Exchanging medical information with Eastern Europe through the internet

The American International Health Alliance, a national not‐for‐profit healthcare organization initiated in 1992, uses Internet technologies to aid in the exchange of medical information between healthcare providers in the U.S. and their colleagues in Eastern Europe and the New Independent States of the former Soviet Union. A major role in the exchange is played by Information Coordinators—physicians, nurses, or administrators in the partnership institutions in the region. Through a questionnaire distributed during a training session in the U.S. and e‐mail exchanges, we interviewed these Information Coordinators to learn how Internet technologies are being introduced, disseminated, and adopted in their institutions. We then applied Everett Rogers's theory of the diffusion of innovations to help interpret their responses. Although now only in its preliminary stages, this study shows that technical communicators must be aware of the cultural influences—economic, political, ethnic, and institutional—that accompany technology as they communicate about such innovations across borders of culture, expertise, and ideology.