1. Who will pay for the project and maintain it?
2. Where will it reside: one site, multiple sites?
3. Will the project encompass all sites and all knowledge or will there be
separate projects such as a health care node?
4. Who will maintain the individual knowledge bases? How will you address
questions of reliability and validity?
5. Can the project be embedded into local databases. For example, I have a
health care database that collects data on patients in acute care settings.
Can I use the brain to access knowledge on certain aspects of patient care,
symptoms, current research on a particular disease, treatment, etc.? Can I
integrate the interface into the database so that it seems transparent to
the end user?
6. Will the brain be able to adapt to future transport modes? Will it be
compatible with existing software or will it act as a stand alone portal?
7. Are there security and privacy issues? For example, should all the
knowledge embedded in the web be available to all users? What about
copyright and other intellectual property rights issues - how will these be
handled? Virus and hacker protection?
Overall I find the proposal fascinating and provocative. I can see quite a
number of applications in my field (medical/nursing informatics) but the
scope of the project may be too ambitious. You might consider taking a
small and well defined domain and implement it at a few sites.
Best of luck
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
John Welton, MSN, RN
Doctoral Student
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
School of Nursing
Database Coordinator
Department of Critical Care Nursing
University of North Carolina Hospitals