Aviv Shachak

Associate Professor (cross-appointed with Dalla Lana School of Public Health)

Phone 416-978-0998

Email: aviv.shachak@utoronto.ca

Office: Health Sciences Building, Suite 425

Website: http://ihpme.utoronto.ca/faculty/aviv-shachak/

Professor Shachak’s research and teaching is mainly in the area of health informatics. It seeks to improve usage and help realize the potential benefits of information systems, especially in health care and biomedicine. Recently, this work focuses mostly on health professions education in, and for, the digital era.

Education
- B.Sc. (Life sciences), Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel (1993)
- M.Sc. (Horticulture), The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel (1997)
- Ph.D. (Information Science), Bar-Ilan University, Israel (2005)
- Post-doc (Medical Informatics), Technion- Israel Institute of Technology (2005-2007)
Research Description

Dr. Shachak’s current work is in 3 major areas:

Improving use of electronic medical records (EMRs) in primary care through education: This work includes the design and evaluation of simulation-based training interventions to help physicians better integrate the use of electronic medical records into the primary care consultation and communication with patients. Simulation methods include standardized patients(funded by Israel National Institute for Health Policy and Health Services Research) as well as computer-based (‘virtual patient’) simulation (funded by SIM-one: Ontario Simulation Network).Our virtual patient prototypes are available from SIM-one’s website under Creative Commons license:

Scenario 1

Scenario 2

Other research projects in progress include video tutorials to improve diabetes care using EMRs (doctoral research of Gurprit Randhawa at the University of Victoria with Drs. Karen Courtney and Andre Kushniruk) and an educational intervention to improve data quality in EMR documentation (Master’s research of Dr. Noah Crampton with Drs. Nikki Woods, Sharon Domb and Michelle Griever).

Patient engagement (and health information literacy):

The first research in this area (led by Prof. Raisa Deber) examines the inter-relationships between patients’ preferred role in health decision making and their trust in the health care provider and perceived health information literacy (doctoral research of Vidhi Thakaar with Drs. Raisa Deber and Nav Persaud). Another study looks critically at patient-specific social media platforms, highlighting the tools they provide and how they collect and use information about patients (doctoral research of Claudia Lai with Drs. Raisa Deber and Alex Jadad). Finally, we are looking at how physicians utilize information provided by parents of children with complex medical conditions (doctoral research of Francine Buchanan with Drs. Eyal Cohen and Golda Milo-Manson).

Digital professionalism

In this research, we seek to develop and evaluate educational intervention(s) to facilitate professional digital behaviour by future health care professionals (doctoral research of Tamara Bahr)
Selected Publications
Journal articles
1. Rodin, A., Shachak, A., Miller, A., Akopyan, V., & Semenova, N. (2017). Mobile applications for eye care in Canada: a review of the iTunes store. JMIR mHealth and uHealth, 5(6), e84.
1. Kudlow, P., Cockerill, M., Toccalino, D., Dziadyk, D. B., Rutledge, A., Shachak, A., . . . Eysenbach, G. (2017). Online distribution channel increases article usage on Mendeley: a randomized controlled trial. Scientometrics, 112(3), 1537-1556.
2. Shachak, A., Elamrousy, S., Borycki, E.M., Domb, s., Kushniruk, A.W. (2016). Towards educational electronic health records (EHRs): a design process for integrating EHRs, simulation, and video tutorials. Studies in Health Technology and Informatics 228: 624-628.
3. Kudlow, P., Rutledge, A., Shachak, A., McIntire, R., & Eisenbach, G. (2016). TrendMD: helping scholarly content providers reach larger, and more targeted audiences. Learned Publishing 29(2): 125–129
4. Crampton, N. H., Reis, S. & Shachak, A. (2016). Computers in the clinical encounter: a scoping review and thematic analysis. Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association 23(3):654-65. (epub ahead of print)
5. Shachak, A., Domb S., Borycki, E., Fong, N., Skyrme, A., Kushniruk, A., Reis, S., Ziv, A.(2015). A pilot study of computer-based simulation training for enhancing Family Medicine residents’ competence in computerized settings. Studies in Health Technology and Informatics 216:506-510.
6. Wilcox, L. Patel, R., Chen, Y. and Shachak, A. (2013). Report on the ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, focus on patient-centered health communication. Patient Education and Counselling 93(3): 532-534.
7. Shachak, A., Reis, S. and Pearce, C. (2013). Patient-Physician Interactions and Electronic Health Records [Letter to the editor]. JAMA – Journal of the American Medical Association 310(17): 1857-1858.
8. Shachak, A., Montgomery, C., Dow, R., Barnsley, J., Tu, K., Jadad, A. R., & Lemieux-Charles, L. (2013). End-user support for primary care electronic medical records: a qualitative case study of users’ needs, expectations, and realities. Health Systems, 2: 198-212.
9. Shachak, A., Dow, R., Barnsley, J., Tu, K., Domb, S., Jadad, A.R., Lemieux-Charles, L. (2013) User manuals for a primary care electronic medical record system: a mixed methods study of user- and vendor-generated documents. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 56(3): 194-209.
10. Yeung, K. N., Jadad, R. A., Shachak, A. (2013). What do electronic health record vendors reveal about their products: an analysis of vendor websites. Journal of Medical Internet Research 15(2), e36
11. Laberge, M., Shachak, A. (2013). Developing a tool to assess the quality of socio demographic data in community health centres. Applied Clinical Informatics 4(1):1-11.
12. Shachak, A., Barnsley, J., Montgomery C., Tu, K., Jadad, A.R., Lemieux-Charles, L. (2012). End-User Support for a primary care electronic medical record: a qualitative case study of a vendor’s perspective. Informatics in Primary Care 20(3): 185-196.
13. Shachak, A., Barnsley, J., Tu, K., Jadad, A.R., Lemieux-Charles, L. (2011). Understanding end-user support for health information technology: a theoretical framework. Informatics in Primary Care 19(3):169-172.
14. O’Grady, L., Charnaw-Burger, J., Betel, L, Wathen, N., Shachak, A., Luke, R., Hockema, S., Jadad, R. (2012). The use of tags and tag clouds to discern credible content in online health message forums. International Journal of Medical Informatics 81(1):36-44
15. Reis, S., Cohen-Tamir, H., Eger-Dreyfuss, L., Eisenberg, O, Shachak, A., Hasson-Gilad, D.R., Ziv, A. (2011). The Israeli patient-doctor-computer communication study: an educational intervention pilot report and its implications for person-centered medicine. International Journal of Person Centered Medicine 1(4): 776-781.
16. de Lusignan, S., Pearce, C., Kumarapeli, P., Stavropoulou, C., Kushniruk, A., Sheikh, A., Shachak, A. & Mendis, K. (2011). Reporting observational studies of the use of information technology in the clinical consultation: A position statement from the International Medical Informatics Association Primary Care Informatics Working Group (IMIA PCI WG). International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) 2011 Yearbook of Medical Informatics (pp. 39-47).
17. Shuval, K., Harker, K., Roudsari, B., Groce, N.E, Mills, B., Siddiqi, Z. and Shachak, A. (2011) Is qualitative research second class science? a quantitative longitudinal examination of qualitative research in medical journals. PLoS one 6(2): e16937
18. Pearce, C., Shachak, A, Kushniruk, A. and De Lusignan, S. (2010) Usability: a critical dimension for assessing the quality of clinical systems. Informatics in Primary Care 17(4):195-8
19. Shachak, A. and Jadad, A.R. (2010). Electronic health records in the age of social networking and global telecommunications. JAMA- Journal of the American Medical Association 303(5): 452-453.
20. Shachak, A., Hadas-Dayagi, M, Ziv, A. and Reis, S. (2009) Primary care physicians’ use of an Electronic Medical Record system- a cognitive task analysis. Journal of General Internal Medicine 24(3): 341-348
21. Shachak, A. and Reis, S. (2009). The impact of electronic medical records on patient-doctor communication during consultation: a narrative literature review. Journal of Evaluation in Clinical practice 15: 641-649.
22. Peleg, M., Shachak, A., Wang, D. and Karnieli, E. (2009). Using multi-perspective methodologies to study user interactions with the front-end of a guideline-based decision-support system for diabetic-foot care. International Journal of Medical Informatics 87(7):482-493.
23. Bar-Ilan, J., Shoham, S., Idan, A., Miller, I. and Shachak, A. (2008). Structured vs. unstructured tagging- a case study. Online Information Review, 32(5): 635-647
24. Shachak, A, and Fine, S. (2008) The effect of training on biologists’ acceptance of bioinformatics tools: a field experiment. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 59(5): 719-730.
25. Shachak, A., Shuval, K. and Fine, S. (2007). Barriers and enablers to the acceptance of bioinformatics tools: a qualitative study. Journal of the Medical Library Association, 95(4): 454-458.
26. Shuval, K., Shachak, A., Linn, S., Brezis, M., Feder-Bubis, P. and Reis, S. (2007). The impact of an evidence-based medicine educational intervention on primary care physicians: a qualitative study. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 22(3): 327-331.
27. Shuval, K., Shachak, A. Linn, S., Brezis, M. and Reis S. (2007). Evaluating primary care physicians’ Evidence-Based Medicine skills in a busy urban setting. Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice 13(4): 576-580.
28. Shachak, A. (2006) Diffusion pattern of the use of genomic databases and analysis of biological sequences – 1970-2003: Bibliographic record analysis of twelve journals. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (JASIST), 57(1): 44-50.
29. Shachak, A., Ophir, R. and Rubin E. (2005). Applying instructional design theories to bioinformatics education in microarray analysis and primer design workshops. Cell Biology Education, 4: 199 -206.
30. Yakubov, B., Barazani, O., Shachack, A., Rowland, L.J., Shoseyov, O. and Golan-Goldhirsh, A. (2005). Cloning and expression of a dehydrin-like protein from Pistacia vera L. Trees Structure and Function, 19(2): 224-230.
31. Golan-Goldhirsh, A. and Shachak, A. (1998). Immunological cross-reaction between bud and bark proteins of dormant deciduous trees. Scientia Horticulturae 73(2/3): 165-173.
Books
1. Shachak, A., Borycki, E.M. & Reis, S.P. (editors). Health Professionals’ Education in the Age of Clinical Information Systems, Mobile Computing and Social Networks. 2017. London, UK; San Diego, CA; Cambridge, MA; and Oxford, UK: Academic Press (Elsevier).
Book chapters
1. Shachak, A., & Reis, S. Evaluating educational interventions for health professions in the digital age. In A. Shachak, E.M. Borycki & S. Reis (Eds.) Health professionals’ education in the age of clinical information systems, mobile computing and social networks., 2017. London, UK; San Diego, CA; Cambridge, MA; and Oxford, UK: Academic Press (Elsevier).
2. Bhyat, R., Gibson, C., Hayward, R., Shachak, A., Borycki, E.M., Condon, A., Farrell, G., Premkumar, K., & Ho, K. (in press). Implementing informatics competencies in undergraduate medical education: a national-level ‘train the trainer’ initiative. In A. Shachak, E.M. Borycki & S. Reis (Eds.) Health professionals’ education in the age of clinical information systems, mobile computing and social networks. 2017. London, UK; San Diego, CA; Cambridge, MA; and Oxford, UK: Academic Press (Elsevier).
3. Shachak, A. and Reis, S. The computer-assisted patient consultation: promises and challenges. In: S. Kabene (ed.) Healthcare and the effect of technology: developments, challenges and advancements (pp. 72-83). IGI Global: Hershey, PA, USA.
Conference proceedings
1. Shachak,, Domb, S., Reis, S., Borycki, E., Kushniruk, A., & Ziv, A. (2013, April 28). Computer-Based Simulation for Enhancing Patient-Clinician Communication in Computerized Settings. Paper presented at the CHI 2013 Workshop on Patient-Clinician Communication: The Roadmap for Human-Computer Interaction, Paris, France. http://care.cs.columbia.edu/chi2013health/CRPapers/Shachak.pdf
2. Dow,, Montgomery, C., Barnsley, J., Tu, K., Jadad, A. R., Lemieux-Charles, L., & Shachack, A. (2012, April 25-27). Preliminary findings from a multiple case study exploring the links between end-user support and electronic medical record success Paper presented at the Advances in Health Informatics Conference (AHIC), Toronto, Canada.
3. O’Grady, , Betel, L., & Shachack, A. (2010, February 6-10). Sensemaking and credibility of health information in online message forums: a multi-method study assessing tagging and tag clouds. Paper presented at the CSCW reasearch in healthcare: past present and future workshop, ACM Conference on Computer Supported Collaborative Work (CSCW), Savannah, Georgia. http://sites.google.com/site/cscwinhc/accepted/O%27Grady_CSCW10.doc?attredirects=0
4. Peleg,, Shachack, A., Wang, D., Sender, H., Shenhav, S., & Karnieli, E. (2007, June 7). Using multi-perspective methodologies to study user interactions with the front-end of a guideline-based decision-support system for diabetic-foot care Paper presented at the Human factors Engineering in Health Informatics, Aarhus, Denmark. [CA]
5. Shachack,, Hadas-Dayagi, M., Ziv, A., & Reis, S. (2007, June 7). A cognitive task analysis of primary care physicians’ use of electronic medical records: implications for design. Paper presented at the Human factors Engineering in Health Informatics (HFE2007), Aarhus, Denmark.
6. Shachack,, Ziv, A., & Reis, S. (2006, October 16). Physicians use of electronic medical records: a cognitive task analysis. Paper presented at the Israel Association for Information Systems (ILAIS) Conference, Haifa, Israel. http://ilais.openu.ac.il/wp/wp- content/uploads/2006/10/Shachak-Ziv-Reis-ILAIS2006.pdf
7. Bar-Ilan, J., Shoham, S., Idan, A., Miller, Y., & Shachack, A. (2006, May 23-26). Structured vs. unstructured tagging – a case study. Paper presented at the Collaborative Web Tagging Workshop, 15th International World Wide Web Conference, Edinbourgh, Scotland.
Supervision
Practica
- University of Toronto, Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation. Plumaletta Berry. EMR benefits realization project. Academic supervisor for practicum, supported by MITACS- Accelerate Ontario program. Summer 2009.
- University of Toronto, Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation. Shamsa Jiwani. Transitioning mental health and addictions organizations toward web-based electronic solutions Academic supervisor for practicum, supported by MITACS- Accelerate Ontario program. Summer 2009.
- University of Toronto, Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation. Samer Elamrousy. EMR-sim: computer-based simulation for enhancing Family Medicine residents’ competence in computerized settings. Summer+Fall 2013.
- University of Toronto, Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation. Linda Kaleis. Increasing Patient Engagement and Informing Marketing Decisions through the use of Patient Personas and Patient Journey Mapping. Academic supervisor for practicum, supported by MITACS- Accelerate Ontario program. Summer 2017.
Master’s theses
- University of Toronto, Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation. Noah Crampton. Developing and administering an educational intervention to novice clinical trainee electronic medical record users to increase documentation data quality: a Canadian pilot study (in progress).
- University of Toronto, Faculty of Information. Natalie Yeung. Multimedia in electronic health records: current status and user acceptance. Master of Information (MI) thesis; 2011.
- University of Toronto, Faculty of Information. Rustam Dow. The affects of end-user support on the categories of electronic medical record success across systems in Ontario Family Health Teams. Master of Information (MI) thesis; 2012.
Doctoral
- University of Toronto, Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation. Claudia Lai, Engaging patients on health specific social media platforms (in progress).
- University of Toronto, Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation. Francine Buchanan. Physicians’ use of information provided by parents of children with medical complexities: a qualitative study and measurement development (in progress).
- University of Toronto, Faculty of Information. Tamara Bahr. Teaching digital professionalism in post graduate medical education (working title; in progress).
- University of Toronto, Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation. Vidhi Thakaar. The relationships between perceived e-health literacy and preferred role in treatment decision making of glaucoma patients (in progress; co-supervisor with Prof. Raisa Deber)
- University of Toronto, Institute of Medical science Paul Kudlow, Institute of Medical Science. TrendMD: A peer-reviewed content discovery platform (in progress; co-supervisor).
- University of Victoria, School of Health information Science. Gurprit Randhawa. Evaluating the effects of a multi-faceted post-implementation EMR training intervention for diabetes care management in primary care (in progress; co-supervisor with Prof. Karen Courtney).

Aviv Shachak

Aviv Shachak

Education

Research Description

Selected Publications

Supervision