Bmc Med Inform Decis
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Bmc Med Inform Decis · Jan 2013
National survey focusing on the crucial information needs of intensive care charge nurses and intensivists: same goal, different demands.
Although information technology adequately supports clinical care in many intensive care units (ICUs), it provides much poorer support for the managerial information needed to coordinate multi-professional care. To gain a general view of the most crucial multi-professional information needs of ICU shift leaders a national survey was conducted, focusing on the information needs of charge nurses and intensivists. ⋯ The reliability and validity of our survey was found to be good. Our study findings show that care coordination at an ICU is a collaborative process among ICU shift leaders with multiprofessional information needs related to organisation and management, patient admission, and allocation of staff resources. Study findings can be used to identify the most crucial information needs of ICU shift leaders when new information technology is developed to support managerial decision-making during care coordination.
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Bmc Med Inform Decis · Jan 2013
Generic medicines: an evaluation of the accuracy and accessibility of information available on the Internet.
Internationally, generic medicines are increasingly seen as a key strategy to reduce healthcare expenditure, therefore awareness and knowledge transfer regarding generic medicines are valid areas of research. Although the Internet is a frequently used source of medical information, the accuracy of material found online is variable. The aim of this study was to evaluate information provided on the Internet regarding generic medicines in terms of quality of information and readability. ⋯ This novel evaluation of websites providing information on generic medicines showed that, of the websites likely to be seen by a searcher, none demonstrated a combination of scoring highly on quality of information (as evinced by WQA score) and readability. Therefore, there is a gap in online knowledge provision on this topic which, if filled by a website designed using the WQA tool developed in this study, has an improved likelihood of ranking highly in google.com search results.
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Bmc Med Inform Decis · Jan 2013
ReviewSystematic review of clinical decision support interventions with potential for inpatient cost reduction.
Healthcare costs are increasing rapidly and at an unsustainable rate in many countries, and inpatient hospitalizations are a significant driver of these costs. Clinical decision support (CDS) represents a promising approach to not only improve care but to reduce costs in the inpatient setting. The purpose of this study was to systematically review trials of CDS interventions with the potential to reduce inpatient costs, so as to identify promising interventions for more widespread implementation and to inform future research in this area. ⋯ Significantly more research is required on the impact of clinical decision support on inpatient costs. In particular, there is a remarkable gap in the availability of cost effectiveness studies required by policy makers and decision makers in healthcare systems.
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Bmc Med Inform Decis · Jan 2013
Review Case ReportsThe challenges of implementing a telestroke network: a systematic review and case study.
The use of telemedicine in acute stroke care can facilitate rapid access to treatment, but the work required to embed any new technology into routine practice is often hidden, and can be challenging. We aimed to collate recommendations and resources to support telestroke implementation. ⋯ Information to guide telestroke implementation is sparse, but available. By using multiple sources of data, sufficient information was collated to construct a web-based toolkit detailing implementation tasks, resources and challenges in the development of a telestroke system for assessment and thrombolysis delivery in acute care. The toolkit is freely available online.
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Bmc Med Inform Decis · Jan 2013
Comparative StudyMeasuring preferences for analgesic treatment for cancer pain: how do African-Americans and Whites perform on choice-based conjoint (CBC) analysis experiments?
Conjoint Analysis (CA) can serve as an important tool to study health disparities and unique factors underlying decision-making in diverse subgroups. However, methodological advancements are needed in exploiting this application of CA. We compared the internal and external predictive validity and inter-temporal stability of Choice-based-Conjoint (CBC) analysis between African-Americans and Whites in the clinical context of preferences for analgesic treatment for cancer pain. ⋯ While we found slight group differences, overall the internal and external predictive validity of CBC was comparable between African-Americans and Whites. We discuss some areas to investigate and improve internal and external predictive validity of CBC experiments.