Method Inform Med
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Comparative Study
Respiratory variability during different auditory stimulation periods in schizophrenia patients.
Schizophrenic patients are known to have difficulty processing emotions and to exhibit impairment in stimuli discrimination. However, there is limited knowledge regarding their physiological responsivity to auditory stimuli. ⋯ Further studies are needed to correlate respiratory differences with emotionally evocative stimuli and to refine our understanding of the dynamics of these types of stimuli in relation to clinical state and medication effects.
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Physicians dedicate approximately a quarter of daily work to documentation. Completeness and speed of medical documentation processes are important parameters, because they can affect quality of healthcare. ⋯ Monitoring of completeness and speed of medical documentation is feasible and can provide quantitative information on these processes.
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The ratio of observed to expected mortality (standardized mortality ratio, SMR), is a key indicator of quality of care. We use PreControl Charts to investigate SMR behavior over time of an existing tree-model for predicting mortality in intensive care units (ICUs) and its implications for hospital ranking. We compare the results to those of a logistic regression model. ⋯ Although the tree-model has seemingly a longer shelf life than the logistic regression model, its SMR may be less useful for quality of care assessment as it insufficiently responds to changes in the population over time.
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We previously devised and published a guideline for reporting health informatics evaluation studies named STARE-HI, which is formally endorsed by IMIA and EFMI. ⋯ We produced a ranked list of reporting items from STARE-HI according to their prioritized relevance for inclusion in space-limited conference papers. The priority adjusted completeness scores demonstrated room for improvement for the analyzed conference papers. We believe that this prioritization framework is an aid to improving the quality and utility of conference papers on health informatics evaluation studies.
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Healthcare professionals in hospital care increasingly use small-screen handheld computers. Studies that have investigated doctors' concerns about handheld usage have mainly focused on technical, organizational and performance issues. Very few have looked at the effects of Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) on the interaction between physician and patient. ⋯ Despite the many benefits, PDA usage at the point-of-care comes with the increased risk of distractions for physicians and can cause a negative patient experience. Designers of point-of-care systems need to be aware of, and address, the problems with handhelds and learn from the attributes and access capabilities of paper charts.