Studies in health technology and informatics
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2014
An integrated approach to safety-driven and ICT-enabled process reengineering: methodological advice and a case study.
Patient safety is a central concern inside any healthcare environment. With the progress of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), new solutions have become available to support care and management processes. Analyzing process risks helps identifying areas of improvement and provides ICT-solutions design with indications on what portions of the process need primary interventions. ⋯ Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori (INT), offers a good example of process reengineering driven by the purpose of increasing patient safety, enabled by new technologies. A pillar of the evolution of ICT process support at INT is based on Radio Frequency Identification technologies, implemented to identify and trace items and people across processes. This paper will present an integrated approach, based on process reengineering methodologies and risk assessment studies, and methodological advice applied to a case of surgical kits management procedures.
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Advances in information and communications technologies (ICT) enable new personalized health care concepts which are often characterized by four "P" terms, i.e. personalized, predictive, preventive and participatory. However, real world implementations of the complete 4P spectrum hardly exist today. ⋯ Smart devices and enabling elements like Near Field Communication (NFC) and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology already exist and increasingly will be a mainstream element of our lives. This future vision paper attempts to assess if and how the Internet of Things for personalized health (IoT4pH) can help to facilitate the 4P healthcare paradigm and discusses related challenges and opportunities.
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2014
ReviewEthical aspects of using medical social media in healthcare applications.
The advances in internet and mobile technologies and their increased use in healthcare led to the development of a new research field: health web science. Many research questions are addressed in that field, starting from analysing social-media data, to recruiting participants for clinical studies and monitoring the public health status. ⋯ Through a literature review, the current awareness on ethical issues in the context of public health monitoring and research using medical social media data is determined. Further, considerations on the topic were collected from members of the IMIA Social Media Working group.
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2014
Development and evaluation of a memory clinic information system.
To describe the requirements, development and evaluation of a cognitive disorders and older persons' clinical and research application, outlining the conceptual and practical challenges. ⋯ The development of a system needs to take in account existing data collection methods and other information systems used. The GreyMatters system can be considered a supplementary or complementary health record that sits alongside the main Trust information system. Integrating data from multiple systems enhances utility to clinical and research users.
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2014
Hospital nurses' and physicians' use of information sources during their production of discharge summaries: a cross-sectional study.
Hospital nurses' and physicians' production and exchange of accurate information between levels of care are crucial for ensuring safe and seamless care for patients in transition. We report on a study in which we explored hospital providers' use of information sources when they prepared discharge information for colleges in the community health-care sector. In this cross-sectional study, 510 nurses and 236 physicians responded through a questionnaire. Our findings show that nurses and physicians use different information sources in patient records when they produce their discharge summaries.