Studies in health technology and informatics
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Much has been written on the benefits of big data for healthcare such as improving patient outcomes, public health surveillance, and healthcare policy decisions. Over the past five years, Big Data, and the data sciences field in general, has been hyped as the "Holy Grail" for the healthcare industry promising a more efficient healthcare system with the promise of improved healthcare outcomes. ⋯ Our study results show that although Big Data is built up to be as a the "Holy Grail" for healthcare, small data techniques using traditional statistical methods are, in many cases, more accurate and can lead to more improved healthcare outcomes than Big Data methods. In sum, Big Data for healthcare may cause more problems for the healthcare industry than solutions, and in short, when it comes to the use of data in healthcare, "size isn't everything."
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2017
Clinical Simulation: Evaluating the Usability of a Health Information System in a Telenurse Call Centre.
Telenursing is a specialized subset of nursing practice that has emerged in response to the development of health care technology. Telenurses use health information systems (HIS) as their main source of health information in order to assist callers with their health related concerns on the telephone. ⋯ The purpose of this paper is to describe usability issues that emerged during a clinical simulation study of nurses working in a call centre. Clinical simulation was thus chosen as the most comprehensive methodology in this study and its benefits will be discussed.
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2017
Machine Learning Models of Post-Intubation Hypoxia During General Anesthesia.
Fine-meshed perioperative measurements are offering enormous potential for automatically investigating clinical complications during general anesthesia. In this study, we employed multiple machine learning methods to model perioperative hypoxia and compare their respective capabilities. After exporting and visualizing 620 series of perioperative vital signs, we had ten anesthesiologists annotate the subjective presence and severity of temporary post-intubation oxygen desaturation. ⋯ Furthermore, we deployed our classification methods for processing unlabeled inputs to estimate the incidence of hypoxic episodes in another sizeable patient cohort, which attests to the feasibility of using the approach on a larger scale. We interpret that our machine learning models could be instrumental for computerized observational studies of the clinical determinants of post-intubation oxygen deficiency. Future research might also investigate potential benefits of more advanced preprocessing approaches such as automated feature learning.
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2017
Randomized Controlled TrialCognitive Performance of Users Is Affected by Electronic Handovers Depending on Role, Task and Human Factors.
Patient handovers are cognitively demanding, crucial for information continuity and patient safety, but error prone. This study investigated the effect of an electronic handover tool, i.e. the handoverEHR, on the memory and care planning performance of nurse students (n=32) in a randomised, controlled cross-over design with the factors handover task and handover role. ⋯ Without handover experience and with low fluency to word problems, givers performed badly in the most demanding of the handover tasks. Final recommendations, however, can only be made after replicating this study in a clinical setting with mixed groups.
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2017
Consumer Medication Information: Similarities and Differences Between Three Canadian Pharmacies.
Prescription medication use is prevalent. When a new prescription medication is dispensed, Consumer Medication Information (CMI) is provided to communicate various important aspects of the medication (e.g., benefits, administration instructions, potential side effects). However, CMI is not regulated and differs from pharmacy to pharmacy. ⋯ Although online CMI has the advantage of interactivity to expedite navigation to specific topics of interest (e.g., heading links) and searching for key words, this CMI was not layered but rather presented as one long continuous page. Consumers with lower eHealth literacy skills may be deterred by the length of the document. As CMI makes the shift to online presentation an improved understanding of optimal information organization and media presentation will be needed.