Studies in health technology and informatics
-
Assessment of vital signs is an essential part of surveillance of critically ill patients to detect condition changes and clinical deterioration. While most modern electronic medical records allow for vitals to be recorded in a structured format, the frequency and quality of what is electronically stored may differ from how often these measures are actually recorded. We created a tool that extracts blood pressure, heart rate, temperature, respiratory rate, blood oxygen saturation, and pain level from nursing and other clinical notes recorded in the course of inpatient care to supplement structured vital sign data.
-
Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2015
Innovative Information Systems in the Intensive Care Unit, King Saud Medical City in Saudi Arabia.
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the experience of implementing innovative information technology to improve the quality of services in one of the largest Intensive Care Units in Saudi Arabia. The Intensive Care Units in King Saud Medical City (ICU-KSMC) is the main ICU in the kingdom that represents the Ministry of Health. ⋯ By 2015, ICU in KSMC has noticed a remarkable improvement in: beds' occupation and utilization, staff communication, reduced medical errors, and improved departmental work flow, which created a healthy professional work environment. Yet, ICU in KSMC has ongoing improvement projects that include future plans for more innovative information technologies' implementation in the department.
-
Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2015
Making an APPropriate Care Program for Indigenous Cardiac Disease: Customization of an Existing Cardiac Rehabilitation Program.
Cardiovascular disease is a major health problem for all Australians and is the leading cause of death in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. In 2010, more then 50% of all heart attack deaths were due to repeated events. Cardiac rehabilitation programs have been proven to be effective in preventing the recurrence of cardiac events and readmission to hospitals. ⋯ To address these barriers, CSIRO developed an IT enabled cardiac rehabilitation program delivered by mobile phone through a smartphone app and succesfully trialed it in an urban general population. If these results can be replicated in Indigenous populations, the program has the potential to significantly improve life expectancy and help close the gap in health outcomes. The challenge described in this paper is customizing the existing cardiac health program to make it culturally relevant and suitable for Indigenous Australians living in urban and remote communities.
-
Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2015
Review Meta AnalysisIdentification of Patient Safety Risks Associated with Electronic Health Records: A Software Quality Perspective.
Although Electronic Health Records (EHR) can offer benefits to the health care process, there is a growing body of evidence that these systems can also incur risks to patient safety when developed or used improperly. This work is a literature review to identify these risks from a software quality perspective. ⋯ This work elucidates the fact that EHR quality problems can adversely affect patient safety, resulting in errors such as incorrect patient identification, incorrect calculation of medication dosages, and lack of access to patient data. Therefore, the risks presented here provide the basis for developers and EHR regulating bodies to pay attention to the quality aspects of these systems that can result in patient harm.