Interviewer: At large institutions it can tough to know what's going on with everyone else, you know, as far as research or innovation is concerned. And interesting solution to that problem we'll examine that next on The Scope.
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Interviewer: This is an interesting concept, librarians helping to create content and not just curate content. We're talking with Jean Shipman, who is Director of the Spencer S. Eccles Health Sciences Library, about a brand new creation called the e-Channel. This is your baby?
Dr. Shipman: That's it, and we are so excited to be launching e-Channel.
Interviewer: Tell me a little bit about e-Channel, and what challenges were you trying to overcome, or what problems were you trying to solve when this came into being?
Dr. Shipman: We've been dealing for a long time with the idea of how long it takes to get information to the public. Our CTSA is an example of how to get research from the bench to bedside quicker.
Interviewer: And what is CTSA?
Dr. Shipman: CTSA is Clinical Translational Science Award, this whole government-funded initiative to push research faster to patient care.
Interviewer: Okay, so the physicians are getting it faster, so patients can access it faster.
Dr. Shipman: Exactly. And yet the traditional journal is not going any faster. So we were struggling with our publishers, our authors here at the University. How can we get this information out to the public faster?
Interviewer: Traditional channels; how long does it take for a journal article to be published?
Dr. Shipman: It can take nine months at the fastest to probably a year and a half.
Interviewer: And at one point maybe 50 or 60 years ago that was fine.
Dr. Shipman: Right, but now today, when things are happening so rapidly, healthcare transformation causes things to happen overnight, so you can't wait for nine months to get the latest information.
Interviewer: What was the holdup on the traditional journals?
Dr. Shipman: Well everyone wants quality, so there's a lot of review of the material that's being published. In a statistical review there's a lot of accuracy checks on editing, and it just takes awhile. But there is now also a chance for conversation. You hit this print item and there it is 2D.
Interviewer: There you go, right?
Dr. Shipman: 2D, whether you can understand it or not.
Interviewer: Yeah.
Dr. Shipman: Whereas with today's media, you can do all kinds of fascinating 3D, as I call it, conversation with blogs, with chat rooms, with videos, you name it, it's possible.
Interviewer: The goal is to create conversation it sounds like.
Dr. Shipman: Conversation, but also rapid release of information.
Interviewer: Aren't you worried about the accuracy then if you're speeding up the process?
Dr. Shipman: Well you can be, but if you think about all the peer eyes that are looking at this content, it's almost more editing availability than what you'd have in a print where you have two or three reviewers.
Interviewer: It's kind of like, I know Wikipedia takes a lot of flack, but it's pretty decent really for what it is. Right?
Dr. Shipman: It is, because you have the whole universe of experts kind of looking at a topic or idea.
Interviewer: Gotcha. So that's why an alternative to the traditional journal article is speed and it creates some conversation.
Dr. Shipman: That, and also we recognize with different disciplines. There are different uptakes for journal articles, too. And working with innovators, we found that the traditional journal is not something that they go to. How do you publish a medical device? How do you replicate the effort that went into that in a traditional journal article?
So innovators want to a place to also have a voice in how their disseminating their results successfully as well as their failures. And that's something you don't see in journal articles.
Interviewer: Yeah, but it's a very valuable learning lesson. Anybody that's ever learned probably has learned from failure more than success.
Dr. Shipman: Exactly, and with innovation you can get a failure and then build on that and have a major success results.
Interviewer: So the e-Channel; the traditional journal format is written, is the e-Channel written the same way as a more of a blog format, or is it going to be multimedia?
Dr. Shipman: Definitely multimedia, probably print very little. In fact we're not trying to replicate the traditional journal article, in which a lot of libraries are going in that direction. But we're trying to make it the lively, electronic, eclectic, entrepreneurial channel, thus E. And also it just happens to stand for Eccles.
Interviewer: Okay, entrepreneurial and Eccles...
Dr. Shipman: And extraordinary.
Interviewer: And extraordinary, right. And it's also that would be a very powerful, because it allows the person talking about whatever it is they're talking about to use the medium that can best communicate that. Sometimes the written word is not it. Sometimes it's a 15-second video.
Dr. Shipman: Exactly, it came really clear as our Chief of Pediatrics said, "I've written one editorial of 900 words five times in nine months in order to make it clearly relevant and current. And I need more conversation, because I'm worried about health care reform in pediatric hospitals."
A 900 word editorial; how many people see it and how many people relate to it, think about it. But if you see me as a person, as the Chief of Pediatric Hospital here, talking about it, it's much more vivid and more lively.
Interviewer: Yes, you're creating that sense of community.
Dr. Shipman: Yes, and recognition and all kinds. So he can't wait to get this shoe to drop, is what his editorial is about.
Interviewer: What are some of the content that's currently available?
Dr. Shipman: We just are starting out, so we have had four cohorts of lean training projects here at the University that were sponsored by Dr. Vivian Lee that were sponsored by Dr. Vivian Lee. And we have captured all of the templates that have come out of those projects; so all the best of the evidence of our efforts at creating lean or projects are available to the general public.
And we're hoping that everyone will contribute to that repository so that we can even build on the best of the evidence and kind of analyze it and come up with let's say three institutions to do the same kind of project. Why should the fourth institution start from scratch? Why not build on the effort and the knowledge gained by those first three?
Interviewer: Yeah, so the e-Channel is for other academic medical centers, because that's a big topic right now, lean process. But it's a big topic in business, too, so who knows somebody from outside of medicine might be able to contribute to this and give us an idea you never thought of.
Dr. Shipman: And that's really what this is all about, that interdisciplinary, interprofessional conversation. And then we are adding Dr. Clark's videos, which he will also be talking about. He had about ten videos done. We walk through the Pediatric Hospital with him and he really talked about where healthcare reform could come into play.
Interviewer: What do you hope that this e-Channel will ultimately become?
Dr. Shipman: I'm hoping it's the first place people will go to when they are having their breakfast. But that's a pretty [inaudible 00:06:25].
Interviewer: It sure is.
Dr. Shipman: But I'm hoping it will be a place where our university personnel who really want to get information about their innovations, their research, their latest medical therapeutic technologies could have a place to share that information.
Interviewer: Share that information and start the conversation.
Dr. Shipman: Exactly, and get recognition for it, because they also have to go up for promotion and tenure at the university, and traditional journal articles have been usually the metric used to analyze your impact. Here we're hoping that e-Channel will be given as much recognition and time to our promotion.
Interviewer: That's going to be a tall challenge isn't it, to establish that kind of credibility?
Dr. Shipman: It is, but I think with peer reviewing in we can look at different tiers of information on e-Channel. We can get to the level of public interest, too, and internal interest, and to world interest is our hope.
So we will be working with the medical therapeutic entities in the Garden Level Library, to capture all of their output. Our EAE Program here, our Entertainment Arts and Engineering, is one of the best in the world creating gains and medical therapeutics. And they have no place to really put that information out. So we're going to be collecting all of their gains and describing them and creating an opportunity for them to get back to their work as well.
Interviewer: Gotcha. Anything that we left out or any final thoughts?
Dr. Shipman: Well, as soon as we get e-Channel up we're hoping that you'll review it, give us your comments, and input, and think about ideas of what you'd like to contribute to e-Channel.
Interviewer: And how can someone find it?
Dr. Shipman: They will be at our Eccles Health Sciences Library page. There will be an e-Channel URL available and I'll link you to it. But we'll also be putting it out on Algorithms for Innovation on different sites at the university.
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