Wednesday, September 11, 2002

A Web Service Lets Washington U. Students Seek Health-Center Appointments Online By SCOTT CARLSON When they're sick, students at Washington University in St. Louis can fire off an e-mail message instead of picking up the telephone. The university's health center is one of two that use a Web-based program allowing students to request appointments, renew prescriptions, and get lab-test results. Debra Harp, the associate director of the health center, says the service is a convenience for students. "We felt that it was important to have some kind of electronic communication with the students because they are a more mobile population than a lot of other people are," she says. "Because they are in classes and share a dorm with other people, they don't have as many opportunities to get to a phone as other people do." The health center has played phone tag with students, who often don't get the messages until after the health center has closed. Now, with the online service, a student fills out a form on a secure Web page, describes what he or she needs, and sends it off; the health center picks up the message electronically, then sends a response to the student's e-mail account. "They can pick up their response when they have time," Ms. Harp says. "It greatly enhanced our communications with the students, it reduced our call volume significantly, and the response from students has been very positive." Still, the Web service handles only a fraction of the total business at the health center, which sees about 200 students a day. Since the university started running the service, in January, about 1,200 messages have passed through it. The service, provided by a commercial Web site called MDhub, is free for both the students and the health center. A link to the service is provided through the health center's Web site. The site lists the names of the doctors working in the health center, and it includes a bulletin board that outlines various procedures, such as getting prescriptions filled. MDhub is operated by the Little Blue Book Companies, a business that publishes ad-supported directories of doctors and other medical services. Judy Andrien, a spokeswoman for the company, says Washington University's health center and the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, in Memphis, are the only student health services that use MDhub, although others have inquired about it. The service offers patients an opportunity to ask general questions, but it is not meant to field urgent or even trivial medical inquiries. That option has been turned off on Washington University's MDhub page, as have the links that allow students to get referrals to specialists through the service. The service might also raise questions about student and patient privacy, but Ms. Andrien says MDhub uses secure software. Replies from the clinics, however, generally use insecure media, like the student's university e-mail account. MDhub's page opens with a disclaimer that says that "some doctors may choose to respond to the patient by sending an e-mail to the e-mail address(es) provided by the patient. The patient understands that such an e-mail response will not be encrypted and will likely travel through various unsecured routers and servers." But, Ms. Andrien says, the correspondence is usually innocuous. "The messages shouldn't be anything that you wouldn't leave on an answering machine." Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

AAUP will review the impact of 9/11 on academic freedom Biology courses have not kept up with research discoveries, report says Colleges hold observances to mark the anniversary of September 11 A Web service lets Washington U. students seek health-center appointments online