Studies in health technology and informatics
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2013
Randomized Controlled Trial Comparative StudyComparison of automated and manual vital sign collection at hospital wards.
Using a cross-over study design, vital signs were collected from 60 patients by 6 nurses. Each nurse was randomly assigned for manual vital sign collection in 5 patients and for automated data collection in other 5 patients. ⋯ We found that 30% of vital sign records were transmitted to EMR with at least one error after manual data collection whereas there wasno transmission error with automated data collection. Allparticipating nurses stated that the automated vital sign collection can improve their efficiency and save their time for direct patient care.
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2013
Multicenter StudyExamination of changes in pathology tests ordered by Diagnosis-Related Group (DRGs) following CPOE introduction.
Electronic test ordering, via the Electronic Medical Record (EMR), which incorporates computerised provider order entry (CPOE), is widely considered as a useful tool to support appropriate pathology test ordering. Diagnosis-related groups (DRGs) are clinically meaningful categories that allow comparisons in pathology utilisation by patient groups by controlling for many potentially confounding variables. This study used DRG data linked to pathology test data to examine changes in rates of test ordering across four years coinciding with the introduction of an EMR in six hospitals in New South Wales, Australia. ⋯ We investigated patients with a Chest pain DRG to examine whether tests rates changed for specific test groups by hospital emergency department (ED) pre- and post-EMR. There was little change in testing rates between EDs or between time periods pre- and post-EMR. This is a valuable method for monitoring the impact of EMR and clinical decision support on test order rates.
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2013
A guideline-based decision support system for headache diagnosis.
The ratio of correct diagnosis for primary headache has always been relatively low for general practitioners due to the unacquaintance with headache guideline in Chinese primary hospitals. This study proposed a computerized headache guideline method using SAGE module and developed a decision support system for headache diagnosis, which could be expected to help general practitioners of primary hospitals improve diagnostic accuracy. 282 previously diagnosed cases from EMR were used to evaluate the diagnostic accuracy of the system, the result is: migraine 144/153 (94.1%), tension-type headache 89/100 (89.0%), cluster headache 10/11 (90.9%) and chronic daily headache 53/57(93.0%). The proposed system is in the starting phase of the implementation at the outpatient department of Neurology in Chinese PLA general hospital.
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Smartphones have become increasingly popular among every segment of the population. Caregivers do not want to miss out on this evolution and express interest in using mobile devices to perform their everyday care. This tendency has been well understood by many software providers who have produced many medical applications for smartphones. ⋯ In this paper, we look to adopt a rigorous approach to acquire evidence about these concerns through a prospective study. In order to get this evidence, the study compares several input interfaces in the context of recording vital signs on mobile devices. We would like to discover not only which interface is the most efficient, but also which one is the least prone to errors.
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2013
Anonymizing patient genomic data for public sharing association studies.
The development of personalized medicine is tightly linked with the correct exploitation of molecular data, especially those associated with the genome sequence along with these use of genomic data there is an increasing demand to share these data for research purposes. Transition of clinical data to research is based in the anonymization of these data so the patient cannot be identified, the use of genomic data poses a great challenge because its nature of identifying data. In this work we have analyzed current methods for genome anonymization and propose a one way encryption method that may enable the process of genomic data sharing accessing only to certain regions of genomes for research purposes.