Development of PDA Version Cancer Management Guidelines

Abstract

The internship was performed in Cancer Care Nova Scotia (CCNS) from May 9th to September 2nd, 2005. The objective of the internship work was to convert the cancer management guidelines developed by Cancer Site Teams of CCNS into PDA document format. The existing guidelines in CCNS before were hard copy and electronic version such as Word documents and PDF documents, CCNS recognized that there were certain requirements for the PDA version guidelines by health professionals in Nova Scotia. The author was mainly responsible for providing PDA technology consulting, building prototypes of PDA version guidelines including “Guidelines for the Management of Lung Cancer” and “Guidelines for the Management of Cancer-Related Pain in Adults”. Also, the author assisted CCNS to evaluate the usefulness of PDA version guidelines, and finally gave the recommendations and support for future development by CCNS. This internship opportunity allowed the author utilized her knowledge and experience of health informatics, and there were many challenges during this process. The report will discuss the problems that the author encountered and also gave the solutions to solve those problems. Finally, the report will indicate the recommendations to achieve more successful PDA technology adoption in health care.