were introduced.
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Delegates of Iceland and Norway enlightened us about the eHealth services and telehealth development in these countries. From the researchers perspective it was also a pleasure to hear about examples of the research done relating to the topic.
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Example of the research done at Norway.

In Sweden a large study had been conducted relating to attitudes and opinions on the electronic health record for citizens.
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Nordic countries are not alone in struggling with the challenges of eHealth and telemedicine. The seminar participants were told about the eHealth group, established by The Nordic Council of Ministers (NCM), in 2010 for knowledge transfer between the Nordic countries and Faroe Islands, Greenland and Åland, to strengthen the Nordic global leadership position in the eHealth area and to raise awareness of eHealth as an instrument for modernisation of the health care systems. In 2012, the eHealth group established a subgroup – The Nordic eHealth Research Network (NeRN) – to develop, test and access a common set of indicators for monitoring eHealth in the region to be used by policy makers and scientific communities in supporting development of Nordic Welfare. The Finnish National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) was selected as a coordinator of the network.
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Hannele Hyppönen from THL

On the second day of the conference Finnish healthcare projects and companies had their change to present themselves. The conference also included poster sessions, time for social interaction and healthcare-related site visits at Stockholm.
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In the poster session also posters of the GASEL-project were presented.

At the conference several awards were delivered. The Finnish National eHealth award was given to PhD Teija Norri-Sederholm for her doctoral thesis “On top of the situation! From information needs to shared knowledge – Emergency response centre operator’s and paramedic field supervisor’s situational awareness”. The work has received a lot of positive media coverage, but it also works well as a reference material for example in the training of emergency response centre operators.