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NVOG - Outstanding Achievement Award

Nederlandse Vereniging voor Obstetrie en Gynaecologie (NVOG)
Dutch Society of Obstetrics and Gynaecology

[ NVOGnet ] [ OBGYN.net Outstanding Achievement Award ]

[ In Dutch ]

From the early prototype to a most impressive product, we have been watching the evolution of the NVOG Internet presence. NVOG is the professional society in which most OBGYN specialists and trainees in The Netherlands are members. What they have achieved, in a very short time, is an excellent model for how an organization can use Internet technology to serve their membership and the public. It is truly an outstanding achievement!

The man behind this project is Dr. Hans van der Slikke. Hans responded for NVOG to a few questions we had:

1. How is NVOG serving the Ob/Gyn community with Internet Technology?

The NVOG has implemented NVOG-net to serve the Dutch OBGYN community through the Internet. All improvements and promises the Internet holds for now, and the future, are closely followed by a team of enthusiastic OBGYN practitioners.

The NVOG-net has a public section and a section for members only called the VILLA.

PUBLIC SECTION

For patients

Here we present approved patient information sheets on female sterilization, hysteroscopy etc. (in Dutch). We are preparing links to other suitable organizations who offer similar information in the Dutch language.

We also have contacts with some patient organizations and will establish links to their sites. If they don't have their own site we'll assist them in developing home pages on our server.

Our latest challenge is to construct a forum for patients and laymen (laywomen) in Dutch on pregnancy, home birth and women's health. For those women that can not understand or write English, especially in medical terms, this will be a place to discuss everything. It will also offer specific information about very aspect of perinatal care. Important in a country with more than 30% of the babies being born at home. We will of course provide FAQs.

For The Professionals

Links and soon the international congress calendar

MEMBERS ONLY SECTION

Entering the VILLA one first comes to the ATRIUM, where members find common subjects concerning the Society

  • A listing of names, addresses phone/fax/E-mail numbers of all the members
  • Newsletters from the President
  • Newsletters from the Editor
  • Discussions on different professional and political topics
  • Agenda (meetings of the society)

The atrium is surrounded by cubicula ('rooms' in the old Roman house), where our working parties and committees each have their own pages for sharing results of their tasks with the membership.

If a member of a party or committee accesses their page he gets the options to:

  • go to their deliberation group
  • check and add to the agenda for the next party-meeting
  • read the minutes of the previous meeting and
  • help in preparing new protocols, guidance-lines etc.

Other members looking at the same page don't get to view these last options since they're not a member of this party/committee. Because NVOG-net uses multiple levels of access, the appearance of elements on a page, as well as access to certain pages, can be fine tuned to a high degree.

This feature, a wish of the editors of NVOG-net, is used throughout the professional section and a part of SDI (smart database interactivity) based on WebDBC technology. Users look at the pages, and the pages also look at them, identifying each individual to serve them better. In this sense every member has his own customized pages.

Future enhancements include personal preferences for each member that will further influence the performance of calendars and all other dynamic parts, as well as layout.

2.Why did NVOG get involved with the Internet?

We wanted to

  • stimulate communication between the members
  • make data accessible and easy to customize for each hospital or clinic
  • promote the Internet as a tool for quality improvement
  • communicate with our patients in a new way by offering them information about surgery, pregnancy etc.

3. How long has NVOG been using the Internet?

The NVOG-net site was officially launched November 22, 1996 - so very recently!

It all started with my personal home page http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/NVOG/ which I created as a test site for NVOG in the beginning of 1996. I gave a demonstration to the board of the NVOG and they allowed me to hire a professional technician as webmaster. And from August 1 we have had a webmaster: Ap ter Haak. He did a wonderful job on the databases (SQL/HTX/ODBC) and the web interface, in classical Roman style.

4.What has been NVOG's greatest reward in using the Internet?

This award....

But also:

  • Some colleagues (other disciplines such as surgeons and ENT) liked our efforts very much. They were very interested and asked us for advice on how to start a web site for their professional society.
  • The rapid change with many colleagues. The most skeptic individual changes into a very enthusiastic Internet user within a day

5.What is the future for the Ob/Gyn community on the Internet - what is possible?

The future for the OBGYN society on the Internet will rest on four pillars:

  1. Personal communication (forums, lists, E-Mail)
  2. Education (interactive sites, teleconferencing)
  3. Quality improvement: quality networking and bench marking, but also randomization of trials: One example: http://epipc05.leeds.ac.uk/grit/grit.htm
  4. As soon as problems concerning privacy are solved, this technology will be the first choice for Electronic Patient/Medical Records. More and more hospitals will have their own IntrAnet .

For more information, contact:

Hans van der Slikke, OB/GYN
vdslikke@knmg.nl
Tel: +31 (0) 75 6502 756
Fax: +31 (0) 75 6502 758
Editor in Chief NVOG-net
http://www.nvog.nl

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