Nearly all people with health problems seek out information on their illnesses. If they have the means, they consult their doctor or a primary health-care professional. However, it is difficult for a single doctor to form a complete diagnosis, and patients are often encouraged to seek other sources and second opinions. Some of the complimentary information patients seek is available tacitly – through consulting with other professionals, fellow patients, or knowledgeable friends; some is available explicitly – through electronic or print documents. Internet search engines clearly facilitate the gathering and interpretation of explicit knowledge. Professors at SISAT are currently working on tools that will aid patients in their search for this information.

The mission of SISAT’s Social Learning Software Lab (SL2) is to develop enhanced social networking software for this purpose. In conjunction with Claremont Graduate University’s Transdisciplinary Office and Professor Wendy Martin, students in transdisciplinary courses have been using software that combines a number of social networking software applications (blogs, wikis, social networking space) to create the Claremont Conversation, a website that can be utilized for health-care applications. A student team, led by SISAT Professor Terry Ryan, designed the Claremont Conversation website, and they are currently monitoring how students and faculty utilize the site. Using this feedback, SL2 will be working with SISAT Assistant Professor Gondy Leroy and her colleagues to redesign the site over the summer to make it more accessible for health care information.

Social networking software has been used for decades, but recent innovations motivated by the simplicity and accessibility of the Internet have made this software nearly ubiquitous, as well as cheap and easy to use. The most popular form of social networking is done through blogs, forums that allow individuals and groups to write and post their personal stories on the Internet. Blog entries also facilitate discussion by allowing readers to discuss the content of posts through comment boxes or talkback features that link one blog entry to another. Discussion forums are also a popular means for disseminating information online; someone poses a question or offers an idea and, as with blogs, readers provide comments in the form of answers, questions, stories, etc. Discussion forums are typically threaded, so that each subtopic is allotted a unique space. A wiki is a set of web pages that is accessible for editing by groups and individuals. Its format makes it topic-oriented, and somewhat easier to browse, but it is not geared for discussions. A social network application lets individuals post their profile with a set of tags that allow users to identify others with similar interests.

Preliminary findings, culled in a different setting than health care, indicate that combining all networking options into one application portal can have value for social groups. That is why SISAT professors are adapting the Claremont Conversation model, which combines elements of all social networking options, to create a comprehensive health-care site for accessing information and facilitating discussion.

Dean Lorne Olfman,
School of Information Systems and Technology