Bmc Med Inform Decis
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Bmc Med Inform Decis · Jan 2015
Care episode retrieval: distributional semantic models for information retrieval in the clinical domain.
Patients' health related information is stored in electronic health records (EHRs) by health service providers. These records include sequential documentation of care episodes in the form of clinical notes. EHRs are used throughout the health care sector by professionals, administrators and patients, primarily for clinical purposes, but also for secondary purposes such as decision support and research. ⋯ Two novel methods are introduced that utilize the ICD-10 codes attached to care episodes to better induce domain-specificity in the semantic model. We report on experimental evaluation of care episode retrieval that circumvents the lack of human judgements regarding episode relevance. Results suggest that several of the methods proposed outperform a state-of-the art search engine (Lucene) on the retrieval task.
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Bmc Med Inform Decis · Aug 2014
ReviewPublication trends of shared decision making in 15 high impact medical journals: a full-text review with bibliometric analysis.
Shared Decision Making (SDM) is increasingly advocated as a model for medical decision making. However, there is still low use of SDM in clinical practice. High impact factor journals might represent an efficient way for its dissemination. We aimed to identify and characterize publication trends of SDM in 15 high impact medical journals. ⋯ This review in full-text showed that SDM publications increased exponentially in major medical journals from 1996 to 2011. This growth might reflect an increased dissemination of the SDM concept to the medical community.
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Bmc Med Inform Decis · Jul 2014
Randomized Controlled TrialThe challenges of real-world implementation of web-based shared care software: the HopSCOTCH Shared-Care Obesity Trial in Children.
E-health initiatives hold promise to improve shared-care models of health care. In 2008-2011 we developed and trialled web-based software to facilitate a randomised trial of a shared-care approach for childhood obesity involving General Practitioners (GPs) working with tertiary specialists. We describe the software's development, implementation and evaluation, and make recommendations for future e-health initiatives. The web-based software was designed with the goals of allowing both GPs and specialists to communicate and review patient progress; integrating with existing GP software; and supporting GPs to deliver the structured intervention. Specifically, we aimed to highlight the challenges inherent in this process, and report on the extent to which the software ultimately met its implementation and user aims. ⋯ GPs are willing to embrace novel technologies to support their practice. However, implementation remains challenging mainly for technical reasons, and this precludes further evaluation of potential user-specific barriers. These findings could inform future e-health ventures into shared-care, and highlight the need for an appropriate infrastructure.
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Bmc Med Inform Decis · May 2014
An adaptive Kalman filter approach for cardiorespiratory signal extraction and fusion of non-contacting sensors.
Extracting cardiorespiratory signals from non-invasive and non-contacting sensor arrangements, i.e. magnetic induction sensors, is a challenging task. The respiratory and cardiac signals are mixed on top of a large and time-varying offset and are likely to be disturbed by measurement noise. Basic filtering techniques fail to extract relevant information for monitoring purposes. ⋯ It is possible to measure in real-time heart and breathing rates using an adaptive Kalman filter approach. Adapting the Kalman filter matrices improves the estimation results and makes the filter universally deployable when measuring cardiorespiratory signals.
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Bmc Med Inform Decis · Apr 2014
A cross-sectional survey assessing the acceptability and feasibility of self-report electronic data collection about health risks from patients attending an Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Service.
Aboriginal Australians experience significantly worse health and a higher burden of chronic disease than non-Aboriginal Australians. Electronic self-report data collection is a systematic means of collecting data about health risk factors which could help to overcome screening barriers and assist in the provision of preventive health care. Yet this approach has not been tested in an Aboriginal health care setting. Therefore, the aim of this study was to examine the acceptability and feasibility of a health risk questionnaire administered on a touch screen laptop computer for patients attending an Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Service (ACCHS). ⋯ Results indicate that the use of a touch screen questionnaire to collect information from patients about health risk factors affecting Aboriginal Australians is feasible and acceptable in the ACCHS setting. This approach has potential to improve identification and management of at-risk individuals, therein providing significant opportunities to reduce the burden of disease among Aboriginal Australians.