Customize your Web data with the intranet’
With all the information available on the Internet, how can you help employees access the wellness data they really need in a timely, efficient manner? You can certainly refer them to your wellness consulting firm, if that firm is "connected." But if you prefer a more hands-on approach, why not set up your own "intranet?"
An intranet is exactly what is sounds like: an internal network that operates in exactly the same manner as the Internet, with home pages, and "links" to related sources of information.
"An Intranet allows us to get information to employees in a timely manner, efficiently and inexpensively," says Wayne N. Burton, MD, vice president and corporate medical director of First Chicago NBD, a banking and financial services organization.
Burton’s medical unit has been "connected" for quite a while and currently has a model home page demo on its intranet. "It was created for human resources, and particularly wellness," says Burton.
The demo currently provides information about diabetes that a major pharmacy company provided First Chicago from its own intranet site.
That’s the beauty of an intranet, says Burton: It can be customized. "You can put any information on it that you want to; in theory, you can hot-link’ it to the Internet," he notes.
Burton plans to download information from the Internet and put it up on his site, as well as share internal information with employees. Current plans call for coverage in these areas:
• disease state management, including information on asthma, diabetes, and depression;
• Internet sites employees might want to visit;
• general women’s health;
• general information on health care consumerism.
"The advantage of this approach is that we can update the system very inexpensively and send it directly to employees’ terminals," says Burton. For employees who do not have their own terminals, First Chicago plans to put up kiosks in strategic locations through which these employees will be able to access the Intranet.
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