Seahorse Healthcare Portal
OCC's Role in the SEAHORSE Project
OCC's role in the SEAHORSE Project was providing the technological expertise allowing individuals and organisations to share information about AIDS / HIV globally.
A response to AIDS / HIV is the formation of community groups and NGOs (Non Governmental Organisations), offering information, emotional and practical support to those living with HIV+/AIDS. The support groups needed new ways of exchanging information. SEAHORSE simplifies global access to sharing the wealth of information via the World Wide Web (WWW) .
Accessing and composing information locally
Users can annotate others' documents or reviews thus building up an ever-increasing bank of information and responses. Immediate contact is available through discussion groups.
When connecting to the system, the front page has links to all local sites. Someone travelling in Europe, for example, will have access to the system they are used to. This allows people involved with HIV+/AIDS - both patients and carers - access to information in the SEAHORSE portal, translations, abstracts from global sources, reading lists and annotations.
The infrastructure: local sites yet global access
Local community groups or NGOs can communicate their available resources, such as drop in centres with Internet access. A site's users usually have gender, linguistic, social or cultural factors in common and are interested in information that is ordered and presented in a way relevant to them.
SEAHORSE not only gives these users access to a wealth of information, but also the chance to have a say in both the type of information available and how it is ordered. They can produce translations and reviews of existing items and classify them in terms of relevance, as well as submitting their own articles for inclusion into the SEAHORSE body of work.
Collaborative nature of SEAHORSE
The SEAHORSE model and applications with its collaborative character has strong potential for sharing information in other healthcare areas. Similar work is being done in the areas of cancer, lupus and multiple sclerosis.
Our development work for the NICE website was built on the successful establishment of SEAHORSE.
