Participants voted "Establish health care and wellness centers" as no. 1 with their private dollars; but ranked the same application 21.5 (tied with "Create telemedicine connection between patient, physician and medical center to include 'dial a doc' care delivery ability.") The top five private applications included (in the following order):
(2) "Sell Hawaii as an international, business, and leisure destination";
(3) "Real time video, voice, data interactive telecommunications applications";
(4) "Integrated virtual learning environment"; and
(5) "Create virtual corporations and enhance telework capabilities".
On the other hand, participants voted the application "E-mail between government departments, employees, citizens and governmental entities" no. 1 with public dollars. Ranked no. 2 with public dollars was "Ubiquitous access to education", followed closely by "Telework options for government employees". The applications "Integrated virtual learning environments" and "Provide continuous information/media/technological literacy programs" rounded out the top five public dollar choices.
The only application ranked in the top five with both private and public dollars was "Integrated virtual learning environments" (ranked no. 4 by participants in the public and private votes).
a. Distance learning/telework
This grouping appeared to include applications which would foster "distance learning", i.e., learning which did not require in-person attendance in the class room or in a group setting. In the business context, telework was a similar "distance" type activity, which did not require that people actually be physically together in the same room or building. This grouping cut across most of the user groups, which would tend to indicate that the attendees predicted that by the year 2000 these applications would be common place. The infrastructure which would permit these applications to function is not yet all in place, and the technology is still under development. Since this grouping appears to be the most popular, it would make sense to invest private and public dollars to produce applications that will let people learn and work in their homes or at other locations.
The following list shows the particular applications that each break out groupappeared to include in this grouping.
- Business
- Create virtual corporations and enhance telework capabilities
- Library
- Create and support virtual/ face to face/ learning environments.
- Provide continuous information/ media/ technological literacy programs.
- Home access: all uses - recreation, business, educational, daily life skills/ information needs from home.
- Higher Education
- Ubiquitous access to education.
- Health Care
- Create a patient health education system which is interactive and can be used by patients to create a health education plan.
- Government
- Telework options for government employees.
- Lower Education
- Applications which create interactive, integrated, virtual learning community focused on the human element.
- Applications which develop a flexible and customized multimedia distance education facility in every home and public institution.
b. Communication Between Groups and/or Individuals
Another common grouping was communication between groups and/or individuals. Such applications as data interactive communications and conferencing public agencies are examples. The infrastructure and technology that supports such specific applications as E-mail is in existence, but not at the level that attendees appeared to envision in the year 2000.
- Business
- Real time video, voice, data interactive telecommunications applications.
- Non Profits
- Conferencing public agency to agency; agency to client; client to client.
- Health Care
- Create telemedicine connection between patient, physician and medical center to include a "dial-a-doc" care delivery ability.
- Government
- E-mail between government departments, employees, citizens and governmental entities.
- Forms that are downloaded to computers and when completed sent back to government electronically.
- Visitor Industry
- Optimize guest/customer processing.
c. Access to information
Not surprisingly, applications that permit access to "pools" of information formed a common grouping. For Non Profits, funding effectiveness could be assessed through information made available to agencies and policy makers. For Health Care, a virtual record system was important. These databases will probably dwarf those now in existence, and technological barriers such as transmission speed will have to be overcome. In addition, privacy and other legal issues will need to be resolved before much of this information can be made accessible.
- Non Profits
- Providing funding agencies and policy makers access to information about the effectiveness of funding particular programs.
- Health Care
- Develop a virtual medical record system (electronic and paperless).
Media
- Standard user interface to Internet/sources of information.
- Intelligent agent that is directed to access selective information from pool of information.
- Entertainment /education /information pool composed of newspapers, TV stations, etc.
- Visitor Industry
- Sell Hawaii as an international, business and leisure destination.