Introduction

I am a Ph.D. student at the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing at UC Davis.  Contrary to what you might expect, I am not a nurse, but rather have a background management of provider organizations, healthcare consulting, and health IT including a stint as a CEO of a software startup.  In addition to my doctoral studies, I am a principal investigator on two health IT research projects at San Francisco State University, Health Equity Institute.  The first one is called iN Touch: Observations of Daily Living via Mobile Platforms for Youth with Obesity and Depression.  We are investigating the potential for patient-generated observations collected and reported through an iPhone/iPod Touch application to improve patient self-management and strengthen patient-care team collaboration.  The second project is SCANNER:  Scalable National Network for Effectiveness Research.  This project is led by Lucila Ohno-Machado at UC San Diego.  My component is do develop a flexible privacy model  that can efficiently and effectively govern any number of health information exchange research networks and specify requirements for development in the electronic network.  This model will be developed based on consumer and professional user input.  I am looking forward to sharing further information about these projects and learning from all of you as we travel through this course together.