Ray Jones

Ray Jones is Associate Dean for Research in the Faculty of Health and Social Work, and Professor of Health Informatics, at the University of Plymouth.

He started his career in health informatics in Nottingham in 1976. His interest in patients' access to their own medical record began in 1979 when, with colleagues, he established the Nottingham Diabetes System issuing paper copies of medical records to patients.

He moved to Glasgow in 1984 where he developed and evaluated the first public access health kiosks (Healthpoint) and carried out research into patients' online access to their own medical record. This included a series of randomised trials including of: patient-held records in primary care; a personalised touchscreen system for patients with cancer, an education system for patients with schizophrenia, and a community based multimedia system for treatment of anxiety.

He moved to Plymouth in 2002 where he has been developing interdisciplinary health and social care research, including e-health. His interest in synchronous technologies started with use of a Plymouth uplink to an ESA satellite. He has been exploring the synergy between e-health and e-learning.

Ray Jones is an elected Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health, a member of the British Computer Society, and a Chartered Engineer.

Synopsis

Watching and tailoring: exploring new ways of using the web for combined e-health e-learning.

Web-based information for individual patients can be tailored via 'user-models' which may include the patient's own medical record. There is evidence that tailoring information in this way can make it more useable by patients and their families, with possible impact on psychological wellbeing. Clinical staff can learn from patients and patients may use web based information aimed primarily at professionals. So again, there may be benefits in 'efficiency' and for patients, students, and clinicians from shared e-learning (re-usable learning objects which are tailored to specific user-groups). The web is increasingly used for synchronous communication including instant messaging, Internet telephony, videoconferencing, and watching live webcasts. Combinations of synchronous methods with tailored asynchronous supporting information may be an effective way of releasing the huge potential of world-wide sharing -both across countries and across sectors - of health information. This presentation will describe the vision of 'watching and tailoring' and steps taken towards this.