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 1993
Improving the efficiency of patient recruitment with an automated telephone screening system in a client-server environment.
An automated telephone screening system was implemented at the Baltimore VA Hospital on a Local Area Network (LAN) to evaluate older adults for the GRECC research program. Using the system for decision support, a registered nurse (RN) placed 117 phone calls to older adults in the Baltimore community over a 3 month period. The modular design of the system allowed tracking of inclusion and exclusion criteria which was shared by clinicians and researchers. ⋯ Effectiveness is defined as avoiding under--or over--screening. Using the telephone system, it is estimated the research team saved over $6,000.00 in unnecessary medical evaluation in a 3 months period. As the system develops, the process by which older adults are assessed for research programs in the Geriatrics Service at the Baltimore VAMC will provide additional cost efficiencies.
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Proc Annu Symp Comput Appl Med Care · Jan 1993
Words or concepts: the features of indexing units and their optimal use in information retrieval.
Words or Concepts, which are a better choice for indexing the contents of documents? The answer depends on what method is used for retrieval. This paper studies the effects of using canonical concepts versus document words in different retrieval systems with a testing collection of MEDLINE documents. ⋯ For a system which depends on the UMLS synonym set for a mapping from queries or documents to canonical concepts, the retrieval results were slightly better than the case of not using the synonyms, but still worse than the systems using words. For the systems which automatically "learn" empirical connections between words and concepts from examples in the testing collection, the vocabulary problem was effectively solved, and the results of using concepts were competitive or better, compared to those using words.
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Proc Annu Symp Comput Appl Med Care · Jan 1992
Digital patient records and the medical desktop: an integrated physician workstation for medical informatics training.
The Institute of Medicine and others have advocated a shift from a paper-based to an electronic medical record and many authorities have advanced the concept of a physician workstation that can provide access to a wide variety of both clinically and reference oriented medical information. We have developed a working model of an integrated physician workstation based on a graphically oriented "Medical Desktop," for personal computers. ⋯ It contains an on-line help system that facilitates use and allows access to all the systems' capabilities. This system has been used to teach students and physicians the methods and potential of computer-based medical information management to prepare them for the impact of computers in their practices and educate them concerning the imperative for the involvement of all health care providers in implementing these changes.
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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.