Studies in health technology and informatics
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2013
Engineering natural language processing solutions for structured information from clinical text: extracting sentinel events from palliative care consult letters.
Despite a trend to formalize and codify medical information, natural language communications still play a prominent role in health care workflows, in particular when it comes to hand-overs between providers. Natural language processing (NLP) attempts to bridge the gap between informal, natural language information and coded, machine-interpretable data. This paper reports on a study that applies an advanced NLP method for the extraction of sentinel events in palliative care consult letters. ⋯ A random selection of 215 anonymized consult letters was used for the study. The results of the NLP extraction were evaluated by comparison with coded sentinel event data captured independently by clinicians. The average accuracy of the automated extraction was 73.6%.
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2013
Analysis of the interface and data transfer from ICU to normal wards in a German University Hospital.
Typically general wards and intensive care units (ICU) have very different labor organizations, structures and IT-systems in Germany. There is a need for coordination, because of the different working arrangements. Our team investigated the interface between ICU and general ward and especially the respective information transfer in the University hospital in Erlangen (Bavaria, Germany). ⋯ In a second step, we investigate the requirements of data transmission in expert interviews. A data transfer concept from the perspective of the nurses and physicians was developed and we formulated recommendations for improvements of process and communication for this interface. Finally the data transfer concept was evaluated by the respondents.
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Handheld technology finds slowly its place in the healthcare world. Some clinicians already use intensively dedicated mobile applications to consult clinical references. However, handheld technology hasn't still broadly embraced to the core of the healthcare business, the hospitals. ⋯ To answer these questions, we have set up a field study to compare users' performances on three different user interfaces while recording vital signs. Some user interfaces were familiar to users, and others were totally innovative. Results showed that users' familiarity with smartphone influences their performances and that users improve their performances by repeating a task.
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2013
Utilizing electronic health record data to determine the health of the medication process after the relocation of a children's hospital.
Hospital relocation is a highly complex undertaking, which has the potential to interrupt operations and poses risks for patients, staff, and providers. Little is known how hospital relocation impacts on workflow and communication. ⋯ Overall performance of the medication process has declined slightly. We identified regional (unit) differences with the pediatric intensive care unit, which had the most significant changes to its workflow, experiencing a more than doubling of the time from ordering to medication administration. Overall, there was no significant difference in time-sensitive medication administration times. Evaluating the medication ordering-dispensing-administration process through readily available EHR data demonstrated that the impact of a hospital' s relocation on workflow and communication can be successfully monitored.
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Population ageing is the demographic process that characterises the first half of the twenty-first century. Australia's population is already ageing and the states and territories are ageing at different rates. ⋯ In this paper we discuss how a spatially informed health information management system could support population ageing and the disconnected systems that address ageing. We illustrate this with examples from our work to show how spatial informatics can advance our understanding of and response to the implications of population ageing.