Editorial: Online SCAR Expert Hotline

Excerpt

A new online resource, the SCAR Expert Hotline Archive, will debut in March to make one of the Society’s most valuable member assets more usable and more widely available. Accessible at http://​scarhotline.​mcw.​edu, the site combines all past questions and responses into a searchable, indexed database that will allow for regular incorporation of new material. The SCAR Expert Hotline is already a popular free service that allows members of the Society to submit questions about clinical implementation of information systems in imaging. Questions are sent out to a group of experts for review and answers. In the past, under the able direction of Ronald Schilling, PhD, answers came back, were compiled, and then sent back to the requesting member. Subsequently, questions and answers were anonymized and published quarterly in SCAR News. Over the past 5 years, more than 200 questions have been compiled to create a rich and diverse knowledge base. Recognizing the potential of this substantial body of accumulated expertise, SCAR applied for and was awarded a grant from the National Library of Medicine/National Institutes of Health (lGO7 LMOO7875-01, “Improving Access to Digital Imaging Expertise”). The goal of the project was to take the Expert Hotline knowledge and put it online for the benefit of the entire imaging community. Eliot Siegel, MD, chair of the SCAR Publications Committee, served as the principal investigator. When Dr. Siegel discussed the project with me, I naturally was intrigued. I chair the SCAR Online Communications Committee, and our goal is to develop a strong web infrastructure and assist other SCAR committees in making important content available. I saw the Expert Hotline as a wealth of knowledge and the project as an opportunity to build a “FAQ on steroids.” Many websites have lists of frequently asked questions that focus on common queries or ways in which the site can be used, but these are usually quite small and accompanied by limited (if any) search engines. A growing database of several hundred questions requires more sophisticated search and classification tools. …