Get your consumer health information from an avatar!: health and medical related activities in a virtual environment

Together with Carol Perryman (MSLIS, TRLN Doctoral Fellow at School of Information & Library Science, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) Guus van den Brekel (Coördinator Electronic Services of the Central Medical Library at University Medical Center Groningen in the Netherlands), is working in a Grantfunded project: "Providing Consumer Health Outreach and Library Programs to Virtual World Residents in Second Life". HealthInfo Island ,which is the home of the Consumer Health Library, the SL Medical Library and NLM/SIS, wants to be a central point in SL for health and medical information and is investigating possible ways of further cooperation with other health and medical non-profit organizations. One of the main targets for the project is to reach out to all Support Groups in Second Life. A brief summary of our findings about working in a virtual environment like Second Life and some future developments is included, as well as an overview of health, educational, clinical, medical related activities in Second Life.