Bmc Med Inform Decis
-
Bmc Med Inform Decis · Jan 2012
Attitudes among healthcare professionals towards ICT and home follow-up in chronic heart failure care.
eHealth applications for out-of-hospital monitoring and treatment follow-up have been advocated for many years as a promising tool to improve treatment compliance, promote individualized care and obtain a person-centred care. Despite these benefits and a large number of promising projects, a major breakthrough in everyday care is generally still lacking. Inappropriate organization for eHealth technology, reluctance from users in the introduction of new working methods, and resistance to information and communication technology (ICT) in general could be reasons for this. Another reason may be attitudes towards the potential in out-of-hospital eHealth applications. It is therefore of interest to study the general opinions among healthcare professionals to ICT in healthcare, as well as the attitudes towards using ICT as a tool for patient monitoring and follow-up at home. One specific area of interest is in-home follow-up of elderly patients with chronic heart failure (CHF). The aim of this paper is to investigate the attitudes towards ICT, as well as distance monitoring and follow-up, among healthcare professionals working with this patient group. ⋯ The results indicate that a majority of the healthcare professionals in this study are positive to both current and future use of ICT tools in healthcare and home follow-up. Consequently other factors have to play an important role in the slow penetration of out-of-hospital eHealth applications in daily healthcare practice.
-
Bmc Med Inform Decis · Jan 2012
Identification of pneumonia and influenza deaths using the Death Certificate Pipeline.
Death records are a rich source of data, which can be used to assist with public surveillance and/or decision support. However, to use this type of data for such purposes it has to be transformed into a coded format to make it computable. Because the cause of death in the certificates is reported as free text, encoding the data is currently the single largest barrier of using death certificates for surveillance. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to demonstrate the feasibility of using a pipeline, composed of a detection rule and a natural language processor, for the real time encoding of death certificates using the identification of pneumonia and influenza cases as an example and demonstrating that its accuracy is comparable to existing methods. ⋯ The pipeline proposed here for coding death certificates and the detection of cases is feasible and can be extended to other conditions. This method provides an alternative that allows for coding free-text death certificates in real time that may increase its utilization not only in the public health domain but also for biomedical researchers and developers.
-
Bmc Med Inform Decis · Jan 2012
Developing open source, self-contained disease surveillance software applications for use in resource-limited settings.
Emerging public health threats often originate in resource-limited countries. In recognition of this fact, the World Health Organization issued revised International Health Regulations in 2005, which call for significantly increased reporting and response capabilities for all signatory nations. Electronic biosurveillance systems can improve the timeliness of public health data collection, aid in the early detection of and response to disease outbreaks, and enhance situational awareness. ⋯ OpenESSENCE and ESSENCE Desktop Edition are two open-source software products with the capability of significantly improving disease surveillance in a wide range of resource-limited settings. These products, and other emerging surveillance technologies, can assist resource-limited countries compliance with the revised International Health Regulations.
-
Bmc Med Inform Decis · Jan 2012
Comparative StudyUsers' perspectives of key factors to implementing electronic health records in Canada: a Delphi study.
Interoperable electronic health record (EHR) solutions are currently being implemented in Canada, as in many other countries. Understanding EHR users' perspectives is key to the success of EHR implementation projects. This Delphi study aimed to assess in the Canadian context the applicability, the importance, and the priority of pre-identified factors from a previous mixed-methods systematic review of international literature. ⋯ Amongst all factors influencing EHR implementation identified in a previous systematic review, ten were prioritized through this Delphi study. The varying levels of agreement between and within user groups could mean that users' perspectives of each factor are complex and that each user group has unique professional priorities and roles in the EHR implementation process. As more EHR implementations in Canada are completed it will be possible to corroborate this preliminary result with a larger population of EHR users.
-
Bmc Med Inform Decis · Jan 2012
ReviewAdvancing clinical decision support using lessons from outside of healthcare: an interdisciplinary systematic review.
Greater use of computerized decision support (DS) systems could address continuing safety and quality problems in healthcare, but the healthcare field has struggled to implement DS technology. This study surveys DS experience across multiple non-healthcare disciplines for new insights that are generalizable to healthcare provider decisions. In particular, it sought design principles and lessons learned from the other disciplines that could inform efforts to accelerate the adoption of clinical decision support (CDS). ⋯ Complex, high-level decision-making has common features across disciplines as seemingly disparate as defense, business, and healthcare. National efforts to advance the health information technology agenda through broader CDS adoption could benefit by applying the DS principles identified in this review.