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If you need an in-world guide to healthcare issues in the virtual world Second Life, Health Info Island now has a set that I developed.  It is an attempt to help those new to SL discover some of the depth and breadth of health issues.
Notecards that are available at that location include:

• Healthcare Treatment
• Healthcare Libraries and Information Resources
• Healthcare Businesses
• General SL Health and Support Groups
• Healthcare Education
• Knoh’s Healthcare Pro’s Beginning Guide to SL

I’ve been working with the one-and-only Carolina Keats who coaxed me into getting this material up and the irrepressible Tam Hyun who did the graphics and build!

This sort of work is never done, but what we have now will at least get folks up to speed quicker than before.  I will maintaining it as best I can, but we are looking at how to have the community itself keep it updated.

Please note, if you want to know the latest, your best bet would probably be the website SLHealthy.

Here’s a screen shot of Knoh Oh at the Ann Myers Medical Center’s Admission Desk checking out the day’s schedule. To the right of Knoh is an Electronic Medical Record and Clinical Information System application being accessed from within the Second Life client.

It’s more of a proof of concept than anything else, but it does work, and I think would help enhance medical simulations. I could also see it as a great way to train people on how to use the software. One could have several people accessing the same EMR/CIS system in various areas of the hospital sim and run patient’s around.

I hijacked the SL client’s help window, and through it logged into an open source medical software demo. (Technical details at end.)

One of the great advantages to open source is that you really can get the code for free/cheap. Further, since there are no proprietary secrets, there is no reason to hide the software, so the software is easy to try. There are several open source medical software vendors, a few have on-line demo sites, some even have live CD’s one can easily boot up on one’s own PC’s. Wikipedia has a nice list of Free and Open Source Medical Software. One can set up the software and allow others to access it without worrying about licenses.

What I did not do, was create an actual object in SL. No other avatar can look over Knoh’s shoulder and see the screen. It is like a HUD- part of my client. However, other people can log into the same EMR/CIS and use the system as I am. You would get the same result by running the EMR/CIS in a separate browser…just not as cool screenshots

This particular picture features the ClearHealth software running from their demo site. I cannot vouch for their software, but it seems to be of the right weight, covers a multitude of tasks, and works well in the window. Big thanks to ClearHealth for providing an online demo! (I have not spoken to them about it yet.)

How did I do this? A bit of background for some, but the in-world help screen can be used as a web browser (recent Windows SL client, YMMV.) In the SL client go to the toolbar’s drop down “Help” then “In-World Help”. Paste in a URL into the help’s search window and hit return.

PLEASE DO NOT ABUSE THE DEMOS. These companies pay for their bandwidth and need to maintain their severs. If you really want to utilize a particular vendor’s service, contact them. They will most likely be happy to help you out.

THX to ClearHealth and Ann Myers Medical Center who had no idea what I was up to, but are hopefully cool with it.

For those interested, Second Life will have a series of things going on concerning World AIDs day, Dec 1st.

Rik has collected information about it.

Looks like they are getting ready over at HealthInfo Island.

I’ll try to get a little time in-world, so feel free to IM me, Knoh Oh.

If you are interested in healthcare in Second Life, here are a few tips to get you going:

I’m taking snapshots in Second Life of various medical venues. I think it is a quick way to get an overview of the variety that is out there, without actually logging into Second Life: www.sluniverse.com/pics/Default.aspx?Name=Knoh+Oh

The main mailing list for folks that are really involved in SL Medical stuff: lists.secondlife.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/healthcare

There’s a nice wiki being put together at SLHealthy: slhealthy.wetpaint.com

If you are in-world (within Second Life) you would do well to check out these areas:

• Sexual Health Sim
• Virtual Hallucinations
• The Virtual Neurological Education Centre
• SL Medical Library and Health Info Island
  

There are many more places to go, and things change so much in Second Life I hesitate even linking to these…but I know how it helps to have a bit of direction.

Finally, the reason I went into Second Life in the first place was to check out support groups for a medical informatics class I was taking. I found this BBC produced video about Support for Healing Island and that is what convinced me to give the whole thing a try.

I am doing a bit of research on diabetes education and wanted to quickly check in with some folks about their experiences. This isn’t what the research is about, but I thought they could offer a few pointers of what to look for.

My first thought was Second Life, so I went in-world. There was no sim that I could find where folks with this issue would be hanging out, although I did find the SL Diabetes Support group’s info pretty easily. I also stumbled upon some informational posters set up on Health Info Island. They were pretty simple, tho nicely done, and had info on the support group. However, I ended up not finding anyone that I could chat to live.

So back to the web, a bit of searching and I find Diabetic-Talk. I end up getting a lot of live help on good ol’ IRC.

Why? I’m guessing that IRC has been around for a long time, doesn’t take much PC resources, has a brief (but can be somewhat stiff) learning curve, simple/free to set up on a server, and just works. I’m guessing that in the future we’ll find this to be true in the virtual worlds, but not quite yet.

Using a brain-computer interface, folks are able to operate an avatar in Second Life. (Article)

While I don’t think doing simple things with computers via brain waves is all that new, it is cool to see it used in a ‘freely available’ virtual environment populated be all sorts of folks from around the world. (Instead some lonely server tucked away in a research facility.)

While I think this application is in its infancy, we can all agree it demonstrates interesting possibilities.

**Update**

NewWorld Notes has more. Looks like they will continue to push this forward.

**Update II**

Clickable Culture looks at some of the earlier attempts at this sort of thing.

As readers of my blog may know. I travel around Second Life looking at healthcare related sites… I also sometimes wonder what good they might do.

Now I find the Methodist University Hospital has a Virtual Welcome Center that includes maps and videos to familiarize folks with their facilities prior to them visiting. Despite the large-ish learning curve for Second Life, this is the sort of thing it is well suited for.

For example, The Ann Myers Medical Center:

While not based on an actual hospital, as far as I know, it could introduce people in a number of ways to what goes on within one. If it simulated an actual hospital, it could help inform patients further.

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