*Attendees*
Morgan Passiment, AAMC
Michael Gettes, Duke
Steve Olshansky, Internet2
Renee Frost, Internet2
Keith Hazelton, U. Wisconsin
Jeanette Fielden, Internet2
Dave DaMassa Tufts,
Eric Pan, Harvard
Jack Buchanan, U. Tennessee
Barry Ribbeck, UT Health Science Center Houston
Paul Jolly, AAMC

*Discussion*

Barry Ribbeck described the residency evaluation system at UT-Health Science Center Houston (UT-HSCH). They have a medical residents program where medical school students come from all over the U.S. In order to meet their criteria for accreditation evaluations have to be conducted in a dual manner. The attending physicians overseeing the training have to offer comments on the residents and the residents offer comments on the attending physicians.
Then the accreditation board will review them periodically to determine if the facility meets the requirements to issue credentials for a medical specialty when students finish their residency-training program.

The system is an online java based application that feeds into an Oracle database. Residents are authenticated by LDAP. Attending physicians are authenticated via digital ID. The problem, in terms of Shib, Internet2, and MedMid, is that some attending physicians are from other institutions. They are given guest accounts in UT-HSCH's directory to allow them access to this application.

UT-HSCS also has another application for tracking resident hours. It is a client server application to a relational database that is being rewritten as a web based client server application. It tracks residents scheduling, licensing, demographic info, etc. It should be done within 3-4 months. UT-HSCH also has courseware that was built internally, and two other institutions are interested in using it. Barry indicated that Shibbing it would not be hard.

Dave DaMassa indicated that Tufts would be interested in learning more about both applications. They currently still have a paper-based system for evaluations.

Morgan indicated that they have had requests from members around residency programs. The AAMC can put a request out and see if there are other institutions interested. The chance of getting all the hospitals involved with Shib, given their financial situation, is pretty remote. AAMC could become involved in credentialing physicians, which could take some load off hospitals and help make this happen. AAMC collects fingerprints when students take the MCAT exam. Information about identity could help hospitals that might be interested in doing it through AAMC rather than through their own credentialing office. Timeframes are unclear however, if a clear return on investment can be demonstrated, the hospitals would be willing to consider sooner.

At the Internet2 meeting in the MedMid BoF there was a discussion about trying to apply things to the research community. Any medical research area would seem to be prime areas of interest where you have the need for cross-institutional authorization and authentication.

One example of how research could cross institutions is, in order to do animal or human research an Institutional Review Board (IRB) has to be in place to review proposed research. UT-HSCH is branching out to other institutions that can't fund an IRB of their own.

BIRN, the Biomedical Informatics Research Network may be interested in how we could apply Internet2 activities to their projects. Not just things like Shibboleth, but also how it intersects with Grids, eduPerson and getting some commonality of the taxonomies that get used, all from a network perspective. They also fund research centers and would like to connect them together and have them speak a common language. For example if they're doing brain imaging, they might need access to a grid for data processing, or other sites that have data stored. If they were all available via Shibboleth it makes the sharing of information far easier. It might also force common taxonomies and dataset definitions to avoid duplication and reentry of data, as well as increase reusability of data.

There was also discussion of how to build on the Shibboleth pilot project with libraries and electronic information providers. Working with resource providers and licensing has been a significant component of the pilot. This extends easily to medical information and medical libraries. The National Library of Medicine has interest in trying to disseminate information and licensing issues make get less complex if just researchers are involved. It was agreed that a project involving medical information vendors would be pursued.

Dave described the Tufts university scientific knowledge base (TUSK) that runs on Apache with a MySQL database behind it. It is a curriculum knowledge base system that could be of use to other universities. The system is already in place the New York Medical College and in South Africa, but licensing is an issue with information providers. If management could be done with Shibboleth for interchanging that would be great. They plan to make it Shibboleth compliant.

Jack mentioned the Virtual Hospital at the University of Iowa as another example of a possible project.

There might also be a project in linking to the AAMC curriculum project called Kermit.

The key would be acceptance from faculty who typically don't like prepackaged materials but small modules to pick and choose from. Material could be created/offered centrally and then users can customize it to their liking.

HIPAA is also a good project. Does it need to be done 500 times at each institution or can a large portion of it be standardized? Jack is going to a compliance committee meeting Monday, he'll look for opportunities.

There was consensus that Tufts is a prime candidate for a project. If we could raise the visibility, associate it with MedMid and a larger project, it would be of benefit to both Tufts and MedMid, and likely other schools. It would also be great to see AAMC involved. This would create a project of sufficient scope to generate excitement and interest in other institutions that they'll want to get involved.

The next MedMid call is May 15, 2003.