Studies in health technology and informatics
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2013
Exploring the potential of an electronic documentation system to reduce length of stay.
Electronic patient records are important in patient data management. Aim of this 2-year study was to investigate the effect of an e-documentation system on the ED length of stay. The study compared three length of stay parameters with and without the use of a prototype e-documentation system. 99 of trauma patients were monitored with the use of the electronic system and 101 patients (control group) were monitored with traditional methods. ⋯ Similar effect was also found to the total ED length of stay (127±93 vs. 206±41 minutes) and time between completion of care and ED exit (26±10 vs. 57±23 minutes). LOS was reduced with the e-documentation system. This is important for the quality of trauma patient care, since saving time during the first hours after the accident usually determines the outcome of trauma patients.
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Critically injured patients are often found in unusual positions and environments which can hinder the first responder's access to render necessary care. This work describes the use of the videolaryngoscope in airway management of the critically injured patient under unusual conditions.
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2013
Towards large-scale data analysis: challenges in the design of portable systems and use of Cloud computing.
Portable systems and global communications open a broad spectrum for new health applications. In the framework of electrophysiological applications, several challenges are faced when developing portable systems embedded in Cloud computing services. In order to facilitate new developers in this area based on our experience, five areas of interest are presented in this paper where strategies can be applied for improving the performance of portable systems: transducer and conditioning, processing, wireless communications, battery and power management. Likewise, for Cloud services, scalability, portability, privacy and security guidelines have been highlighted.
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2013
Use of knowledge discovery techniques to understand nurse practitioner practice patterns and their integration into a healthcare system.
The objective of this study is to assess the feasibility of applying knowledge discovery techniques to identifying nurse practitioner practice patterns and enacted scope of practice. For the research, we plan to use data extracted from a Ministry of Health database. The data items are focused around: nurse practitioner demographics, health authorities, and encounter types. This analysis produces patterns that indicate relationships between the demographics, scope of practice and practice settings of nurse practitioners working in British Columbia.
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2013
Architecture of a prehospital emergency patient care report system (PEPRS).
In recent years, prehospital emergency care adapted to the technology shift towards tablet computers and mobile computing. In particular, electronic patient care report (e-PCR) systems gained considerable attention and adoption in prehospital emergency medicine [1]. On the other hand, hospital information systems are already widely adopted. ⋯ Aim of this project is to describe a generic architecture which can be used to implement data transfer and integration of pre hospital emergency care reports to hospital information systems. In summary, the prototype was able to integrate data in a standardized manner. The devised methods can be used design generic software for prehospital to hospital data integration.