Studies in health technology and informatics
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2008
Using ESB and BPEL for evolving healthcare systems towards SOA.
Healthcare organizations often face the challenge of integrating diverse and geographically disparate information technology systems to respond to changing requirements and to exploit the capabilities of modern technologies. Hence, systems evolution, through modification and extension of the existing information technology infrastructure, becomes a necessity. This paper takes a process perspective of healthcare delivery within and across organizational boundaries and the presents a disciplined approach for evolving healthcare systems towards a service-oriented architecture using the enterprise system bus middleware technology for resolving integration issues and the business process execution language for supporting collaboration requirements.
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2008
Telemedicine for home health and the new patient: when do we really need to go to the hospital?
This chapter will review the current state-of-the-art of home health services in the telemedicine environment. Two aspects in particular will be discussed that reflect where most of the efforts in home telehealth care are being directed. ⋯ In this application, the users may be patients with chronic conditions such as asthma or diabetes that require regular monitoring to achieve or maintain healthy functioning, but they are typically not in an acute phase. More and more often, however, the users of distance monitoring technologies are relatively healthy people looking to enhance their health awareness and healthy status by monitoring various vital signs to alert them of any potential changes in their health status that would require actual medical attention.
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2008
An artificial neural network derived trauma outcome prediction score as an aid to triage for non-clinicians.
In mass casualty events Emergency Medical Service Providers (EMS) choose treatment at Scene or a "scoop and run" approach. The latter requires clinically trained personnel at the reception site to triage patients. Current methodology based on Revised Trauma Score (tRTS) requires use of Glasgow Coma Scale, a method reliant on experience and clinical knowledge. ⋯ Models performed well in predicting mortality compared to standard outcome predictors. Possible additional variables such as gender or ethnicity might improve the Neural Network predictive ability. Pulse appears an essential variable not recorded by the NTDB.
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Cross-border activities in health care in the European single market are increasing. Many of these cross-border developments are related to e-Health. E-Health describes the application of information and communication technologies across the whole range of functions that affect the health care sector. ⋯ More and clear guidelines on the reimbursement criteria for telemedicine and on liability would also be very useful. Guidance at the European level can be given as to the criteria that (tele-) health sessions will have to comply with for reimbursement purposes, since it is still unclear when e-Health sessions will be reimbursed. It is clear that the existing European legal framework is not finished yet and that more specific European rules are needed.
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2008
Open source electronic health record and patient data management system for intensive care.
In Intensive Care Units, the amount of data to be processed for patients care, the turn over of the patients, the necessity for reliability and for review processes indicate the use of Patient Data Management Systems (PDMS) and electronic health records (EHR). To respond to the needs of an Intensive Care Unit and not to be locked with proprietary software, we developed a PDMS and EHR based on open source software and components. ⋯ The developed system based on open source software components was able to respond to the medical needs of the local ICU environment. The use of OSS for development allowed us to customize the software to the preexisting organization and contributed to the acceptability of the whole system.