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At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1995

Electronic mail.

Electronic mail (email) has many advantages over other forms of communication: it is easy to use, free of charge, fast, and delivers information in a digital format. As a text only medium, email is usually less formal in style than conventional correspondence and may contain acronyms and other features, such as smileys, that are peculiar to the Internet. Email client programs that run on your own microcomputer render email powerful and easy to use. With suitable encoding methods, email can be used to send any kind of computer file, including pictures, sounds, programs, and movies. Numerous biomedical electronic mailing lists and other Internet services are accessible by email.

Computer Communication Networks↗
PubMed1989

Electronic mail basics.

Electronic mail can improve productivity, preserve resources, and contain costs in nursing organizations. Because of its speed, reliability, and convenience, electronic mail virtually eliminates "telephone tag," drastically reduces the turnaround time for responses to messages, produces documentation of conversations, reduces the need for travel and face-to-face meetings, and improves the information processing efficiency of all who use this computer age tool.

Evaluation Studies as Topic↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Factors that impact nurses' use of electronic mail (e-mail).

As electronic applications are used increasingly in healthcare, nurses are being challenged to adopt them. Electronic mail (e-mail) is an electronic tool with general as well as healthcare uses. E-mail use may be an opportunity to learn a tool that requires skills similar to those used in other applications. This study aimed to identify barriers and facilitators that impact nurses' use of e-mail in the workplace. Data for this study were gathered using focus group methodology. Content analysis identified and labeled factors into seven major categories. Specific factors identified were generally consistent with those previously described in the literature as affecting use of computers in general. However, there were several additional factors identified that were not reported in other previous studies: lack of face-to-face communication, individual writing skills, recency of any educational experience, volume of mail received, password integrity, and technical support. Findings from this study provide information for any individual involved in introducing or updating an e-mail system in a healthcare environment.

Adult↗
PubMed1998

Using a WWW-based mail user agent for secure electronic mail service for health care users.

WWW-based user interface is presented for secure electronic mail service for healthcare users. Using this method, communications between an electronic mail (WWW) server and users (WWW browsers) can be performed securely using Secure Socket Layer protocol-based Hypertext Transfer Protocol (SSL-HTTP). The mail can be encrypted, signed, and sent to the recipients and vice versa on the remote WWW server. The merit of this method is that many healthcare users can use a secure electronic mail system easily and immediately, because SSL-compatible WWW browsers are widely used and this system can be made available simply by installing a WWW-based mail user agent on a mail server. We implemented a WWW-based mail user agent which is compatible with PEM-based secure mail and made it available to about 16,000 healthcare users. We believe this approach is effective in facilitating secure network-based information exchange among medical professionals.

Computer Communication Networks↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Guidelines for the clinical use of electronic mail with patients. The AMIA Internet Working Group, Task Force on Guidelines for the Use of Clinic-Patient Electronic Mail.

Guidelines regarding patient-provider electronic mail are presented. The intent is to provide guidance concerning computer-based communications between clinicians and patients within a contractual relationship in which the health-care provider has taken on an explicit measure of responsibility for the client's care. The guidelines address two interrelated aspects: effective interaction between the clinician and patient, and observance of medicolegal prudence. Recommendations for site-specific policy formulation are included.

Communication↗
PubMed2000

A proposed solution for addressing the challenge of patient cries for help through an analysis of unsolicited electronic mail.

BACKGROUND: Unsolicited electronic mail (e-mail) is e-mail sent to a physician from a person unknown to the physician, who is seeking professional help. The purpose of this project was to analyze unsolicited e-mails sent to a digital textbook author to: 1) characterize the e-mails, 2) determine what resources would be necessary to answer the e-mails, and 3) propose a standard approach to reply to e-mails in a helpful yet medicolegally-responsive manner. MATERIALS AND METHODS: All e-mails (315) sent to a digital textbook author from October 1995 through October 1998 were abstracted. Variables included: date and location, sender type, patient age, subject, medical content, and resources necessary to answer the question. Data frequencies were obtained. RESULTS: The most common location was the.com domain (47.6%). The most common senders were laypersons (66%). Overall, 44.4% of the e-mails concerned children. Detailed, patient-specific information was sent in 63.2% of the e-mails. The most common subjects were overviews of a disease or problem (32.4%), differential diagnosis (16.8%), and therapy/treatment questions (15.9%). The medical content covered a broad range of specialties. Specialists were overwhelmingly the resource necessary to answer the e-mails (74.9%). CONCLUSIONS: Pediatricians with educational information on the Internet can expect an increase in the number of unsolicited e-mails as Internet usage expands. Laypersons regard even short passages to mean the author is an expert in that particular area. Pediatricians need to consider the ethical and medicolegal implications of responding to unsolicited e-mails. A nonpersonalized, standard e-mail reply is proposed that directs the sender to quality information resources that may be of further assistance. unsolicited electronic mail, e-mail, medical informatics, legal issues, ethical issues, digital libraries.

Adolescent↗
PubMed1995

Cost-effective clinical uses of wide-area networks: electronic mail as telemedicine.

Electronic mail (E-mail) is widely used as a means of communication in the medical community. E-mail is clearly inexpensive when compared to two-way, fully interactive, real-time, video telemedicine. By content analysis of 200 consecutive messages, we show E-mail to be a low-cost use of computer networks, supporting a wide range of physician decision-making.

Anesthesiology↗
PubMed1994

The utility of electronic mail as a medium for patient-physician communication.

OBJECTIVE: To examine patients' knowledge, use, and attitudes regarding electronic mail communication with their family physicians. DESIGN: Mail survey. SETTING: A university-based family practice center. PARTICIPANTS: Adult patients (18 years and older) of full-time faculty physicians at a university-based family practice center who had seen their physicians at lease once in the 10-month period between July 1, 1992, and April 30, 1993 (N = 4094). Subjects were eligible for participation if both they and their physicians had an electronic mail address at the University of Kentucky, Lexington (n = 117). INTERVENTION: None. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Patient-reported knowledge, use, and attitudes regarding the utility of electronic mail as a means of patient-physician communication. RESULTS: The response rate to the survey was 74% (n = 87). Patient-physician communication via electronic mail was positively perceived by patients for whom electronic mail was accessible Patient-physician communication via electronic mail was perceived to increase speed, convenience, and access to medical care. Electronic mail communication was perceived to be good for simple and nonurgent problems, such as refilling prescriptions, communicating laboratory results, and making appointments. Ninety percent of the patients who had corresponded with their physicians via electronic mail used the medium to discuss a medical problem. CONCLUSIONS: Although electronic mail is not presently in wide use for patient-physician communication, there is great potential for its widespread acceptance.

Attitude↗
PubMed1999

Assessment of an electronic mailing list for orthopaedic and trauma surgery.

Medical electronic mailing lists have grown rapidly with the evolution of the Internet. The purpose of this paper was to assess the content and academic quality and of an electronic mail discussion list "Orthopod" dedicated to research in orthopaedic and trauma surgery. A retrospective analysis was undertaken of four months of web-based archive of communication through the Orthopod mailing list http:(/)/www.mailbase.ac.uk/lists/Orthopod. At the end of this study period there were 505 members of the Orthopod list. The main outcome measures of this paper were number of messages, type of messages, number of contributors, designation of contributor and number of topics referenced. On average 276 messages were posted each month. The mean number of messages per contributor per month only varied between 2.3 and 2.5. On average 54% of message threads contained at least one reference. At least 77% of the patient history and general threads had input from senior orthopaedic staff. The quantity of information on the Internet need not be a substitute for quality in orthopaedic and trauma surgery mailing lists. The Orthopod Electronic mail discussion list is another medium for the circulation of good quality surgical information. Orthopod provides a unique international electronic forum list for trauma and orthopaedic surgeons worldwide.

Humans↗
PubMed1985

Getting started with electronic mail.

This paper gives suggestions to librarians on how to get started with electronic mail. It discusses the cost- and time-saving advantages of using electronic mail rather than TWX, United States mail, or telephones for communicating ILL requests and messages. For instance, preliminary cost data show that electronic mail is often half as expensive as TWX and costs no more than a 22 stamp. Key management concerns that must be considered when setting up electronic mail are discussed, including the need for subscribers to agree on one system. Also covered are the types of equipment that can be used with electronic mail, including print terminals.

Libraries, Medical↗
PubMed1993

Use of electronic mail in a teaching hospital.

Electronic mail has been in use for almost 20 years at Boston's Beth Israel Hospital and is an integral part of the clinical information system. Through a study of usage patterns during a one-week period, we found that 1247 persons sent 7482 messages to 1302 different recipients. Each category of user (attending physician, house officer, nurse, etc.) sent the most e-mail to others of the same user category. Through an electronically administered questionnaire, we found that self-reported usage patterns had a high correlation (r = 0.6) with measured use. Sixty-six percent of respondents used e-mail daily or weekly, and 58% used it for issues of patient care; nearly all users found this useful for communicating about patient care issues. Ninety percent of respondents felt e-mail made their lives easier and 61% felt it had a humanizing influence on their lives. We conclude that the e-mail system is well-utilized by clinical personnel and felt to be useful in both patient care and nonpatient care situations.

Adult↗
PubMed1999

A survey of dental practitioners on their use of electronic mail.

OBJECTIVES: To assess the feasibility of using electronic-mail as a tool for surveying dental practitioners; to determine both response rates and response times for this method; and provide baseline information on e-mail usage. METHOD: Self-administered questionnaire distributed by e-mail to 309 practitioners on Monday morning, 1 June 1998. RESULTS: 53.4% response rate within 1 month; 10.2% of replies were sent within 2 hours; and nearly half the replies were sent within 48 hours. Qualified dentists were more likely to respond early than undergraduates. The most popular point of access for e-mail was home (69.1%). The majority of responders (56.8%) use e-mail every day with 1 in 7 (14.2%) using it at least four times a day. 72.4% stated that they found e-mail useful for communicating with professional bodies, while 41.3% used it to communicate with colleagues about patients and patient referrals. 34.0% found e-mail useful for ordering goods, and supplies and 14.6% were using electronic mail to make patient appointments at least some of the time. CONCLUSIONS: Responses can be obtained at much greater speed than conventional postal techniques will allow, but response rates were only 53.4%. E-mail is predominately used at home and for inter-professional communications, only a small proportion of responders use it for direct communication with patients.

Appointments and Schedules↗
PubMedDate not supplied

The use of electronic mail in biomedical communication.

OBJECTIVES: To determine whether there are statistically significant differences in the content of electronic mail (e-mail) and conventional mail sent to authors of papers published in medical journals. DESIGN: Prospective study by postal questionnaire. Over two one-month periods, corresponding authors of papers published in medical journals were asked to record details of the correspondence prompted by their publications. MEASUREMENTS: Conventional and e-mail correspondence received. Reprint requests. Content of correspondence. Quality of correspondence. RESULTS: Eighty-two of 96 authors replied. Fifty received e-mail (mean, 5.7+/-8.8 e-mails per author) and 72 received conventional mail (15.5+/-32.8 letters per author) (p < 0.05). Seventy percent of e-mails and only 53% of correspondence sent by conventional mail (p < 0.05) referred to the content of the paper. CONCLUSIONS: Publication in general medical journals stimulates more conventional than electronic mail. However, the content of e-mail may be of greater scientific relevance. Electronic mail can be encouraged without fear of diminishing the quality of the communications received.

Authorship↗
PubMed1998

The use of electronic mail at the reference desk: impact of a computer-mediated communication technology on librarian-client interactions.

Commonly recognized computer-mediated communication (CMC) tools include virtual environments, bibliographic databases, listservers, newsgroups, group teleconferencing, interactive messaging systems and electronic mail. The use of these technologies in libraries has grown exponentially over the past decade. Electronic mail has emerged as an especially popular communication tool for librarians, and their colleagues and patrons. This paper explores the use of a reference department electronic mail service and its impact on reference services and librarian-client interactions. Several issues related to the implementation of CMC technologies are presented, including the maintenance and monitoring of reference electronic mail systems, the types of questions that are typically posted, and potential barriers to the implementation and use of reference e-mail.

Academic Medical Centers↗
PubMed1997

Fine-needle aspiration cytology of the breast: a preliminary report on telepathology through Internet multimedia electronic mail.

Telepathology is a field of telemedicine that enables the exchange of histologic and cytologic images for consultations among pathologists of two or more remote institutions, through a suitable communication channel. The Internet can connect several scientific and medical institutions because of the existence of a set of standard protocols that allow different computers to communicate; multimedia electronic mail is one such protocol, which allows asynchronous transmission of multimedia documents, i.e., including text, images, movies, and sounds. The aim of the present article is to test a novel approach in which Internet multimedia electronic mail is used as a communication medium to obtain an asynchronous telepathology tool for remote consultation. To assess the diagnostic validity of the method, 48 cases of fine-needle aspiration cytology of breast lesions were sent from Udine to Trento, Italy. Comparisons between local and remote diagnoses, and cytologic diagnoses versus subsequent histologic reports demonstrated that Internet multimedia electronic mail is suitable for remote consultation. Internet multimedia electronic mail thus presents an additional diagnostic tool that is easy to use, available on a wide range of computers, and inexpensive, because its cost is independent of distance.

Biopsy, Needle↗
PubMed1999

The Mailbase hand surgery electronic mailing list.

Hand - an Internet based electronic mailing list - enables surgeons with a common interest in hand surgery to share experiences and engage in worldwide electronic scholarly discussion. This paper examines the thinking behind the setting up of this list and gives examples of how the list is being used.

General Surgery↗
PubMed1997

Electronic mail: an imperative for healthcare epidemiologists.

Electronic mail (e-mail) offers the potential for near-instantaneous transfer of messages and files across thousands of miles. The same message can be sent simultaneously to multiple recipients and forwarded without retyping. Messages can be sent or read at any time, eliminating "telephone tag," and, because the system is paperless, lost, blurred, and incomplete, facsimile transmissions can be minimized. Additionally, e-mail is less expensive than overnight letter services or long-distance faxes. All healthcare epidemiologists should enter the information superhighway using e-mail. This article provides basic information needed to understand and begin using e-mail.

Computer Communication Networks↗