Method Inform Med
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Our objective was to design and develop a mobile clinical decision support system for emergency triage of different acute pain presentations. The system should interact with existing hospital information systems, run on mobile computing devices (handheld computers) and be suitable for operation in weak-connectivity conditions (with unstable connections between mobile clients and a server). ⋯ The MET system captures the necessary hospital data, allows for entry of patient information, and provides triage support. By operating on handheld computers, it fits into the regular emergency department workflow without introducing any hindrances or disruptions. It supports triage anytime and anywhere, directly at the point of care, and also can be used as an electronic patient chart, facilitating structured data collection.
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This study aimed at gaining comprehensive information on the current status of patient care and management applications used in German acute hospitals. Since the degree of ICT coverage in hospitals depends on the attitude of the key decision makers we also wanted to capture their plans and priorities and herewith try to predict future use. ⋯ There is still a preponderance of management-oriented systems in German hospitals, yet clinical applications, in particular those supporting communications, will gain ground. The future of documentation systems is unclear, unless they not only provide statistical data for the management but support the clinical process properly.
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To review recent research efforts in the field of ubiquitous computing in health care. To identify current research trends and further challenges for medical informatics. ⋯ Several publications demonstrate the potential of ubiquitous computing to enhance effectiveness of health services delivery and organization. But ubiquitous computing is also a societal challenge, caused by the surrounding but unobtrusive character of this technology. Contributions from nearly all of the established sub-disciplines of medical informatics are demanded to turn the visions of this promising new research field into reality.
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CLEF is an MRC sponsored project in the E-Science programme that aims to establish methodologies and a technical infrastructure for the next generation of integrated clinical and bioscience research. ⋯ Once evaluated, it is hoped that the CLEF approach can serve as a model for other distributed electronic health record repositories to be accessed for research.