HCM and Visualization

workshop; geography; numerate disciplines, research; imaging; tools

A Community Psychiatric Nurse for the elderly visiting a workshop on visualization and Virtual Reality in the Social Sciences, surely time can be better spent? The workshop held at Weetwood Hall, Leeds, U.K., was organised by the Advisory Group on Computer Graphics. Geographers and the numerate disciplines were in the majority, not surprising given that their relationship with these applications is approaching that of accountants and spreadsheets; secretaries and wordprocessors.

The organisers kindly invited Brian Hodges (Manchester Metropolitan University) and myself after our expression of interest based on Brian's health carer model (HCM). Terminology aside (is it a model?), HCM provides a structure - a conceptual framework - to help guide nursing (and other healthcare) assessments and evaluations. Two goals that prompted Brian to produce HCM were to facilitate a comprehensive assessment for health visitors, with HCM acting as an aide memoir, and to help with curriculum planning. A website devoted to HCM was proffered as our 'paper' and accepted.

During the workshop delegates presented posters outlining their use of visualization and VR, problems met and how they were solved. This prompted varied presentations: pedestrian movement and flows in a city with line of sight analyses; use of photography to simulate views on field trips; use of visualization in urban planning and public consultation; multimedia presentation for cultural studies; tracking T.B. and others. The programme included details of a web search on visualization and virtual reality; an overview of graphical tools and environments, problems that users face, and 'show and tell' case presentations mentioned above.

So is nursing and visualization a marriage made in heaven? Medical imaging already has a prestigious history, and the potential applications in nursing must be radically different, as determined by the data sets. Although visualization is still very much in vogue, grandiose plans without foundation are not needed. So to answer the question posed - no must be the answer. The workshop was sobering in this respect.

For nursing the courtship must begin with a literature search, what work has been done, what questions must be asked, how suited are the non-numerate aspects of health care to visualization? Although a key aim of the workshop was to extend application of visualization, this aim seemed focused on extension within the academic community. Our presence and that of a few other delegates suggest that visualization is gaining influence in other disciplines, in the 'softer' areas of the social sciences. There are (very encouraging) signs that visualization and VR might support nursing / health care education if not actual clinical practice.

Together, HCM, other health related visual representations, combined with soft and hard informatics could well become a key tool to realise the goal of making information systems relevant to clinicians (and patients).

Relevant beyond their usual uses of patient and medical administration to finally encompass self & conjoint assessment, discharge planning, clinical risk management, continuity of care, and derive an electronic health record. Approaches that transcend any single discipline, but provide a common conceptual framework and interface that all disciplines can use for the benefit of all.

This description first appeared in Information Technology in Nursing, March 1999.

top : home