Proceedings / the ... Annual Symposium on Computer Application [sic] in Medical Care. Symposium on Computer Applications in Medical Care
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Proc Annu Symp Comput Appl Med Care · Jan 1991
Use of DHCP to provide essential information for care and management of HIV patients.
The Department of Veterans' Affairs (VA) has reported over 10,000 Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) cases since the beginning of the epidemic. These cases were distributed throughout 152 of the VA's network of 172 medical centers and outpatient clinics. ⋯ This paper describes a new application within DHCP known as the VA's HIV Registry. This project addresses the need to support clinical information as well as the added need to manage the resources necessary to care for HIV patients.
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Proc Annu Symp Comput Appl Med Care · Jan 1991
The design of a user interface for a ventilator-management advisor.
The lack of user acceptance for many medical decision-support systems should force medical software developers to rethink strategies for user interaction with decision-support programs. Participatory design is an emerging method for the development for computer applications that emphasizes user involvement in both the design and implementation phases. ⋯ In this paper, we present a case history of the participatory design process and describe the resulting interface for the VentPlan program. As a result of applying participatory design ideas, we gained insight as to how to implement VentPlan more effectively.
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Proc Annu Symp Comput Appl Med Care · Jan 1991
Exploring a hospital-wide database: integrating statistical functions with ClinQuery.
Routinely collected clinical data are a valuable source of information for clinical epidemiology, health services research, and outcomes research. To explore, graph, and analyze such a large amount of material easily, one needs three kind of tools: a database management system, graphic displays, and statistical software. ⋯ To address this issue we have integrated new exploratory modules with ClinQuery, a user-friendly computer program for online searching of clinical data. In this paper we describe some of the newly implemented graphics and statistical functions, along with practical examples of the way they may be used.
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Proc Annu Symp Comput Appl Med Care · Jan 1991
PREOP: development of an evidence-based expert system to assist with preoperative assessments.
PREOP is a prototype expert system that is designed to provide physicians with evidence-based recommendations concerning the assessment and care of patients with comorbid medical problems who are about to undergo surgery. The knowledgebase for this system is currently undergoing transition from the conventional advice of medical experts, which is variably related to evidence published in the medical literature, to a more formal approach in which the best available evidence is used for each recommendation and the quality of the evidence made apparent to the user. This work seeks to address important questions concerning improvement of the information contained in expert knowledgebases, namely, how to find and recognize new evidence when it is published, how to assess the quality of evidence in a uniform and efficient fashion, how to replace evidence in the knowledgebase efficiently when it has been superseded by higher quality evidence, and how to represent evidence in a manner that is most valuable for the user.
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Proc Annu Symp Comput Appl Med Care · Jan 1991
A flexible system for vital signs monitoring in hospital general care wards based on the integration of UNIX-based workstations, standard networks and portable vital signs monitors.
The article describes a study conducted on general surgical and thoracic surgical floors of a 1000-bed hospital to assess the impact of a new network for portable patient care devices. This network was developed to address the needs of hospital patients who need constant, multi-parameter, vital signs surveillance, but do not require intensive nursing care. ⋯ A disk-based log within the workstation automatically collected performance data, including patient demographics, monitor alarms, and network status for analysis. The log has allowed the developers to evaluate the use and performance of the system.