National health information management/information technology strategies in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore.

A national health information management/information technology (IM/IT) strategy is crucially important for a country in planning and implementing healthcare priorities. However, little comparative research has been performed in this area, especially in Asian countries. This paper reviews, assesses and compares the healthcare systems, as well as the national health IM/IT initiatives and strategies in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore. Although the proportion of public and private health services, IT infrastructure development, and government involvement in these three jurisdictions are different, they experience similar challenges with limited resources. By outlining the approaches being taken in the three Asian jurisdictions, this paper provides comparison, evaluation and insights that may be useful to other jurisdictions.

Project based experiential distance education: an oxymoron?

In the context of a program in Health Information Science at the University of Victoria in Victoria, BC, Canada, we have over the past 20 years made progress and gained experience in delivering a number of courses in a project-based experiential learning mode which links professionals and students in real world projects. As we are moving towards distance education, we are facing the challenge of translating these achievements into distance mode. The paper reviews the principles which make project-based educational mode involving collaboration with professionals desirable. We then review the experience with two specific courses, in which local students work with distant and local representatives of health institutions, respectively, on projects defined in the professional environment. This experience showed that the approach is of mutual interest and benefit to both the students and the professionals involved, but that a long lead time, and considerable detail in the preparation are required to lead such endeavors to success. We then discuss three alternatives to translating the principles of these approaches into distance mode. Among the alternatives, conducting a local project, closely affiliated with the teaching institution, or relying on a mock project which is based on recorded examples from previous projects, seem to be the most promising options. The alternative of having every student pursuing a different project, which may be local for the student but distant for the educational institution, is less attractive if faculty are expected to assume responsibility for successful project completion. It may, however, be the preferred solution if students are health professionals residing at distant health care institutions. All three alternatives have drawbacks that may limit the feasibility of project-based experiential learning in distance mode.