Fam-Med http://fpen.org/fam-med An Internet Discussion Group on Information Technology in Family Medicine Updated: September 19th, 1999 Summary Subscribing Historical Background E-Mail Discussion Group Etiquette Managing Your Subscription Changing your address Web Resources Getting Help SUMMARY: Fam-Med is an e-mail discussion group (or Listserv list) focused on the use of information technology in Family Medicine. Our members are from around the world and the majority are family physicians. The forum has been active since November of 1990. Anyone is welcome to join. In order to subscribe to Fam-Med, send a one-line e-mail message to listproc@fpen.org with the body of the message reading: subscribe fam-med Marcus Welby If you are not Marcus Welby, substitute your own name. You may browse through old postings that have been made to Fam- Med and other open FPEN.Org lists by going to http://lists.fpen.org/guest/main. You may also use the Web to manage your Fam-Med subscription by first registering at http://lists.fpen.org/guest/register. Then you may control your subscription at http://lists.fpen.org/reguser/listutil/FAM-MED. We have strict rules for posting messages on Fam-Med. Advertising is not welcome but brief mention of new and innovative products are. If you are not familiar with common list etiquette or wish to know if your posting would be appropriate, please refer to the posting guidelines that can be found at http://fpen.org/fam-med/etiquette. Subscription lists, registration lists and personal information has never been and will never be sold or shared. All information about you is considered private and will be kept that way. HISTORICAL BACKGROUND: Fam-Med was created in November of 1990 to provide a forum that would meet the needs of physicians who were trying to incorporate information technology in their practice. Computer networks such as Arpanet, Bitnet CompuServe and FidoNet were just starting to interconnect and e-mail was becoming a viable medium to bring physicians together regardless of location. Fam-Med was created to facilitate the exchange of information and experience among family physicians and other primary health care providers interested in information technologies. Many of the early subscribers to Fam-Med were pioneers in the field and had been working in isolation due to the constraints of time and distance. Fam-Med became the gathering place for these physicians. For the first time they could conveniently share ideas. Today, the explosion of the Web and the dissemination of inexpensive communication technologies have served to make this method of communication more common and convenient. Though the reality of busy schedules and geographic isolation still exist, asynchronous telecommunication has served to bridge this gap of time and space. Fam-Med continues to be a gathering place for those who wish to share their experiences with information technologies in primary care and who want to learn from the experience of others. E-MAIL DISCUSSION GROUP: Currently Fam-Med is an e-mail discussion group (or "listserv list") in which messages sent to the Fam-Med are immediately distributed to the subscribers. The list averages less than 10-20 messages a week so e-mail clutter has been a rare complaint of our subscribers. For those of you who subscribe to several discussion lists, receiving a list in digest form or better yet, investing in an e-mail package with filters can help you manage your mail. You can design a filter to place all the messages that originate from a particular discussion list in their own folder. I find filters very valuable. For a documents created to help deal with e-mail clutter and instructions on the use of mail filters please see the advanced e-mail resources available at http://fpen.org/train/email/. You may also receive the list in the form of a daily digest. If you wish to change your subscription to digest format, please see below. List Etiquette Issues discussed on Fam-Med have included coding, computerization of the patient record, ambulatory care information systems, data security, teleconsulting, practice management systems, on-line information resources and voice entry systems. The majority of our subscribers are primary care providers in practice from around the world. Given the nature of our subscribers it is important that messages on the list respect the list's objectives and other subscribers' time. We therefore require subscribers to adhere to common etiquette. We discourage advertising but allow brief announcements of new products or innovations that may be of interest to the readership. Short announcements of conferences or job openings relevant to information technology in family practice are also welcomed. URLs pointing to documents with more information should be included in these announcements when available. When you reply to a message to a message, please be prudent when you include portions of the original message in your reply. Only copy enough of the message needed to remind the reader of the original idea. When you send messages to the list or post replies, please be sure you send your message in a text-only format. Sending mail in HTML or in the format of another mark-up language can make the message length considerably larger and almost impossible to read for those whose e-mail packages are not capable of interpreting the format. Be sure to include a meaningful subject. If you reply to a digest without modifying the subject, other's may see your subject as "Re: FAM-MED digest 215" which will be meaningless to the majority of readers. Members who stray from accepted list etiquette are assumed to have made an honest mistake and receive a gentle reminder. Members who continue to ignore list etiquette, loose their posting privileges and are required to submit their messages for approval prior to its appearance on the list. If someone wanders outside the limits of what you feel is acceptable list etiquette, assume that the moderator will send them a friendly reminder. For a more detailed description of acceptable discussion list etiquette on Fam-Med, please see http://fpen.org/fam-med/etiquette. Managing Your Subscription: To sign up to receive Fam-Med, follow the instructions in the summary at the start of this message. Once subscribed, you have several options for managing your subscription. You may change your subscription options by sending command in the first line of an e-mail message to Listproc@FPEN.Org. These commands are: set fam-med mail postpone Will halt mail while you are away on vacation. Unsent messages will be lost. set fam-med mail ack Resets your subscription to individual messages and will restart it if it was "postponed." set fam-med mail digest-nomime Resets your subscription to receive only digests in a non-MIME format (works with all e-mail packages) and will restart it if it was "postponed." set fam-med mail digest Resets your subscription to receive only digest in MIME format (works with newer e- mail packages) and will restart it if it was "postponed." unsubscribe fam-med Removes your name from this list If you have registered with the web site, you may use a web interface to manage your subscription to Fam-Med. This page can be found at http://lists,fpen.org/reguser/listutil/FAM-MED and is worth checking out. Changing your address: There are occasions when system administrators change subscribers' return addresses. When this occurs you may still receive mail but when you submit a message for distribution it is rejected since the list does not recognize you as a subscriber. You can subscribe with your new address so you may post, but you might not be able to remove your old address. If you are having trouble, do not hesitate to contact the list manager, Paul Kleeberg , to delete your old address. If you are registered with the web site, it will be necessary for you to contact the site manager Paul Kleeberg , to modify your fpen.org registration. WEB RESOURCES: Discussion Archive: Fam-Med has archived all messages sent to the list since it was started in November of 1990. These can be searched or browsed at http://lists.fpen.org/guest/listutil/FAM-MED/. Resource Archive: When Fam-Med first started, we posted a handful of on-line resources of potential use to the family physician. Many of these have become obsolete and have been removed. We hope to once again build up these resources. Presently there are links to Web, e-mail and advanced e-mail material that has been used in hands- on training sessions for physicians as well as some other items of use. These can be found at. http://www.fpen.org/fam- med/resources/. GETTING HELP: For additional help in obtaining files, joining Fam-Med, or gaining access to the Internet, contact: Paul Kleeberg, M.D. O o paul@fpen.org Allina Health System -+---+- Voice: 612-775-1338 1375 Willow Street |_o_| Family Practice & Minneapolis, MN 55403 USA / \|/ \ Information Services