Studies in health technology and informatics
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2013
Clinical decision support systems: data quality management and governance.
This chapter examines data quality management (DQM) and information governance (IG) of electronic decision support (EDS) systems so that they are safe and fit for use by clinicians and patients and their carers. This is consistent with the ISO definition of data quality as being fit for purpose. ⋯ It must also include protocols and mechanisms to monitor the safety of EDS, which will feedback into DQM & IG activities. Ultimately, DQM & IG must be integrated across the data cycle to ensure that the EDS systems provide guidance that leads to safe and effective clinical decisions and care.
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2013
Automatic system testing of a decision support system for insulin dosing using Google Android.
Hyperglycaemia in hospitalized patients is a common and costly health care problem. The GlucoTab system is a mobile workflow and decision support system, aiming to facilitate efficient and safe glycemic control of non-critically ill patients. Being a medical device, the GlucoTab requires extensive and reproducible testing. ⋯ In 144 data points (12.1%), calculation errors of physicians and nurses in the PBCT were detected. The test framework was able to verify manual calculation of insulin doses and detect relatively many user errors and workflow anomalies in the PBCT data. This shows the high potential of the electronic decision support application to improve safety of implementation of an insulin titration protocol and workflow management system in clinical wards.
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2013
Drugs don't work in patients who don't take them: Dr. Drin, the new ICT paradigm for chronic therapies.
Poor adherence to drug therapies still represents an unsolved problem. In order to provide a useful solution to chronic patients of all ages--with particular attention to the elderly--who are subjected to complex therapeutic regimen, an innovative ICT solution, called Dr. Drin, has been designed and tested. ⋯ Drin over a three-months period. In the following, preliminary results from the first twelve patients are presented and analyzed to prove the effectiveness of Dr. Drin in supporting patients adherence to therapies.
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The complexity of hospital operations ensures that one-size-fits-all solutions seldom work. As hospitals turn to evidence based strategies to redesign flow, it is critical that they tailor the strategies to suit their individual service. This paper analyses the effect of hospital occupancy on inpatient and emergency department patient flow parameters at the Caboolture hospital in Queensland, Australia, and identifies critical levels, or choke points, that result in performance decline. ⋯ We compare these findings to a previous study that has analysed patient flow across Queensland hospitals grouped by size, and discover several differences in the interaction between rising occupancy and patient flow parameters including rates of patient flow, length of stay, and access block. We also identify significantly higher choke points for Caboolture hospital as compared to other similarly sized Queensland hospitals, which suggest that patient flow here can be redesigned to operate at higher levels of occupancy without degrading flow performance. The findings support arguments for hospitals to analyse patient flow at a service level to deliver optimum service improvement.
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2013
Measuring the performance of electronic health records: a case study in residential aged care in Australia.
Measuring the performance of electronic health records (EHR) is an important, yet un-resolved challenge. Various measurements have addressed different aspects of EHR success, yet a holistic, comprehensive measurement tool needs to be developed to capture the potential EHR success variables completely. ⋯ The instrument was used to measure the performance of aged care EHR systems in three aged care organizations. The results suggest that the instrument was reliable.