Studies in health technology and informatics
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2000
Comparative StudyComparison of manual and automated documentation of adverse events with an Anesthesia Information Management System (AIMS).
In this study, an Anesthesia Information Management System (AIMS) is used for the comparison of manually recorded adverse events with automatically detected events from anesthesiological procedures. In 1998, data from all anesthesia procedures, including the data set for quality assurance defined by the German Society of Anesthesiology and Intensive Care Medicine (DGAI), were recorded online with the documentation software NarkoData 4 (IMESO GmbH, Hüttenberg, Germany) followed by storage into a relational database (Oracle Corporation). The occurrence of manually recorded adverse events, as defined by the DGAI, is compared with automatically detected events. ⋯ Data obtained from 16,019 electronic anesthesia records show that in 911 patients (5.7%), one of the selected adverse events was documented manually whereas in 2,996 patients (18.7%) a adverse event was detected automatically. The incidence of automatically detected events is obviously higher compared to manually recorded events. With the help of an AIMS, automatic detection proved significant deficiencies in the manual documentation of adverse events.
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2000
Design principles of a clinical information system for intensive care units (ICUData).
The aim of this project was to develop a cost-effective, standard-based and scalable clinical information system for use in Intensive Care Units (ICUs). The development started in 1998 at the University Giessen, Germany. ⋯ The implementation of the system in two further ICUs is scheduled for the year 2000. The following article describes some of the principal design goals of the system, including the medical vision that drove its interface design, and focuses on the technological underpinnings of the overall system architecture.
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2000
Opportunities for improving quality in the health care industry.
This paper discusses the current state of health care quality and describes some of the factors that are hindering efforts to move toward evidence-based practice. The President's Advisory Commission on Consumer Protection and Quality spent one year looking at the state of health care quality and developed a set of recommendations to tackle the serious quality problem in the health care industry. The Institute of Medicine has started an initiative, Quality of Health Care in America Project, which is addressing many of the quality of care areas identified by the President's Advisory Commission on Consumer Protection and Quality. This paper discusses the work of these two groups and concludes with key issues in the advancement of quality health care.
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This paper will describe a suite of surgical simulators that we have designed and implemented to run on the WWW. The procedures that have been modelled include simulations of ventricular catheterisation, and lumbar puncture. We will present a detailed overview of implementation and operation of these simulators, and indicate results from early use. The advantages and disadvantages of our approach will be discussed.
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2000
AUDIX: a knowledge-based system for speech-therapeutic auditory discrimination exercises.
AUDIX is a knowledge-based multimedia system for auditory discrimination exercises. The aim of AUDIX is to provide patients with a computer-based therapy system which they can use between sessions with the human therapist, at home on an 'on-demand' basis. It is centered around computer based cognitive rehabilitation therapy whereas most existing programs in this area are only used for assessment. ⋯ The system provides computer-based auditory discrimination training. Through the knowledge-based design the domain dependent therapy knowledge is separated from the system core and provides a way for the therapist to add new knowledge, as new stimuli, or to create a new knowledge base to provide special exercises for an individual patient. The AUDIX architecture is described and the advantages of computer-based therapy are discussed.