Medical Informatics: An Essential Tool for Health Sciences Research in Acute Care

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Man Li

2009-10-01

Full Text Available Medical Informatics has become an important tool in modern health care practice and research. In the present article we outline the challenges and opportunities associated with the implementation of electronic medical records (EMR in complex environments such as intensive care units (ICU. We share our initial experience in the design, maintenance and application of a customized critical care, Microsoft SQL based, research warehouse, ICU DataMart. ICU DataMart integrates clinical and administrative data from heterogeneous sources within the EMR to support research and practice improvement in the ICUs. Examples of intelligent alarms – “sniffers”, administrative reports, decision support and clinical research applications are presented.

Consumer Health Informatics: Past, Present, and Future of a Rapidly Evolving Domain.

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Demiris, G

2016-05-20

Consumer Health Informatics (CHI) is a rapidly growing domain within the field of biomedical and health informatics. The objective of this paper is to reflect on the past twenty five years and showcase informatics concepts and applications that led to new models of care and patient empowerment, and to predict future trends and challenges for the next 25 years. We discuss concepts and systems based on a review and analysis of published literature in the consumer health informatics domain in the last 25 years. The field was introduced with the vision that one day patients will be in charge of their own health care using informatics tools and systems. Scientific literature in the field originally focused on ways to assess the quality and validity of available printed health information, only to grow significantly to cover diverse areas such as online communities, social media, and shared decision-making. Concepts such as home telehealth, mHealth, and the quantified-self movement, tools to address transparency of health care organizations, and personal health records and portals provided significant milestones in the field. Consumers are able to actively participate in the decision-making process and to engage in health care processes and decisions. However, challenges such as health literacy and the digital divide have hindered us from maximizing the potential of CHI tools with a significant portion of underserved populations unable to access and utilize them. At the same time, at a global scale consumer tools can increase access to care for underserved populations in developing countries. The field continues to grow and emerging movements such as precision medicine and the sharing economy will introduce new opportunities and challenges.

Practitioner's guide to health informatics

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Braunstein, Mark

2015-01-01

""This book will be a terrific introduction to the field of clinical IT and clinical informatics"" -- Kevin Johnson ""Dr. Braunstein has done a wonderful job of exploring a number of key trends in technology in the context of the transformations that are occurring in our health care system"" -- Bob Greenes ""This insightful book is a perfect primer for technologists entering the health tech field."" -- Deb Estrin ""This book should be read by everyone.​"" -- David Kibbe This book provides care providers and other non-technical readers with a broad, practical overview of the changi

Research Strategies for Biomedical and Health Informatics

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Kulikowski, Casimir A.; Bakken, Suzanne; de Lusignan, Simon; Kimura, Michio; Koch, Sabine; Mantas, John; Maojo, Victor; Marschollek, Michael; Martin-Sanchez, Fernando; Moen, Anne; Park, Hyeoun-Ae; Sarkar, Indra Neil; Leong, Tze Yun; McCray, Alexa T.

2017-01-01

Summary Background Medical informatics, or biomedical and health informatics (BMHI), has become an established scientific discipline. In all such disciplines there is a certain inertia to persist in focusing on well-established research areas and to hold on to well-known research methodologies rather than adopting new ones, which may be more appropriate. Objectives To search for answers to the following questions: What are research fields in informatics, which are not being currently adequately addressed, and which methodological approaches might be insufficiently used? Do we know about reasons? What could be consequences of change for research and for education? Methods Outstanding informatics scientists were invited to three panel sessions on this topic in leading international conferences (MIE 2015, Medinfo 2015, HEC 2016) in order to get their answers to these questions. Results A variety of themes emerged in the set of answers provided by the panellists. Some panellists took the theoretical foundations of the field for granted, while several questioned whether the field was actually grounded in a strong theoretical foundation. Panellists proposed a range of suggestions for new or improved approaches, methodologies, and techniques to enhance the BMHI research agenda. Conclusions The field of BMHI is on the one hand maturing as an academic community and intellectual endeavour. On the other hand vendor-supplied solutions may be too readily and uncritically accepted in health care practice. There is a high chance that BMHI will continue to flourish as an important discipline; its innovative interventions might then reach the original objectives of advancing science and improving health care outcomes. PMID:28119991

Cognitive informatics in health and biomedicine case studies on critical care, complexity and errors

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Patel, Vimla L; Cohen, Trevor

2014-01-01

This interdisciplinary book offers an introduction to cognitive informatics, focusing on key examples drawn from the application of methods and theories from cognitive informatics to challenges specific to the practice of critical-care medicine.

A current perspective on medical informatics and health sciences librarianship.

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Perry, Gerald J; Roderer, Nancy K; Assar, Soraya

2005-04-01

The article offers a current perspective on medical informatics and health sciences librarianship. The authors: (1) discuss how definitions of medical informatics have changed in relation to health sciences librarianship and the broader domain of information science; (2) compare the missions of health sciences librarianship and health sciences informatics, reviewing the characteristics of both disciplines; (3) propose a new definition of health sciences informatics; (4) consider the research agendas of both disciplines and the possibility that they have merged; and (5) conclude with some comments about actions and roles for health sciences librarians to flourish in the biomedical information environment of today and tomorrow. Boundaries are disappearing between the sources and types of and uses for health information managed by informaticians and librarians. Definitions of the professional domains of each have been impacted by these changes in information. Evolving definitions reflect the increasingly overlapping research agendas of both disciplines. Professionals in these disciplines are increasingly functioning collaboratively as "boundary spanners," incorporating human factors that unite technology with health care delivery.

[Biomedical informatics].

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Capurro, Daniel; Soto, Mauricio; Vivent, Macarena; Lopetegui, Marcelo; Herskovic, Jorge R

2011-12-01

Biomedical Informatics is a new discipline that arose from the need to incorporate information technologies to the generation, storage, distribution and analysis of information in the domain of biomedical sciences. This discipline comprises basic biomedical informatics, and public health informatics. The development of the discipline in Chile has been modest and most projects have originated from the interest of individual people or institutions, without a systematic and coordinated national development. Considering the unique features of health care system of our country, research in the area of biomedical informatics is becoming an imperative.

Middle East and North African Health Informatics Association (MENAHIA): Building Sustainable Collaboration.

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Al-Shorbaji, Najeeb; Househ, Mowafa; Taweel, Adel; Alanizi, Abdullah; Mohammed, Bennani Othmani; Abaza, Haitham; Bawadi, Hala; Rasuly, Hamayon; Alyafei, Khalid; Fernandez-Luque, Luis; Shouman, Mohamed; El-Hassan, Osama; Hussein, Rada; Alshammari, Riyad; Mandil, Salah; Shouman, Sarah; Taheri, Shahrad; Emara, Tamer; Dalhem, Wasmiya; Al-Hamdan, Zaid; Serhier, Zineb

2018-04-22

There has been a growing interest in Health Informatics applications, research, and education within the Middle East and North African Region over the past twenty years. People of this region share similar cultural and religious values, primarily speak the Arabic language, and have similar health care related issues, which are in dire need of being addressed. Health Informatics efforts, organizations, and initiatives within the region have been largely under-represented within, but not ignored by, the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA). Attempts to create bonds and collaboration between the different organizations of the region have remained scattered, and often, resulted in failure despite the fact that the need for a united health informatics collaborative within the region has never been more crucial than today. During the 2017 MEDINFO, held in Hangzhou, China, a new organization, the Middle East and North African Health Informatics Association (MENAHIA) was conceived as a regional non-governmental organization to promote and facilitate health informatics uptake within the region endorsing health informatics research and educational initiatives of the 22 countries represented within the region. This paper provides an overview of the collaboration and efforts to date in forming MENAHIA and displays the variety of initiatives that are already occurring within the MENAHIA region, which MENAHIA will help, endorse, support, share, and improve within the international forum of health informatics. Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart.

Health Informatics.

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Russell, Marie; Brittain, J. Michael

2002-01-01

Identifies current trends and issues in health informatics with examples of applications, particularly in English-speaking countries. Topics include health systems, professionals, and patients; consumer health information; electronic medical records; nursing; privacy and confidentiality; finding and using information; the Internet; e-mail;…

Creativity as a Key Driver for Designing Context Sensitive Health Informatics.

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Zhou, Chunfang; Nøhr, Christian

2017-01-01

In order to face the increasing challenges of complexity and uncertainty in practice of health care, this paper aims to discuss how creativity can contribute to design new technologies in health informatics systems. It will firstly introduce the background highlighting creativity as a missing element in recent studies on context sensitive health informatics. Secondly, the concept of creativity and its relationship with activities of technology design will be discussed from a socio-culture perspective. This will be thirdly followed by understanding the roles of creativity in designing new health informatics technologies for meeting needs of high context sensitivity. Finally, a series of potential strategies will be suggested to improve creativity among technology designers working in healthcare industries. Briefly, this paper innovatively bridges two areas studies on creativity and context sensitive health informatics by issues of technology design that also indicates its important significances for future research.

Health informatics 3.0.

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Kalra, Dipak

2011-01-01

Web 3.0 promises us smart computer services that will interact with each other and leverage knowledge about us and our immediate context to deliver prioritised and relevant information to support decisions and actions. Healthcare must take advantage of such new knowledge-integrating services, in particular to support better co-operation between professionals of different disciplines working in different locations, and to enable well-informed co-operation between clinicians and patients. To grasp the potential of Web 3.0 we will need well-harmonised semantic resources that can richly connect virtual teams and link their strategies to real-time and tailored evidence. Facts, decision logic, care pathway steps, alerts, education need to be embedded within components that can interact with multiple EHR systems and services consistently. Using Health Informatics 3.0 a patient's current situation could be compared with the outcomes of very similar patients (from across millions) to deliver personalised care recommendations. The integration of EHRs with biomedical sciences ('omics) research results and predictive models such as the Virtual Physiological Human could help speed up the translation of new knowledge into clinical practice. The mission, and challenge, for Health Informatics 3.0 is to enable healthy citizens, patients and professionals to collaborate within a knowledge-empowered social network in which patient specific information and personalised real-time evidence are seamlessly interwoven.

Behavioral Informatics and Computational Modeling in Support of Proactive Health Management and Care.

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Pavel, Misha; Jimison, Holly B; Korhonen, Ilkka; Gordon, Christine M; Saranummi, Niilo

2015-12-01

Health-related behaviors are among the most significant determinants of health and quality of life. Improving health behavior is an effective way to enhance health outcomes and mitigate the escalating challenges arising from an increasingly aging population and the proliferation of chronic diseases. Although it has been difficult to obtain lasting improvements in health behaviors on a wide scale, advances at the intersection of technology and behavioral science may provide the tools to address this challenge. In this paper, we describe a vision and an approach to improve health behavior interventions using the tools of behavioral informatics, an emerging transdisciplinary research domain based on system-theoretic principles in combination with behavioral science and information technology. The field of behavioral informatics has the potential to optimize interventions through monitoring, assessing, and modeling behavior in support of providing tailored and timely interventions. We describe the components of a closed-loop system for health interventions. These components range from fine grain sensor characterizations to individual-based models of behavior change. We provide an example of a research health coaching platform that incorporates a closed-loop intervention based on these multiscale models. Using this early prototype, we illustrate how the optimized and personalized methodology and technology can support self-management and remote care. We note that despite the existing examples of research projects and our platform, significant future research is required to convert this vision to full-scale implementations.

Engaging clinicians in health informatics projects.

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Caballero Muñoz, Erika; Hullin Lucay Cossio, Carola M

2010-01-01

This chapter gives an educational overview of: * The importance of the engagement of clinicians within a health informatics project * Strategies required for an effective involvement of clinicians throughout a change management process within a clinical context for the implementation of a health informatics project * The critical aspects for a successful implementation of a health informatics project that involves clinicians as end users * Key factors during the administration of changes during the implementation of an informatics project for an information system in clinical practice.

The 13 th world congress on medical and health informatics, Cape Town, South Africa: Partnerships for effective e-Health solutions

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Andrew Georgiou

2011-01-01

Full Text Available The 13 th World Congress on Medical and Health Informatics (Medinfo was held in 2010 between 12 and 15 September in Cape Town, South Africa. This triennial international gathering is the official conference of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA and brings together leading health informatics leaders, scientists, clinicians, researchers, vendors, developers and government and health care planners from around the globe. The conference attracted 905 submissions and resulted in a program that included 260 oral presentations, 349 posters presentations and 21 scientific demonstrations representing contributions from 58 countries. The Medinfo program covered all aspects of health informatics from traditional areas, such as hospital information systems, patient registries, nursing informatics, data integration, standards, interoperability issues and decision support, to innovative topics, such as translational bioinformatics, text mining, intelligent data analysis, emerging technologies, quality, social networking, workflow and organizational issues. The outgoing President of the IMIA, Professor Reinhold Haux, presented on health informatics challenges into the future, reinforcing that today and in the future, health care has to be considered as part of a continuous and coordinated life-time journey and not just as episodes of disease. Medical informatics has a key role to play in this paradigm shift. The new IMIA President, Professor Antoine Geissbuhler, was announced at the closing ceremony. The next Medinfo congress will take place in Copenhagen, Denmark, in September 2013.

Emergence of a new consumer health informatics framework: introducing the healthcare organization.

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Reid, Paulette; Borycki, Elizabeth M

2011-01-01

Healthcare consumers are increasingly seeking reliable forms of health information on the Internet that can be used to support health related decision-making. Frameworks that have been developed and tested in the field of health informatics have attempted to describe the effects of the Internet upon the health care consumer and physician relationship. More recently, health care organizations are responding by providing information such as hospital wait lists or strategies for self-managing disease, and this information is being provided on organizational web-sites. The authors of this paper propose that current conceptualizations of the relationship between the Internet, physicians and patients are limited from a consumer informatics perspective and may need to be extended to include healthcare organizations.

La informatización de la atención primaria de salud The informatization in primary health care

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Rodolfo J. Stusser Beltranena

2006-12-01

Full Text Available La informatización de la atención primaria de salud se percibe como un problema que se soluciona creando redes computarizadas entre los consultorios y policlínicos. El artículo brinda una visión panorámica del estado en que se encuentra el arte de la informatización de la atención primaria y la medicina general integral, en el mundo y en Cuba. Para ello, se sintetiza el origen prehistórico de ese nivel de atención y de la especialidad, así como el desarrollo contemporáneo de la informática y sus aplicaciones médicas; se define igualmente la atención primaria y su informática; se resumen los sistemas de información, las aplicaciones informáticas y sus desafíos; y se ofrece una visión práctica de la historia clínica-electrónica: corazón de la informática de atención primaria de salud y medicina general integral. Se concluye que Cuba ha trabajado 20 años informatizando la dispensarización y estadísticas para la gerencia de servicios de este nivel de atención, pero que también podría trabajar con el enfoque centrado en la vida del paciente, que contribuiría a crear una clasificación integradora de la salud con la enfermedad, y a computarizar la información y la toma de decisiones clínicas en el consultorio del médico, y en el futuro hasta en el hogar del paciente, elevando directamente la calidad de la atención primaria de salud.The informatization in primary health care is perceived as problem that is solved by creating computer networks between the family physicians' offices and the polyclinics. This article gives a panoramic view of the state in which the art of informatization of primary health care and comprehensive general medicine is in the world and in Cuba. To this end, the prehistoric origin of this care level and of the specialty is synthezised, as well as the contemporary development of informatics and its medical applications. Primary care and its informatics is also defined, and the information

The state and profile of open source software projects in health and medical informatics.

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Janamanchi, Balaji; Katsamakas, Evangelos; Raghupathi, Wullianallur; Gao, Wei

2009-07-01

Little has been published about the application profiles and development patterns of open source software (OSS) in health and medical informatics. This study explores these issues with an analysis of health and medical informatics related OSS projects on SourceForge, a large repository of open source projects. A search was conducted on the SourceForge website during the period from May 1 to 15, 2007, to identify health and medical informatics OSS projects. This search resulted in a sample of 174 projects. A Java-based parser was written to extract data for several of the key variables of each project. Several visually descriptive statistics were generated to analyze the profiles of the OSS projects. Many of the projects have sponsors, implying a growing interest in OSS among organizations. Sponsorship, we discovered, has a significant impact on project success metrics. Nearly two-thirds of the projects have a restrictive license type. Restrictive licensing may indicate tighter control over the development process. Our sample includes a wide range of projects that are at various stages of development (status). Projects targeted towards the advanced end user are primarily focused on bio-informatics, data formats, database and medical science applications. We conclude that there exists an active and thriving OSS development community that is focusing on health and medical informatics. A wide range of OSS applications are in development, from bio-informatics to hospital information systems. A profile of OSS in health and medical informatics emerges that is distinct and unique to the health care field. Future research can focus on OSS acceptance and diffusion and impact on cost, efficiency and quality of health care.

Interdisciplinary innovations in biomedical and health informatics graduate education.

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Demiris, G

2007-01-01

Biomedical and health informatics (BHI) is a rapidly growing domain that relies on the active collaboration with diverse disciplines and professions. Educational initiatives in BHI need to prepare students with skills and competencies that will allow them to function within and even facilitate interdisciplinary teams (IDT). This paper describes an interdisciplinary educational approach introduced into a BHI graduate curriculum that aims to prepare informatics researchers to lead IDT research. A case study of the "gerontechnology" research track is presented which highlights how the curriculum fosters collaboration with and understanding of the disciplines of Nursing, Engineering, Computer Science, and Health Administration. Gerontechnology is a new interdisciplinary field that focuses on the use of technology to support aging. Its aim is to explore innovative ways to use information technology and develop systems that support independency and increase quality of life for senior citizens. As a result of a large research group that explores "smart home" technologies and the use of information technology, we integrated this new domain into the curriculum providing a platform for computer scientists, engineers, nurses and physicians to explore challenges and opportunities with our informatics students and faculty. The interdisciplinary educational model provides an opportunity for health informatics students to acquire the skills for communication and collaboration with other disciplines. Numerous graduate and postgraduate students have already participated in this initiative. The evaluation model of this approach is presented. Interdisciplinary educational models are required for health informatics graduate education. Such models need to be innovative and reflect the needs and trends in the domains of health care and information technology.

Massive open online course for health informatics education.

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Paton, Chris

2014-04-01

This paper outlines a new method of teaching health informatics to large numbers of students from around the world through a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). The Health Informatics Forum is a social networking site for educating health informatics students and professionals [corrected]. It is running a MOOC for students from around the world that uses creative commons licenced content funded by the US government and developed by five US universities. The content is delivered through narrated lectures with slides that can be viewed online with discussion threads on the forum for class interactions. Students can maintain a professional profile, upload photos and files, write their own blog posts and post discussion threads on the forum. The Health Informatics Forum MOOC has been accessed by 11,316 unique users from 127 countries from August 2, 2012 to January 24, 2014. Most users accessed the MOOC via a desktop computer, followed by tablets and mobile devices and 55% of users were female. Over 400,000 unique users have now accessed the wider Health Informatics Forum since it was established in 2008. Advances in health informatics and educational technology have both created a demand for online learning material in health informatics and a solution for providing it. By using a MOOC delivered through a social networking platform it is hoped that high quality health informatics education will be able to be delivered to a large global audience of future health informaticians without cost.

Health Informatics and E-health Curriculum for Clinical Health Profession Degrees.

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Gray, Kathleen; Choo, Dawn; Butler-Henderson, Kerryn; Whetton, Sue; Maeder, Anthony

2015-01-01

The project reported in this paper models a new approach to making health informatics and e-health education widely available to students in a range of Australian clinical health profession degrees. The development of a Masters level subject uses design-based research to apply educational quality assurance practices which are consistent with university qualification frameworks, and with clinical health profession education standards; at the same time it gives recognition to health informatics as a specialised profession in its own right. The paper presents details of (a) design with reference to the Australian Qualifications Framework and CHIA competencies, (b) peer review within a three-university teaching team, (c) external review by experts from the professions, (d) cross-institutional interprofessional online learning, (e) methods for evaluating student learning experiences and outcomes, and (f) mechanisms for making the curriculum openly available to interested parties. The project has sought and found demand among clinical health professionals for formal health informatics and e-health education that is designed for them. It has helped the educators and organisations involved to understand the need for nuanced and complementary health informatics educational offerings in Australian universities. These insights may aid in further efforts to address substantive and systemic challenges that clinical informatics faces in Australia.

Solving Interoperability in Translational Health. Perspectives of Students from the International Partnership in Health Informatics Education (IPHIE) 2016 Master Class.

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Turner, Anne M; Facelli, Julio C; Jaspers, Monique; Wetter, Thomas; Pfeifer, Daniel; Gatewood, Laël Cranmer; Adam, Terry; Li, Yu-Chuan; Lin, Ming-Chin; Evans, R Scott; Beukenhorst, Anna; van Mens, Hugo Johan Theodoore; Tensen, Esmee; Bock, Christian; Fendrich, Laura; Seitz, Peter; Suleder, Julian; Aldelkhyyel, Ranyah; Bridgeman, Kent; Hu, Zhen; Sattler, Aaron; Guo, Shin-Yi; Mohaimenul, Islam Md Mohaimenul; Anggraini Ningrum, Dina Nur; Tung, Hsin-Ru; Bian, Jiantano; Plasek, Joseph M; Rommel, Casey; Burke, Juandalyn; Sohih, Harkirat

2017-06-20

In the summer of 2016 an international group of biomedical and health informatics faculty and graduate students gathered for the 16th meeting of the International Partnership in Health Informatics Education (IPHIE) masterclass at the University of Utah campus in Salt Lake City, Utah. This international biomedical and health informatics workshop was created to share knowledge and explore issues in biomedical health informatics (BHI). The goal of this paper is to summarize the discussions of biomedical and health informatics graduate students who were asked to define interoperability, and make critical observations to gather insight on how to improve biomedical education. Students were assigned to one of four groups and asked to define interoperability and explore potential solutions to current problems of interoperability in health care. We summarize here the student reports on the importance and possible solutions to the "interoperability problem" in biomedical informatics. Reports are provided from each of the four groups of highly qualified graduate students from leading BHI programs in the US, Europe and Asia. International workshops such as IPHIE provide a unique opportunity for graduate student learning and knowledge sharing. BHI faculty are encouraged to incorporate into their curriculum opportunities to exercise and strengthen student critical thinking to prepare our students for solving health informatics problems in the future.

Health Informatics for Development: a Three-pronged Strategy of Partnerships, Standards, and Mobile Health. Contribution of the IMIA Working Group on Health Informatics for Development.

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Marcelo, A; Adejumo, A; Luna, D

2011-01-01

Describe the issues surrounding health informatics in developing countries and the challenges faced by practitioners in building internal capacity. From these issues, the authors propose cost-effective strategies that can fast track health informatics development in these low to medium income countries (LMICs). The authors conducted a review of literature and consulted key opinion leaders who have experience with health informatics implementations around the world. Despite geographic and cultural differences, many LMICs share similar challenges and opportunities in developing health informatics. Partnerships, standards, and inter-operability are well known components of successful informatics programs. Establishing partnerships can be comprised of formal inter-institutional collaborations on training and research, collaborative open source software development, and effective use of social networking. Lacking legacy systems, LMICs can discuss standards and inter-operability more openly and have greater potential for success. Lastly, since cellphones are pervasive in developing countries, they can be leveraged as access points for delivering and documenting health services in remote under-served areas. Mobile health or mHealth gives LMICs a unique opportunity to leapfrog through most issues that have plagued health informatics in developed countries. By employing this proposed roadmap, LMICs can now develop capacity for health informatics using appropriate and cost-effective technologies.

Big Data: Are Biomedical and Health Informatics Training Programs Ready? Contribution of the IMIA Working Group for Health and Medical Informatics Education.

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Otero, P; Hersh, W; Jai Ganesh, A U

2014-08-15

The growing volume and diversity of health and biomedical data indicate that the era of Big Data has arrived for healthcare. This has many implications for informatics, not only in terms of implementing and evaluating information systems, but also for the work and training of informatics researchers and professionals. This article addresses the question: What do biomedical and health informaticians working in analytics and Big Data need to know? We hypothesize a set of skills that we hope will be discussed among academic and other informaticians. The set of skills includes: Programming - especially with data-oriented tools, such as SQL and statistical programming languages; Statistics - working knowledge to apply tools and techniques; Domain knowledge - depending on one's area of work, bioscience or health care; and Communication - being able to understand needs of people and organizations, and articulate results back to them. Biomedical and health informatics educational programs must introduce concepts of analytics, Big Data, and the underlying skills to use and apply them into their curricula. The development of new coursework should focus on those who will become experts, with training aiming to provide skills in "deep analytical talent" as well as those who need knowledge to support such individuals.

Understanding the Essence of Caring from the Lived Experiences of Filipino Informatics Nurses.

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Macabasag, Romeo Luis A; Diño, Michael Joseph S

2018-04-01

Caring is considered a unique concept in nursing because it subsumes all intrinsic attributes of nursing as a human helping discipline. Scholars have argued that caring is usually seen as an encounter between nurses and patients, but how about nurses with minimal or absent nurse-patient encounters, like informatics nurses? In this study, we explored the meaning of the phenomenon of caring to present lived experiences of caring, namely caring as actions of coming in between; caring as expressed within embodied relations; and caring and the path traversed by informatics nurses. The informatics nurse-cyborg-patient triad speaks of Filipino informatics nurses' insightful understanding of the phenomenon of caring.

Towards health informatics 3.0. Editorial.

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Kulikowski, Casimir A; Geissbuhler, Antoine

2011-01-01

To provide an editorial introduction to the 2011 IMIA Yearbook of Medical Informatics with an overview of its contents and contributors. A brief overview of the main theme, and an outline of the purposes, contents, format, and acknowledgment of contributions for the 2011 IMIA Yearbook. This 2011 issue of the IMIA Yearbook highlights important developments in the development of Web 3.0 capabilities that are increasing in Health Informatics, impacting the activities in research, education and practice in this interdisciplinary field. There has been steady progress towards introducing semantics into informatics systems through more sophisticated representations of knowledge in their underlying information. Health Informatics 3.0 capabilities are identified from the recent literature, illustrated by selected papers published during the past 12 months, and articles reported by IMIA Working Groups. Surveys of the main research sub-fields in biomedical informatics in the Yearbook provide an overview of progress and current challenges across the spectrum of the discipline, focusing on Web 3.0 challenges and opportunities.

Advances in health informatics education: educating students at the intersection of health care and information technology.

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Kushniruk, Andre; Borycki, Elizabeth; Armstrong, Brian; Kuo, Mu-Hsing

2012-01-01

The paper describes the authors' work in the area of health informatics (HI) education involving emerging health information technologies. A range of information technologies promise to modernize health care. Foremost among these are electronic health records (EHRs), which are expected to significantly improve and streamline health care practice. Major national and international efforts are currently underway to increase EHR adoption. However, there have been numerous issues affecting the widespread use of such information technology, ranging from a complex array of technical problems to social issues. This paper describes work in the integration of information technologies directly into the education and training of HI students at both the undergraduate and graduate level. This has included work in (a) the development of Web-based computer tools and platforms to allow students to have hands-on access to the latest technologies and (b) development of interdisciplinary educational models that can be used to guide integrating information technologies into HI education. The paper describes approaches that allow for remote hands-on access by HI students to a range of EHRs and related technology. To date, this work has been applied in HI education in a variety of ways. Several approaches for integration of this essential technology into HI education and training are discussed, along with future directions for the integration of EHR technology into improving and informing the education of future health and HI professionals.

Medical informatics in morocco.

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Bouhaddou, O; Bennani Othmani, M; Diouny, S

2013-01-01

Informatics is an essential tool for helping to transform healthcare from a paper-based to a digital sector. This article explores the state-of-the-art of health informatics in Morocco. Specifically, it aims to give a general overview of the Moroccan healthcare system, the challenges it is facing, and the efforts undertaken by the informatics community and Moroccan government in terms of education, research and practice to reform the country's health sector. Through the experience of establishing Medical Informatics as a medical specialty in 2008, creating a Moroccan Medical Informatics Association in 2010 and holding a first national congress took place in April 2012, the authors present their assessment of some important priorities for health informatics in Morocco. These Moroccan initiatives are facilitating collaboration in education, research, and implementation of clinical information systems. In particular, the stakeholders have recognized the need for a national coordinator office and the development of a national framework for standards and interoperability. For developing countries like Morocco, new health IT approaches like mobile health and trans-media health advertising could help optimize scarce resources, improve access to rural areas and focus on the most prevalent health problems, optimizing health care access, quality, and cost for Morocco population.

Assessment of Health Informatics Competencies in Undergraduate ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Rwanda Journal Series F: Medicine and Health Sciences Vol. ... establishment of continuous on-the-job training in health informatics for those ... deals with the resources, devices and formalized methods .... informatics competencies in undergraduate level, the tool ... Descriptive statistics were used to describe numerical.

Health Informatics 3.0 and other increasingly dispersed technologies require even greater trust: promoting safe evidence-based health informatics. Contribution of the IMIA Working Group on Technology Assessment & Quality Development in Health Informatics.

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Rigby, M; Ammenwerth, E; Talmon, J; Nykänen, P; Brender, J; de Keizer, N

2011-01-01

Health informatics is generally less committed to a scientific evidence-based approach than any other area of health science, which is an unsound position. Introducing the new Web 3.0 paradigms into health IT applications can unleash a further great potential, able to integrate and distribute data from multiple sources. The counter side is that it makes the user and the patient evermore dependent on the 'black box' of the system, and the re-use of the data remote from the author and initial context. Thus anticipatory consideration of uses, and proactive analysis of evidence of effects, are imperative, as only when a clinical technology can be proven to be trustworthy and safe should it be implemented widely - as is the case with other health technologies. To argue for promoting evidence-based health informatics as systems become more powerful and pro-active yet more dispersed and remote; and evaluation as the means of generating the necessary scientific evidence base. To present ongoing IMIA and EFMI initiatives in this field. Critical overview of recent developments in health informatics evaluation, alongside the precedents of other health technologies, summarising current initiatives and the new challenges presented by Health Informatics 3.0. Web 3.0 should be taken as an opportunity to move health informatics from being largely unaccountable to one of being an ethical and responsible science-based domain. Recent and planned activities of the EFMI and IMIA working groups have significantly progressed key initiatives. Concurrent with the emergence of Web 3.0 as a means of new-generation diffuse health information systems comes an increasing need for an evidence-based culture in health informatics.

Recommendations of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) on Education in Health and Medical Informatics

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Arokiasamy, J.; Ball, M.; Barnett, D.; Bearman, M.; Bemmel van, J.; Douglas, J.; Fisher, P.; Garrie, R.; Gatewood, L.; Goossen, W.; Grant, A.; Hales, J.; Hasman, A.; Haux, R.; Hovenga, E.; Johns, M.; Knaup, P.; Leven, F. J.; Lorenzi, N.; Murray, P.; Neame, R.; Protti, D.; Power, M.; Richard, J.; Schuster, E.; Swinkels, W.; Yang, J.; Zelmer, L.; Zvárová, Jana

2001-01-01

Roč. 40, č. 5 (2001), s. 267-277 ISSN 0026-1270 Institutional research plan: AV0Z1030915 Keywords : health informatics * medical informatics * education * recommendations * International Medical Informatics Association * IMIA Subject RIV: BB - Applied Statistics, Operational Research Impact factor: 1.254, year: 2001

Establishing a national resource: a health informatics collection to maintain the legacy of health informatics development.

Science.gov (United States)

Ellis, Beverley; Roberts, Jean; Cooper, Helen

2007-01-01

This case study report of the establishment of a national repository of multi-media materials describes the creation process, the challenges faced in putting it into operation and the opportunities for the future. The initial resource has been incorporated under standard library and knowledge management practices. A collaborative action research method was used with active experts in the domain to determine the requirements and priorities for further development. The National Health Informatics Collection (NatHIC) is now accessible and the further issues are being addressed by inclusion in future University and NHS strategic plans. Ultimately the Collection will link with other facilities that contribute to the description and maintenance of effective informatics in support of health globally. The issues raised about the National Health Informatics Collection as established in the UK have resonance with the challenges of capturing the overall historic development of an emerging discipline in any country.

Personal Health, Person-centred Health and Personalised Medicine - Concepts, Consumers, Confusion and Challenges in the Informatics World.

Science.gov (United States)

Rigby, M

2012-01-01

To define and assess 'Consumer Health Informatics' and related emergent issues in an era of new media and of personalisation of care, and from this to define what actions need to be taken to optimise benefits and address risks. Definition of key concepts; review of health personalisation, emergent health information and communication technologies and knowledge sources available to citizens and social media; and identification of unresolved issues threatening optimal use of each. A structured review supported by citations and examples. Several new aspects of consumer health informatics are emerging, including new knowledge sources, feedback on treatments and care providers, on-line videos, and a new generation of patient experience sites including those which are for profit and seek to influence treatment paradigms. Not just the information usage, but also the potential social challenges and malicious abuses, are global issues, and also transcend the traditional health community and thus should be addressed in partnership with other global agencies.

Clinical microbiology informatics.

Science.gov (United States)

Rhoads, Daniel D; Sintchenko, Vitali; Rauch, Carol A; Pantanowitz, Liron

2014-10-01

The clinical microbiology laboratory has responsibilities ranging from characterizing the causative agent in a patient's infection to helping detect global disease outbreaks. All of these processes are increasingly becoming partnered more intimately with informatics. Effective application of informatics tools can increase the accuracy, timeliness, and completeness of microbiology testing while decreasing the laboratory workload, which can lead to optimized laboratory workflow and decreased costs. Informatics is poised to be increasingly relevant in clinical microbiology, with the advent of total laboratory automation, complex instrument interfaces, electronic health records, clinical decision support tools, and the clinical implementation of microbial genome sequencing. This review discusses the diverse informatics aspects that are relevant to the clinical microbiology laboratory, including the following: the microbiology laboratory information system, decision support tools, expert systems, instrument interfaces, total laboratory automation, telemicrobiology, automated image analysis, nucleic acid sequence databases, electronic reporting of infectious agents to public health agencies, and disease outbreak surveillance. The breadth and utility of informatics tools used in clinical microbiology have made them indispensable to contemporary clinical and laboratory practice. Continued advances in technology and development of these informatics tools will further improve patient and public health care in the future. Copyright © 2014, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

Informatics for Health 2017: Advancing both science and practice

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Philip J. Scott

2017-04-01

Full Text Available Introduction: The Informatics for Health congress, 24-26 April 2017, in Manchester, UK, brought together the Medical Informatics Europe (MIE conference and the Farr Institute International Conference. This special issue of the Journal of Innovation in Health Informatics contains 113 presentation abstracts and 149 poster abstracts from the congress. Discussion: The twin programmes of “Big Data” and “Digital Health” are not always joined up by coherent policy and investment priorities. Substantial global investment in health IT and data science has led to sound progress but highly variable outcomes. Society needs an approach that brings together the science and the practice of health informatics. The goal is multi-level Learning Health Systems that consume and intelligently act upon both patient data and organizational intervention outcomes. Conclusions: Informatics for Health demonstrated the art of the possible, seen in the breadth and depth of our contributions. We call upon policy makers, research funders and programme leaders to learn from this joined-up approach.

Public health informatics in India: the potential and the challenges.

Science.gov (United States)

Athavale, A V; Zodpey, Sanjay P

2010-01-01

Public health informatics is emerging as a new and distinct specialty area in the global scenario within the broader discipline of health informatics. The potential role of informatics in reducing health disparities in underserved populations has been identified by a number of reports from all over the world. The article discusses the scope, the limitations, and future perspective of this novice discipline in context to India. It also highlights information and technology related tools namely Geographical Information Systems, Telemedicine and Electronic Medical Record/Electronic Health Record. India needs to leverage its "technology" oriented growth until now (e.g., few satellite-based telemedicine projects, etc.) simultaneously toward development of "information"-based public health informatics systems in future. Under the rapidly evolving scenario of global public health, the future of the public health governance and population health in India would depend upon building and integrating the comprehensive and responsive domain of public health informatics.

Building a Culture of Health Informatics Innovation and Entrepreneurship: A New Frontier.

Science.gov (United States)

Househ, Mowafa; Alshammari, Riyad; Almutairi, Mariam; Jamal, Amr; Alshoaib, Saleh

2015-01-01

Entrepreneurship and innovation within the health informatics (HI) scientific community are relatively sluggish when compared to other disciplines such as computer science and engineering. Healthcare in general, and specifically, the health informatics scientific community needs to embrace more innovative and entrepreneurial practices. In this paper, we explore the concepts of innovation and entrepreneurship as they apply to the health informatics scientific community. We also outline several strategies to improve the culture of innovation and entrepreneurship within the health informatics scientific community such as: (I) incorporating innovation and entrepreneurship in health informatics education; (II) creating strong linkages with industry and healthcare organizations; (III) supporting national health innovation and entrepreneurship competitions; (IV) creating a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship within healthcare organizations; (V) developing health informatics policies that support innovation and entrepreneurship based on internationally recognized standards; and (VI) develop an health informatics entrepreneurship ecosystem. With these changes, we conclude that embracing health innovation and entrepreneurship may be more readily accepted over the long-term within the health informatics scientific community.

Health Departments’ Engagement in Emergency Preparedness Activities: The Influence of Health Informatics Capacity

OpenAIRE

Gulzar H. Shah; Bobbie Newell; Ruth E. Whitworth

2016-01-01

Background: Local health departments (LHDs) operate in a complex and dynamic public health landscape, with changing demands on their emergency response capacities. Informatics capacities might play an instrumental role in aiding LHDs emergency preparedness. This study aimed to explore the extent to which LHDs’ informatics capacities are associated with their activity level in emergency preparedness and to identify which health informatics capacities are associated with improved em...

Building a Privacy, Ethics, and Data Access Framework for Real World Computerised Medical Record System Data: A Delphi Study. Contribution of the Primary Health Care Informatics Working Group.

Science.gov (United States)

Liyanage, H; Liaw, S-T; Di Iorio, C T; Kuziemsky, C; Schreiber, R; Terry, A L; de Lusignan, S

2016-11-10

Privacy, ethics, and data access issues pose significant challenges to the timely delivery of health research. Whilst the fundamental drivers to ensure that data access is ethical and satisfies privacy requirements are similar, they are often dealt with in varying ways by different approval processes. To achieve a consensus across an international panel of health care and informatics professionals on an integrated set of privacy and ethics principles that could accelerate health data access in data-driven health research projects. A three-round consensus development process was used. In round one, we developed a baseline framework for privacy, ethics, and data access based on a review of existing literature in the health, informatics, and policy domains. This was further developed using a two-round Delphi consensus building process involving 20 experts who were members of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) and European Federation of Medical Informatics (EFMI) Primary Health Care Informatics Working Groups. To achieve consensus we required an extended Delphi process. The first round involved feedback on and development of the baseline framework. This consisted of four components: (1) ethical principles, (2) ethical guidance questions, (3) privacy and data access principles, and (4) privacy and data access guidance questions. Round two developed consensus in key areas of the revised framework, allowing the building of a newly, more detailed and descriptive framework. In the final round panel experts expressed their opinions, either as agreements or disagreements, on the ethics and privacy statements of the framework finding some of the previous round disagreements to be surprising in view of established ethical principles. This study develops a framework for an integrated approach to ethics and privacy. Privacy breech risk should not be considered in isolation but instead balanced by potential ethical benefit.

Perspectives on Clinical Informatics: Integrating Large-Scale Clinical, Genomic, and Health Information for Clinical Care

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

In Young Choi

2013-12-01

Full Text Available The advances in electronic medical records (EMRs and bioinformatics (BI represent two significant trends in healthcare. The widespread adoption of EMR systems and the completion of the Human Genome Project developed the technologies for data acquisition, analysis, and visualization in two different domains. The massive amount of data from both clinical and biology domains is expected to provide personalized, preventive, and predictive healthcare services in the near future. The integrated use of EMR and BI data needs to consider four key informatics areas: data modeling, analytics, standardization, and privacy. Bioclinical data warehouses integrating heterogeneous patient-related clinical or omics data should be considered. The representative standardization effort by the Clinical Bioinformatics Ontology (CBO aims to provide uniquely identified concepts to include molecular pathology terminologies. Since individual genome data are easily used to predict current and future health status, different safeguards to ensure confidentiality should be considered. In this paper, we focused on the informatics aspects of integrating the EMR community and BI community by identifying opportunities, challenges, and approaches to provide the best possible care service for our patients and the population.

Recommendations of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) on Education in Biomedical and Health Informatics. First Revision

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Mantas, John; Ammenwerth, Elske; Demiris, George; Hasman, Arie; Haux, Reinhold; Hersh, William; Hovenga, Evelyn; Lun, K. C.; Marin, Heimar; Martin-Sanchez, Fernando; Wright, Graham

2010-01-01

Objective: The International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) agreed on revising the existing international recommendations in health informatics/medical informatics education. These should help to establish courses, course tracks or even complete programs in this field, to further develop

The Role of Medical Informatics in Primary Care Education

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

PJ McCullagh

2000-02-01

Full Text Available This paper investigates the ability of a group of Primary Care professionals to acquire appropriate document retrieval skills, so that they can apply evidence based health care techniques to their various Primary Care roles. The participants, most of whom had little prior experience of the Internet, were enrolled on a two-year part-time Postgraduate Diploma / MSc in Primary Care. As part of the course, they took a compulsory 12-week module in Medical Informatics. A specific task was set: to find appropriate information on Meningococcal Meningitis and Public Health, by using National Library of Medicine's PUBMED bibliographic retrieval system and other unspecified Internet sources. A supplementary piece of coursework required the group to become information providers by providing tutorials on the world wide web. Analysis of the reports showed that the participants were able to learn and use the information tools successfully and that appropriate skills can be transferred in a short time. Overall nine were positive as to the benefits of the evidence-based approach contributing to local health care, with nine expressing mixed views and two having more negative opinions.

The imaging 3.0 informatics scorecard.

Science.gov (United States)

Kohli, Marc; Dreyer, Keith J; Geis, J Raymond

2015-04-01

Imaging 3.0 is a radiology community initiative to empower radiologists to create and demonstrate value for their patients, referring physicians, and health systems. In image-guided health care, radiologists contribute to the entire health care process, well before and after the actual examination, and out to the point at which they guide clinical decisions and affect patient outcome. Because imaging is so pervasive, radiologists who adopt Imaging 3.0 concepts in their practice can help their health care systems provide consistently high-quality care at reduced cost. By doing this, radiologists become more valuable in the new health care setting. The authors describe how informatics is critical to embracing Imaging 3.0 and present a scorecard that can be used to gauge a radiology group's informatics resources and capabilities. Copyright © 2015 American College of Radiology. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Integrating community-based participatory research and informatics approaches to improve the engagement and health of underserved populations.

Science.gov (United States)

Unertl, Kim M; Schaefbauer, Chris L; Campbell, Terrance R; Senteio, Charles; Siek, Katie A; Bakken, Suzanne; Veinot, Tiffany C

2016-01-01

We compare 5 health informatics research projects that applied community-based participatory research (CBPR) approaches with the goal of extending existing CBPR principles to address issues specific to health informatics research. We conducted a cross-case analysis of 5 diverse case studies with 1 common element: integration of CBPR approaches into health informatics research. After reviewing publications and other case-related materials, all coauthors engaged in collaborative discussions focused on CBPR. Researchers mapped each case to an existing CBPR framework, examined each case individually for success factors and barriers, and identified common patterns across cases. Benefits of applying CBPR approaches to health informatics research across the cases included the following: developing more relevant research with wider impact, greater engagement with diverse populations, improved internal validity, more rapid translation of research into action, and the development of people. Challenges of applying CBPR to health informatics research included requirements to develop strong, sustainable academic-community partnerships and mismatches related to cultural and temporal factors. Several technology-related challenges, including needs to define ownership of technology outputs and to build technical capacity with community partners, also emerged from our analysis. Finally, we created several principles that extended an existing CBPR framework to specifically address health informatics research requirements. Our cross-case analysis yielded valuable insights regarding CBPR implementation in health informatics research and identified valuable lessons useful for future CBPR-based research. The benefits of applying CBPR approaches can be significant, particularly in engaging populations that are typically underserved by health care and in designing patient-facing technology. © The Authors 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Medical

Health Informatics in the Classroom: An Empirical Study to Investigate Higher Education's Response to Healthcare Transformation

Science.gov (United States)

Ashrafi, Noushin; Kuilboer, Jean-Pierre; Joshi, Chaitanya; Ran, Iris; Pande, Priyanka

2014-01-01

The explosive advances in information technology combined with the current climate for health care reform have intensified the need for skilled individuals who can develop, understand, and manage medical information systems in organizations. Health Informatics facilitates quality care at a reasonable cost by allowing access to the right data by…

Improving the quality of the evidence base of health informatics.

Science.gov (United States)

Talmon, Jan

2008-11-06

Evaluation of health informatics technology has had attention from quite a few researchers in health informatics in the last few decades. In the early nineties of the past century several working groups and research projects have discussed evaluation methods and methodologies. Despite these activities, evaluation of health informatics has not received the recognition it deserves. In this presentation we will reiterate the arguments put forward in the Declaration of Innsbruck to consider evaluation an essential element of the evidence base of health informatics. Not only are evaluation studies essential, it is also required that such studies are properly reported. A joint effort of the IMIA, EFMI and AMIA working groups on evaluation has resulted in a guideline for reporting the results of evaluation studies of health informatics applications (STARE-HI). STARE-HI is currently endorsed by EFMI. The general assembly of IMIA has adopted STARE-HI as an official IMIA document. Endorsement from AMIA is being sought. A pilot study in which STARE-HI was applied to assess the quality of current reporting clearly indicates that there is quite some room for improvement. Application of guidelines such as STARE-HI would contribute to a further improvement of the evidence base of health informatics and would open the road for high quality reviews and meta-analyses.

A stimulus to define informatics and health information technology.

Science.gov (United States)

Hersh, William

2009-05-15

Despite the growing interest by leaders, policy makers, and others, the terminology of health information technology as well as biomedical and health informatics is poorly understood and not even agreed upon by academics and professionals in the field. The paper, presented as a Debate to encourage further discussion and disagreement, provides definitions of the major terminology used in biomedical and health informatics and health information technology. For informatics, it focuses on the words that modify the term as well as individuals who practice the discipline. Other categories of related terms are covered as well, from the associated disciplines of computer science, information technology and health information management to the major application categories of applications used. The discussion closes with a classification of individuals who work in the largest segment of the field, namely clinical informatics. The goal of presenting in Debate format is to provide a starting point for discussion to reach a documented consensus on the definition and use of these terms.

Big Data Application in Biomedical Research and Health Care: A Literature Review.

Science.gov (United States)

Luo, Jake; Wu, Min; Gopukumar, Deepika; Zhao, Yiqing

2016-01-01

Big data technologies are increasingly used for biomedical and health-care informatics research. Large amounts of biological and clinical data have been generated and collected at an unprecedented speed and scale. For example, the new generation of sequencing technologies enables the processing of billions of DNA sequence data per day, and the application of electronic health records (EHRs) is documenting large amounts of patient data. The cost of acquiring and analyzing biomedical data is expected to decrease dramatically with the help of technology upgrades, such as the emergence of new sequencing machines, the development of novel hardware and software for parallel computing, and the extensive expansion of EHRs. Big data applications present new opportunities to discover new knowledge and create novel methods to improve the quality of health care. The application of big data in health care is a fast-growing field, with many new discoveries and methodologies published in the last five years. In this paper, we review and discuss big data application in four major biomedical subdisciplines: (1) bioinformatics, (2) clinical informatics, (3) imaging informatics, and (4) public health informatics. Specifically, in bioinformatics, high-throughput experiments facilitate the research of new genome-wide association studies of diseases, and with clinical informatics, the clinical field benefits from the vast amount of collected patient data for making intelligent decisions. Imaging informatics is now more rapidly integrated with cloud platforms to share medical image data and workflows, and public health informatics leverages big data techniques for predicting and monitoring infectious disease outbreaks, such as Ebola. In this paper, we review the recent progress and breakthroughs of big data applications in these health-care domains and summarize the challenges, gaps, and opportunities to improve and advance big data applications in health care.

Person-generated Data in Self-quantification. A Health Informatics Research Program.

Science.gov (United States)

Gray, Kathleen; Martin-Sanchez, Fernando J; Lopez-Campos, Guillermo H; Almalki, Manal; Merolli, Mark

2017-01-09

The availability of internet-connected mobile, wearable and ambient consumer technologies, direct-to-consumer e-services and peer-to-peer social media sites far outstrips evidence about the efficiency, effectiveness and efficacy of using them in healthcare applications. The aim of this paper is to describe one approach to build a program of health informatics research, so as to generate rich and robust evidence about health data and information processing in self-quantification and associated healthcare and health outcomes. The paper summarises relevant health informatics research approaches in the literature and presents an example of developing a program of research in the Health and Biomedical Informatics Centre (HaBIC) at the University of Melbourne. The paper describes this program in terms of research infrastructure, conceptual models, research design, research reporting and knowledge sharing. The paper identifies key outcomes from integrative and multiple-angle approaches to investigating the management of information and data generated by use of this Centre's collection of wearable, mobiles and other devices in health self-monitoring experiments. These research results offer lessons for consumers, developers, clinical practitioners and biomedical and health informatics researchers. Health informatics is increasingly called upon to make sense of emerging self-quantification and other digital health phenomena that are well beyond the conventions of healthcare in which the field of informatics originated and consolidated. To make a substantial contribution to optimise the aims, processes and outcomes of health self-quantification needs further work at scale in multi-centre collaborations for this Centre and for health informatics researchers generally.

Data, Staff, and Money: Leadership Reflections on the Future of Public Health Informatics.

Science.gov (United States)

Leider, Jonathon P; Shah, Gulzar H; Williams, Karmen S; Gupta, Akrati; Castrucci, Brian C

Health informatics can play a critical role in supporting local health departments' (LHDs') delivery of certain essential public health services and improving evidence base for decision support. However, LHDs' informatics capacities are below an optimum level. Efforts to build such capacities face ongoing challenges. Moreover, little is known about LHD leaders' desires for the future of public health informatics. Conduct a qualitative analysis of LHDs' future informatics plans, perceived barriers to accomplishing those plans, and potential impact of future advances in public health informatics on the work of the public health enterprise. This research presents findings from 49 in-depth key informant interviews with public health leaders and informatics professionals from LHDs, representing insights from across the United States. Interviewees were selected on the basis of the size of the population their LHD serves, as well as level of informatics capacity. Interviews were transcribed, verified, and double coded. Major barriers to doing more with informatics included staff capacity and training, financial constraints, dependency on state health agency, and small LHD size/lack of regionalization. When asked about the role of leadership in expanding informatics, interviewees said that leaders could make it a priority through (1) learning more about informatics and (2) creating appropriate budgets for integrated information systems. Local health department leaders said that they desired data that were timely and geographically specific. In addition, LHD leaders said that they desired greater access to clinical data, especially around chronic disease indicators. Local health department leadership desires to have timely or even real-time data. Local health departments have a great potential to benefit from informatics, particularly electronic health records in advancing their administrative practices and service delivery, but financial and human capital represents the

Informatics and communication in a state public health department: a case study.

Science.gov (United States)

Hills, Rebecca A; Turner, Anne M

2008-11-06

State and local health departments are witnessing growth in the area of informatics. As new informatics projects commence, existing methods of communication within the health department may not be sufficient. We gathered information about roles and communication between a development team and a user group working simultaneously on an informatics project in a state public health department in an effort to better define how communication and role definition is best used within an informatics project.

A repository of codes of ethics and technical standards in health informatics.

Science.gov (United States)

Samuel, Hamman W; Zaïane, Osmar R

2014-01-01

We present a searchable repository of codes of ethics and standards in health informatics. It is built using state-of-the-art search algorithms and technologies. The repository will be potentially beneficial for public health practitioners, researchers, and software developers in finding and comparing ethics topics of interest. Public health clinics, clinicians, and researchers can use the repository platform as a one-stop reference for various ethics codes and standards. In addition, the repository interface is built for easy navigation, fast search, and side-by-side comparative reading of documents. Our selection criteria for codes and standards are two-fold; firstly, to maintain intellectual property rights, we index only codes and standards freely available on the internet. Secondly, major international, regional, and national health informatics bodies across the globe are surveyed with the aim of understanding the landscape in this domain. We also look at prevalent technical standards in health informatics from major bodies such as the International Standards Organization (ISO) and the U. S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Our repository contains codes of ethics from the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA), the iHealth Coalition (iHC), the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA), the Australasian College of Health Informatics (ACHI), the British Computer Society (BCS), and the UK Council for Health Informatics Professions (UKCHIP), with room for adding more in the future. Our major contribution is enhancing the findability of codes and standards related to health informatics ethics by compilation and unified access through the health informatics ethics repository.

Nursing informatics and nursing ethics

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kaltoft, Mette Kjer

2013-01-01

All healthcare visions, including that of The TIGER (Technology-Informatics-Guiding-Educational-Reform) Initiative envisage a crucial role for nursing. However, its 7 descriptive pillars do not address the disconnect between Nursing Informatics and Nursing Ethics and their distinct communities......-of-(care)-decision. Increased pressure for translating 'evidence-based' research findings into 'ethically-sound', 'value-based' and 'patient-centered' practice requires rethinking the model implicit in conventional knowledge translation and informatics practice in all disciplines, including nursing. The aim is to aid 'how...... nurses and other health care scientists more clearly identify clinical and other relevant data that can be captured to inform future comparative effectiveness research. 'A prescriptive, theory-based discipline of '(Nursing) Decisionics' expands the Grid for Volunteer Development of TIGER's newly launched...

Research Strategies for Biomedical and Health Informatics. Some Thought-provoking and Critical Proposals to Encourage Scientific Debate on the Nature of Good Research in Medical Informatics.

Science.gov (United States)

Haux, Reinhold; Kulikowski, Casimir A; Bakken, Suzanne; de Lusignan, Simon; Kimura, Michio; Koch, Sabine; Mantas, John; Maojo, Victor; Marschollek, Michael; Martin-Sanchez, Fernando; Moen, Anne; Park, Hyeoun-Ae; Sarkar, Indra N; Leong, Tze Yun; McCray, Alexa T

2017-01-25

Medical informatics, or biomedical and health informatics (BMHI), has become an established scientific discipline. In all such disciplines there is a certain inertia to persist in focusing on well-established research areas and to hold on to well-known research methodologies rather than adopting new ones, which may be more appropriate. To search for answers to the following questions: What are research fields in informatics, which are not being currently adequately addressed, and which methodological approaches might be insufficiently used? Do we know about reasons? What could be consequences of change for research and for education? Outstanding informatics scientists were invited to three panel sessions on this topic in leading international conferences (MIE 2015, Medinfo 2015, HEC 2016) in order to get their answers to these questions. A variety of themes emerged in the set of answers provided by the panellists. Some panellists took the theoretical foundations of the field for granted, while several questioned whether the field was actually grounded in a strong theoretical foundation. Panellists proposed a range of suggestions for new or improved approaches, methodologies, and techniques to enhance the BMHI research agenda. The field of BMHI is on the one hand maturing as an academic community and intellectual endeavour. On the other hand vendor-supplied solutions may be too readily and uncritically accepted in health care practice. There is a high chance that BMHI will continue to flourish as an important discipline; its innovative interventions might then reach the original objectives of advancing science and improving health care outcomes.

Health informatics and modernisation: bridging the gap

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Cheryl Cowley

2003-12-01

Full Text Available This pilot initiative uses an approach that focuses on improving the whole business of primary care, its processes and its people. The Health Informatics Programme for Coronary Heart Disease (HIP for CHD addresses the two faces of clinical governance but has a prime focus on the development of learning organisations. The project has developed a methodology and an associated set of tools that it has tested and evaluated in a small number of pilot sites. The work of HIP for CHD is focused on coronary heart disease but the methodology is equally applicable to other clinical areas. In particular, HIP for CHD provides an approach that allows the diverse strands of all of the National Service Frameworks to be handled in a joined-up way in primary care.

Multi-dimensional knowledge translation: enabling health informatics capacity audits using patient journey models.

Science.gov (United States)

Catley, Christina; McGregor, Carolyn; Percival, Jennifer; Curry, Joanne; James, Andrew

2008-01-01

This paper presents a multi-dimensional approach to knowledge translation, enabling results obtained from a survey evaluating the uptake of Information Technology within Neonatal Intensive Care Units to be translated into knowledge, in the form of health informatics capacity audits. Survey data, having multiple roles, patient care scenarios, levels, and hospitals, is translated using a structured data modeling approach, into patient journey models. The data model is defined such that users can develop queries to generate patient journey models based on a pre-defined Patient Journey Model architecture (PaJMa). PaJMa models are then analyzed to build capacity audits. Capacity audits offer a sophisticated view of health informatics usage, providing not only details of what IT solutions a hospital utilizes, but also answering the questions: when, how and why, by determining when the IT solutions are integrated into the patient journey, how they support the patient information flow, and why they improve the patient journey.

Developing capacity in health informatics in a resource poor setting: lessons from Peru.

Science.gov (United States)

Kimball, Ann Marie; Curioso, Walter H; Arima, Yuzo; Fuller, Sherrilynne; Garcia, Patricia J; Segovia-Juarez, Jose; Castagnetto, Jesus M; Leon-Velarde, Fabiola; Holmes, King K

2009-10-27

The public sectors of developing countries require strengthened capacity in health informatics. In Peru, where formal university graduate degrees in biomedical and health informatics were lacking until recently, the AMAUTA Global Informatics Research and Training Program has provided research and training for health professionals in the region since 1999. The Fogarty International Center supports the program as a collaborative partnership between Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia in Peru and the University of Washington in the United States of America. The program aims to train core professionals in health informatics and to strengthen the health information resource capabilities and accessibility in Peru. The program has achieved considerable success in the development and institutionalization of informatics research and training programs in Peru. Projects supported by this program are leading to the development of sustainable training opportunities for informatics and eight of ten Peruvian fellows trained at the University of Washington are now developing informatics programs and an information infrastructure in Peru. In 2007, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia started offering the first graduate diploma program in biomedical informatics in Peru.

Achieving benefit for patients in primary care informatics: the report of a international consensus workshop at Medinfo 2007.

Science.gov (United States)

de Lusignan, Simon; Teasdale, Sheila

2007-01-01

Landmark reports suggest that sharing health data between clinical computer systems should improve patient safety and the quality of care. Enhancing the use of informatics in primary care is usually a key part of these strategies. To synthesise the learning from the international use of informatics in primary care. The workshop was attended by 21 delegates drawn from all continents. There were presentations from USA, UK and the Netherlands, and informal updates from Australia, Argentina, and Sweden and the Nordic countries. These presentations were discussed in a workshop setting to identify common issues. Key principles were synthesised through a post-workshop analysis and then sorted into themes. Themes emerged about the deployment of informatics which can be applied at health service, practice and individual clinical consultation level: 1 At the health service or provider level, success appeared proportional to the extent of collaboration between a broad range of stakeholders and identification of leaders. 2 Within the practice much is currently being achieved with legacy computer systems and apparently outdated coding systems. This includes prescribing safety alerts, clinical audit and promoting computer data recording and quality. 3 In the consultation the computer is a 'big player' and may make traditional models of the consultation redundant. We should make more efforts to share learning; develop clear internationally acceptable definitions; highlight gaps between pockets of excellence and real-world practice, and most importantly suggest how they might be bridged. Knowledge synthesis from different health systems may provide a greater understanding of how the third actor (the computer) is best used in primary care.

Outcomes management of mechanically ventilated patients: utilizing informatics technology.

Science.gov (United States)

Smith, K R

1998-11-01

This article examines an informatics system developed for outcomes management of the mechanically ventilated adult population, focusing on weaning the patient from mechanical ventilation. The link between medical informatics and outcomes management is discussed, along with the development of methods, tools, and data sets for outcomes management of the mechanically ventilated adult population at an acute care academic institution. Pros and cons of this system are identified, and specific areas for improvement of future health care outcomes medical informatics systems are discussed.

Epilepsy informatics and an ontology-driven infrastructure for large database research and patient care in epilepsy

Science.gov (United States)

Sahoo, Satya S.; Zhang, Guo-Qiang; Lhatoo, Samden D.

2013-01-01

Summary The epilepsy community increasingly recognizes the need for a modern classification system that can also be easily integrated with effective informatics tools. The 2010 reports by the United States President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) identified informatics as a critical resource to improve quality of patient care, drive clinical research, and reduce the cost of health services. An effective informatics infrastructure for epilepsy, which is underpinned by a formal knowledge model or ontology, can leverage an ever increasing amount of multimodal data to improve (1) clinical decision support, (2) access to information for patients and their families, (3) easier data sharing, and (4) accelerate secondary use of clinical data. Modeling the recommendations of the International League Against Epilepsy (ILAE) classification system in the form of an epilepsy domain ontology is essential for consistent use of terminology in a variety of applications, including electronic health records systems and clinical applications. In this review, we discuss the data management issues in epilepsy and explore the benefits of an ontology-driven informatics infrastructure and its role in adoption of a “data-driven” paradigm in epilepsy research. PMID:23647220

Blockchain distributed ledger technologies for biomedical and health care applications.

Science.gov (United States)

Kuo, Tsung-Ting; Kim, Hyeon-Eui; Ohno-Machado, Lucila

2017-11-01

To introduce blockchain technologies, including their benefits, pitfalls, and the latest applications, to the biomedical and health care domains. Biomedical and health care informatics researchers who would like to learn about blockchain technologies and their applications in the biomedical/health care domains. The covered topics include: (1) introduction to the famous Bitcoin crypto-currency and the underlying blockchain technology; (2) features of blockchain; (3) review of alternative blockchain technologies; (4) emerging nonfinancial distributed ledger technologies and applications; (5) benefits of blockchain for biomedical/health care applications when compared to traditional distributed databases; (6) overview of the latest biomedical/health care applications of blockchain technologies; and (7) discussion of the potential challenges and proposed solutions of adopting blockchain technologies in biomedical/health care domains. © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Medical Informatics Association.

Informatics and Technology in Resident Education.

Science.gov (United States)

Niehaus, William

2017-05-01

Biomedical or clinical informatics is the transdisciplinary field that studies and develops effective uses of biomedical data, information technology innovations, and medical knowledge for scientific inquiry, problem solving, and decision making, with an emphasis on improving human health. Given the ongoing advances in information technology, the field of informatics is becoming important to clinical practice and to residency education. This article will discuss how informatics is specifically relevant to residency education and the different ways to incorporate informatics into residency education, and will highlight applications of current technology in the context of residency education. How informatics can optimize communication for residents, promote information technology use, refine documentation techniques, reduce medical errors, and improve clinical decision making will be reviewed. It is hoped that this article will increase faculty and trainees' knowledge of the field of informatics, awareness of available technology, and will assist practitioners to maximize their ability to provide quality care to their patients. This article will also introduce the idea of incorporating informatics specialists into residency programs to help practitioners deliver more evidenced-based care and to further improve their efficiency. Copyright © 2017 American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Optimization of the pharmaceutical care system for diabetes patients using modern pharmaceutical informatics methodology

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Андрій Ігорович Бойко

2016-04-01

Full Text Available Aim. Implementation of pharmaceutical informatics methods in the system of pharmaceutical care for diabetes patients in Ukraine.Methods. System method was used for the analysis of status and reforming the pharmaceutical care for patients with diabetes; program-oriented management at informatization project realization; pharmaceutical informatics in the creation of computer pharmaceutical knowledge bases; methods of data synthesis and summarizing.Results. System analysis of the basic directions of reforming the pharmaceutical care for patients with diabetes in Ukraine was carried out. Ways of it’s of optimization were processed: establishment of specialized pharmacies with implementation of modern information technologies and special postgraduate education for pharmacists. Structure and information providing of computer knowledge base “Pharmaceutical care for patients with diabetes” was substantiated.Conclusion. Based on the regional project “Informatization of prescription antidiabetic drugs circulation in Ukraine” realization, the necessity of establishment of specialized pharmacies providing pharmaceutical care for patients with diabetes was substantiated. Ways for optimization of postgraduate education for pharmacists of the specialized pharmacies by implementation of special thematic improvement cycles were proceed. Computer knowledge base as an effective tool for optimization of pharmaceutical care for patients with diabetes was realized

The Effectiveness of Hands-on Health Informatics Skills Exercises in the Multidisciplinary Smart Home Healthcare and Health Informatics Training Laboratories.

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Sapci, A H; Sapci, H A

2017-10-01

This article aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of newly established innovative smart home healthcare and health informatics laboratories, and a novel laboratory course that focuses on experiential health informatics training, and determine students' self-confidence to operate wireless home health monitoring devices before and after the hands-on laboratory course. Two web-based pretraining and posttraining questionnaires were sent to 64 students who received hands-on training with wireless remote patient monitoring devices in smart home healthcare and health informatics laboratories. All 64 students completed the pretraining survey (100% response rate), and 49 students completed the posttraining survey (76% response rate). The quantitative data analysis showed that 95% of students had an interest in taking more hands-on laboratory courses. Sixty-seven percent of students had no prior experience with medical image, physiological data acquisition, storage, and transmission protocols. After the hands-on training session, 75.51% of students expressed improved confidence about training patients to measure blood pressure monitor using wireless devices. Ninety percent of students preferred to use a similar experiential approach in their future learning experience. Additionally, the qualitative data analysis demonstrated that students were expecting to have more courses with hands-on exercises and integration of technology-enabled delivery and patient monitoring concepts into the curriculum. This study demonstrated that the multidisciplinary smart home healthcare and health informatics training laboratories and the hands-on exercises improved students' technology adoption rates and their self-confidence in using wireless patient monitoring devices. Schattauer GmbH Stuttgart.

Consumer Health Informatics: The Application of ICT in Improving Patient-Provider Partnership for a Better Health Care.

Science.gov (United States)

Abaidoo, Benjamin; Larweh, Benjamin Teye

2014-01-01

There is a growing interest concerning the potential of ICT solutions that are customized to consumers. This emerging discipline referred to as consumer health informatics (CHI) plays a major role in providing information to patients and the public, and facilitates the promotion of self-management. The concept of CHI has emerged out of the desire of most patients to shoulder responsibilities regarding their health and a growing desire of health practitioners to fully appreciate the potential of the patient. To describe the role of ICT in improving the patient-provider partnership in consumer health informatics. Systematic reviewing of literature, identification of reference sources and formulation of search strategies and manual search regarding the significance of developed CHI applications in healthcare delivery. New consumer health IT applications have been developed to be used on a variety of different platforms, including the Web, messaging systems, PDAs, and cell phones. These applications assists patients with self-management through reminders and prompts, delivery of real-time data on a patient's health condition to patients and providers, web-based communication and personal electronic health information. New tools are being developed for the purposes of providing information to patients and the public which has enhanced decision making in health matters and an avenue for clinicians and consumers to exchange health information for personal and public use. This calls for corroboration among healthcare organizations, governments and the ICT industry to develop new research and IT innovations which are tailored to the health needs of the consumer.

New approaches to health promotion and informatics education using Internet in the Czech Republic.

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Zvárová, J

2005-01-01

The paper describes nowadays information technology skills in the Czech Republic. It focuses on informatics education using Internet, ECDL concept and the links between computer literacy among health care professionals and quality of health care. Everyone understands that the main source of wealth of any nation is information management and the efficient transformation of information into knowledge. There appear completely new decisive factors for the economics of the near future based on circulation and exchange information. It is clear that modern health care cannot be built without information and communication technologies. We discuss several approaches how to contribute to some topics of information society in health care, namely the role of electronic health record, structured information, extraction of information from free medical texts and sharing knowledge stored in medical guidelines.

Biomedical and Health Informatics Education – the IMIA Years

Science.gov (United States)

2016-01-01

Summary Objective This paper presents the development of medical informatics education during the years from the establishment of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) until today. Method A search in the literature was performed using search engines and appropriate keywords as well as a manual selection of papers. The search covered English language papers and was limited to search on papers title and abstract only. Results The aggregated papers were analyzed on the basis of the subject area, origin, time span, and curriculum development, and conclusions were drawn. Conclusions From the results, it is evident that IMIA has played a major role in comparing and integrating the Biomedical and Health Informatics educational efforts across the different levels of education and the regional distribution of educators and institutions. A large selection of references is presented facilitating future work on the field of education in biomedical and health informatics. PMID:27488405

On Informatics Diagnostics and Informatics Therapeutics - Good Medical Informatics Research Is Needed Here.

Science.gov (United States)

Haux, Reinhold

2017-01-01

In the era of digitization some new procedures play an increasing role for diagnosis as well as for therapy: informatics diagnostics and informatics therapeutics. Challenges for such procedures are described. It is discussed, when research on such diagnostics and therapeutics can be regarded as good research. Examples are mentioned for informatics diagnostics and informatics therapeutics, which are based on health-enabling technologies.

The informatics capability maturity of integrated primary care centres in Australia.

Science.gov (United States)

Liaw, Siaw-Teng; Kearns, Rachael; Taggart, Jane; Frank, Oliver; Lane, Riki; Tam, Michael; Dennis, Sarah; Walker, Christine; Russell, Grant; Harris, Mark

2017-09-01

Integrated primary care requires systems and service integration along with financial incentives to promote downward substitution to a single entry point to care. Integrated Primary Care Centres (IPCCs) aim to improve integration by co-location of health services. The Informatics Capability Maturity (ICM) describes how well health organisations collect, manage and share information; manage eHealth technology, implementation, change, data quality and governance; and use "intelligence" to improve care. Describe associations of ICM with systems and service integration in IPCCs. Mixed methods evaluation of IPCCs in metropolitan and rural Australia: an enhanced general practice, four GP Super Clinics, a "HealthOne" (private-public partnership) and a Community Health Centre. Data collection methods included self-assessed ICM, document review, interviews, observations in practice and assessment of electronic health record data. Data was analysed and compared across IPCCs. The IPCCs demonstrated a range of funding models, ownership, leadership, organisation and ICM. Digital tools were used with varying effectiveness to collect, use and share data. Connectivity was problematic, requiring "work-arounds" to communicate and share information. The lack of technical, data and software interoperability standards, clinical coding and secure messaging were barriers to data collection, integration and sharing. Strong leadership and governance was important for successful implementation of robust and secure eHealth systems. Patient engagement with eHealth tools was suboptimal. ICM is positively associated with integration of data, systems and care. Improved ICM requires a health workforce with eHealth competencies; technical, semantic and software standards; adequate privacy and security; and good governance and leadership. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Context Sensitive Health Informatics

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kuziemsky, Craig; Nøhr, Christian; Aarts, Jos

2013-01-01

Context is a key consideration when designing and evaluating health information technology (HIT) and cannot be overstated. Unintended consequences are common post HIT implementation and even well designed technology may not achieve desired outcomes because of contextual issues. While context should...... be considered in the design and evaluation of health information systems (HISs) there is a shortcoming of empirical research on contextual aspects of HIT. This conference integrates the sociotechnical and Human-Centered-Design (HCD) approaches and showcases current research on context sensitive health...... informatics. The papers and presentations outlines theories and models for studying contextual issues and insights on how we can better design HIT to accommodate different healthcare contexts....

Innovation in transformative nursing leadership: nursing informatics competencies and roles.

Science.gov (United States)

Remus, Sally; Kennedy, Margaret Ann

2012-12-01

In a recent brief to the Canadian Nurses Association's National Expert Commission on the Health of Our Nation, the Academy of Canadian Executive Nurses (ACEN) discussed leadership needs in the Canadian healthcare system, and promoted the pivotal role of nursing executives in transforming Canada's healthcare system into an integrated patient-centric system. Included among several recommendations was the need to develop innovative leadership competencies that enable nurse leaders to lead and advance transformative health system change. This paper focuses on an emerging "avant-garde executive leadership competency" recommended for today's health leaders to guide health system transformation. Specifically, this competency is articulated as "state of the art communication and technology savvy," and it implies linkages between nursing informatics competencies and transformational leadership roles for nurse executive. The authors of this paper propose that distinct nursing informatics competencies are required to augment traditional executive skills to support transformational outcomes of safe, integrated, high-quality care delivery through knowledge-driven care. International trends involving nursing informatics competencies and the evolution of new corporate informatics roles, such as chief nursing informatics officers (CNIOs), are demonstrating value and advanced transformational leadership as nursing executive roles that are informed by clinical data. Copyright © 2013 Longwoods Publishing.

Beyond information retrieval and electronic health record use: competencies in clinical informatics for medical education

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Hersh WR

2014-07-01

Full Text Available William R Hersh,1 Paul N Gorman,1 Frances E Biagioli,2 Vishnu Mohan,1 Jeffrey A Gold,3 George C Mejicano4 1Department of Medical Informatics and Clinical Epidemiology, 2Department of Family Medicine, 3Department of Medicine, 4School of Medicine, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR, USA Abstract: Physicians in the 21st century will increasingly interact in diverse ways with information systems, requiring competence in many aspects of clinical informatics. In recent years, many medical school curricula have added content in information retrieval (search and basic use of the electronic health record. However, this omits the growing number of other ways that physicians are interacting with information that includes activities such as clinical decision support, quality measurement and improvement, personal health records, telemedicine, and personalized medicine. We describe a process whereby six faculty members representing different perspectives came together to define competencies in clinical informatics for a curriculum transformation process occurring at Oregon Health & Science University. From the broad competencies, we also developed specific learning objectives and milestones, an implementation schedule, and mapping to general competency domains. We present our work to encourage debate and refinement as well as facilitate evaluation in this area. Keywords: curriculum transformation, clinical decision support, patient safety, health care quality, patient engagement

Public health informatics and information systems

CERN Document Server

Magnuson, J A

2013-01-01

In a revised edition, this book covers all aspects of public health informatics, and discusses the creation and management of an information technology infrastructure that is essential in linking state and local organizations in their efforts to gather data.

Electronic Personal Health Record Use Among Nurses in the Nursing Informatics Community.

Science.gov (United States)

Gartrell, Kyungsook; Trinkoff, Alison M; Storr, Carla L; Wilson, Marisa L

2015-07-01

An electronic personal health record is a patient-centric tool that enables patients to securely access, manage, and share their health information with healthcare providers. It is presumed the nursing informatics community would be early adopters of electronic personal health record, yet no studies have been identified that examine the personal adoption of electronic personal health record's for their own healthcare. For this study, we sampled nurse members of the American Medical Informatics Association and the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society with 183 responding. Multiple logistic regression analysis was used to identify those factors associated with electronic personal health record use. Overall, 72% were electronic personal health record users. Users tended to be older (aged >50 years), be more highly educated (72% master's or doctoral degrees), and hold positions as clinical informatics specialists or chief nursing informatics officers. Those whose healthcare providers used electronic health records were significantly more likely to use electronic personal health records (odds ratio, 5.99; 95% confidence interval, 1.40-25.61). Electronic personal health record users were significantly less concerned about privacy of health information online than nonusers (odds ratio, 0.32; 95% confidence interval, 0.14-0.70) adjusted for ethnicity, race, and practice region. Informatics nurses, with their patient-centered view of technology, are in prime position to influence development of electronic personal health records. Our findings can inform policy efforts to encourage informatics and other professional nursing groups to become leaders and users of electronic personal health record; such use could help them endorse and engage patients to use electronic personal health records. Having champions with expertise in and enthusiasm for the new technology can promote the adoptionof electronic personal health records among healthcare providers as well as

Building the foundations of an informatics agenda for global health - 2011 workshop report.

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Mirza, Muzna; Kratz, Mary; Medeiros, Donna; Pina, Jamie; Richards, Janise; Zhang, Xiaohui; Fraser, Hamish; Bailey, Christopher; Krishnamurthy, Ramesh

2012-01-01

Strengthening the capacity of public health systems to protect and promote the health of the global population continues to be essential in an increasingly connected world. Informatics practices and principles can play an important role for improving global health response capacity. A critical step is to develop an informatics agenda for global health so that efforts can be prioritized and important global health issues addressed. With the aim of building a foundation for this agenda, the authors developed a workshop to examine the evidence in this domain, recognize the gaps, and document evidence-based recommendations. On 21 August 2011, at the 2011 Public Health Informatics Conference in Atlanta, GA, USA, a four-hour interactive workshop was conducted with 85 participants from 15 countries representing governmental organizations, private sector companies, academia, and non-governmental organizations. The workshop discussion followed an agenda of a plenary session - planning and agenda setting - and four tracks: Policy and governance; knowledge management, collaborative networks and global partnerships; capacity building; and globally reusable resources: metrics, tools, processes, templates, and digital assets. Track discussions examined the evidence base and the participants' experience to gather information about the current status, compelling and potential benefits, challenges, barriers, and gaps for global health informatics as well as document opportunities and recommendations. This report provides a summary of the discussions and key recommendations as a first step towards building an informatics agenda for global health. Attention to the identified topics and issues is expected to lead to measurable improvements in health equity, health outcomes, and impacts on population health. We propose the workshop report be used as a foundation for the development of the full agenda and a detailed roadmap for global health informatics activities based on further

Neurosurgery clinical registry data collection utilizing Informatics for Integrating Biology and the Bedside and electronic health records at the University of Rochester.

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Pittman, Christine A; Miranpuri, Amrendra S

2015-12-01

In a population health-driven health care system, data collection through the use of clinical registries is becoming imperative to continue to drive effective and efficient patient care. Clinical registries rely on a department's ability to collect high-quality and accurate data. Currently, however, data are collected manually with a high risk for error. The University of Rochester's Department of Neurosurgery in conjunction with the university's Clinical and Translational Science Institute has implemented the integrated use of the Informatics for Integrating Biology and the Bedside (i2b2) informatics framework with the Research Electronic Data Capture (REDCap) databases.

Smartphone as a personal, pervasive health informatics services platform: literature review.

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Wac, K

2012-01-01

The article provides an overview of current trends in personal sensor, signal and imaging informatics, that are based on emerging mobile computing and communications technologies enclosed in a smartphone and enabling the provision of personal, pervasive health informatics services. The article reviews examples of these trends from the PubMed and Google scholar literature search engines, which, by no means claim to be complete, as the field is evolving and some recent advances may not be documented yet. There exist critical technological advances in the surveyed smartphone technologies, employed in provision and improvement of diagnosis, acute and chronic treatment and rehabilitation health services, as well as in education and training of healthcare practitioners. However, the most emerging trend relates to a routine application of these technologies in a prevention/wellness sector, helping its users in self-care to stay healthy. Smartphone-based personal health informatics services exist, but still have a long way to go to become an everyday, personalized healthcare-provisioning tool in the medical field and in a clinical practice. Key main challenge for their widespread adoption involve lack of user acceptance striving from variable credibility and reliability of applications and solutions as they a) lack evidence- based approach; b) have low levels of medical professional involvement in their design and content; c) are provided in an unreliable way, influencing negatively its usability; and, in some cases, d) being industry-driven, hence exposing bias in information provided, for example towards particular types of treatment or intervention procedures.

The state of information and communication technology and health informatics in ghana.

Science.gov (United States)

Achampong, Emmanuel Kusi

2012-01-01

Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has become a major tool in delivery of health services and has had an innovative impact on quality of life. ICT is affecting the way healthcare is delivered to clients. In this paper, we discuss the state of ICT and health informatics in Ghana. We also discuss the state of various relevant infrastructures for the successful implementation of ehealth projects. We analyse the past and present state of health informatics in Ghana, in comparison to other African countries. We also review the challenges facing successful implementation of health informatics projects in Ghana and suggest possible solutions.

Understanding the use of geographical information systems (GIS) in health informatics research: A review.

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Shaw, Nicola; McGuire, Suzanne

2017-06-23

The purpose of this literature review is to understand geographical information systems (GIS) and how they can be applied to public health informatics, medical informatics, and epidemiology. Relevant papers that reflected the use of geographical information systems (GIS) in health research were identified from four academic databases: Academic Search Complete, BioMed Central, PubMed Central, and Scholars Portal, as well as Google Scholar. The search strategy used was to identify articles with "geographic information systems", "GIS", "public health", "medical informatics", "epidemiology", and "health geography" as main subject headings or text words in titles and abstracts. Papers published between 1997 and 2014 were considered and a total of 39 articles were included to inform the authors on the use of GIS technologies in health informatics research. The main applications of GIS in health informatics and epidemiology include disease surveillance, health risk analysis, health access and planning, and community health profiling. GIS technologies can significantly improve quality and efficiency in health research as substantial connections can be made between a population's health and their geographical location. Gains in health informatics can be made when GIS are applied through research, however, improvements need to occur in the quantity and quality of data input for these systems to ensure better geographical health maps are used so that proper conclusions between public health and environmental factors may be made.

Informatics to support the IOM social and behavioral domains and measures.

Science.gov (United States)

Hripcsak, George; Forrest, Christopher B; Brennan, Patricia Flatley; Stead, William W

2015-07-01

Consistent collection and use of social and behavioral determinants of health can improve clinical care, prevention and general health, patient satisfaction, research, and public health. A recent Institute of Medicine committee defined a panel of 11 domains and 12 measures to be included in electronic health records. Incorporating the panel into practice creates a number of informatics research opportunities as well as challenges. The informatics issues revolve around standardization, efficient collection and review, decision support, and support for research. The informatics community can aid the effort by simultaneously optimizing the collection of the selected measures while also partnering with social science researchers to develop and validate new sources of information about social and behavioral determinants of health. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Medical Informatics Association.

The educational needs of health information managers in an electronic environment: what information technology and health informatics skills and knowledge are required?

Science.gov (United States)

Robertson, Merryn; Callen, Joanne

The profile of health information managers (HIMs) employed within one metropolitan area health service in New South Wales (NSW) was identified, together with which information technology and health informatics knowledge and skills they possess, and which ones they require in their workplace. The subjects worked in a variety of roles: 26% were employed in the area's Information Systems Division developing and implementing point-of-care clinical systems. Health information managers perceived they needed further continuing and formal education in point-of-care clinical systems, decision support systems, the electronic health record, privacy and security, health data collections, and database applications.

The Health Information Technology Competencies Tool: Does It Translate for Nursing Informatics in the United States?

Science.gov (United States)

Sipes, Carolyn; Hunter, Kathleen; McGonigle, Dee; West, Karen; Hill, Taryn; Hebda, Toni

2017-12-01

Information technology use in healthcare delivery mandates a prepared workforce. The initial Health Information Technology Competencies tool resulted from a 2-year transatlantic effort by experts from the US and European Union to identify approaches to develop skills and knowledge needed by healthcare workers. It was determined that competencies must be identified before strategies are established, resulting in a searchable database of more than 1000 competencies representing five domains, five skill levels, and more than 250 roles. Health Information Technology Competencies is available at no cost and supports role- or competency-based queries. Health Information Technology Competencies developers suggest its use for curriculum planning, job descriptions, and professional development.The Chamberlain College of Nursing informatics research team examined Health Information Technology Competencies for its possible application to our research and our curricular development, comparing it originally with the TIGER-based Assessment of Nursing Informatics Competencies and Nursing Informatics Competency Assessment of Level 3 and Level 4 tools, which examine informatics competencies at four levels of nursing practice. Additional analysis involved the 2015 Nursing Informatics: Scope and Standards of Practice. Informatics is a Health Information Technology Competencies domain, so clear delineation of nursing-informatics competencies was expected. Researchers found TIGER-based Assessment of Nursing Informatics Competencies and Nursing Informatics Competency Assessment of Level 3 and Level 4 differed from Health Information Technology Competencies 2016 in focus, definitions, ascribed competencies, and defined levels of expertise. When Health Information Technology Competencies 2017 was compared against the nursing informatics scope and standards, researchers found an increase in the number of informatics competencies but not to a significant degree. This is not surprising

Present and Future Trends in Consumer Health Informatics and Patient-Generated Health Data.

Science.gov (United States)

Lai, A M; Hsueh, P-Y S; Choi, Y K; Austin, R R

2017-08-01

Objectives: Consumer Health Informatics (CHI) and the use of Patient-Generated Health Data (PGHD) are rapidly growing focus areas in healthcare. The objective of this paper is to briefly review the literature that has been published over the past few years and to provide a sense of where the field is going. Methods: We searched PubMed and the ACM Digital Library for articles published between 2014 and 2016 on the topics of CHI and PGHD. The results of the search were screened for relevance and categorized into a set of common themes. We discuss the major topics covered in these articles. Results: We retrieved 65 articles from our PubMed query and 32 articles from our ACM Digital Library query. After a review of titles, we were left with 47 articles to conduct our full article survey of the activities in CHI and PGHD. We have summarized these articles and placed them into major categories of activity. Within the domain of consumer health informatics, articles focused on mobile health and patient-generated health data comprise the majority of the articles published in recent years. Conclusions: Current evidence indicates that technological advancements and the widespread availability of affordable consumer-grade devices are fueling research into using PGHD for better care. As we observe a growing number of (pilot) developments using various mobile health technologies to collect PGHD, major gaps still exist in how to use the data by both patients and providers. Further research is needed to understand the impact of PGHD on clinical outcomes. Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart.

Medical Informatics Education & Research in Greece.

Science.gov (United States)

Chouvarda, I; Maglaveras, N

2015-08-13

This paper aims to present an overview of the medical informatics landscape in Greece, to describe the Greek ehealth background and to highlight the main education and research axes in medical informatics, along with activities, achievements and pitfalls. With respect to research and education, formal and informal sources were investigated and information was collected and presented in a qualitative manner, including also quantitative indicators when possible. Greece has adopted and applied medical informatics education in various ways, including undergraduate courses in health sciences schools as well as multidisciplinary postgraduate courses. There is a continuous research effort, and large participation in EU-wide initiatives, in all the spectrum of medical informatics research, with notable scientific contributions, although technology maturation is not without barriers. Wide-scale deployment of eHealth is anticipated in the healthcare system in the near future. While ePrescription deployment has been an important step, ICT for integrated care and telehealth have a lot of room for further deployment. Greece is a valuable contributor in the European medical informatics arena, and has the potential to offer more as long as the barriers of research and innovation fragmentation are addressed and alleviated.

Patient Outcomes as Transformative Mechanisms to Bring Health Information Technology Industry and Research Informatics Closer Together.

Science.gov (United States)

Krive, Jacob

2015-01-01

Despite the fast pace of recent innovation within the health information technology and research informatics domains, there remains a large gap between research and academia, while interest in translating research innovations into implementations in the patient care settings is lacking. This is due to absence of common outcomes and performance measurement targets, with health information technology industry employing financial and operational measures and academia focusing on patient outcome concerns. The paper introduces methodology for and roadmap to introduction of common objectives as a way to encourage better collaboration between industry and academia using patient outcomes as a composite measure of demonstrated success from health information systems investments. Along the way, the concept of economics of health informatics, or "infonomics," is introduced to define a new way of mapping future technology investments in accordance with projected clinical impact.

Handbook of evaluation methods for health informatics

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Brender, Jytte

2006-01-01

.... Amsterdam: lOS Press, Studies in Health Technology and Informatics 1997; 42, with permission. This book is printed on acid-free paper. (~ Copyright 92006, Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. No part ...

International Conference on Health Informatics

CERN Document Server

2014-01-01

This volume presents the proceedings of the International Conference on Health Informatics (ICHI). The conference was a new special topic conference initiative by the International Federation of Medical and Biological Engineering (IFMBE), held in Vilamoura, Portugal on 7-9 November, 2013. The main theme of the ICHI2013 was “Integrating Information and Communication Technologies with Biomedicine for Global Health”. The proceedings offer a unique forum to examine enabling technologies of sensors, devices and systems that optimize the acquisition, transmission, processing, storage, retrieval of biomedical and health information as well as to report novel clinical applications of health information systems and the deployment of m-Health, e-Health, u-Health, p-Health and Telemedicine.

METEOR: An Enterprise Health Informatics Environment to Support Evidence-Based Medicine.

Science.gov (United States)

Puppala, Mamta; He, Tiancheng; Chen, Shenyi; Ogunti, Richard; Yu, Xiaohui; Li, Fuhai; Jackson, Robert; Wong, Stephen T C

2015-12-01

The aim of this paper is to propose the design and implementation of next-generation enterprise analytics platform developed at the Houston Methodist Hospital (HMH) system to meet the market and regulatory needs of the healthcare industry. For this goal, we developed an integrated clinical informatics environment, i.e., Methodist environment for translational enhancement and outcomes research (METEOR). The framework of METEOR consists of two components: the enterprise data warehouse (EDW) and a software intelligence and analytics (SIA) layer for enabling a wide range of clinical decision support systems that can be used directly by outcomes researchers and clinical investigators to facilitate data access for the purposes of hypothesis testing, cohort identification, data mining, risk prediction, and clinical research training. Data and usability analysis were performed on METEOR components as a preliminary evaluation, which successfully demonstrated that METEOR addresses significant niches in the clinical informatics area, and provides a powerful means for data integration and efficient access in supporting clinical and translational research. METEOR EDW and informatics applications improved outcomes, enabled coordinated care, and support health analytics and clinical research at HMH. The twin pressures of cost containment in the healthcare market and new federal regulations and policies have led to the prioritization of the meaningful use of electronic health records in the United States. EDW and SIA layers on top of EDW are becoming an essential strategic tool to healthcare institutions and integrated delivery networks in order to support evidence-based medicine at the enterprise level.

Synergy between Medical Informatics and Bioinformatics: Facilitating Genomic Medicine for Future Health Care

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Martin-Sanchez, F.; Iakovidis, I.; Norager, S.; Maojo, V.; de Groen, P.; Van der Lei, J.; Jones, T.; Abraham-Fuchs, K.; Apweiler, R.; Babic, A.; Baud, R.; Breton, V.; Cinquin, P.; Doupi, P.; Dugas, M.; Eils, R.; Engelbrecht, R.; Ghazal, P.; Jehenson, P.; Kulikowski, C.; Lampe, K.; De Moor, G.; Orphanoudakis, S.; Rossing, N.; Sarachan, B.; Sousa, A.; Spekowius, G.; Thireos, G.; Zahlmann, G.; Zvárová, Jana; Hermosilla, I.; Vicente, F. J.

2004-01-01

Roč. 37, - (2004), s. 30-42 ISSN 1532-0464 Institutional research plan: CEZ:AV0Z1030915 Keywords : bioinformatics * medical informatics * genomics * genomic medicine * biomedical informatics Subject RIV: BD - Theory of Information Impact factor: 1.013, year: 2004

An informatics agenda for public health: summarized recommendations from the 2011 AMIA PHI Conference

Science.gov (United States)

Goodman, Kenneth W; Gotham, Ivan J; Holmes, John H; Lang, Lisa; Miner, Kathleen; Potenziani, David D; Richards, Janise; Turner, Anne M; Fu, Paul C

2012-01-01

The AMIA Public Health Informatics 2011 Conference brought together members of the public health and health informatics communities to revisit the national agenda developed at the AMIA Spring Congress in 2001, assess the progress that has been made in the past decade, and develop recommendations to further guide the field. Participants met in five discussion tracks: technical framework; research and evaluation; ethics; education, professional training, and workforce development; and sustainability. Participants identified 62 recommendations, which clustered into three key themes related to the need to (1) enhance communication and information sharing within the public health informatics community, (2) improve the consistency of public health informatics through common public health terminologies, rigorous evaluation methodologies, and competency-based training, and (3) promote effective coordination and leadership that will champion and drive the field forward. The agenda and recommendations from the meeting will be disseminated and discussed throughout the public health and informatics communities. Both communities stand to gain much by working together to use these recommendations to further advance the application of information technology to improve health. PMID:22395299

Education of medical informatics in Bosnia and Herzegowina.

Science.gov (United States)

Masić, I

1998-06-01

called basic pre-clinic sciences, especially basics of information, would make things easier for the students the more informative education is in the course of their medical studies. The medical faculty in Sarajevo also established and accepted a course of health informatics and economics of post-graduate studies in 1979, of which the main objective is education of experts for work informatics jobs in health care system and services, especially for needs of the future information systems in BiH.

Unravelling the tangled taxonomies of health informatics

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

David Barrett

2014-08-01

Full Text Available Even though informatics is a term used commonly in healthcare, it can be a confusing and disengaging one. Many definitions exist in the literature, and attempts have been made to develop a clear taxonomy. Despite this, informatics is still a term that lacks clarity in both its scope and the classification of sub-terms that it encompasses.This paper reviews the importance of an agreed taxonomy and explores the challenges of establishing exactly what is meant by health informatics (HI. It reviews what a taxonomy should do, summarises previous attempts at categorising and organising HI and suggests the elements to consider when seeking to develop a system of classification.The paper does not provide all the answers, but it does clarify the questions. By plotting a path towards a taxonomy of HI, it will be possible to enhance understanding and optimise the benefits of embracing technology in clinical practice.

Conceptual Models in Health Informatics Research: A Literature Review and Suggestions for Development.

Science.gov (United States)

Gray, Kathleen; Sockolow, Paulina

2016-02-24

Contributing to health informatics research means using conceptual models that are integrative and explain the research in terms of the two broad domains of health science and information science. However, it can be hard for novice health informatics researchers to find exemplars and guidelines in working with integrative conceptual models. The aim of this paper is to support the use of integrative conceptual models in research on information and communication technologies in the health sector, and to encourage discussion of these conceptual models in scholarly forums. A two-part method was used to summarize and structure ideas about how to work effectively with conceptual models in health informatics research that included (1) a selective review and summary of the literature of conceptual models; and (2) the construction of a step-by-step approach to developing a conceptual model. The seven-step methodology for developing conceptual models in health informatics research explained in this paper involves (1) acknowledging the limitations of health science and information science conceptual models; (2) giving a rationale for one's choice of integrative conceptual model; (3) explicating a conceptual model verbally and graphically; (4) seeking feedback about the conceptual model from stakeholders in both the health science and information science domains; (5) aligning a conceptual model with an appropriate research plan; (6) adapting a conceptual model in response to new knowledge over time; and (7) disseminating conceptual models in scholarly and scientific forums. Making explicit the conceptual model that underpins a health informatics research project can contribute to increasing the number of well-formed and strongly grounded health informatics research projects. This explication has distinct benefits for researchers in training, research teams, and researchers and practitioners in information, health, and other disciplines.

Nursing informatics: the future now.

Science.gov (United States)

Mamta

2014-01-01

Technological advancements in the health care field have always impacted the health care practices. Nursing practice has also been greatly influenced by the technology. In the recent years, use of information technology including computers, handheld digital devices, internet has advanced the nursing by bridging the gap from nursing as an art to nursing as science. In every sphere of nursing practice, nursing research, nursing education and nursing informatics play a very important role. If used properly it is a way to save time, helping to provide quality nursing care and increases the proficiency of nursing personnel.

Applied nursing informatics research - state-of-the-art methodologies using electronic health record data.

Science.gov (United States)

Park, Jung In; Pruinelli, Lisiane; Westra, Bonnie L; Delaney, Connie W

2014-01-01

With the pervasive implementation of electronic health records (EHR), new opportunities arise for nursing research through use of EHR data. Increasingly, comparative effectiveness research within and across health systems is conducted to identify the impact of nursing for improving health, health care, and lowering costs of care. Use of EHR data for this type of research requires use of national and internationally recognized nursing terminologies to normalize data. Research methods are evolving as large data sets become available through EHRs. Little is known about the types of research and analytic methods for applied to nursing research using EHR data normalized with nursing terminologies. The purpose of this paper is to report on a subset of a systematic review of peer reviewed studies related to applied nursing informatics research involving EHR data using standardized nursing terminologies.

Electronic Health Record for Continuous Shared Health Care

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Hanzlíček, Petr; Zvárová, Jana

2005-01-01

Roč. 9, - (2005), s. 275-280 ISSN 1335-2393. [YBERC 2005. Young Biomedical Engineers and Researchers Conference. Stará Lesná, 13.07.2005-15.07.2005] R&D Projects: GA AV ČR 1ET200300413 Institutional research plan: CEZ:AV0Z10300504 Keywords : information society * telemedicine * electronic health record * digital signature * personal data protection * biomedical informatics Subject RIV: FQ - Public Health Care, Social Medicine

10th International Conference on Health Informatics

CERN Document Server

2017-01-01

The purpose of the International Conference on Health Informatics is to bring together researchers and practitioners interested in the application of information and communication technologies (ICT) to healthcare and medicine in general and to the support of persons with special needs in particular.

Strategic planning of the master programme in health informatics at Aalborg University: targeting and updating the programme, to meet explicit customer needs.

Science.gov (United States)

Nøhr, C; Bygholm, A; Hejlesen, O

1998-06-01

Education is essentially giving people new skills and qualifications to fulfil certain tasks. In planning and managing educational programmes it is crucial to know what skills and what qualifications are needed to carry out the tasks in question, not to mention the importance of knowing what tasks are relevant to carry out. The programme in health informatics at Aalborg University produces health informatics professionals. The students are developing skills in solving informatics problems in health care organisations. The programme has been running for 3 years now and to maintain the perception of the aim for the programme a number of activities have been launched. In the following, the programme will be presented, the activities to obtain information on how to keep the programme targeted and updated will be described and the changes that are going to be introduced will be outlined.

Nurse Leadership and Informatics Competencies: Shaping Transformation of Professional Practice.

Science.gov (United States)

Kennedy, Margaret Ann; Moen, Anne

2017-01-01

Nurse leaders must demonstrate capacities and develop specific informatics competencies in order to provide meaningful leadership and support ongoing transformation of the healthcare system. Concurrently, staff informatics competencies must be planned and fostered to support critical principles of transformation and patient safety in practice, advance evidence-informed practice, and enable nursing to flourish in complex digital environments across the healthcare continuum. In addition to nurse leader competencies, two key aspects of leadership and informatics competencies will be addressed in this chapter - namely, the transformation of health care and preparation of the nursing workforce.

Biomedical informatics and translational medicine

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sarkar Indra

2010-02-01

Full Text Available Abstract Biomedical informatics involves a core set of methodologies that can provide a foundation for crossing the "translational barriers" associated with translational medicine. To this end, the fundamental aspects of biomedical informatics (e.g., bioinformatics, imaging informatics, clinical informatics, and public health informatics may be essential in helping improve the ability to bring basic research findings to the bedside, evaluate the efficacy of interventions across communities, and enable the assessment of the eventual impact of translational medicine innovations on health policies. Here, a brief description is provided for a selection of key biomedical informatics topics (Decision Support, Natural Language Processing, Standards, Information Retrieval, and Electronic Health Records and their relevance to translational medicine. Based on contributions and advancements in each of these topic areas, the article proposes that biomedical informatics practitioners ("biomedical informaticians" can be essential members of translational medicine teams.

Informatics enables public health surveillance

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Scott J. N McNabb

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Over the past decade, the world has radically changed. New advances in information and communication technologies (ICT connect the world in ways never imagined. Public health informatics (PHI leveraged for public health surveillance (PHS, can enable, enhance, and empower essential PHS functions (i.e., detection, reporting, confirmation, analyses, feedback, response. However, the tail doesn't wag the dog; as such, ICT cannot (should not drive public health surveillance strengthening. Rather, ICT can serve PHS to more effectively empower core functions. In this review, we explore promising ICT trends for prevention, detection, and response, laboratory reporting, push notification, analytics, predictive surveillance, and using new data sources, while recognizing that it is the people, politics, and policies that most challenge progress for implementation of solutions.

Medical Informatics Impact of Information Society in Health Care Development

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Zvárová, Jana

2005-01-01

Roč. 9, - (2005), s. 269-274 ISSN 1335-2393. [YBERC 2005. Young Biomedical Engineers and Researchers Conference. Stará Lesná, 13.07.2005-15.07.2005] Institutional research plan: CEZ:AV0Z10300504 Keywords : medical informatics * information society * telemedicine * education * research and development Subject RIV: BD - Theory of Information

The Importance of Informatics for Health Care Industry

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Abdullah Talha Kabakuş

2016-09-01

Full Text Available There is no industry that does not benefit from the advantages of information technology (IT. Health care industry is no different from them. IT solutions are used to minimize the human resource required for labor-intensive or time consuming tasks by automating them, benefit from the intelligent software solutions that not just store the data in electronic format but also ease the decision making process, accelerate the business processes by providing services simultaneously, and provide maintainable and consistent services. Despite all of these advantages, health care industry spends only 2% of its revenues on technology, which is very limited when it is compared to other industries that spend around 10%.

From bed to bench: bridging from informatics practice to theory: an exploratory analysis.

Science.gov (United States)

Haux, R; Lehmann, C U

2014-01-01

In 2009, Applied Clinical Informatics (ACI)--focused on applications in clinical informatics--was launched as a companion journal to Methods of Information in Medicine (MIM). Both journals are official journals of the International Medical Informatics Association. To explore which congruencies and interdependencies exist in publications from theory to practice and from practice to theory and to determine existing gaps. Major topics discussed in ACI and MIM were analyzed. We explored if the intention of publishing companion journals to provide an information bridge from informatics theory to informatics practice and vice versa could be supported by this model. In this manuscript we will report on congruencies and interdependences from practice to theory and on major topics in MIM. Retrospective, prolective observational study on recent publications of ACI and MIM. All publications of the years 2012 and 2013 were indexed and analyzed. Hundred and ninety-six publications were analyzed (ACI 87, MIM 109). In MIM publications, modelling aspects as well as methodological and evaluation approaches for the analysis of data, information, and knowledge in biomedicine and health care were frequently raised - and often discussed from an interdisciplinary point of view. Important themes were ambient-assisted living, anatomic spatial relations, biomedical informatics as scientific discipline, boosting, coding, computerized physician order entry, data analysis, grid and cloud computing, health care systems and services, health-enabling technologies, health information search, health information systems, imaging, knowledge-based decision support, patient records, signal analysis, and web science. Congruencies between journals could be found in themes, but with a different focus on content. Interdependencies from practice to theory, found in these publications, were only limited. Bridging from informatics theory to practice and vice versa remains a major component of successful

Crossing Borders: An Online Interdisciplinary Course in Health Informatics for Students From Two Countries.

Science.gov (United States)

Fossum, Mariann; Fruhling, Ann; Moe, Carl Erik; Thompson, Cheryl Bagley

2017-04-01

A cross-countries and interprofessional novel approach for delivering an international interdisciplinary graduate health informatics course online is presented. Included in this discussion are the challenges, lessons learned, and pedagogical recommendations from the experiences of teaching the course. Four professors from three different fields and from three universities collaborated in offering an international health informatics course for an interdisciplinary group of 18 US and seven Norwegian students. Highly motivated students and professors, an online technology infrastructure that supported asynchronously communication and course delivery, the ability to adapt the curriculum to meet the pedagogy requirements at all universities, and the support of higher administration for international collaboration were enablers for success. This project demonstrated the feasibility and advantages of an interdisciplinary, interprofessional, and cross-countries approach in teaching health informatics online. Students were able to establish relationships and conduct professional conversations across disciplines and international boundaries using content management software. This graduate course can be used as a part of informatics, computer science, and/or health science programs.

A national agenda for public health informatics: summarized recommendations from the 2001 AMIA Spring Congress.

Science.gov (United States)

Yasnoff, W A; Overhage, J M; Humphreys, B L; LaVenture, M

2001-01-01

The AMIA 2001 Spring Congress brought together members of the the public health and informatics communities to develop a national agenda for public health informatics. Discussions of funding and governance; architecture and infrastructure; standards and vocabulary; research, evaluation, and best practices; privacy, confidentiality, and security; and training and workforce resulted in 74 recommendations with two key themes-that all stakeholders need to be engaged in coordinated activities related to public health information architecture, standards, confidentiality, best practices, and research; and that informatics training is needed throughout the public health workforce. Implementation of this consensus agenda will help promote progress in the application of information technology to improve public health.

Medical Informatics in Clinical Practice: An Overview. | Okoromah ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Providing a high-quality service to patients involves having the right information at the ... Knowledge and practice and application of computer technology in both ... informatics and to stimulate interest in computer support in health care in our ...

Patient Centred Systems: Techno-Anthropological reflections on the challenges of 'meaningfully engaging' patients within health informatics research.

Science.gov (United States)

Wong, Ming-Chao; Almond, Helen; Cummings, Elizabeth; Roehrer, Erin; Showell, Chris; Turner, Paul

2015-01-01

This chapter explores how Techno-Anthropology can contribute to more explicitly professional and ethically responsible reflections on the socio-technical practices involved in meaningfully engaging patients in health informatics research. The chapter draws on insights from health informatics research projects focused on chronic disease and self-management conducted in Tasmania during the last 10 years. Through these projects the paper explores three topics of relevance to 'meaningful engagement' with patients: (i) Patient Self-Management and Chronic Disease (ii) Patients as Users in Health Informatics research, and, (iii) Evaluations of outcomes in Health and Health Informatics Interventions. Techno-Anthropological reflections are then discussed through the concepts of liminality, polyphony and power. This chapter argues that beyond its contribution to methodology, an important role for Techno-Anthropology in patient centred health informatics research may be its capacity to support new ways of conceptualising and critically reflecting on the construction and mediation of patients' needs, values and perspectives.

Past and next 10 years of medical informatics

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Ückert, Frank; Ammenwerth, Elske; Dujat, Carl; Grant, Andrew; Haux, Reinhold; Hein, Andreas; Hochlehnert, Achim; Knaup-Gregori, Petra; Kulikowski, Casimir; Mantas, John; Maojo, Victor; Marschollek, Michael; Moura, Lincoln; Plischke, Maik; Röhrig, Rainer; Stausberg, Jürgen; Takabayashi, Katsuhiko; Winter, Alfred; Wolf, Klaus-Hendrik; Hasman, Arie

2014-01-01

More than 10 years ago Haux et al. tried to answer the question how health care provision will look like in the year 2013. A follow-up workshop was held in Braunschweig, Germany, for 2 days in May, 2013, with 20 invited international experts in biomedical and health informatics. Among other things

Proceedings from The 14th Scandinavian Conference on Health Informatics 2016 : Gothenburg, Sweden, April 6-7 2016

OpenAIRE

2016-01-01

The Scandinavian Conference on Health Informtics 2016 is organized together with the national health informatics organisations in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden and this year also the Vitalis conference. The goal of the conference is to stimulate scientific discussion of health informatics issues in the Scandinavian countries. The target audience of the conference are people doing, or having an interest in, health informatics research in a wide sense, including any development, implementation, e...

Towards Sustainable Health Care Organizations

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Mauro ROMANELLI

2017-09-01

Full Text Available Health care organizations have to develop a sustainable path for creating public value by seeking legitimacy for building and maintaining public trust with patients as social and economic institutions creating value and sustaining both health and wealth for people and communities within society. Health care organizations having at disposal decreasing resources and meeting increasing demands of citizens are following an unsustainable path. Designing sustainable health care systems and organizations is emerging as a strategic goal for developing the wealth of people and communities over time. Building sustainable organizations relies on valuing human resources, designing efficient and effective processes, using technology for better managing the relationships within and outside organizations. Sustainable health care organizations tend to rediscover the importance of human resource management and policies for effectively improving communication with patients and building trust-based relationships. While processes of accreditation contribute to legitimizing effectiveness and quality of health care services and efficient processes, introducing and using new information and communication technologies (ICTs and informatics helps communication leading to restore trust-based relationships between health care institutions and patients for value creation within society.

Some Innovative Approaches for Public Health and Epidemiology Informatics.

Science.gov (United States)

Toubiana, L; Griffon, N

2016-11-10

Summarize excellent current research published in 2015 in the field of Public Health and Epidemiology Informatics. The complete 2015 literature concerning public health and epidemiology informatics has been searched in PubMed and Web of Science, and the returned references were reviewed by the two section editors to select 14 candidate best papers. These papers were then peer-reviewed by external reviewers to allow the editorial team an enlightened selection of the best papers. Among the 1,272 references retrieved from PubMed and Web of Science, three were finally selected as best papers. The first one presents a language agnostic approach for epidemic event detection in news articles. The second paper describes a system using big health data gathered by a statewide system to forecast emergency department visits. The last paper proposes a rather original approach that uses machine learning to solve the old issue of outbreak detection and prediction. The increasing availability of data, now directly from health systems, will probably lead to a boom in public health surveillance systems and in large-scale epidemiologic studies.

Health Informatics via Machine Learning for the Clinical Management of Patients.

Science.gov (United States)

Clifton, D A; Niehaus, K E; Charlton, P; Colopy, G W

2015-08-13

To review how health informatics systems based on machine learning methods have impacted the clinical management of patients, by affecting clinical practice. We reviewed literature from 2010-2015 from databases such as Pubmed, IEEE xplore, and INSPEC, in which methods based on machine learning are likely to be reported. We bring together a broad body of literature, aiming to identify those leading examples of health informatics that have advanced the methodology of machine learning. While individual methods may have further examples that might be added, we have chosen some of the most representative, informative exemplars in each case. Our survey highlights that, while much research is taking place in this high-profile field, examples of those that affect the clinical management of patients are seldom found. We show that substantial progress is being made in terms of methodology, often by data scientists working in close collaboration with clinical groups. Health informatics systems based on machine learning are in their infancy and the translation of such systems into clinical management has yet to be performed at scale.

Health informatics model for helminthiasis in Thailand.

Science.gov (United States)

Nithikathkul, C; Trevanich, A; Wongsaroj, T; Wongsawad, C; Reungsang, P

2017-09-01

At the beginning of the new millennium, helminth infections continue to be prevalent, particularly among impoverished populations. This study attempts to create the first health informatics model of helminthiasis in Thailand. The authors investigate how a health informatics model could be used to predict the control and eradication in a national control campaign. Fish-borne helminthiasis caused by Opisthorchis viverrini remains a major public health problem in many parts of South-East Asia, including Thailand, Lao PDR, Vietnam and Cambodia. The epicentre of this disease is located in north-east Thailand, where high prevalence coexists with a high incidence of cholangiocarcinoma (CHCA). The current report was conducted to determine a mathematical model of surveillance for helminthiasis while also using a geographic information system. The fish-borne helminthiasis model or the predicted equation was Y1 = 3.028 + 0.020 (elevation) - 2.098 (clay). For soil-transmitted helminthiasis, the mathematical model or the predicted equation was Y2 = -1.559 + 0.005 (rainfall) + 0.004 (elevation) - 2.198 (clay). The Ministry of Public Health has concluded that mass treatment for helminthiasis in the Thai population, targeting high-risk individuals, may be a cost-effective way to allocate limited funds. This type of approach, as well as further study on the correlation of clinical symptoms with environmental and geographic information, may offer a novel strategy to the helminth crisis.

Solving Interoperability in Translational Health. Perspectives of Students from the International Partnership in Health Informatics Education (IPHIE) 2016 Master Class

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Turner, Anne M.; Facelli, Julio C.; Jaspers, Monique; Wetter, Thomas; Pfeifer, Daniel; Gatewood, Laël Cranmer; Adam, Terry; Li, Yu-Chuan; Lin, Ming-Chin; Evans, R. Scott; Beukenhorst, Anna; van Mens, Hugo Johan Theodoore; Tensen, Esmee; Bock, Christian; Fendrich, Laura; Seitz, Peter; Suleder, Julian; Aldelkhyyel, Ranyah; Bridgeman, Kent; Hu, Zhen; Sattler, Aaron; Guo, Shin-Yi; Mohaimenul, Islam Md Mohaimenul; Anggraini Ningrum, Dina Nur; Tung, Hsin-Ru; Bian, Jiantano; Plasek, Joseph M.; Rommel, Casey; Burke, Juandalyn; Sohih, Harkirat

2017-01-01

In the summer of 2016 an international group of biomedical and health informatics faculty and graduate students gathered for the 16th meeting of the International Partnership in Health Informatics Education (IPHIE) masterclass at the University of Utah campus in Salt Lake City, Utah. This

Consumer Health Informatics in the Context of Engaged Citizens and eHealth Services - A New CHI Meta Model.

Science.gov (United States)

Wiesner, Martin; Griebel, Lena; Becker, Kurt; Pobiruchin, Monika

2016-01-01

Consumer Health Informatics (CHI) is a relatively new and interdisciplinary field in Medical Informatics. It focuses on consumer- rather than professional-centered services. However, the definitions and understanding of a) what is a "consumer"? or b) what is health technology in the context of CHI? and c) what factors and actors influence the usage of eHealth services? vary widely. The CHI special interest group (SIG) - associated with the German Association for Medical Informatics, Biometry and Epidemiology - conducted two workshops in 2015 to improve the common understanding on these topics. The workshop outcomes, the derived CHI-specific meta model and examples how to apply this model are presented in this paper. The model supports the definition of multi-actor contexts, as it not solely reflects the conventional patient-physician relationship but also allows for the description of second health market providers.

Implementation of electronic health records in Polish outpatient health care clinics – starting point, progress, problems, and forecasts

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Aleksandra Czerw

2016-06-01

Most health care entities providing specialized outpatient care would not have complied with the provisions of the Act on Information System in Health Care had the deadline for implementation of EHR not been postponed. Five months before the date stipulated in the first version of the Act (August 2014, about 74% of health care entities covered by this study did not yet have a ready EHR system. The study also showed that 2 years is insufficient time for the entire process of informatization of a health care establishment.

A Health Informatics Curriculum Congruent with IS 2010 and IMIA Recommendations for an Undergraduate Degree

Science.gov (United States)

Longenecker, Herbert E., Jr.; Campbell, S. Matt; Landry, Jeffrey P.; Pardue, Harold; Daigle, Roy J.

2012-01-01

In addition to being a relevant program for health information technology workers, a recently proposed Health Informatics program was designed with additional objectives in mind: that the program is compatible with the IS 2010 Model Curriculum and that it satisfies the International Medical Informatics Association recommendation for undergraduate…

Techno-Anthropological Sensibilities in Health Informatics

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bossen, Claus

2015-01-01

What kind of knowledges, skills and competences may be required by Techno-Anthropology engaging with health informatics? If we understand Techno-Anthropology to mean conducting anthropological analyses of the interwoven and mutually shaping relationship between organizing, technologies and actors...... professions and organizations; and skilled in generating analyses and proposing new solutions. Also, people with insight into how action, technologies and organizing are interwoven and redistribute competences, responsibilities and risks are invaluable: Look at from afar, technologies seem to cause...

Health-enabling technologies for pervasive health care: on services and ICT architecture paradigms.

Science.gov (United States)

Haux, Reinhold; Howe, Jurgen; Marschollek, Michael; Plischke, Maik; Wolf, Klaus-Hendrik

2008-06-01

Progress in information and communication technologies (ICT) is providing new opportunities for pervasive health care services in aging societies. To identify starting points of health-enabling technologies for pervasive health care. To describe typical services of and contemporary ICT architecture paradigms for pervasive health care. Summarizing outcomes of literature analyses and results from own research projects in this field. Basic functions for pervasive health care with respect to home care comprise emergency detection and alarm, disease management, as well as health status feedback and advice. These functions are complemented by optional (non-health care) functions. Four major paradigms for contemporary ICT architectures are person-centered ICT architectures, home-centered ICT architectures, telehealth service-centered ICT architectures and health care institution-centered ICT architectures. Health-enabling technologies may lead to both new ways of living and new ways of health care. Both ways are interwoven. This has to be considered for appropriate ICT architectures of sensor-enhanced health information systems. IMIA, the International Medical Informatics Association, may be an appropriate forum for interdisciplinary research exchange on health-enabling technologies for pervasive health care.

Transforming health care delivery through consumer engagement, health data transparency, and patient-generated health information.

Science.gov (United States)

Sands, D Z; Wald, J S

2014-08-15

Address current topics in consumer health informatics. Literature review. Current health care delivery systems need to be more effective in the management of chronic conditions as the population turns older and experiences escalating chronic illness that threatens to consume more health care resources than countries can afford. Most health care systems are positioned poorly to accommodate this. Meanwhile, the availability of ever more powerful and cheaper information and communication technology, both for professionals and consumers, has raised the capacity to gather and process information, communicate more effectively, and monitor the quality of care processes. Adapting health care systems to serve current and future needs requires new streams of data to enable better self-management, improve shared decision making, and provide more virtual care. Changes in reimbursement for health care services, increased adoption of relevant technologies, patient engagement, and calls for data transparency raise the importance of patient-generated health information, remote monitoring, non-visit based care, and other innovative care approaches that foster more frequent contact with patients and better management of chronic conditions.

An Informatics Approach to Establishing a Sustainable Public Health Community

Science.gov (United States)

Kriseman, Jeffrey Michael

2012-01-01

This work involved the analysis of a public health system, and the design, development and deployment of enterprise informatics architecture, and sustainable community methods to address problems with the current public health system. Specifically, assessment of the Nationally Notifiable Disease Surveillance System (NNDSS) was instrumental in…

Medical image informatics infrastructure design and applications.

Science.gov (United States)

Huang, H K; Wong, S T; Pietka, E

1997-01-01

Picture archiving and communication systems (PACS) is a system integration of multimodality images and health information systems designed for improving the operation of a radiology department. As it evolves, PACS becomes a hospital image document management system with a voluminous image and related data file repository. A medical image informatics infrastructure can be designed to take advantage of existing data, providing PACS with add-on value for health care service, research, and education. A medical image informatics infrastructure (MIII) consists of the following components: medical images and associated data (including PACS database), image processing, data/knowledge base management, visualization, graphic user interface, communication networking, and application oriented software. This paper describes these components and their logical connection, and illustrates some applications based on the concept of the MIII.

Comparative effectiveness research and medical informatics.

Science.gov (United States)

D'Avolio, Leonard W; Farwell, Wildon R; Fiore, Louis D

2010-12-01

As is the case for environmental, ecological, astronomical, and other sciences, medical practice and research finds itself in a tsunami of data. This data deluge, due primarily to the introduction of digitalization in routine medical care and medical research, affords the opportunity for improved patient care and scientific discovery. Medical informatics is the subdiscipline of medicine created to make greater use of information in order to improve healthcare. The 4 areas of medical informatics research (information access, structure, analysis, and interaction) are used as a framework to discuss the overlap in information needs of comparative effectiveness research and potential contributions of medical informatics. Examples of progress from the medical informatics literature and the Veterans Affairs Healthcare System are provided. Published by Elsevier Inc.

Consortium for oral health-related informatics: improving dental research, education, and treatment.

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Stark, Paul C; Kalenderian, Elsbeth; White, Joel M; Walji, Muhammad F; Stewart, Denice C L; Kimmes, Nicole; Meng, Thomas R; Willis, George P; DeVries, Ted; Chapman, Robert J

2010-10-01

Advances in informatics, particularly the implementation of electronic health records (EHR), in dentistry have facilitated the exchange of information. The majority of dental schools in North America use the same EHR system, providing an unprecedented opportunity to integrate these data into a repository that can be used for oral health education and research. In 2007, fourteen dental schools formed the Consortium for Oral Health-Related Informatics (COHRI). Since its inception, COHRI has established structural and operational processes, governance and bylaws, and a number of work groups organized in two divisions: one focused on research (data standardization, integration, and analysis), and one focused on education (performance evaluations, virtual standardized patients, and objective structured clinical examinations). To date, COHRI (which now includes twenty dental schools) has been successful in developing a data repository, pilot-testing data integration, and sharing EHR enhancements among the group. This consortium has collaborated on standardizing medical and dental histories, developing diagnostic terminology, and promoting the utilization of informatics in dental education. The consortium is in the process of assembling the largest oral health database ever created. This will be an invaluable resource for research and provide a foundation for evidence-based dentistry for years to come.

Building Comprehensive and Sustainable Health Informatics Institutions in Developing Countries: Moi University Experience.

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Were, Martin C; Siika, Abraham; Ayuo, Paul O; Atwoli, Lukoye; Esamai, Fabian

2015-01-01

Current approaches for capacity building in Health Informatics (HI) in developing countries mostly focus on training, and often rely on support from foreign entities. In this paper, we describe a comprehensive and multidimensional capacity-building framework by Lansang & Dennis, and its application for HI capacity building as implemented in a higher-education institution in Kenya. This framework incorporates training, learning-by-doing, partnerships, and centers of excellence. At Moi University (Kenya), the training dimensions include an accredited Masters in HI Program, PhD in HI, and HI short courses. Learning-by-doing occurs through work within MOH facilities at the AMPATH care and treatment program serving 3 million people. Moi University has formed strategic HI partnerships with Regenstrief Institute, Inc. (USA), University of Bergen (Norway), and Makerere University (Uganda), among others. The University has also created an Institute of Biomedical Informatics to serve as an HI Center of Excellence in the region. This Institute has divisions in Training, Research, Service and Administration. The HI capacity-building approach by Moi provides a model for adoption by other institutions in resource-limited settings.

Clinical Informatics Fellowship Programs: In Search of a Viable Financial Model: An open letter to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

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Lehmann, C U; Longhurst, C A; Hersh, W; Mohan, V; Levy, B P; Embi, P J; Finnell, J T; Turner, A M; Martin, R; Williamson, J; Munger, B

2015-01-01

In the US, the new subspecialty of Clinical Informatics focuses on systems-level improvements in care delivery through the use of health information technology (HIT), data analytics, clinical decision support, data visualization and related tools. Clinical informatics is one of the first subspecialties in medicine open to physicians trained in any primary specialty. Clinical Informatics benefits patients and payers such as Medicare and Medicaid through its potential to reduce errors, increase safety, reduce costs, and improve care coordination and efficiency. Even though Clinical Informatics benefits patients and payers, because GME funding from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has not grown at the same rate as training programs, the majority of the cost of training new Clinical Informaticians is currently paid by academic health science centers, which is unsustainable. To maintain the value of HIT investments by the government and health care organizations, we must train sufficient leaders in Clinical Informatics. In the best interest of patients, payers, and the US society, it is therefore critical to find viable financial models for Clinical Informatics fellowship programs. To support the development of adequate training programs in Clinical Informatics, we request that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issue clarifying guidance that would allow accredited ACGME institutions to bill for clinical services delivered by fellows at the fellowship program site within their primary specialty.

Developing an evidence-based public health informatics course.

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Yu, Xinyu; Xie, Yue; Pan, Xuequn; Mayfield-Johnson, Susan; Whipple, Jessica; Azadbakht, Elena

2015-10-01

This study assessed the need to develop a public health informatics (PHI) introductory course and determine contents of such a course. Community assessments employing focus group interviews and an online survey were utilized to determine course need and content. Results revealed a need to provide PHI training to graduate public health students and suggested broad course content requirements. Results indicated lack of awareness of libraries and librarians as sources of public health information. A graduate PHI course was developed and delivered. Additionally, implementation of a subject guide increased the library's profile.

An Invitation to Collaborate: The SPIRIT Open Source Health Care Portal

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Bray, Brian; Molin, Joseph Dal

2001-01-01

The SPIRIT portal is a web site resulting from a joint project of the European Commission 5th Framework Research Programme for Information Society Technologies, Minoru Development (France), Conecta srl (Italy), and Sistema Information Systems (Italy). The portal indexes and disseminates free software, serves as a meeting point for health care informatics researchers, and provides collaboration services to health care innovators. This poster session describes the services of the portal and invites researchers to join a worldwide collaborative community developing evidence based health care solutions.

Design of a Community-Engaged Health Informatics Platform with an Architecture of Participation.

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Millery, Mari; Ramos, Wilson; Lien, Chueh; Aguirre, Alejandra N; Kukafka, Rita

2015-01-01

Community-engaged health informatics (CEHI) applies information technology and participatory approaches to improve the health of communities. Our objective was to translate the concept of CEHI into a usable and replicable informatics platform that will facilitate community-engaged practice and research. The setting is a diverse urban neighborhood in New York City. The methods included community asset mapping, stakeholder interviews, logic modeling, analysis of affordances in open-source tools, elicitation of use cases and requirements, and a survey of early adopters. Based on synthesis of data collected, GetHealthyHeigths.org (GHH) was developed using open-source LAMP stack and Drupal content management software. Drupal's organic groups module was used for novel participatory functionality, along with detailed user roles and permissions. Future work includes evaluation of GHH and its impact on agency and service networks. We plan to expand GHH with additional functionality to further support CEHI by combining informatics solutions with community engagement to improve health.

The Integration of Nursing Informatics in Delaware Nursing Education Programs

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Wheeler, Bernadette

2016-01-01

Over the past decade, there has been a conversion to electronic health records (EHRs) in an effort to improve patient care, access, and efficiency. The goal, which has been supported by federal initiatives, is to meaningfully use informatics to improve the safety and quality of patient care as a major force in improving healthcare. How nurses…

Incorporating Health Information Technology and Pharmacy Informatics in a Pharmacy Professional Didactic Curriculum -with a Team-based Learning Approach.

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Hincapie, Ana L; Cutler, Timothy W; Fingado, Amanda R

2016-08-25

Objective. To incorporate a pharmacy informatics program in the didactic curriculum of a team-based learning institution and to assess students' knowledge of and confidence with health informatics during the course. Design. A previously developed online pharmacy informatics course was adapted and implemented into a team-based learning (TBL) 3-credit-hour drug information course for doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) students in their second didactic year. During a period of five weeks (15 contact hours), students used the online pharmacy informatics modules as part of their readiness assurance process. Additional material was developed to comply with the TBL principles. Online pre/postsurveys were administered to evaluate knowledge gained and students' perceptions of the informatics program. Assessment. Eighty-three second-year students (84% response rate) completed the surveys. Participants' knowledge of electronic health records, computerized physician order entry, pharmacy information systems, and clinical decision support was significantly improved. Additionally, their confidence significantly improved in terms of describing health informatics terminology, describing the benefits and barriers of using health information technology, and understanding reasons for systematically processing health information. Conclusion. Students responded favorably to the incorporation of pharmacy informatics content into a drug information course using a TBL approach. Students met the learning objectives of seven thematic areas and had positive attitudes toward the course after its completion.

Refining a self-assessment of informatics competency scale using Mokken scaling analysis.

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Yoon, Sunmoo; Shaffer, Jonathan A; Bakken, Suzanne

2015-01-01

Healthcare environments are increasingly implementing health information technology (HIT) and those from various professions must be competent to use HIT in meaningful ways. In addition, HIT has been shown to enable interprofessional approaches to health care. The purpose of this article is to describe the refinement of the Self-Assessment of Nursing Informatics Competencies Scale (SANICS) using analytic techniques based upon item response theory (IRT) and discuss its relevance to interprofessional education and practice. In a sample of 604 nursing students, the 93-item version of SANICS was examined using non-parametric IRT. The iterative modeling procedure included 31 steps comprising: (1) assessing scalability, (2) assessing monotonicity, (3) assessing invariant item ordering, and (4) expert input. SANICS was reduced to an 18-item hierarchical scale with excellent reliability. Fundamental skills for team functioning and shared decision making among team members (e.g. "using monitoring systems appropriately," "describing general systems to support clinical care") had the highest level of difficulty, and "demonstrating basic technology skills" had the lowest difficulty level. Most items reflect informatics competencies relevant to all health professionals. Further, the approaches can be applied to construct a new hierarchical scale or refine an existing scale related to informatics attitudes or competencies for various health professions.

The ongoing evolution of the core curriculum of a clinical fellowship in pathology informatics

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Andrew M Quinn

2014-01-01

Full Text Available The Partners HealthCare system′s Clinical Fellowship in Pathology Informatics (Boston, MA, USA faces ongoing challenges to the delivery of its core curriculum in the forms of: (1 New classes of fellows annually with new and varying educational needs and increasingly fractured, enterprise-wide commitments; (2 taxing electronic health record (EHR and laboratory information system (LIS implementations; and (3 increasing interest in the subspecialty at the academic medical centers (AMCs in what is a large health care network. In response to these challenges, the fellowship has modified its existing didactic sessions and piloted both a network-wide pathology informatics lecture series and regular "learning laboratories". Didactic sessions, which had previously included more formal discussions of the four divisions of the core curriculum: Information fundamentals, information systems, workflow and process, and governance and management, now focus on group discussions concerning the fellows′ ongoing projects, updates on the enterprise-wide EHR and LIS implementations, and directed questions about weekly readings. Lectures are given by the informatics faculty, guest informatics faculty, current and former fellows, and information systems members in the network, and are open to all professional members of the pathology departments at the AMCs. Learning laboratories consist of small-group exercises geared toward a variety of learning styles, and are driven by both the fellows and a member of the informatics faculty. The learning laboratories have created a forum for discussing real-time and real-world pathology informatics matters, and for incorporating awareness of and timely discussions about the latest pathology informatics literature. These changes have diversified the delivery of the fellowship′s core curriculum, increased exposure of faculty, fellows and trainees to one another, and more equitably distributed teaching responsibilities among

The ongoing evolution of the core curriculum of a clinical fellowship in pathology informatics.

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Quinn, Andrew M; Klepeis, Veronica E; Mandelker, Diana L; Platt, Mia Y; Rao, Luigi K F; Riedlinger, Gregory; Baron, Jason M; Brodsky, Victor; Kim, Ji Yeon; Lane, William; Lee, Roy E; Levy, Bruce P; McClintock, David S; Beckwith, Bruce A; Kuo, Frank C; Gilbertson, John R

2014-01-01

The Partners HealthCare system's Clinical Fellowship in Pathology Informatics (Boston, MA, USA) faces ongoing challenges to the delivery of its core curriculum in the forms of: (1) New classes of fellows annually with new and varying educational needs and increasingly fractured, enterprise-wide commitments; (2) taxing electronic health record (EHR) and laboratory information system (LIS) implementations; and (3) increasing interest in the subspecialty at the academic medical centers (AMCs) in what is a large health care network. In response to these challenges, the fellowship has modified its existing didactic sessions and piloted both a network-wide pathology informatics lecture series and regular "learning laboratories". Didactic sessions, which had previously included more formal discussions of the four divisions of the core curriculum: Information fundamentals, information systems, workflow and process, and governance and management, now focus on group discussions concerning the fellows' ongoing projects, updates on the enterprise-wide EHR and LIS implementations, and directed questions about weekly readings. Lectures are given by the informatics faculty, guest informatics faculty, current and former fellows, and information systems members in the network, and are open to all professional members of the pathology departments at the AMCs. Learning laboratories consist of small-group exercises geared toward a variety of learning styles, and are driven by both the fellows and a member of the informatics faculty. The learning laboratories have created a forum for discussing real-time and real-world pathology informatics matters, and for incorporating awareness of and timely discussions about the latest pathology informatics literature. These changes have diversified the delivery of the fellowship's core curriculum, increased exposure of faculty, fellows and trainees to one another, and more equitably distributed teaching responsibilities among the entirety of the

Personal health and consumer informatics. The impact of health oriented social media applications on health outcomes.

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Gibbons, M C

2013-01-01

The rapid evolution in the world-wide use of Social Media tools suggests the emergence of a global phenomenon that may have implications in the Personal Health and Consumer Health Informatics domains. However the impact of these tools on health outcomes is not known. The goal of this research was to review the randomized controlled trial (RCT) evidence of the impact of health oriented Social Media informatics tools on health outcomes. Evaluations of Social Media consumer health tools were systematically reviewed. Research was limited to studies published in the English language, published in Medline, published in the calendar year 2012 and limited to studies that utilized a RCT methodological design. Two high quality Randomized Controlled Trials among over 600 articles published in Medline were identified. These studies indicate that Social Media interventions may be able to significantly improve pain control among patients with chronic pain and enhance weight loss maintenance among individuals attempting to lose weight. Significantly more research needs to be done to confirm these early findings, evaluate additional health outcomes and further evaluate emerging health oriented Social Media interventions. Chronic pain and weight control have both socially oriented determinants. These studies suggest that understanding the social component of a disease may ultimately provide novel therapeutic targets and socio-clinical interventional strategies.

Don E. Detmer and the American Medical Informatics Association: An Appreciation

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Shortliffe, Edward H.; Bates, David W.; Bloomrosen, Meryl; Greenwood, Karen; Safran, Charles; Steen, Elaine B.; Tang, Paul C.; Williamson, Jeffrey J.

2009-01-01

Don E. Detmer has served as President and Chief Executive Officer of the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) for the past five years, helping to set a course for the organization and demonstrating remarkable leadership as AMIA has evolved into a vibrant and influential professional association. On the occasion of Dr. Detmer's retirement, we fondly reflect on his professional life and his many contributions to biomedical informatics and, more generally, to health care in the U.S. and globally. PMID:19574463

Evaluation of Founding Members of the International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics (IAHSI) Based on Google Scholar and Scopus Parameters.

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Masic, Izet

2017-12-01

The International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics (IAHSI) is established by International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) which is the world body for health and biomedical informatics. The Academy will serve as an honor society that recognizes expertise in biomedical and health informatics internationally. Academy membership will be one of the highest honors in the international field of biomedical and health informatics. To present scientometric analysis of founding members of the International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics, to evaluate members and their scientific rating. The work has an analytical character and presents analysis of the data obtained from the Google Scholar and Scopus database. Results are shown through number of cases, percentage and graphically. The analysis showed a significant correlation between the Academy and the country (continent) of origin of the academician. In IAHSI are mainly represented academics originating from Europe - 40 members (33,3%), North America - 39 members (32,5%), Asia - 20 members (16,6%), South America - 9 members (7,5%), Australia - 7 members (5,8%), while only 5 members or 4,16% come from Africa. Criteria for number of representatives of each continent to main academic communities are relatively questionable, as this analysis showed. Development of Health Sciences Informatics should be the main purpose, and it should be evenly distributed with slight deviations in number of representatives of each continent.

Evidence-based Practice. Findings from the Section on Education and Consumer Health Informatics.

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Staccini, P; Douali, N

2013-01-01

To provide an overview of outstanding current research conducted in Education and Consumer Informatics. Synopsis of the articles on education and consumer health informatics published in 2012 and selected for the IMIA Yearbook of Medical Informatics 2013. Architecture of monitoring or telehealth information systems for patients with chronic disease must include wireless devices to aid in the collection of personal data. Data acquisition technologies have an impact on patients' willingness to participate in telehealth programmes. Patients are more likely to prefer mobile applications over web-based applications. Social media is widely used by clinicians. Especially younger clinicians use it for personal purposes and for reference materials retrieval. Questions remain on optimal training requirements and on the effects on clinician behavior and on patient outcomes. A high level of e-Health literacy by patients will promote increased adoption and utilization of personal health records. The selected articles highlight the need for training of clinicians to become aware of existing telehealth systems, in order to correctly inform and guide patients to take part in telehealth systems and adopt personal healthcare records (PHR).

Information needs of physicians, care coordinators, and families to support care coordination of children and youth with special health care needs (CYSHCN).

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Ranade-Kharkar, Pallavi; Weir, Charlene; Norlin, Chuck; Collins, Sarah A; Scarton, Lou Ann; Baker, Gina B; Borbolla, Damian; Taliercio, Vanina; Del Fiol, Guilherme

2017-09-01

Identify and describe information needs and associated goals of physicians, care coordinators, and families related to coordinating care for medically complex children and youth with special health care needs (CYSHCN). We conducted 19 in-depth interviews with physicians, care coordinators, and parents of CYSHCN following the Critical Decision Method technique. We analyzed the interviews for information needs posed as questions using a systematic content analysis approach and categorized the questions into information need goal types and subtypes. The Critical Decision Method interviews resulted in an average of 80 information needs per interview. We categorized them into 6 information need goal types: (1) situation understanding, (2) care networking, (3) planning, (4) tracking/monitoring, (5) navigating the health care system, and (6) learning, and 32 subtypes. Caring for CYSHCN generates a large amount of information needs that require significant effort from physicians, care coordinators, parents, and various other individuals. CYSHCN are often chronically ill and face developmental challenges that translate into intense demands on time, effort, and resources. Care coordination for CYCHSN involves multiple information systems, specialized resources, and complex decision-making. Solutions currently offered by health information technology fall short in providing support to meet the information needs to perform the complex care coordination tasks. Our findings present significant opportunities to improve coordination of care through multifaceted and fully integrated informatics solutions. © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Medical Informatics Association. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com

From bench to bed: bridging from informatics theory to practice. An exploratory analysis.

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Lehmann, C U; Haux, R

2014-01-01

In 2009, the journal Applied Clinical Informatics (ACI) commenced publication. Focused on applications in clinical informatics, ACI was intended to be a companion journal to METHODS of Information in Medicine (MIM). Both journals are official journals of IMIA, the International Medical Informatics Association. To explore, after five years, which congruencies and interdependencies exist in publications of these journals and to determine if gaps exist. To achieve this goal, major topics discussed in ACI and in MIM had to be analysed. Finally, we wanted to explore, whether the intention of publishing these companion journals to provide an information bridge from informatics theory to informatics practice and from practice to theory could be supported by this model. In this manuscript we will report on congruencies and interdependencies from practise to theory and on major topis in ACI. Further results will be reported in a second paper. Retrospective, prolective observational study on recent publications of ACI and MIM. All publications of the years 2012 and 2013 from these journals were indexed and analysed. Hundred and ninety-six publications have been analysed (87 ACI, 109 MIM). In ACI publications addressed care coordination, shared decision support, and provider communication in its importance for complex patient care and safety and quality. Other major themes included improving clinical documentation quality and efficiency, effectiveness of clinical decision support and alerts, implementation of health information technology systems including discussion of failures and succeses. An emerging topic in the years analyzed was a focus on health information technology to predict and prevent hospital admissions and managing population health including the application of mobile health technology. Congruencies between journals could be found in themes, but with different focus in its contents. Interdependencies from practise to theory found in these publications, were

Consumer Health Informatics Aspects of Direct-to-Consumer Personal Genomic Testing.

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Gray, Kathleen; Stephen, Remya; Terrill, Bronwyn; Wilson, Brenda; Middleton, Anna; Tytherleigh, Rigan; Turbitt, Erin; Gaff, Clara; Savard, Jacqueline; Hickerton, Chriselle; Newson, Ainsley; Metcalfe, Sylvia

2017-01-01

This paper uses consumer health informatics as a framework to explore whether and how direct-to-consumer personal genomic testing can be regarded as a form of information which assists consumers to manage their health. It presents findings from qualitative content analysis of web sites that offer testing services, and of transcripts from focus groups conducted as part a study of the Australian public's expectations of personal genomics. Content analysis showed that service offerings have some features of consumer health information but lack consistency. Focus group participants were mostly unfamiliar with the specifics of test reports and related information services. Some of their ideas about aids to knowledge were in line with the benefits described on provider web sites, but some expectations were inflated. People were ambivalent about whether these services would address consumers' health needs, interests and contexts and whether they would support consumers' health self-management decisions and outcomes. There is scope for consumer health informatics approaches to refine the usage and the utility of direct-to-consumer personal genomic testing. Further research may focus on how uptake is affected by consumers' health literacy or by services' engagement with consumers about what they really want.

HIPAA, HIPAA, Hooray?: Current Challenges and Initiatives in Health Informatics in the United States.

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Joshi, Sanjaya

2008-01-01

A review of the current challenges, trends and initiatives around the various regulations as related to Health Informatics in the United States is presented. A summary of the functions in a workflow-based approach organized into the process and compliance for HIPAA, secure email and fax communications interfaces, e-prescriptions and patient safety and the health information technology savings claims versus costs follows: HIPAA compliance is complex; data interoperability and integration remains difficult.Email and faxing is possible with current over-the-shelf technologies within the purview of the HIPAA Security and Privacy rule.Integration of e-prescribing and NPI data is an area where health informatics can make a real difference.Medical errors remain high.There are no real savings yet from the usage of health information technologies; the costs for implementation remain high, and the business model has not evolved to meet the needs.Health Information Technology (Health IT) projects continue to have a significant failure rate; Open Source technologies are a viable alternative both for cost reduction and scalability. A discussion on the macro view of health informatics is also presented within the context of healthcare models and a comparison of the U.S. system against other countries.

HIPAA, HIPAA, Hooray? Current Challenges and Initiatives in Health Informatics in the United States

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sanjaya Joshi

2008-01-01

Full Text Available A review of the current challenges, trends and initiatives around the various regulations as related to Health Informatics in the United States is presented.A summary of the functions in a workflow-based approach organized into the process and compliance for HIPAA, secure email and fax communications interfaces, e-prescriptions and patient safety and the health information technology savings claims versus costs follows: * HIPAA compliance is complex; data interoperability and integration remains difficult. * Email and faxing is possible with current over-the-shelf technologies within the purview of the HIPAA Security and Privacy rule. * Integration of e-prescribing and NPI data is an area where health informatics can make a real difference. * Medical errors remain high. * There are no real savings yet from the usage of health information technologies; the costs for implementation remain high, and the business model has not evolved to meet the needs. * Health Information Technology (Health IT projects continue to have a significant failure rate; Open Source technologies are a viable alternative both for cost reduction and scalability.A discussion on the macro view of health informatics is also presented within the context of healthcare models and a comparison of the U.S. system against other countries.

Wellbeing Understanding in High Quality Healthcare Informatics and Telepractice.

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Fiorini, Rodolfo A; De Giacomo, Piero; L'Abate, Luciano

2016-01-01

The proper use of healthcare informatics technology and multidimensional conceptual clarity are fundamental to create and boost outstanding clinical and telepractice results. Avoiding even terminology ambiguities is mandatory for high quality of care service. For instance, well-being or wellbeing is a different way to write the same concept only, or there is a good deal of ambiguity around the meanings of these terms the way they are written. In personal health, healthcare and healthcare informatics, this kind of ambiguity and lack of conceptual clarity has been called out repeatedly over the past 50 years. It is time to get the right, terse scenario. We present a brief review to develop and achieve ultimate wellbeing understanding for practical high quality healthcare informatics and telepractice application. This article presents an innovative point of view on deeper wellbeing understanding towards its increased clinical effective application.

The role of health informatics in clinical audit: part of the problem or key to the solution?

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Georgiou, Andrew; Pearson, Michael

2002-05-01

The concepts of quality assurance (for which clinical audit is an essential part), evaluation and clinical governance each depend on the ability to derive and record measurements that describe clinical performance. Rapid IT developments have raised many new possibilities for managing health care. They have allowed for easier collection and processing of data in greater quantities. These developments have encouraged the growth of quality assurance as a key feature of health care delivery. In the past most of the emphasis has been on hospital information systems designed predominantly for the administration of patients and the management of financial performance. Large, hi-tech information system capacity does not guarantee quality information. The task of producing information that can be confidently used to monitor the quality of clinical care requires attention to key aspects of the design and operation of the audit. The Myocardial Infarction National Audit Project (MINAP) utilizes an IT-based system to collect and process data on large numbers of patients and make them readily available to contributing hospitals. The project shows that IT systems that employ rigorous health informatics methodologies can do much to improve the monitoring and provision of health care.

The impact of informatics on nursing education: a review of the literature.

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Ainsley, Bonnie; Brown, Abbie

2009-05-01

On the basis of a study by the Institute of Medicine, the current health care system is facing several challenges that may be addressed by changes in health professions education. The study focused on integration of five core competencies into health professions education, one of which was informatics. This critical analysis investigates current use of technology and online instructional strategies in nursing education. It also explores the potential impact of integration of informatics into nursing education to increase the cognitive skills of nurses to promote evidence-based nursing. Advantages and disadvantages of using online education in the instruction of nursing students and recommendations for best online practices in nursing education are discussed.

10 years experience with pioneering open access publishing in health informatics: the Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR).

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Eysenbach, Gunther

2010-01-01

Peer-reviewed journals remain important vehicles for knowledge transfer and dissemination in health informatics, yet, their format, processes and business models are changing only slowly. Up to the end of last century, it was common for individual researchers and scientific organizations to leave the business of knowledge transfer to professional publishers, signing away their rights to the works in the process, which in turn impeded wider dissemination. Traditional medical informatics journals are poorly cited and the visibility and uptake of articles beyond the medical informatics community remain limited. In 1999, the Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR; http://www.jmir.org) was launched, featuring several innovations including 1) ownership and copyright retained by the authors, 2) electronic-only, "lean" non-for-profit publishing, 3) openly accessible articles with a reversed business model (author pays instead of reader pays), 4) technological innovations such as automatic XML tagging and reference checking, on-the-fly PDF generation from XML, etc., enabling wide distribution in various bibliographic and full-text databases. In the past 10 years, despite limited resources, the journal has emerged as a leading journal in health informatics, and is presently ranked the top journal in the medical informatics and health services research categories by impact factor. The paper summarizes some of the features of the Journal, and uses bibliometric and access data to compare the influence of the Journal on the discipline of medical informatics and other disciplines. While traditional medical informatics journals are primarily cited by other Medical Informatics journals (33%-46% of citations), JMIR papers are to a more often cited by "end-users" (policy, public health, clinical journals), which may be partly attributable to the "open access advantage".

Improving Bridging from Informatics Practice to Theory.

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Lehmann, C U; Gundlapalli, A V

2015-01-01

In 1962, Methods of Information in Medicine ( MIM ) began to publish papers on the methodology and scientific fundamentals of organizing, representing, and analyzing data, information, and knowledge in biomedicine and health care. Considered a companion journal, Applied Clinical Informatics ( ACI ) was launched in 2009 with a mission to establish a platform that allows sharing of knowledge between clinical medicine and health IT specialists as well as to bridge gaps between visionary design and successful and pragmatic deployment of clinical information systems. Both journals are official journals of the International Medical Informatics Association. As a follow-up to prior work, we set out to explore congruencies and interdependencies in publications of ACI and MIM. The objectives were to describe the major topics discussed in articles published in ACI in 2014 and to determine if there was evidence that theory in 2014 MIM publications was informed by practice described in ACI publications in any year. We also set out to describe lessons learned in the context of bridging informatics practice and theory and offer opinions on how ACI editorial policies could evolve to foster and improve such bridging. We conducted a retrospective observational study and reviewed all articles published in ACI during the calendar year 2014 (Volume 5) for their main theme, conclusions, and key words. We then reviewed the citations of all MIM papers from 2014 to determine if there were references to ACI articles from any year. Lessons learned in the context of bridging informatics practice and theory and opinions on ACI editorial policies were developed by consensus among the two authors. A total of 70 articles were published in ACI in 2014. Clinical decision support, clinical documentation, usability, Meaningful Use, health information exchange, patient portals, and clinical research informatics emerged as major themes. Only one MIM article from 2014 cited an ACI article. There

Entrepreneurial Health Informatics for Computer Science and Information Systems Students

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Lawler, James; Joseph, Anthony; Narula, Stuti

2014-01-01

Corporate entrepreneurship is a critical area of curricula for computer science and information systems students. Few institutions of computer science and information systems have entrepreneurship in the curricula however. This paper presents entrepreneurial health informatics as a course in a concentration of Technology Entrepreneurship at a…

[Smart card systems in health care (protection, key-functions, divided data bases, applications)].

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Simon, P

1999-04-25

Barely more than 15 years have passed since electronic memory cards appeared, their popularity has grown rapidly (first of all as a cash-saving device and later for other purposes, as well). This is due also to the growing interest towards development of the intelligence of information systems for the follow-up of patients' health condition and medical care in countries with a highly developed health and insurance system (need for the creation of data bases divided for individuals) and also to their commitment towards a better control of the quality and costs of health care. We can come to the conclusion that the aim of research, development and the creation of systems in health informatics is to prevent illness and to give a direct informatic support to medical and nursing activity carried out in the patients' interests. The smart card and the surrounding application systems are certainly the appropriate means for the achievement of these aims.

The Western New York regional electronic health record initiative: Healthcare informatics use from the registered nurse perspective.

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Sackett, Kay M; Erdley, W Scott; Jones, Janice

2006-01-01

This paper describes a select population of Western New York (WNY) Registered Nurses' (RN) perspectives on the use of healthcare informatics and the adoption of a regional electronic health record (EHR). A three part class assignment on healthcare informatics used a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats (SWOT) Analysis, and a Healthcare Informatics Schemata: A paradigm shift over time(c) timeline to determine RN perspectives about healthcare informatics use at their place of employment. Qualitative analysis of 41 RNs who completed the SWOT analysis provided positive and negative themes related to perceptions about healthcare informatics and EHR use at their place of employment. 29 healthcare organizations were aggregated by year on the timeline from 1950 through 2000. Information suggests that, RNs have the capacity to positively drive the adoption of EHRs and healthcare informatics in WNY.

Nursing Informatics Certification Worldwide: History, Pathway, Roles, and Motivation

Science.gov (United States)

Cummins, M. R.; Gundlapalli, A. V.; Murray, P.; Park, H.-A.; Lehmann, C. U.

2016-01-01

Summary Introduction Official recognition and certification for informatics professionals are essential aspects of workforce development. Objective: To describe the history, pathways, and nuances of certification in nursing informatics across the globe; compare and contrast those with board certification in clinical informatics for physicians. Methods (1) A review of the representative literature on informatics certification and related competencies for nurses and physicians, and relevant websites for nursing informatics associations and societies worldwide; (2) similarities and differences between certification processes for nurses and physicians, and (3) perspectives on roles for nursing informatics professionals in healthcare Results The literature search for ‘nursing informatics certification’ yielded few results in PubMed; Google Scholar yielded a large number of citations that extended to magazines and other non-peer reviewed sources. Worldwide, there are several nursing informatics associations, societies, and workgroups dedicated to nursing informatics associated with medical/health informatics societies. A formal certification program for nursing informatics appears to be available only in the United States. This certification was established in 1992, in concert with the formation and definition of nursing informatics as a specialty practice of nursing by the American Nurses Association. Although informatics is inherently interprofessional, certification pathways for nurses and physicians have developed separately, following long-standing professional structures, training, and pathways aligned with clinical licensure and direct patient care. There is substantial similarity with regard to the skills and competencies required for nurses and physicians to obtain informatics certification in their respective fields. Nurses may apply for and complete a certification examination if they have experience in the field, regardless of formal training. Increasing

Translational Research from an Informatics Perspective

Science.gov (United States)

Bernstam, Elmer; Meric-Bernstam, Funda; Johnson-Throop, Kathy A.; Turley, James P.; Smith, Jack W.

2007-01-01

Clinical and translational research (CTR) is an essential part of a sustainable global health system. Informatics is now recognized as an important en-abler of CTR and informaticians are increasingly called upon to help CTR efforts. The US National Institutes of Health mandated biomedical informatics activity as part of its new national CTR grant initiative, the Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA). Traditionally, translational re-search was defined as the translation of laboratory discoveries to patient care (bench to bedside). We argue, however, that there are many other kinds of translational research. Indeed, translational re-search requires the translation of knowledge dis-covered in one domain to another domain and is therefore an information-based activity. In this panel, we will expand upon this view of translational research and present three different examples of translation to illustrate the point: 1) bench to bedside, 2) Earth to space and 3) academia to community. We will conclude with a discussion of our local translational research efforts that draw on each of the three examples.

Informatics and Autopsy Pathology.

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Levy, Bruce

2015-06-01

Many health care providers believe that the autopsy is no longer relevant in high-technology medicine era. This has fueled a decline in the hospital autopsy rate. Although it seems that advanced diagnostic tests answer all clinical questions, studies repeatedly demonstrate that an autopsy uncovers as many undiagnosed conditions today as in the past. The forensic autopsy rate has also declined, although not as precipitously. Pathologists are still performing a nineteenth century autopsy procedure that remains essentially unchanged. Informatics offers several potential answers that will evolve the low-tech autopsy into the high-tech autopsy. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Bioinformatics and Medical Informatics: Collaborations on the Road to Genomic Medicine?

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Maojo, Victor; Kulikowski, Casimir A.

2003-01-01

In this report, the authors compare and contrast medical informatics (MI) and bioinformatics (BI) and provide a viewpoint on their complementarities and potential for collaboration in various subfields. The authors compare MI and BI along several dimensions, including: (1) historical development of the disciplines, (2) their scientific foundations, (3) data quality and analysis, (4) integration of knowledge and databases, (5) informatics tools to support practice, (6) informatics methods to support research (signal processing, imaging and vision, and computational modeling, (7) professional and patient continuing education, and (8) education and training. It is pointed out that, while the two disciplines differ in their histories, scientific foundations, and methodologic approaches to research in various areas, they nevertheless share methods and tools, which provides a basis for exchange of experience in their different applications. MI expertise in developing health care applications and the strength of BI in biological “discovery science” complement each other well. The new field of biomedical informatics (BMI) holds great promise for developing informatics methods that will be crucial in the development of genomic medicine. The future of BMI will be influenced strongly by whether significant advances in clinical practice and biomedical research come about from separate efforts in MI and BI, or from emerging, hybrid informatics subdisciplines at their interface. PMID:12925552

Using nationwide ‘big data’ from linked electronic health records to help improve outcomes in cardiovascular diseases:33 studies using methods from epidemiology, informatics, economics and social science in the ClinicAl disease research using LInked Bespoke studies and Electronic health Records (CALIBER) programme

OpenAIRE

Hemingway, Harry; Feder, Gene; Fitzpatrick, Natalie; Denaxas, Spiros; Shah, Amit; Timmis, A D

2017-01-01

BACKGROUND:Electronic health records (EHRs), when linked across primary and secondary care and curated for research use, have the potential to improve our understanding of care quality and outcomes.OBJECTIVE:To evaluate new opportunities arising from linked EHRs for improving quality of care and outcomes for patients at risk of or with coronary disease across the patient journey.DESIGN:Epidemiological cohort, health informatics, health economics and ethnographic approaches were used.SETTING:2...

Clinical informatics to improve quality of care: a population-based system for patients with diabetes mellitus

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Rajeev Chaudhry

2009-06-01

Conclusions A clinical informatics system, used to deliver proactive, co-ordinated care to a population of patients with diabetes mellitus, can improve process and also quality outcome measures. Larger studies are needed to confirm these early findings.

Towards an International Framework for Recommendations of Core Competencies in Nursing and Inter-Professional Informatics: The TIGER Competency Synthesis Project.

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Hübner, Ursula; Shaw, Toria; Thye, Johannes; Egbert, Nicole; Marin, Heimar; Ball, Marion

2016-01-01

Informatics competencies of the health care workforce must meet the requirements of inter-professional process and outcome oriented provision of care. In order to help nursing education transform accordingly, the TIGER Initiative deployed an international survey, with participation from 21 countries, to evaluate and prioritise a broad list of core competencies for nurses in five domains: 1) nursing management, 2) information technology (IT) management in nursing, 3) interprofessional coordination of care, 4) quality management, and 5) clinical nursing. Informatics core competencies were found highly important for all domains. In addition, this project compiled eight national cases studies from Austria, Finland, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, the Philippines, Portugal, and Switzerland that reflected the country specific perspective. These findings will lead us to an international framework of informatics recommendations.

Genesis of a UK Faculty of Clinical Informatics at a time of anticipation for some, and ruby, golden and diamond celebrations for others

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Simon de Lusignan

2018-01-01

Full Text Available This Editorial marks the launch of the UK Faculty of Clinical Informatics (FCI at the time when non-clinically qualified informaticians are anticipating the lauch of  the Federation of Informatics Professionals in Health and Care (Fed-IP.

Distraction: an assessment of smartphone usage in health care work settings

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Gill PS

2012-08-01

Full Text Available Preetinder S Gill,1 Ashwini Kamath,2 Tejkaran S Gill31College of Technology, Eastern Michigan University, Ypsilanti, MI, USA; 2School of Information, University of Texas, Austin, TX, USA; 3College of Engineering, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, USAAbstract: Smartphone use in health care work settings presents both opportunities and challenges. The benefits could be severely undermined if abuse and overuse are not kept in check. This practice-focused research paper examines the current panorama of health software applications. Findings from existing research are consolidated to elucidate the level and effects of distraction in health care work settings due to smartphone use. A conceptual framework for crafting guidelines to regulate the use of smartphones in health care work settings is then presented. Finally, specific guidelines are delineated to assist in creating policies for the use of smartphones in a health care workplace.Keywords: smartphone, health care, distraction, workplace, mobile apps, health informatics

Time for TIGER to ROAR! Technology Informatics Guiding Education Reform.

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O'Connor, Siobhan; Hubner, Ursula; Shaw, Toria; Blake, Rachelle; Ball, Marion

2017-11-01

Information Technology (IT) continues to evolve and develop with electronic devices and systems becoming integral to healthcare in every country. This has led to an urgent need for all professions working in healthcare to be knowledgeable and skilled in informatics. The Technology Informatics Guiding Education Reform (TIGER) Initiative was established in 2006 in the United States to develop key areas of informatics in nursing. One of these was to integrate informatics competencies into nursing curricula and life-long learning. In 2009, TIGER developed an informatics competency framework which outlines numerous IT competencies required for professional practice and this work helped increase the emphasis of informatics in nursing education standards in the United States. In 2012, TIGER expanded to the international community to help synthesise informatics competencies for nurses and pool educational resources in health IT. This transition led to a new interprofessional, interdisciplinary approach, as health informatics education needs to expand to other clinical fields and beyond. In tandem, a European Union (EU) - United States (US) Collaboration on eHealth began a strand of work which focuses on developing the IT skills of the health workforce to ensure technology can be adopted and applied in healthcare. One initiative within this is the EU*US eHealth Work Project, which started in 2016 and is mapping the current structure and gaps in health IT skills and training needs globally. It aims to increase educational opportunities by developing a model for open and scalable access to eHealth training programmes. With this renewed initiative to incorporate informatics into the education and training of nurses and other health professionals globally, it is time for educators, researchers, practitioners and policy makers to join in and ROAR with TIGER. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Ten Demands of Improved Usability in eHealth and Some Progress - Co-Creation by Health and Social Care Professionals.

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Scandurra, Isabella; Liljequist, David

2016-01-01

Current healthcare organizations often do not accomplish the intended effects of their eHealth systems due to inadequate usability. Commissioned by the Swedish Ministry of Health and Social Affairs, the usability of current eHealth systems in Swedish health and social care has been analysed from the perspective of their professionals. The objective of the study was to report on current problems, potential solutions as well as to relate these to research in relevant areas. Using a participatory approach, nine workshops were held where health informatics researchers guided staff from different care organizations, representatives of the national associations of health and social care professionals and the national eHealth system vendor organization. This paper presents ten demands that Swedish health and social care professionals find imperative to prioritize. The study emphasizes that development of eHealth systems must be integrated into the care practice improvement process and iteratively evaluated regarding usability.

A Review of User-Centered Design for Diabetes-Related Consumer Health Informatics Technologies

Science.gov (United States)

LeRouge, Cynthia; Wickramasinghe, Nilmini

2013-01-01

User-centered design (UCD) is well recognized as an effective human factor engineering strategy for designing ease of use in the total customer experience with products and information technology that has been applied specifically to health care information technology systems. We conducted a literature review to analyze the current research regarding the use of UCD methods and principles to support the development or evaluation of diabetes-related consumer health informatics technology (CHIT) initiatives. Findings indicate that (1) UCD activities have been applied across the technology development life cycle stages, (2) there are benefits to incorporating UCD to better inform CHIT development in this area, and (3) the degree of adoption of the UCD process is quite uneven across diabetes CHIT studies. In addition, few to no studies report on methods used across all phases of the life cycle with process detail. To address that void, the Appendix provides an illustrative case study example of UCD techniques across development stages. PMID:23911188

Nursing informatics and nursing ethics: addressing their disconnect through an enhanced TIGER-vision.

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Kaltoft, Mette Kjer

2013-01-01

All healthcare visions, including that of The TIGER (Technology-Informatics-Guiding-Educational-Reform) Initiative envisage a crucial role for nursing. However, its 7 descriptive pillars do not address the disconnect between Nursing Informatics and Nursing Ethics and their distinct communities in the clinical-disciplinary landscape. Each sees itself as providing decision support by way of information inputs and ethical insights, respectively. Both have reasons - ideological, professional, institutional - for their task construction, but this simultaneously disables each from engaging fully in the point-of-(care)-decision. Increased pressure for translating 'evidence-based' research findings into 'ethically-sound', 'value-based' and 'patient-centered' practice requires rethinking the model implicit in conventional knowledge translation and informatics practice in all disciplines, including nursing. The aim is to aid 'how nurses and other health care scientists more clearly identify clinical and other relevant data that can be captured to inform future comparative effectiveness research. 'A prescriptive, theory-based discipline of '(Nursing) Decisionics' expands the Grid for Volunteer Development of TIGER's newly launched virtual learning environment (VLE). This provides an enhanced TIGER-vision for educational reform to deliver ethically coherent, person-centered care transparently.

Gaps in the existing public health informatics training programs: a challenge to the development of a skilled global workforce.

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Joshi, Ashish; Perin, Douglas Marcel Puricelli

2012-01-01

The objective of this study was to explore public health informatics (PHI) training programs that currently exist to meet the growing demand for a trained global workforce. We used several search engines, scientific databases, and the websites of informatics organizations; sources included PubMed, Google, the American Medical Informatics Organization, and the International Medical Informatics Organization. The search was conducted from May to July 2011 and from January to February 2012 using key words such as informatics, public health informatics, or biomedical informatics along with academic programs, training, certificate, graduate programs, or postgraduate programs. Course titles and catalog descriptions were gathered from the program or institution websites. Variables included PHI program categories, location and mode of delivery, program credits, and costs. Each course was then categorized based on its title and description as available on the Internet. Finally, we matched course titles and descriptions with the competencies for PHIs determined by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Descriptive analysis was performed to report means and frequency distributions for continuous and categorical variables. Stratified analysis was performed to explore average credits and cost per credit among both the public and private institutions. Fifteen PHI programs were identified across 13 different institutions, the majority of which were US-based. The average number of credits and the associated costs required to obtain PHI training were much higher in private as compared to public institutions. The study results suggest that a need for online contextual and cost-effective PHI training programs exists to address the growing needs of professionals worldwide who are using technology to improve public health in their respective countries.

The Emerging Role of the Chief Research Informatics Officer in Academic Health Centers.

Science.gov (United States)

Sanchez-Pinto, L Nelson; Mosa, Abu S M; Fultz-Hollis, Kate; Tachinardi, Umberto; Barnett, William K; Embi, Peter J

2017-08-16

The role of the Chief Research Informatics Officer (CRIO) is emerging in academic health centers to address the challenges clinical researchers face in the increasingly digitalized, data-intensive healthcare system. Most current CRIOs are the first officers in their institutions to hold that role. To date there is very little published information about this role and the individuals who serve it. To increase our understanding of the CRIO role, the leaders who serve it, and the factors associated with their success in their organizations. The Clinical Research Informatics Working Group of the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) conducted a national survey of CRIOs in the United States and convened an expert panel of CRIOs to discuss their experience during the 2016 AMIA Annual Symposium. CRIOs come from diverse academic backgrounds. Most have advance training and extensive experience in biomedical informatics but the majority have been CRIOs for less than three years. CRIOs identify funding, data governance, and advancing data analytics as their major challenges. CRIOs play an important role in helping shape the future of clinical research, innovation, and data analytics in healthcare in their organizations. They share many of the same challenges and see the same opportunities for the future of the field. Better understanding the background and experience of current CRIOs can help define and develop the role in other organizations and enhance their influence in the field of research informatics.

Scientific papers for health informatics.

Science.gov (United States)

Pereira, Samáris Ramiro; Duarte, Jacy Marcondes; Bandiera-Paiva, Paulo

2013-01-01

From the hypothesis that the development of scientific papers, mainly in interdisciplinary areas such as Health Informatics, may bring difficulties to the author, as had its communicative efficacy decreased or compromising their approval for publication; we aim to make considerations on the main items to good players making this kind of text. The scientific writing has peculiarities that must be taken into consideration when it writes: general characteristics, such as simplicity and objectivity, and characteristics of each area of knowledge, such as terminology, formatting and standardization. The research methodology adopted is bibliographical. The information was based on literature review and the authors' experience, teachers and assessors of scientific methodology in peer review publications in the area. As a result, we designed a checklist of items to be checked before submission of a paper to a scientific publication vehicle in order to contribute to the promotion of research, facilitating the publication and increase its capacity in this important area of knowledge.

IMIA Working Group 15 : Technology assessment and quality development in health informatics

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Gennip, E.M.S.J. van

1999-01-01

The working group on technology assessment and quality development in health informatics was established as a follow-up to the recommendations made at the IMIA-ISTAHC working conference in 1990. The working group was approved by the IMIA General Assembly at Kyoto, September, 1993. The working group

Translational Bioinformatics and Clinical Research (Biomedical) Informatics.

Science.gov (United States)

Sirintrapun, S Joseph; Zehir, Ahmet; Syed, Aijazuddin; Gao, JianJiong; Schultz, Nikolaus; Cheng, Donavan T

2015-06-01

Translational bioinformatics and clinical research (biomedical) informatics are the primary domains related to informatics activities that support translational research. Translational bioinformatics focuses on computational techniques in genetics, molecular biology, and systems biology. Clinical research (biomedical) informatics involves the use of informatics in discovery and management of new knowledge relating to health and disease. This article details 3 projects that are hybrid applications of translational bioinformatics and clinical research (biomedical) informatics: The Cancer Genome Atlas, the cBioPortal for Cancer Genomics, and the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center clinical variants and results database, all designed to facilitate insights into cancer biology and clinical/therapeutic correlations. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Informatization of home care processes

OpenAIRE

Vidmar, Miha

2014-01-01

This thesis describes the complete server side system for computerisation of home care service. The solution is built as an intermediate layer between the mobile application and the existing backend of the health institution. It consists of three main applications: custody application, web service for integration with the mobile application, and web service for integration with the backend of the health institution. It supports working with the users (nurses in home care) and work orders whic...

Treating the Healthcare Workforce Crisis: A Prescription for a Health Informatics Curriculum

Science.gov (United States)

Campbell, S. Matt; Pardue, J. Harold; Longenecker, Herbert E., Jr.; Barnett, H. Les; Landry, Jeffrey P.

2012-01-01

A serious need exists for information systems workers who have an understanding of the healthcare environment. Traditional information systems degree programs do not adequately prepare students to enter the healthcare environment. In this paper, we propose a curriculum for a baccalaureate health informatics degree that combines the technical and…

Past and next 10 years of medical informatics.

Science.gov (United States)

Ückert, Frank; Ammenwerth, Elske; Dujat, Carl; Grant, Andrew; Haux, Reinhold; Hein, Andreas; Hochlehnert, Achim; Knaup-Gregori, Petra; Kulikowski, Casimir; Mantas, John; Maojo, Victor; Marschollek, Michael; Moura, Lincoln; Plischke, Maik; Röhrig, Rainer; Stausberg, Jürgen; Takabayashi, Katsuhiko; Winter, Alfred; Wolf, Klaus-Hendrik; Hasman, Arie

2014-07-01

More than 10 years ago Haux et al. tried to answer the question how health care provision will look like in the year 2013. A follow-up workshop was held in Braunschweig, Germany, for 2 days in May, 2013, with 20 invited international experts in biomedical and health informatics. Among other things it had the objectives to discuss the suggested goals and measures of 2002 and how priorities on MI research in this context should be set from the viewpoint of today. The goals from 2002 are now as up-to-date as they were then. The experts stated that the three goals: "patient-centred recording and use of medical data for cooperative care"; "process-integrated decision support through current medical knowledge" and "comprehensive use of patient data for research and health care reporting" have not been reached yet and are still relevant. A new goal for ICT in health care should be the support of patient centred personalized (individual) medicine. MI as an academic discipline carries out research concerning tools that support health care professionals in their work. This research should be carried out without the pressure that it should lead to systems that are immediately and directly accepted in practice.

An analysis of application of health informatics in Traditional Medicine: A review of four Traditional Medicine Systems.

Science.gov (United States)

Raja Ikram, Raja Rina; Abd Ghani, Mohd Khanapi; Abdullah, Noraswaliza

2015-11-01

This paper shall first investigate the informatics areas and applications of the four Traditional Medicine systems - Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), Ayurveda, Traditional Arabic and Islamic Medicine and Traditional Malay Medicine. Then, this paper shall examine the national informatics infrastructure initiatives in the four respective countries that support the Traditional Medicine systems. Challenges of implementing informatics in Traditional Medicine Systems shall also be discussed. The literature was sourced from four databases: Ebsco Host, IEEE Explore, Proquest and Google scholar. The search term used was "Traditional Medicine", "informatics", "informatics infrastructure", "traditional Chinese medicine", "Ayurveda", "traditional Arabic and Islamic medicine", and "traditional malay medicine". A combination of the search terms above was also executed to enhance the searching process. A search was also conducted in Google to identify miscellaneous books, publications, and organization websites using the same terms. Amongst major advancements in TCM and Ayurveda are bioinformatics, development of Traditional Medicine databases for decision system support, data mining and image processing. Traditional Chinese Medicine differentiates itself from other Traditional Medicine systems with documented ISO Standards to support the standardization of TCM. Informatics applications in Traditional Arabic and Islamic Medicine are mostly ehealth applications that focus more on spiritual healing, Islamic obligations and prophetic traditions. Literature regarding development of health informatics to support Traditional Malay Medicine is still insufficient. Major informatics infrastructure that is common in China and India are automated insurance payment systems for Traditional Medicine treatment. National informatics infrastructure in Middle East and Malaysia mainly cater for modern medicine. Other infrastructure such as telemedicine and hospital information systems focus its

Offering Distance Education in Health Informatics: The State of the Web Sites.

Science.gov (United States)

Lazinger, Susan; Handzel, Ruth

2003-01-01

Within the framework of a bi-national project, between the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and four Israeli universities, a prototype database of programs and courses in health informatics was implemented. Examined Web sites particularly for courses offered via distance education and discusses results of a content analysis. (Author/LRW)

The European community and its standardization efforts in medical informatics

Science.gov (United States)

Mattheus, Rudy A.

1992-07-01

A summary of the CEN TC 251/4 ''Medical Imaging and Multi-Media'' activities will be given. CEN is the European standardization institute, TC 251 deals with medical informatics. Standardization is a condition for the wide scale use of health care and medical informatics and for the creation of a common market. In the last two years, three important categories-- namely, the Commission of the European Communities with their programs and the mandates, the medical informaticians through their European professional federation, and the national normalization institutes through the European committee--have shown to be aware of this problem and have taken actions. As a result, a number of AIM (Advanced Informatics in Medicine), CEC sponsored projects, the CEC mandates to CEN and EWOS, the EFMI working group on standardization, the technical committee of CEN, and the working groups and project teams of CEN and EWOS are working on the subject. On overview of the CEN TC 251/4 ''Medical Imaging and Multi-Media'' activities will be given, including their relation to other work.

Biomedical informatics: we are what we publish.

Science.gov (United States)

Elkin, P L; Brown, S H; Wright, G

2013-01-01

This article is part of a For-Discussion-Section of Methods of Information in Medicine on "Biomedical Informatics: We are what we publish". It is introduced by an editorial and followed by a commentary paper with invited comments. In subsequent issues the discussion may continue through letters to the editor. Informatics experts have attempted to define the field via consensus projects which has led to consensus statements by both AMIA. and by IMIA. We add to the output of this process the results of a study of the Pubmed publications with abstracts from the field of Biomedical Informatics. We took the terms from the AMIA consensus document and the terms from the IMIA definitions of the field of Biomedical Informatics and combined them through human review to create the Health Informatics Ontology. We built a terminology server using the Intelligent Natural Language Processor (iNLP). Then we downloaded the entire set of articles in Medline identified by searching the literature by "Medical Informatics" OR "Bioinformatics". The articles were parsed by the joint AMIA / IMIA terminology and then again using SNOMED CT and for the Bioinformatics they were also parsed using HGNC Ontology. We identified 153,580 articles using "Medical Informatics" and 20,573 articles using "Bioinformatics". This resulted in 168,298 unique articles and an overlap of 5,855 articles. Of these 62,244 articles (37%) had titles and abstracts that contained at least one concept from the Health Informatics Ontology. SNOMED CT indexing showed that the field interacts with most all clinical fields of medicine. Further defining the field by what we publish can add value to the consensus driven processes that have been the mainstay of the efforts to date. Next steps should be to extract terms from the literature that are uncovered and create class hierarchies and relationships for this content. We should also examine the high occurring of MeSH terms as markers to define Biomedical Informatics

A survey of informatics platforms that enable distributed comparative effectiveness research using multi-institutional heterogenous clinical data.

Science.gov (United States)

Sittig, Dean F; Hazlehurst, Brian L; Brown, Jeffrey; Murphy, Shawn; Rosenman, Marc; Tarczy-Hornoch, Peter; Wilcox, Adam B

2012-07-01

Comparative effectiveness research (CER) has the potential to transform the current health care delivery system by identifying the most effective medical and surgical treatments, diagnostic tests, disease prevention methods, and ways to deliver care for specific clinical conditions. To be successful, such research requires the identification, capture, aggregation, integration, and analysis of disparate data sources held by different institutions with diverse representations of the relevant clinical events. In an effort to address these diverse demands, there have been multiple new designs and implementations of informatics platforms that provide access to electronic clinical data and the governance infrastructure required for interinstitutional CER. The goal of this manuscript is to help investigators understand why these informatics platforms are required and to compare and contrast 6 large-scale, recently funded, CER-focused informatics platform development efforts. We utilized an 8-dimension, sociotechnical model of health information technology to help guide our work. We identified 6 generic steps that are necessary in any distributed, multi-institutional CER project: data identification, extraction, modeling, aggregation, analysis, and dissemination. We expect that over the next several years these projects will provide answers to many important, and heretofore unanswerable, clinical research questions.

Federal Interagency Traumatic Brain Injury Research (FITBIR) Informatics System

Data.gov (United States)

U.S. Department of Health & Human Services — The Federal Interagency Traumatic Brain Injury Research (FITBIR) informatics system is an extensible, scalable informatics platform for TBI relevant imaging,...

Personal Informatics in the Wild: Hacking Habits for Health & Happiness

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Li, Ian; Froehlich, Jon; Larsen, Jakob Eg

2013-01-01

Personal informatics is a class of systems that help people collect personal information to improve selfknowledge. Improving self-knowledge can foster selfinsight and promote positive behaviors, such as healthy living and energy conservation. The development of personal informatics applications p...

Social media and patient health outcomes. Findings from the yearbook 2014 section on consumer health informatics.

Science.gov (United States)

Staccini, P; Douali, N

2014-08-15

To provide a review of the current excellent research published in the field of Consumer Health Informatics. We searched MEDLINE® and WEB OF SCIENCE® databases for papers published in 2013 in relation with Consumer Health Informatics. The authors identified 16 candidate best papers, which were then reviewed by four reviewers. Five out of the 16 candidate papers were selected as best papers. One paper presents the key features of a system to automate the collection of web-based social media content for subsequent semantic annotation. This paper emphasizes the importance of mining social media to collect novel data from which new findings in drug abuse research were uncovered. The second paper presents a practical method to predict how a community structure would impact the spreading of information within the community. The third paper presents a method for improving the quality of online health communities. The fourth presents a new social network to allow the monitoring of the evolution of individuals' health status and diagnostic deficiencies, difficulties or barriers in rehabilitation. The last paper reports on teenage patients' perception on privacy and social media. Selected papers not only show the value of using social media in the medical field but how to use these media to detect emergent diseases or risks, inform patients, promote disease prevention, and follow patients' opinion on healthcare resources.

Two Decades of HELINA Conferences: A Historical Review of Health Informatics in Africa.

Science.gov (United States)

Korpela, M

2013-01-01

Review the history of health informatics in Africa as projected by the HELINA conferences, to draw inferences for the next phase. Summarising from the proceedings of HELINA 93, unpublished programmes and reports of later conferences, abstracts and presentations on the web sites of the most recent conferences, and personal recollections of all but one of the conferences. Analysing the e-health situation in Africa in 1993, 2007 and 2011 by mapping software applications presented in the respective conferences on a simplified model of potential spots for e-health use. The following phases were identified: Pre-phase from 1979; individual scientific papers. Phase 1, the 1993-1999 conferences; carried by the momentum of HELINA 93. Phase 2, interregnum; difficulty to find conference organisers. Phase 3, the 2007-2011 conferences; carried by the HELINA association as IMIA Africa Region. Currently most of the important spots for e-health use are being populated by appropriate software applications, mostly by collaborative open source projects. Phase 4 starting, characterised by the expansion of e-health practice on the continent, the HELINA association as a key organiser, and annual HELINA conferences becoming scientifically stronger and more visible. Key issues in making health informatics blossom in Africa include local development capacity, community orientation, collaborative design, international collaboration, government support, champions and organised continent-wide collaboration.

XML and its impact on content and structure in electronic health care documents.

Science.gov (United States)

Sokolowski, R.; Dudeck, J.

1999-01-01

Worldwide information networks have the requirement that electronic documents must be easily accessible, portable, flexible and system-independent. With the development of XML (eXtensible Markup Language), the future of electronic documents, health care informatics and the Web itself are about to change. The intent of the recently formed ASTM E31.25 subcommittee, "XML DTDs for Health Care", is to develop standard electronic document representations of paper-based health care documents and forms. A goal of the subcommittee is to work together to enhance existing levels of interoperability among the various XML/SGML standardization efforts, products and systems in health care. The ASTM E31.25 subcommittee uses common practices and software standards to develop the implementation recommendations for XML documents in health care. The implementation recommendations are being developed to standardize the many different structures of documents. These recommendations are in the form of a set of standard DTDs, or document type definitions that match the electronic document requirements in the health care industry. This paper discusses recent efforts of the ASTM E31.25 subcommittee. PMID:10566338

The diversity and disparity in biomedical informatics (DDBI) workshop.

Science.gov (United States)

Southerland, William M; Swamidass, S Joshua; Payne, Philip R O; Wiley, Laura; Williams-DeVane, ClarLynda

2018-01-01

The Diversity and Disparity in Biomedical Informatics (DDBI) workshop will be focused on complementary and critical issues concerned with enhancing diversity in the informatics workforce as well as diversity in patient cohorts. According to the National Institute of Minority Health and Health Disparities (NIMHD) at the NIH, diversity refers to the inclusion of the following traditionally underrepresented groups: African Americans/Blacks, Asians (>30 countries), American Indian or Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, Latino or Hispanic (20 countries). Gender, culture, and socioeconomic status are also important dimensions of diversity, which may define some underrepresented groups. The under-representation of specific groups in both the biomedical informatics workforce as well as in the patient-derived data that is being used for research purposes has contributed to an ongoing disparity; these groups have not experienced equity in contributing to or benefiting from advancements in informatics research. This workshop will highlight innovative efforts to increase the pool of minority informaticians and discuss examples of informatics research that addresses the health concerns that impact minority populations. This workshop topics will provide insight into overcoming pipeline issues in the development of minority informaticians while emphasizing the importance of minority participation in health related research. The DDBI workshop will occur in two parts. Part I will discuss specific minority health & health disparities research topics and Part II will cover discussions related to overcoming pipeline issues in the training of minority informaticians.

Clinical Research Informatics Contributions from 2015.

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Daniel, C; Choquet, R

2016-11-10

To summarize key contributions to current research in the field of Clinical Research Informatics (CRI) and to select best papers published in 2015. A bibliographic search using a combination of MeSH and free terms search over PubMed on Clinical Research Informatics (CRI) was performed followed by a double-blind review in order to select a list of candidate best papers to be then peer-reviewed by external reviewers. A consensus meeting between the two section editors and the editorial team was finally organized to conclude on the selection of best papers. Among the 579 returned papers published in the past year in the various areas of Clinical Research Informatics (CRI) - i) methods supporting clinical research, ii) data sharing and interoperability, iii) re-use of healthcare data for research, iv) patient recruitment and engagement, v) data privacy, security and regulatory issues and vi) policy and perspectives - the full review process selected four best papers. The first selected paper evaluates the capability of the Clinical Data Interchange Standards Consortium (CDISC) Operational Data Model (ODM) to support the representation of case report forms (in both the design stage and with patient level data) during a complete clinical study lifecycle. The second selected paper describes a prototype for secondary use of electronic health records data captured in non-standardized text. The third selected paper presents a privacy preserving electronic health record linkage tool and the last selected paper describes how big data use in US relies on access to health information governed by varying and often misunderstood legal requirements and ethical considerations. A major trend in the 2015 publications is the analysis of observational, "nonexperimental" information and the potential biases and confounding factors hidden in the data that will have to be carefully taken into account to validate new predictive models. In addiction, researchers have to understand

Fellowship training at John Hopkins: programs leading to careers in librarianship and informatics as informaticians or informationists.

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Campbell, Jayne M; Roderer, Nancy K

2005-01-01

Preparing librarians to meet the information challenges faced in the current and future health care environments is critical. At Johns Hopkins University, three NLM-funded fellowship programs provide opportunities for librarians to utilize the rich environments of the Welch Medical Library and the Division of Health Sciences Informatics in support of life-long learning.

Current Challenge in Consumer Health Informatics: Bridging the Gap between Access to Information and Information Understanding

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Laurence Alpay

2009-01-01

Full Text Available The number of health-related websites has proliferated over the past few years. Health information consumers confront a myriad of health related resources on the internet that have varying levels of quality and are not always easy to comprehend. There is thus a need to help health information consumers to bridge the gap between access to information and information understanding—i.e. to help consumers understand health related web-based resources so that they can act upon it. At the same time health information consumers are becoming not only more involved in their own health care but also more information technology minded. One way to address this issue is to provide consumers with tailored information that is contextualized and personalized e.g. directly relevant and easily comprehensible to the person’s own health situation. This paper presents a current trend in Consumer Health Informatics which focuses on theory-based design and development of contextualized and personalized tools to allow the evolving consumer with varying backgrounds and interests to use online health information efficiently. The proposed approach uses a theoretical framework of communication in order to support the consumer’s capacity to understand health-related web-based resources.

Transforming consumer health informatics through a patient work framework: connecting patients to context.

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Valdez, Rupa S; Holden, Richard J; Novak, Laurie L; Veinot, Tiffany C

2015-01-01

Designing patient-centered consumer health informatics (CHI) applications requires understanding and creating alignment with patients' and their family members' health-related activities, referred to here as 'patient work'. A patient work approach to CHI draws on medical social science and human factors engineering models and simultaneously attends to patients, their family members, activities, and context. A patient work approach extends existing approaches to CHI design that are responsive to patients' biomedical realities and personal skills and behaviors. It focuses on the embeddedness of patients' health management in larger processes and contexts and prioritizes patients' perspectives on illness management. Future research is required to advance (1) theories of patient work, (2) methods for assessing patient work, and (3) techniques for translating knowledge of patient work into CHI application design. Advancing a patient work approach within CHI is integral to developing and deploying consumer-facing technologies that are integrated with patients' everyday lives. © The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Medical Informatics Association. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com. For numbered affiliations see end of article.

Biomedical and health informatics education and research at the Information Technology Institute in Egypt.

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Hussein, R; Khalifa, A

2011-01-01

During the last decade, Egypt has experienced a revolution in the field of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) that has had a corresponding impact on the field of healthcare. Since 1993, the Information Technology Institute (ITI) has been leading the development of the Information Technology (IT) professional training and education in Egypt to produce top quality IT professionals who are considered now the backbone of the IT revolution in Egypt. For the past five years, ITI has been adopting the objective of building high caliber health professionals who can effectively serve the ever-growing information society. Academic links have been established with internationally renowned universities, e.g., Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) in US, University of Leipzig in Germany, in addition those with the Egyptian Fellowship Board in order to enrich ITI Medical Informatics Education and Research. The ITI Biomedical and Health Informatics (BMHI) education and training programs target fresh graduates as well as life-long learners. Therefore, the program's learning objectives are framed within the context of the four specialization tracks: Healthcare Management (HCM), Biomedical Informatics Research (BMIR), Bioinformatics Professional (BIP), and Healthcare Professional (HCP). The ITI BMHI research projects tackle a wide-range of current challenges in this field, such as knowledge management in healthcare, providing tele-consultation services for diagnosis and treatment of infectious diseases for underserved regions in Egypt, and exploring the cultural and educational aspects of Nanoinformatics. Since 2006, ITI has been positively contributing to develop the discipline of BMHI in Egypt in order to support improved healthcare services.

Changes in Quality of Health Care Delivery after Vertical Integration.

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Carlin, Caroline S; Dowd, Bryan; Feldman, Roger

2015-08-01

To fill an empirical gap in the literature by examining changes in quality of care measures occurring when multispecialty clinic systems were acquired by hospital-owned, vertically integrated health care delivery systems in the Twin Cities area. Administrative data for health plan enrollees attributed to treatment and control clinic systems, merged with U.S. Census data. We compared changes in quality measures for health plan enrollees in the acquired clinics to enrollees in nine control groups using a differences-in-differences model. Our dataset spans 2 years prior to and 4 years after the acquisitions. We estimated probit models with errors clustered within enrollees. Data were assembled by the health plan's informatics team. Vertical integration is associated with increased rates of colorectal and cervical cancer screening and more appropriate emergency department use. The probability of ambulatory care-sensitive admissions increased when the acquisition caused disruption in admitting patterns. Moving a clinic system into a vertically integrated delivery system resulted in limited increases in quality of care indicators. Caution is warranted when the acquisition causes disruption in referral patterns. © Health Research and Educational Trust.

All that Glitters Is not Gold: Consumer Health Informatics and Education in the Era of Social Media and Health Apps. Findings from the Yearbook 2016 Section on Consumer Health Informatics.

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Fernandez-Luque, L; Staccini, P

2016-11-10

To summarize the state of the art published during the year 2015 in the areas related to consumer health informatics and education with a special emphasis on unintended consequences of applying mobile and social media technologies in that domain. We conducted a systematic review of articles published in PubMed with a predefined set of queries, which lead to the selection of over 700 potential relevant articles. Section editors screened those papers on the title, abstract, and finally complete paper basis, taking into account the papers' relevance for the section topic. The 15 most representative papers were finally selected by consensus between the two section editors and submitted for full review and scoring to external reviewers and the yearbook editors. Based on the final scoring, section editors selected the best five papers. The five best papers can be grouped in two major areas: 1) Digital health literacy and 2) Quality and safety concerns. Regarding health literacy issues of patients with chronic conditions such as asthma, online interventions should rather focus on changing patient beliefs about the disease than on supporting them in the management of their pathology since personally controlled health management systems do not show expected benefits,. Nevertheless, encouraging and training chronic patients for an active online health information-seeking behaviour substantially decreases state anxiety level. Regarding safety and privacy issues, even recommended health-related apps available on mobile phones do not guarantee personal data protection. Furthermore, the analysis indicated that patients undergoing Internet interventions experienced at least one adverse event that might be related to treatment. At least, predictive factors have been identified in order to credit or not a health rumour. Trusting digital and connected health can be achieved if patients, health care professionals, and industrials build a shared model of health data management

Health Social Media and Patient-Centered Care: Buzz or Evidence? Findings from the Section "Education and Consumer Health Informatics" of the 2015 Edition of the IMIA Yearbook.

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Staccini, P; Fernandez-Luque, L

2015-08-13

To summarize the 2014 state of the art in the areas related to consumer health informatics and social media. We conducted a systematic review of articles published in 2014 in PubMed with a predefined set of queries. We identified 439 articles relevant for the review. The two section editors independently screened those papers taking into account their relevance to the topics covered by the section. In a second step, they jointly selected the 20 most representative papers as candidate best papers. Candidate best papers were then submitted for full review and scoring by external reviewers. Based on the scoring, section editors together with the IMIA Yearbook editorial board selected the four best papers published in 2014 in consumer health informatics. Helping patients acquire a healthier lifestyle is a crucial part of patient empowerment. In this line of work, new studies are exploring the efficacy of online health interventions for patient behavioral change. The special case of smoking cessation for consumers with low socio-economic status is particularly noticeable. Another study has explored how an online intervention can reduce the anxiety of women who experience an abnormal mammography. The team of PatientsLikeMe has studied how online support groups could play a role in the quality of life of organ transplant recipients. The patient perspective of online forums' users is also analyzed in the domain of anticoagulation therapy. Online health interventions, many of them using social media, have confirmed their potential to impact consumer behavioral change. However, there are still many methodological issues that need to be addressed in order to prove cost-effectiveness.

The management and policy challenges of the globalisation effect of informatics and telemedicine.

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Rigby, M

1999-01-01

Managers and policy makers face new and as yet unrecognised challenges--particularly loss of control--through the application of new information technologies in healthcare. Whilst informatics and telemedicine are important developments, the potential for adverse organisational and societal effects should be recognised and anticipated. Health organisations are frequently seen as circumscribed networks, and these in turn form local alliances with related organisations. Information technologies are frequently construed as relating to operational systems within organisations, not least electronic patient record systems and diagnostic systems. These can then be linked to new generation health business systems, to provide accurate management information at low additional cost. However, this pair of assumptions is now seriously flawed, due to the effects of the latest developments in health informatics and telemedicine. In particular, telecommunications and Internet technologies render ineffectual previous external barriers of distance and national boundaries, whilst within the organisation the combination of knowledge bases with information technologies creates tendencies towards internal autonomy. Organisational and national policy control of health care face direct and radical challenges through perverse effects of otherwise beneficial developments, and early action is needed.

Third generation participatory design in health informatics--making user participation applicable to large-scale information system projects.

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Pilemalm, Sofie; Timpka, Toomas

2008-04-01

Participatory Design (PD) methods in the field of health informatics have mainly been applied to the development of small-scale systems with homogeneous user groups in local settings. Meanwhile, health service organizations are becoming increasingly large and complex in character, making it necessary to extend the scope of the systems that are used for managing data, information and knowledge. This study reports participatory action research on the development of a PD framework for large-scale system design. The research was conducted in a public health informatics project aimed at developing a system for 175,000 users. A renewed PD framework was developed in response to six major limitations experienced to be associated with the existing methods. The resulting framework preserves the theoretical grounding, but extends the toolbox to suit applications in networked health service organizations. Future research should involve evaluations of the framework in other health service settings where comprehensive HISs are developed.

Embedded librarian within an online health informatics graduate research course: a case study.

Science.gov (United States)

Kumar, Sajeesh; Wu, Lin; Reynolds, Rebecca

2014-01-01

The Health Sciences Library and the Department of Health Informatics & Information Management at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis piloted an embedded librarian project in summer 2012. The value and effectiveness of the pilot project was evaluated by analyzing the content of e-mail questions received from the students and the students' answers to the pre- and post-class surveys. The project received positive feedback from the students and course faculty. Librarians collaborating with teaching faculty and interacting one-on-one with students in health information-intensive courses proved to be helpful for student learning.

A comparative analysis of moral principles and behavioral norms in eight ethical codes relevant to health sciences librarianship, medical informatics, and the health professions.

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Byrd, Gary D; Winkelstein, Peter

2014-10-01

Based on the authors' shared interest in the interprofessional challenges surrounding health information management, this study explores the degree to which librarians, informatics professionals, and core health professionals in medicine, nursing, and public health share common ethical behavior norms grounded in moral principles. Using the "Principlism" framework from a widely cited textbook of biomedical ethics, the authors analyze the statements in the ethical codes for associations of librarians (Medical Library Association [MLA], American Library Association, and Special Libraries Association), informatics professionals (American Medical Informatics Association [AMIA] and American Health Information Management Association), and core health professionals (American Medical Association, American Nurses Association, and American Public Health Association). This analysis focuses on whether and how the statements in these eight codes specify core moral norms (Autonomy, Beneficence, Non-Maleficence, and Justice), core behavioral norms (Veracity, Privacy, Confidentiality, and Fidelity), and other norms that are empirically derived from the code statements. These eight ethical codes share a large number of common behavioral norms based most frequently on the principle of Beneficence, then on Autonomy and Justice, but rarely on Non-Maleficence. The MLA and AMIA codes share the largest number of common behavioral norms, and these two associations also share many norms with the other six associations. The shared core of behavioral norms among these professions, all grounded in core moral principles, point to many opportunities for building effective interprofessional communication and collaboration regarding the development, management, and use of health information resources and technologies.

Using informatics to capture older adults' wellness.

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Demiris, George; Thompson, Hilaire J; Reeder, Blaine; Wilamowska, Katarzyna; Zaslavsky, Oleg

2013-11-01

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate how informatics applications can support the assessment and visualization of older adults' wellness. A theoretical framework is presented that informs the design of a technology enhanced screening platform for wellness. We highlight an ongoing pilot demonstration in an assisted living facility where a community room has been converted into a living laboratory for the use of diverse technologies (including a telehealth component to capture vital signs and customized questionnaires, a gait analysis component and cognitive assessment software) to assess the multiple aspects of wellness of older adults. A demonstration project was introduced in an independent retirement community to validate our theoretical framework of informatics and wellness assessment for older adults. Subjects are being recruited to attend a community room and engage in the use of diverse technologies to assess cognitive performance, physiological and gait variables as well as psychometrics pertaining to social and spiritual components of wellness for a period of eight weeks. Data are integrated from various sources into one study database and different visualization approaches are pursued to efficiently display potential correlations between different parameters and capture overall trends of wellness. Preliminary findings indicate that older adults are willing to participate in technology-enhanced interventions and embrace different information technology applications given appropriate and customized training and hardware and software features that address potential functional limitations and inexperience with computers. Informatics can advance health care for older adults and support a holistic assessment of older adults' wellness. The described framework can support decision making, link formal and informal caregiving networks and identify early trends and patterns that if addressed could reduce adverse health events. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ireland

Strategic uses of information technology in health care: a state-of-the-art survey.

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Raghupathi, W; Tan, J

1999-08-01

The general perception that the use of information technology (IT) in health care is ten to fifteen years behind IT in other industrial sectors such as banking, manufacturing, and airline is rapidly changing. Health care providers, faced with an unprecedented era of competition and managed care, are now exploring the opportunities for using IT to improve the quality while simultaneously reducing the cost of health care. A revolution is taking place in the health care industry, with IT playing an increasingly important role in its delivery. In recent years, for example, the industry spent approximately $12 billion to $14 billion a year on IT. Further exponential growth is expected as the health care industry implements electronic medical records, upgrades hospital information systems, sets up intranets for sharing information among key stakeholders, and uses public networks, such as the Internet, for distributing health-related information and for providing remote diagnostics. Along with these drastic changes and the new approach to health care, the field of health/medical informatics and telematics has also experienced significant growth in the last few years. This article identifies and surveys the critical information technologies that are being adopted to provide strategic benefits to the various health care constituencies including hospitals and health maintenance organizations (HMOs).

New study program: Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Specialist Study in Medical Informatics.

Science.gov (United States)

Hercigonja-Szekeres, Mira; Simić, Diana; Božikov, Jadranka; Vondra, Petra

2014-01-01

Paper presents an overview of the EU funded Project of Curriculum Development for Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Specialist Study in Medical Informatics named MEDINFO to be introduced in Croatia. The target group for the program is formed by professionals in any of the areas of medicine, IT professionals working on applications of IT for health and researchers and teachers in medical informatics. In addition to Croatian students, the program will also provide opportunity for enrolling students from a wider region of Southeast Europe. Project partners are two faculties of the University of Zagreb - Faculty of Organization and Informatics from Varaždin and School of Medicine, Andrija Štampar School of Public Health from Zagreb with the Croatian Society for Medical Informatics, Croatian Chamber of Economy, and Ericsson Nikola Tesla Company as associates.

[Standards in Medical Informatics: Fundamentals and Applications].

Science.gov (United States)

Suárez-Obando, Fernando; Camacho Sánchez, Jhon

2013-09-01

The use of computers in medical practice has enabled novel forms of communication to be developed in health care. The optimization of communication processes is achieved through the use of standards to harmonize the exchange of information and provide a common language for all those involved. This article describes the concept of a standard applied to medical informatics and its importance in the development of various applications, such as computational representation of medical knowledge, disease classification and coding systems, medical literature searches and integration of biological and clinical sciences. Copyright © 2013 Asociación Colombiana de Psiquiatría. Publicado por Elsevier España. All rights reserved.

Machine Learning Takes on Health Care: Leonard D'Avolio's Cyft Employs Big Data to Benefit Patients and Providers.

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Mertz, Leslie

2018-01-01

When Leonard D'Avolio (Figure 1) was working on his Ph.D. degree in biomedical informatics, he saw the power of machine learning in transforming multiple industries; health care, however, was not among them. "The reason that Amazon, Netflix, and Google have transformed their industries is because they have embedded learning throughout every aspect of what they do. If we could prove that is possible in health care too, I thought we would have the potential to have a huge impact," he says.

CER Hub: An informatics platform for conducting comparative effectiveness research using multi-institutional, heterogeneous, electronic clinical data.

Science.gov (United States)

Hazlehurst, Brian L; Kurtz, Stephen E; Masica, Andrew; Stevens, Victor J; McBurnie, Mary Ann; Puro, Jon E; Vijayadeva, Vinutha; Au, David H; Brannon, Elissa D; Sittig, Dean F

2015-10-01

Comparative effectiveness research (CER) requires the capture and analysis of data from disparate sources, often from a variety of institutions with diverse electronic health record (EHR) implementations. In this paper we describe the CER Hub, a web-based informatics platform for developing and conducting research studies that combine comprehensive electronic clinical data from multiple health care organizations. The CER Hub platform implements a data processing pipeline that employs informatics standards for data representation and web-based tools for developing study-specific data processing applications, providing standardized access to the patient-centric electronic health record (EHR) across organizations. The CER Hub is being used to conduct two CER studies utilizing data from six geographically distributed and demographically diverse health systems. These foundational studies address the effectiveness of medications for controlling asthma and the effectiveness of smoking cessation services delivered in primary care. The CER Hub includes four key capabilities: the ability to process and analyze both free-text and coded clinical data in the EHR; a data processing environment supported by distributed data and study governance processes; a clinical data-interchange format for facilitating standardized extraction of clinical data from EHRs; and a library of shareable clinical data processing applications. CER requires coordinated and scalable methods for extracting, aggregating, and analyzing complex, multi-institutional clinical data. By offering a range of informatics tools integrated into a framework for conducting studies using EHR data, the CER Hub provides a solution to the challenges of multi-institutional research using electronic medical record data. Copyright © 2015. Published by Elsevier Ireland Ltd.

A short history of medical informatics in bosnia and herzegovina.

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Masic, Izet

2014-02-01

The health informatics profession in Bosnia and Herzegovina has relatively long history. Thirty five years from the introduction of the first automatic manipulation of data, thirty years from the establishment of Society for Medical Informatics BiH, twenty years from the establishment of the Scientific journal "Acta Informatica Medica (Acta Inform Med", indexed in PubMed, PubMed Central Scopus, Embase, etc.), twenty years on from the establishment of the first Cathedra for Medical Informatics on Biomedical Faculties in Bosnia and Herzegovina, ten years on from the introduction of the method of "Distance learning" in medical curriculum. The author of this article is eager to mark the importance of the above mentioned Anniversaries in the development of Health informatics in Bosnia and Herzegovina and have attempted, very briefly, to present the most significant events and persons with essential roles throughout this period.

Developing Workforce Capacity in Public Health Informatics: Core Competencies and Curriculum Design

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Douglas R. Wholey

2018-05-01

Full Text Available We describe a master’s level public health informatics (PHI curriculum to support workforce development. Public health decision-making requires intensive information management to organize responses to health threats and develop effective health education and promotion. PHI competencies prepare the public health workforce to design and implement these information systems. The objective for a Master’s and Certificate in PHI is to prepare public health informaticians with the competencies to work collaboratively with colleagues in public health and other health professions to design and develop information systems that support population health improvement. The PHI competencies are drawn from computer, information, and organizational sciences. A curriculum is proposed to deliver the competencies and result of a pilot PHI program is presented. Since the public health workforce needs to use information technology effectively to improve population health, it is essential for public health academic institutions to develop and implement PHI workforce training programs.

Developing Workforce Capacity in Public Health Informatics: Core Competencies and Curriculum Design

Science.gov (United States)

Wholey, Douglas R.; LaVenture, Martin; Rajamani, Sripriya; Kreiger, Rob; Hedberg, Craig; Kenyon, Cynthia

2018-01-01

We describe a master’s level public health informatics (PHI) curriculum to support workforce development. Public health decision-making requires intensive information management to organize responses to health threats and develop effective health education and promotion. PHI competencies prepare the public health workforce to design and implement these information systems. The objective for a Master’s and Certificate in PHI is to prepare public health informaticians with the competencies to work collaboratively with colleagues in public health and other health professions to design and develop information systems that support population health improvement. The PHI competencies are drawn from computer, information, and organizational sciences. A curriculum is proposed to deliver the competencies and result of a pilot PHI program is presented. Since the public health workforce needs to use information technology effectively to improve population health, it is essential for public health academic institutions to develop and implement PHI workforce training programs. PMID:29770321

Secondary Use of Recorded or Self-expressed Personal Data: Consumer Health Informatics and Education in the Era of Social Media and Health Apps.

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Staccini, P; Fernandez-Luque, L

2017-08-01

Objective: To summarize the state of the art during the year 2016 in the areas related to consumer health informatics and education with a special emphasis in secondary use of patient data. Methods: We conducted a systematic review of articles published in 2016, using PubMed with a predefined set of queries. We identified over 320 potential articles for review. Papers were considered according to their relevance for the topic of the section. Using consensus, we selected the 15 most representative papers, which were submitted to external reviewers for full review and scoring. Based on the scoring and quality criteria, five papers were finally selected as best papers Results: The five best papers can be grouped in two major areas: 1) methods and tools to identify and collect formal requirements for secondary use of data, and 2) innovative topics highlighting the interest of carrying on "secondary" studies on patient data, more specifically on the data self-expressed by patients through social media tools. Regarding the formal requirements about informed consent, the selected papers report a comparison of legal aspects in European countries to find a common and unified grammar around the concept of "data donation". Regarding innovative approaches to value patient data, the selected papers report machine learning algorithms to extract knowledge from patient experience and satisfaction with health care delivery, drug and medication use, treatment compliance and barriers during cancer disease, or acceptation of public health actions such as vaccination. Conclusions: Secondary use of patient data (apart from personal health care record data) can be expressed according to many ways. Requirements to allow this secondary use have to be harmonized between countries, and social media platforms can be efficiently used to explore and create knowledge on patient experience with health problems or activities. Machine learning algorithms can explore those massive amounts of data to

Continued multidisciplinary project-based learning - implementation in health informatics.

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Wessel, C; Spreckelsen, C

2009-01-01

Problem- and project-based learning are approved methods to train students, graduates and post-graduates in scientific and other professional skills. The students are trained on realistic scenarios in a broader context. For students specializing in health informatics we introduced continued multidisciplinary project-based learning (CM-PBL) at a department of medical informatics. The training approach addresses both students of medicine and students of computer science. The students are full members of an ongoing research project and develop a project-related application or module, or explore or evaluate a sub-project. Two teachers guide and review the students' work. The training on scientific work follows a workflow with defined milestones. The team acts as peer group. By participating in the research team's work the students are trained on professional skills. A research project on a web-based information system on hospitals built the scenario for the realistic context. The research team consisted of up to 14 active members at a time, who were scientists and students of computer science and medicine. The well communicated educational approach and team policy fostered the participation of the students. Formative assessment and evaluation showed a considerable improvement of the students' skills and a high participant satisfaction. Alternative education approaches such as project-based learning empower students to acquire scientific knowledge and professional skills, especially the ability of life-long learning, multidisciplinary team work and social responsibility.

Data Analysis and Data Mining: Current Issues in Biomedical Informatics

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Bellazzi, Riccardo; Diomidous, Marianna; Sarkar, Indra Neil; Takabayashi, Katsuhiko; Ziegler, Andreas; McCray, Alexa T.

2011-01-01

Summary Background Medicine and biomedical sciences have become data-intensive fields, which, at the same time, enable the application of data-driven approaches and require sophisticated data analysis and data mining methods. Biomedical informatics provides a proper interdisciplinary context to integrate data and knowledge when processing available information, with the aim of giving effective decision-making support in clinics and translational research. Objectives To reflect on different perspectives related to the role of data analysis and data mining in biomedical informatics. Methods On the occasion of the 50th year of Methods of Information in Medicine a symposium was organized, that reflected on opportunities, challenges and priorities of organizing, representing and analysing data, information and knowledge in biomedicine and health care. The contributions of experts with a variety of backgrounds in the area of biomedical data analysis have been collected as one outcome of this symposium, in order to provide a broad, though coherent, overview of some of the most interesting aspects of the field. Results The paper presents sections on data accumulation and data-driven approaches in medical informatics, data and knowledge integration, statistical issues for the evaluation of data mining models, translational bioinformatics and bioinformatics aspects of genetic epidemiology. Conclusions Biomedical informatics represents a natural framework to properly and effectively apply data analysis and data mining methods in a decision-making context. In the future, it will be necessary to preserve the inclusive nature of the field and to foster an increasing sharing of data and methods between researchers. PMID:22146916

Mental health informatics

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Song, Insu; Yellowlees, Peter; Diederich, Joachim

2014-01-01

This book introduces approaches that have the potential to transform the daily practice of psychiatrists and psychologists. This includes the asynchronous communication between mental health care providers and clients as well as the automation of assessment and therapy. Speech and language are particularly interesting from the viewpoint of psychological assessment. For instance, depression may change the characteristics of voice in individuals and these changes can be detected by a special form of speech analysis. Computational screening methods that utilise speech and language can detect subtle changes and alert clinicians as well as individuals and caregivers. The use of online technologies in mental health, however, poses ethical problems that will occupy concerned individuals, governments and the wider public for some time. Assuming that these ethical problems can be solved, it should be possible to diagnose and treat mental health disorders online (excluding the use of medication).

Development and institutionalization of the first online certificate and master program of biomedical informatics in global health in Peru

OpenAIRE

Garcia, Patricia J.; Facultad de Salud Pública y Administración, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia. Lima, Perú. Department of Global Health, University of Washington. Seattle, Washington, EE. UU.; Egoavil, Miguel S.; Facultad de Salud Pública y Administración, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia. Lima, Perú.; Blas, Magaly M.; Facultad de Salud Pública y Administración, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia. Lima, Perú.; Alvarado-Vásquez, Eduardo; Facultad de Salud Pública y Administración, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia. Lima, Perú.; Curioso, Walter H.; Facultad de Salud Pública y Administración, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia. Lima, Perú. Department of Biomedical Informatics, School of Medicine, University of Washington. Seattle, Washington, EE. UU.; Zimic, Mirko; Unidad de Bioinformática, Laboratorios de Investigación y Desarrollo. Facultad de Ciencias y Filosofía, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia. Lima, Perú.; Castagnetto, Jesus M.; Dirección Universitaria de Informática, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia. Lima, Perú.; Lescano, Andres G.; US Naval Medical Research Unit No. 6 (NAMRU-6). Lima, Perú.; Lopez, Diego M.; Universidad del Cauca. Popayán, Colombia.; Carcamo, Cesar P.; Facultad de Salud Pública y Administración, Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia. Lima, Perú.

2015-01-01

Training in Biomedical Informatics is essential to meet the challenges of a globalized world. However, the development of postgraduate training and research programs in this area are scarce in Latin America. Through QUIPU: Andean Center for Training and research in Iformatics for Global Health, has developed the first Certificate and Master’s Program on Biomedical Informatics in the Andean Region. The aim of this article is to describe the experience of the program. To date, 51 students from ...

The jubilee of medical informatics in bosnia and herzegovina - 20 years anniversary.

Science.gov (United States)

Masic, Izet

2009-01-01

NONE DECLARED LAST TWO YEARS, THE HEALTH INFORMATICS PROFESSION CELEBRATED FIVE JUBILEES IN BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA: thirty years from the introduction of the first automatic manipulation of data, twenty years from the establishment of Society for Medical Informatics BiH, fifteen years from the establishment of the Scientific and Professional Journal of the Society for Medical Informatics of Bosnia and Herzegovina "Acta Informatica Medica", fifteen years on from the establishment of the first Cathedra for Medical Informatics on Biomedical Faculties in Bosnia and Herzegovina and five years on from the introduction of the method of "Distance learning" in medical curriculum. The author of this article are eager to mark the importance of the above mentioned Anniversaries in the development of Health informatics in Bosnia and Herzegovina and have attempted, very briefly, to present the most significant events and persons with essential roles throughout this period.

Examining the Impact of Non-Technical Security Management Factors on Information Security Management in Health Informatics

Science.gov (United States)

Imam, Abbas H.

2013-01-01

Complexity of information security has become a major issue for organizations due to incessant threats to information assets. Healthcare organizations are particularly concerned with security owing to the inherent vulnerability of sensitive information assets in health informatics. While the non-technical security management elements have been at…

Medical Secretaries’ Care of Records

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Bossen, Claus; Jensen, Lotte Groth; Witt, Flemming

2012-01-01

to health informatics and CSCW, this case study identifies their importance, and suggests that they and other non-clinical groups should be considered, when developing health care IT. We propose the term 'boundary-object trimming', to conceptualize their contributions to hospitals' cooperative work...

DEVELOPMENT AND INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF THE FIRST ONLINE CERTIFICATE AND MASTER PROGRAM OF BIOMEDICAL INFORMATICS IN GLOBAL HEALTH IN PERU

Science.gov (United States)

García, Patricia J.; Egoavil, Miguel S.; Blas, Magaly M.; Alvarado-Vásquez, Eduardo; Curioso, Walter H.; Zimic, Mirko; Castagnetto, Jesus M.; Lescano, Andrés G.; Lopez, Diego M.; Cárcamo, Cesar P.

2017-01-01

Training in Biomedical Informatics is essential to meet the challenges of a globalized world. However, the development of postgraduate training and research programs in this area are scarce in Latin America. Through QUIPU: Andean Center for Training and research in Iformatics for Global Health, has developed the first Certificate and Master’s Program on Biomedical Informatics in the Andean Region. The aim of this article is to describe the experience of the program. To date, 51 students from Peru, Chile, Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela have participated; they come from health ministries, hospitals, universities, research centers, professional associations and private companies. Seventeen courses were offered with the participation of faculty from Argentina, Chile, Colombia, USA, Mexico and Peru. This program is already institutionalized at the School of Public Health and Administration from the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia. PMID:26338399

[Development and institutionalization of the first online certificate and Master Program of Biomedical Informatics in global health in Peru].

Science.gov (United States)

García, Patricia J; Egoavil, Miguel S; Blas, Magaly M; Alvarado-Vásquez, Eduardo; Curioso, Walter H; Zimic, Mirko; Castagnetto, Jesus M; Lescano, Andrés G; Lopez, Diego M; Cárcamo, Cesar P

2015-01-01

Training in Biomedical Informatics is essential to meet the challenges of a globalized world. However, the development of postgraduate training and research programs in this area are scarce in Latin America. Through QUIPU: Andean Center for Training and research in Iformatics for Global Health, has developed the first Certificate and Master’s Program on Biomedical Informatics in the Andean Region. The aim of this article is to describe the experience of the program. To date, 51 students from Peru, Chile, Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela have participated; they come from health ministries, hospitals, universities, research centers, professional associations and private companies. Seventeen courses were offered with the participation of faculty from Argentina, Chile, Colombia, USA, Mexico and Peru. This program is already institutionalized at the School of Public Health and Administration from the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia.

Facilitating biomedical researchers' interrogation of electronic health record data: Ideas from outside of biomedical informatics.

Science.gov (United States)

Hruby, Gregory W; Matsoukas, Konstantina; Cimino, James J; Weng, Chunhua

2016-04-01

Electronic health records (EHR) are a vital data resource for research uses, including cohort identification, phenotyping, pharmacovigilance, and public health surveillance. To realize the promise of EHR data for accelerating clinical research, it is imperative to enable efficient and autonomous EHR data interrogation by end users such as biomedical researchers. This paper surveys state-of-art approaches and key methodological considerations to this purpose. We adapted a previously published conceptual framework for interactive information retrieval, which defines three entities: user, channel, and source, by elaborating on channels for query formulation in the context of facilitating end users to interrogate EHR data. We show the current progress in biomedical informatics mainly lies in support for query execution and information modeling, primarily due to emphases on infrastructure development for data integration and data access via self-service query tools, but has neglected user support needed during iteratively query formulation processes, which can be costly and error-prone. In contrast, the information science literature has offered elaborate theories and methods for user modeling and query formulation support. The two bodies of literature are complementary, implying opportunities for cross-disciplinary idea exchange. On this basis, we outline the directions for future informatics research to improve our understanding of user needs and requirements for facilitating autonomous interrogation of EHR data by biomedical researchers. We suggest that cross-disciplinary translational research between biomedical informatics and information science can benefit our research in facilitating efficient data access in life sciences. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Examining the Relationship Between Nursing Informatics Competency and the Quality of Information Processing.

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Al-Hawamdih, Sajidah; Ahmad, Muayyad M

2018-03-01

The purpose of this study was to examine nursing informatics competency and the quality of information processing among nurses in Jordan. The study was conducted in a large hospital with 380 registered nurses. The hospital introduced the electronic health record in 2010. The measures used in this study were personal and job characteristics, self-efficacy, Self-Assessment Nursing Informatics Competencies, and Health Information System Monitoring Questionnaire. The convenience sample consisted of 99 nurses who used the electronic health record for at least 3 months. The analysis showed that nine predictors explained 22% of the variance in the quality of information processing, whereas the statistically significant predictors were nursing informatics competency, clinical specialty, and years of nursing experience. There is a need for policies that advocate for every nurse to be educated in nursing informatics and the quality of information processing.

Twenty years of society of medical informatics of b&h and the journal acta informatica medica.

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Masic, Izet

2012-03-01

In 2012, Health/Medical informatics profession celebrates five jubilees in Bosnia and Herzegovina: a) Thirty five years from the introduction of the first automatic manipulation of data; b) Twenty five years from establishing Society for Medical Informatics BiH; c) Twenty years from establishing scientific and professional journal of the Society for Medical Informatics of Bosnia and Herzegovina "Acta Informatica Medica"; d) Twenty years from establishing first Cathdra for Medical Informatics on biomedical faculties in Bosnia and Herzegovina and e) Ten years from the introduction of "Distance learning" in medical curriculum. All of the five mentioned activities in the area of Medical informatics had special importance and gave appropriate contribution in the development of Health/Medical informatics in Bosnia And Herzegovina.

INFORMATIZATION IN EDUCATION

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

А А Меджидова

2016-12-01

Full Text Available The article draws attention to the fact that the Informatization of primary education is a uniform process, in which I the first turn mathematics and computer science are associated. Learning these disciplines is in natural interrelation and this comes from the nature of these disciplines. But in other subjects both mathematics and computer science play an applied role. It is proved that at the modern stage of Informatization in education contributes to improving the quality of assimilated knowledge acquired and skills.The article touches upon issues that reveal the relevance of the subject of Informatics in education. In connection with the information development there is a need of Informatization of education and society as a whole. The basic concepts of Informatics as a scientific and academic discipline are shown. Set out the subject, object and objectives of teaching science. Methodical program of the subject, aimed to develop school education is also considered.

The history of pathology informatics: A global perspective

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Park, Seung; Parwani, Anil V.; Aller, Raymond D.; Banach, Lech; Becich, Michael J.; Borkenfeld, Stephan; Carter, Alexis B.; Friedman, Bruce A.; Rojo, Marcial Garcia; Georgiou, Andrew; Kayser, Gian; Kayser, Klaus; Legg, Michael; Naugler, Christopher; Sawai, Takashi; Weiner, Hal; Winsten, Dennis; Pantanowitz, Liron

2013-01-01

Pathology informatics has evolved to varying levels around the world. The history of pathology informatics in different countries is a tale with many dimensions. At first glance, it is the familiar story of individuals solving problems that arise in their clinical practice to enhance efficiency, better manage (e.g., digitize) laboratory information, as well as exploit emerging information technologies. Under the surface, however, lie powerful resource, regulatory, and societal forces that helped shape our discipline into what it is today. In this monograph, for the first time in the history of our discipline, we collectively perform a global review of the field of pathology informatics. In doing so, we illustrate how general far-reaching trends such as the advent of computers, the Internet and digital imaging have affected pathology informatics in the world at large. Major drivers in the field included the need for pathologists to comply with national standards for health information technology and telepathology applications to meet the scarcity of pathology services and trained people in certain countries. Following trials by a multitude of investigators, not all of them successful, it is apparent that innovation alone did not assure the success of many informatics tools and solutions. Common, ongoing barriers to the widespread adoption of informatics devices include poor information technology infrastructure in undeveloped areas, the cost of technology, and regulatory issues. This review offers a deeper understanding of how pathology informatics historically developed and provides insights into what the promising future might hold. PMID:23869286

A prototype informatics system integrating weather and health data to manage meningitis

Science.gov (United States)

Pandya, R.; Yoksas, T.; Hayden, M.; Hopson, T.; Laing, A.; Lazo, J.; Warner, T.; Rice, J.; Adams-Forgor, A.; Hodgson, A.; Semazzi, F.; Mera, R.; Thomson, M.; Trzaska, S.; Lamptey, B.

2009-04-01

This presentation will describe progress in developing the informatics system that will support a newly funded project designed to integrate health and environmental data for health-related decision-making in Africa. This infromatics system supports a project in which the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), the International Research Institute for Climate and Society, and North Carolina State University in the United States, and the Navrongo Health Research Centre in Ghana will build and implement a prototype decision-support system that integrates two- to 14-day weather forecasts and epidemiological data to provide actionable information that can be used to contain the spread of meningitis epidemics in Ghana. By applying a preliminary economic evaluation of this decision support system, we will also assess the potential benefit of using environmental data to improve public health outcomes, help prioritize continuing investment in meningitis management in Ghana and throughout the Meningitis Belt, and determine the appropriateness of extending the prototype to other diseases, nations, and continents. This effort is a small piece of an overall Google.org effort to develop an Earth-gauging System that will integrate environmental, health and development data into products that stakeholders and researchers can use to monitor variables, analyze trends and identify relationships among different variables. The Earth-gauging System will support the prediction of emerging threats, and provide the basis for an robust early-warning system that will improve health, food security, and development and conservation outcomes. For the informatics session, our presentation will focus on the projects' leveraging of current UCAR Unidata data management software to create and populate an archive of meteorological and epidemiological data. We will also describe strategies to extend the Unidata network for data distribution - which currently provides real-time access

Spreading knowledge in medical informatics: the contribution of the hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires.

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Gonzalez Bernaldo de Quiros, F; Luna, D; Otero, P; Baum, A; Borbolla, D

2009-01-01

Medical Informatics (MI) is an emerging discipline with a high need of trained and skillful professionals. To describe the educational experience of the Department of Health Informatics of the Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires. A descriptive study of the development of the Medical Informatics Residency Program (MIRP) and the e-learning courses related to medical informatics. A four-year MIRP with 15 rotations was started in 2000, and was awarded national educational accreditation. Eight residents have been fully trained and their main academic contributions are shown in this study. The e-learning courses related to medical informatics (Healthcare Management, Epidemiology & Biostatistics, Information Retrieval, Computer Literacy started, 10x10 Spanish version and HL7 introductory course) started in 2006 and were followed by more than 2266 students from all over the world, with an increase trend in foreign students. These educational activities have produced skilled human resources for the development and maintenance of the health informatics projects at our Hospital. In parallel, the number of students trained by e-learning continues to increase, demonstrating the worldwide need of knowledge in this field.

Education in Biomedical and Health Informatics in the Web 3.0 Era: Standards for data, curricula, and activities. Contribution of the IMIA Working Group on Health and Medical Informatics Education.

Science.gov (United States)

Otero, P; Hersh, W

2011-01-01

Web 3.0 is transforming the World Wide Web by allowing knowledge and reasoning to be gleaned from its content. Describe a new scenario in education and training known as "Education 3.0" that can help in the promotion of learning in health informatics in a collaborative way. Review of the current standards available for curricula and learning activities in in Biomedical and Health Informatics (BMHI) for a Web 3.0 scenario. A new scenario known as "Education 3.0" can provide open educational resources created and reused throughout different institutions and improved by means of an international collaborative knowledge powered by the use of E-learning. Currently there are standards that could be used in identifying and deliver content in education in BMHI in the semantic web era such as Resource Description Format (RDF), Web Ontology Language (OWL) and Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM). In addition, there are other standards to support healthcare education and training. There are few experiences in the use of standards in e-learning in BMHI published in the literature. Web 3.0 can propose new approaches to building the BMHI workforce so there is a need to build tools as knowledge infrastructure to leverage it. The usefulness of standards in the content and competencies of training programs in BMHI needs more experience and research so as to promote the interoperability and sharing of resources in this growing discipline.

ASHP statement on the pharmacy technician's role in pharmacy informatics.

Science.gov (United States)

2014-02-01

The American Society of Health- System Pharmacists (ASHP) believes that specially trained pharmacy technicians can assume important supportive roles in pharmacy informatics. These roles include automation and technology systems management, management of projects, training and education, policy and governance, customer service, charge integrity, and reporting. Such roles require pharmacy technicians to gain expertise in information technology (IT) systems, including knowledge of interfaces, computer management techniques, problem resolution, and database maintenance. This knowledge could be acquired through specialized training or experience in a health science or allied scientific field (e.g., health informatics). With appropriate safeguards and supervision, pharmacy technician informaticists (PTIs) will manage IT processes in health-system pharmacy services, ensuring a safe and efficient medication-use process.

Health Care Transformation Through Collaboration on Open-Source Informatics Projects: Integrating a Medical Applications Platform, Research Data Repository, and Patient Summarization

Science.gov (United States)

McCoy, Allison B; Wright, Adam; Wattanasin, Nich; Sittig, Dean F; Murphy, Shawn N

2013-01-01

Background The Strategic Health IT Advanced Research Projects (SHARP) program seeks to conquer well-understood challenges in medical informatics through breakthrough research. Two SHARP centers have found alignment in their methodological needs: (1) members of the National Center for Cognitive Informatics and Decision-making (NCCD) have developed knowledge bases to support problem-oriented summarizations of patient data, and (2) Substitutable Medical Apps, Reusable Technologies (SMART), which is a platform for reusable medical apps that can run on participating platforms connected to various electronic health records (EHR). Combining the work of these two centers will ensure wide dissemination of new methods for synthesized views of patient data. Informatics for Integrating Biology and the Bedside (i2b2) is an NIH-funded clinical research data repository platform in use at over 100 sites worldwide. By also working with a co-occurring initiative to SMART-enabling i2b2, we can confidently write one app that can be used extremely broadly. Objective Our goal was to facilitate development of intuitive, problem-oriented views of the patient record using NCCD knowledge bases that would run in any EHR. To do this, we developed a collaboration between the two SHARPs and an NIH center, i2b2. Methods First, we implemented collaborative tools to connect researchers at three institutions. Next, we developed a patient summarization app using the SMART platform and a previously validated NCCD problem-medication linkage knowledge base derived from the National Drug File-Reference Terminology (NDF-RT). Finally, to SMART-enable i2b2, we implemented two new Web service “cells” that expose the SMART application programming interface (API), and we made changes to the Web interface of i2b2 to host a “carousel” of SMART apps. Results We deployed our SMART-based, NDF-RT-derived patient summarization app in this SMART-i2b2 container. It displays a problem-oriented view of

Health care transformation through collaboration on open-source informatics projects: integrating a medical applications platform, research data repository, and patient summarization.

Science.gov (United States)

Klann, Jeffrey G; McCoy, Allison B; Wright, Adam; Wattanasin, Nich; Sittig, Dean F; Murphy, Shawn N

2013-05-30

The Strategic Health IT Advanced Research Projects (SHARP) program seeks to conquer well-understood challenges in medical informatics through breakthrough research. Two SHARP centers have found alignment in their methodological needs: (1) members of the National Center for Cognitive Informatics and Decision-making (NCCD) have developed knowledge bases to support problem-oriented summarizations of patient data, and (2) Substitutable Medical Apps, Reusable Technologies (SMART), which is a platform for reusable medical apps that can run on participating platforms connected to various electronic health records (EHR). Combining the work of these two centers will ensure wide dissemination of new methods for synthesized views of patient data. Informatics for Integrating Biology and the Bedside (i2b2) is an NIH-funded clinical research data repository platform in use at over 100 sites worldwide. By also working with a co-occurring initiative to SMART-enabling i2b2, we can confidently write one app that can be used extremely broadly. Our goal was to facilitate development of intuitive, problem-oriented views of the patient record using NCCD knowledge bases that would run in any EHR. To do this, we developed a collaboration between the two SHARPs and an NIH center, i2b2. First, we implemented collaborative tools to connect researchers at three institutions. Next, we developed a patient summarization app using the SMART platform and a previously validated NCCD problem-medication linkage knowledge base derived from the National Drug File-Reference Terminology (NDF-RT). Finally, to SMART-enable i2b2, we implemented two new Web service "cells" that expose the SMART application programming interface (API), and we made changes to the Web interface of i2b2 to host a "carousel" of SMART apps. We deployed our SMART-based, NDF-RT-derived patient summarization app in this SMART-i2b2 container. It displays a problem-oriented view of medications and presents a line-graph display of

IMIA Educational Recommendations and Nursing Informatics

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Mantas, John; Hasman, Arie

2017-01-01

The updated version of the IMIA educational recommendations has given an adequate guidelines platform for developing educational programs in Biomedical and Health Informatics at all levels of education, vocational training, and distance learning. This chapter will provide a brief introduction of the

Using key performance indicators as knowledge-management tools at a regional health-care authority level.

Science.gov (United States)

Berler, Alexander; Pavlopoulos, Sotiris; Koutsouris, Dimitris

2005-06-01

The advantages of the introduction of information and communication technologies in the complex health-care sector are already well-known and well-stated in the past. It is, nevertheless, paradoxical that although the medical community has embraced with satisfaction most of the technological discoveries allowing the improvement in patient care, this has not happened when talking about health-care informatics. Taking the above issue of concern, our work proposes an information model for knowledge management (KM) based upon the use of key performance indicators (KPIs) in health-care systems. Based upon the use of the balanced scorecard (BSC) framework (Kaplan/Norton) and quality assurance techniques in health care (Donabedian), this paper is proposing a patient journey centered approach that drives information flow at all levels of the day-to-day process of delivering effective and managed care, toward information assessment and knowledge discovery. In order to persuade health-care decision-makers to assess the added value of KM tools, those should be used to propose new performance measurement and performance management techniques at all levels of a health-care system. The proposed KPIs are forming a complete set of metrics that enable the performance management of a regional health-care system. In addition, the performance framework established is technically applied by the use of state-of-the-art KM tools such as data warehouses and business intelligence information systems. In that sense, the proposed infrastructure is, technologically speaking, an important KM tool that enables knowledge sharing amongst various health-care stakeholders and between different health-care groups. The use of BSC is an enabling framework toward a KM strategy in health care.

Nursing informatics education and use: challenges and prospects in ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Nursing informatics education and use: challenges and prospects in Nigeria. ... that training in NI is critical in the delivery of safe and quality patient care. ... Director of Nursing Services and Principals as well as Nursing associations like ...

Can learning health systems help organisations deliver personalised care?

Science.gov (United States)

Nwaru, Bright I; Friedman, Charles; Halamka, John; Sheikh, Aziz

2017-10-02

There is increasing international policy and clinical interest in developing learning health systems and delivering precision medicine, which it is hoped will help reduce variation in the quality and safety of care, improve efficiency, and lead to increasing the personalisation of healthcare. Although reliant on similar policies, informatics tools, and data science and implementation research capabilities, these two major initiatives have thus far largely progressed in parallel. In this opinion piece, we argue that they should be considered as complementary, synergistic initiatives whereby the creation of learning health systems infrastructure can support and catalyse the delivery of precision medicine that maximises the benefits and minimises the risks associated with treatments for individual patients. We illustrate this synergy by considering the example of treatments for asthma, which is now recognised as an umbrella term for a heterogeneous group of related conditions.

Development of national competency-based learning objectives "Medical Informatics" for undergraduate medical education.

Science.gov (United States)

Röhrig, R; Stausberg, J; Dugas, M

2013-01-01

The aim of this project is to develop a catalogue of competency-based learning objectives "Medical Informatics" for undergraduate medical education (abbreviated NKLM-MI in German). The development followed a multi-level annotation and consensus process. For each learning objective a reason why a physician needs this competence was required. In addition, each objective was categorized according to the competence context (A = covered by medical informatics, B = core subject of medical informatics, C = optional subject of medical informatics), the competence level (1 = referenced knowledge, 2 = applied knowledge, 3 = routine knowledge) and a CanMEDS competence role (medical expert, communicator, collaborator, manager, health advocate, professional, scholar). Overall 42 objectives in seven areas (medical documentation and information processing, medical classifications and terminologies, information systems in healthcare, health telematics and telemedicine, data protection and security, access to medical knowledge and medical signal-/image processing) were identified, defined and consented. With the NKLM-MI the competences in the field of medical informatics vital to a first year resident physician are identified, defined and operationalized. These competencies are consistent with the recommendations of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA). The NKLM-MI will be submitted to the National Competence-Based Learning Objectives for Undergraduate Medical Education. The next step is implementation of these objectives by the faculties.

Translational informatics: an industry perspective.

Science.gov (United States)

Cantor, Michael N

2012-01-01

Translational informatics (TI) is extremely important for the pharmaceutical industry, especially as the bar for regulatory approval of new medications is set higher and higher. This paper will explore three specific areas in the drug development lifecycle, from tools developed by precompetitive consortia to standardized clinical data collection to the effective delivery of medications using clinical decision support, in which TI has a major role to play. Advancing TI will require investment in new tools and algorithms, as well as ensuring that translational issues are addressed early in the design process of informatics projects, and also given higher weight in funding or publication decisions. Ultimately, the source of translational tools and differences between academia and industry are secondary, as long as they move towards the shared goal of improving health.

Accelerating the development of an information ecosystem in health care, by stimulating the growth of safe intermediate processing of health information (IPHI

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Harshana Liyanage

2013-03-01

Full Text Available Health care, in common with many other industries, is generating large amounts of routine data, data that are challenging to process, analyse or curate, so-called ‘big data’. A challenge for health informatics is to make sense of these data. Part of the answer will come from the development of ontologies that support the use of heterogeneous data sources and the development of intermediate processors of health information (IPHI. IPHI will sit between the generators of health data and information, often the providers of health care, and the managers, commissioners, policy makers, researchers, and the pharmaceutical and other healthcare industries. They will create a health ecosystem by processing data in a way that stimulates improved data quality and potentially health care delivery by providers of health care, and by providing greater insights to legitimate users of data. Exemplars are provided of how a health ecosystem might be encouraged and developed to promote patient safety and more efficient health care. These are in the areas of how to integrate data around the unsafe use of alcohol and to explore vaccine safety. A challenge for IPHI is how to ensure that their processing of data is valid, safe and maintains privacy. Development of the healthcare ecosystem and IPHI should be actively encouraged internationally. Governments, regulators and providers of health care should facilitate access to health data and the use of national and international comparisons to monitor standards. However, most importantly, they should pilot new methods of improving quality and safety through the intermediate processing of health data.

The need of a multi-actor perspective to understand expectations from virtual presence: managing elderly homecare informatics.

Science.gov (United States)

Mettler, Tobias; Vimarlund, Vivian

2011-12-01

Different studies have analysed a wide range of use cases and scenarios for using IT-based services in homecare settings for elderly people. In most instances, the impact of such services has been studied using a one-dimensional approach, either focusing on the benefits for the patient or health service provider. The objective of this contribution is to explore a model for identifying and understanding outcomes of IT-based homecare services from a multi-actor perspective. In order to better understand the state of the art in homecare informatics, we conducted a literature review. We use experiences from previous research in the area of informatics to develop the proposed model. The proposed model consists of four core activities 'identify involved actors', 'understand consequences', 'clarify contingencies', 'take corrective actions', and one additional activity 'brainstorming IT use'. The primary goal of innovating organisations, processes and services in homecare informatics today, is to offer continued care, better decision support both to practitioners and patients, as well as effective distribution of resources. A multi-actor analysis perspective is needed to understand utility determination for the involved stakeholders.

Data Lakes and Data Visualization: An Innovative Approach to Address the Challenges of Access to Health Care in Mississippi.

Science.gov (United States)

Krause, Denise D

2015-01-01

There are a variety of challenges to developing strategies to improve access to health care, but access to data is critical for effective evidence-based decision-making. Many agencies and organizations throughout Mississippi have been collecting quality health data for many years. However, those data have historically resided in data silos and have not been readily shared. A strategy was developed to build and coordinate infrastructure, capacity, tools, and resources to facilitate health workforce and population health planning throughout the state. Realizing data as the foundation upon which to build, the primary objective was to develop the capacity to collect, store, maintain, visualize, and analyze data from a variety of disparate sources -- with the ultimate goal of improving access to health care. Specific aims were to: 1) build a centralized data repository and scalable informatics platform, 2) develop a data management solution for this platform and then, 3) derive value from this platform by facilitating data visualization and analysis. A managed data lake was designed and constructed for health data from disparate sources throughout the state of Mississippi. A data management application was developed to log and track all data sources, maps and geographies, and data marts. With this informatics platform as a foundation, a variety of tools are used to visualize and analyze data. To illustrate, a web mapping application was developed to examine the health workforce geographically and attractive data visualizations and dynamic dashboards were created to facilitate health planning and research. Samples of data visualizations that aim to inform health planners and policymakers are presented. Many agencies and organizations throughout the state benefit from this platform. The overarching goal is that by providing timely, reliable information to stakeholders, Mississippians in general will experience improved access to quality care.

Health care consumers' experiences of information communication technology--a summary of literature.

Science.gov (United States)

Akesson, Kerstin M; Saveman, Britt-Inger; Nilsson, Gunilla

2007-09-01

There is an increasing interest in reaching consumers directly through the Internet and different telecommunication systems. The most important contacts in health care will always be the face-to-face meetings, but the tools of health informatics can be seen as a means to an end, which is to provide the best possible health care. A variety of applications have been described in different references. To our knowledge there has been no review of a research-based state of the art in the field of consumers' experiences in using different applications in health informatics. According to the benefits in using information communication technology (ICT) as being cost-effective and timesaving it is of great importance to focus on and examine consumers' experiences. It is important that it is user friendly and regarded as valuable and useful. The aim of this study was to describe consumers' subjective experiences of using electronic resources with reference to health and illness. DESIGN AND/OR METHOD: A systematic literature search was performed in databases CINAHL, Medline and Cochrane, as well as a manual search. Retrieved references (n=14) were appraised according to their scientific structure and quality. A broad search was performed in order to find as many different applications as possible. Our primary intention was to identify existing references describing consumers' experiences with ICT. In spite of this broad search few references were found. Twelve references remained and three themes were identified: support and help, education and information, and telecommunication instead of on-site visiting. Consumers felt more confident and empowered, their knowledge increased and their health status improved due to the ICT resources. Lack of face-to-face meetings or privacy did not appear to be a problem. ICT can improve the nurse-patient relationship and augment well-being for consumers. More research is needed to measure consumers' experiences and factors that influence it

Evolving National Strategy Driving Nursing Informatics in New Zealand.

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Honey, Michelle; Westbrooke, Lucy

2016-01-01

An update to the New Zealand Health Strategy identifying direction and priorities for health services is underway. Three specific areas have implications for nursing informatics and link to education and practice: best use of technology and information, fostering and spreading innovation and quality improvements, and building leaders and capability for the future. An emphasis on prevention and wellness means nursing needs to focus on health promotion and the role of consumers is changing with access to their on-line information a major focus. As the modes of delivery for services such as telehealth and telenursing changes, nurses are increasingly working independently and utilizing information and communication technologies to collaborate with the health team. New Zealand, and other countries, need strong nursing leadership to sustain the nursing voice in policy and planning and ensure nurses develop the required informatics skills.

Nursing Informatics Competencies Among Nursing Students and Their Relationship to Patient Safety Competencies: Knowledge, Attitude, and Skills.

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Abdrbo, Amany Ahmed

2015-11-01

With implementation of information technology in healthcare settings to promote safety and evidence-based nursing care, a growing emphasis on the importance of nursing informatics competencies has emerged. This study assessed the relationship between nursing informatics and patient safety competencies among nursing students and nursing interns. A descriptive, cross-sectional correlational design with a convenience sample of 154 participants (99 nursing students and 55 interns) completed the Self-assessment of Nursing Informatics Competencies and Patient Safety Competencies. The nursing students and interns were similar in age and years of computer experience, and more than half of the participants in both groups had taken a nursing informatics course. There were no significant differences between competencies in nursing informatics and patient safety except for clinical informatics role and applied computer skills in the two groups of participants. Nursing informatics competencies and patient safety competencies were significantly correlated except for clinical informatics role both with patient safety knowledge and attitude. These results provided feedback to adjust and incorporate informatics competencies in the baccalaureate program and to recommend embracing the nursing informatics course as one of the core courses, not as an elective course, in the curriculum.

The Value of Electronic Medical Record Implementation in Mental Health Care: A Case Study.

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Riahi, Sanaz; Fischler, Ilan; Stuckey, Melanie I; Klassen, Philip E; Chen, John

2017-01-05

Electronic medical records (EMR) have been implemented in many organizations to improve the quality of care. Evidence supporting the value added to a recovery-oriented mental health facility is lacking. The goal of this project was to implement and customize a fully integrated EMR system in a specialized, recovery-oriented mental health care facility. This evaluation examined the outcomes of quality improvement initiatives driven by the EMR to determine the value that the EMR brought to the organization. The setting was a tertiary-level mental health facility in Ontario, Canada. Clinical informatics and decision support worked closely with point-of-care staff to develop workflows and documentation tools in the EMR. The primary initiatives were implementation of modules for closed loop medication administration, collaborative plan of care, clinical practice guidelines for schizophrenia, restraint minimization, the infection prevention and control surveillance status board, drug of abuse screening, and business intelligence. Medication and patient scan rates have been greater than 95% since April 2014, mitigating the adverse effects of medication errors. Specifically, between April 2014 and March 2015, only 1 moderately severe and 0 severe adverse drug events occurred. The number of restraint incidents decreased 19.7%, which resulted in cost savings of more than Can $1.4 million (US $1.0 million) over 2 years. Implementation of clinical practice guidelines for schizophrenia increased adherence to evidence-based practices, standardizing care across the facility. Improved infection prevention and control surveillance reduced the number of outbreak days from 47 in the year preceding implementation of the status board to 7 days in the year following. Decision support to encourage preferential use of the cost-effective drug of abuse screen when clinically indicated resulted in organizational cost savings. EMR implementation allowed Ontario Shores Centre for Mental Health

A Model for Clinical Informatics Education for Residents: Addressing an Unmet Need.

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Mai, Mark V; Luo, Brooke T; Orenstein, Evan W; Luberti, Anthony A

2018-04-01

Opportunities for education in clinical informatics exist throughout the spectrum of formal education extending from high school to postgraduate training. However, physicians in residency represent an underdeveloped source of potential informaticians. Despite the rapid growth of accredited fellowship programs since clinical informatics became a board-eligible subspecialty in 2011, few resident physicians are aware of their role at the intersection of clinical medicine and health information technology or associated opportunities. In an effort to educate and engage residents in clinical informatics, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia has developed a three-pronged model: (1) an elective rotation with hands-on project experience; (2) a longitudinal experience that offers increased exposure and mentorship; and (3) a resident founded and led working group in clinical informatics. We describe resident participation in these initiatives and lessons learned, as well as resident perceptions of how these components have positively influenced informatics knowledge and career choices. Since inception of this model, five residents have pursued the clinical informatics fellowship. This educational model supports resident involvement in hospital-wide informatics efforts with tangible projects and promotes wider engagement through educational opportunities commensurate with the resident's level of interest. Schattauer GmbH Stuttgart.

Pathology Informatics Essentials for Residents: A flexible informatics curriculum linked to Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education milestones

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Henricks, Walter H; Karcher, Donald S; Harrison, James H; Sinard, John H; Riben, Michael W; Boyer, Philip J; Plath, Sue; Thompson, Arlene; Pantanowitz, Liron

2016-01-01

Context: Recognition of the importance of informatics to the practice of pathology has surged. Training residents in pathology informatics have been a daunting task for most residency programs in the United States because faculty often lacks experience and training resources. Nevertheless, developing resident competence in informatics is essential for the future of pathology as a specialty. Objective: The objective of the study is to develop and deliver a pathology informatics curriculum and instructional framework that guides pathology residency programs in training residents in critical pathology informatics knowledge and skills and meets Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education Informatics Milestones. Design: The College of American Pathologists, Association of Pathology Chairs, and Association for Pathology Informatics formed a partnership and expert work group to identify critical pathology informatics training outcomes and to create a highly adaptable curriculum and instructional approach, supported by a multiyear change management strategy. Results: Pathology Informatics Essentials for Residents (PIER) is a rigorous approach for educating all pathology residents in important pathology informatics knowledge and skills. PIER includes an instructional resource guide and toolkit for incorporating informatics training into residency programs that vary in needs, size, settings, and resources. PIER is available at http://www.apcprods.org/PIER (accessed April 6, 2016). Conclusions: PIER is an important contribution to informatics training in pathology residency programs. PIER introduces pathology trainees to broadly useful informatics concepts and tools that are relevant to practice. PIER provides residency program directors with a means to implement a standardized informatics training curriculum, to adapt the approach to local program needs, and to evaluate resident performance and progress over time. PMID:27563486

Evaluation of a joint Bioinformatics and Medical Informatics international course in Peru.

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Curioso, Walter H; Hansen, Jacquelyn R; Centurion-Lara, Arturo; Garcia, Patricia J; Wolf, Fredric M; Fuller, Sherrilynne; Holmes, King K; Kimball, Ann Marie

2008-01-14

New technologies that emerge at the interface of computational and biomedical science could drive new advances in global health, therefore more training in technology is needed among health care workers. To assess the potential for informatics training using an approach designed to foster interaction at this interface, the University of Washington and the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia developed and assessed a one-week course that included a new Bioinformatics (BIO) track along with an established Medical/Public Health Informatics track (MI) for participants in Peru. We assessed the background of the participants, and measured the knowledge gained by track-specific (MI or BIO) 30-minute pre- and post-tests. Participants' attitudes were evaluated both by daily evaluations and by an end-course evaluation. Forty-three participants enrolled in the course - 20 in the MI track and 23 in the BIO track. Of 20 questions, the mean % score for the MI track increased from 49.7 pre-test (standard deviation or SD = 17.0) to 59.7 (SD = 15.2) for the post-test (P = 0.002, n = 18). The BIO track mean score increased from 33.6 pre-test to 51.2 post-test (P < 0.001, n = 21). Most comments (76%) about any aspect of the course were positive. The main perceived strength of the course was the quality of the speakers, and the main perceived weakness was the short duration of the course. Overall, the course acceptability was very good to excellent with a rating of 4.1 (scale 1-5), and the usefulness of the course was rated as very good. Most participants (62.9%) expressed a positive opinion about having had the BIO and MI tracks come together for some of the lectures. Pre- and post-test results and the positive evaluations by the participants indicate that this first joint Bioinformatics and Medical/Public Health Informatics (MI and BIO) course was a success.

Training multidisciplinary biomedical informatics students: three years of experience.

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van Mulligen, Erik M; Cases, Montserrat; Hettne, Kristina; Molero, Eva; Weeber, Marc; Robertson, Kevin A; Oliva, Baldomero; de la Calle, Guillermo; Maojo, Victor

2008-01-01

The European INFOBIOMED Network of Excellence recognized that a successful education program in biomedical informatics should include not only traditional teaching activities in the basic sciences but also the development of skills for working in multidisciplinary teams. A carefully developed 3-year training program for biomedical informatics students addressed these educational aspects through the following four activities: (1) an internet course database containing an overview of all Medical Informatics and BioInformatics courses, (2) a BioMedical Informatics Summer School, (3) a mobility program based on a 'brokerage service' which published demands and offers, including funding for research exchange projects, and (4) training challenges aimed at the development of multi-disciplinary skills. This paper focuses on experiences gained in the development of novel educational activities addressing work in multidisciplinary teams. The training challenges described here were evaluated by asking participants to fill out forms with Likert scale based questions. For the mobility program a needs assessment was carried out. The mobility program supported 20 exchanges which fostered new BMI research, resulted in a number of peer-reviewed publications and demonstrated the feasibility of this multidisciplinary BMI approach within the European Union. Students unanimously indicated that the training challenge experience had contributed to their understanding and appreciation of multidisciplinary teamwork. The training activities undertaken in INFOBIOMED have contributed to a multi-disciplinary BMI approach. It is our hope that this work might provide an impetus for training efforts in Europe, and yield a new generation of biomedical informaticians.

Perceptions of pathology informatics by non-informaticist pathologists and trainees

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Addie Walker

2016-01-01

Full Text Available Background: Although pathology informatics (PI is essential to modern pathology practice, the field is often poorly understood. Pathologists who have received little to no exposure to informatics, either in training or in practice, may not recognize the roles that informatics serves in pathology. The purpose of this study was to characterize perceptions of PI by noninformatics-oriented pathologists and to do so at two large centers with differing informatics environments. Methods: Pathology trainees and staff at Cleveland Clinic (CC and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH were surveyed. At MGH, pathology department leadership has promoted a pervasive informatics presence through practice, training, and research. At CC, PI efforts focus on production systems that serve a multi-site integrated health system and a reference laboratory, and on the development of applications oriented to department operations. The survey assessed perceived definition of PI, interest in PI, and perceived utility of PI. Results: The survey was completed by 107 noninformatics-oriented pathologists and trainees. A majority viewed informatics positively. Except among MGH trainees, confusion of PI with information technology (IT and help desk services was prominent, even in those who indicated they understood informatics. Attendings and trainees indicated desire to learn more about PI. While most acknowledged that having some level of PI knowledge would be professionally useful and advantageous, only a minority plan to utilize it. Conclusions: Informatics is viewed positively by the majority of noninformatics pathologists at two large centers with differing informatics orientations. Differences in departmental informatics culture can be attributed to the varying perceptions of PI by different individuals. Incorrect perceptions exist, such as conflating PI with IT and help desk services, even among those who claim to understand PI. Further efforts by the PI community could

Managing interoperability and complexity in health systems.

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Bouamrane, M-M; Tao, C; Sarkar, I N

2015-01-01

In recent years, we have witnessed substantial progress in the use of clinical informatics systems to support clinicians during episodes of care, manage specialised domain knowledge, perform complex clinical data analysis and improve the management of health organisations' resources. However, the vision of fully integrated health information eco-systems, which provide relevant information and useful knowledge at the point-of-care, remains elusive. This journal Focus Theme reviews some of the enduring challenges of interoperability and complexity in clinical informatics systems. Furthermore, a range of approaches are proposed in order to address, harness and resolve some of the many remaining issues towards a greater integration of health information systems and extraction of useful or new knowledge from heterogeneous electronic data repositories.

The Top 100 Articles in the Medical Informatics: a Bibliometric Analysis.

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Nadri, Hamed; Rahimi, Bahlol; Timpka, Toomas; Sedghi, Shahram

2017-08-19

The number of citations that a research paper receives can be used as a measure of its scientific impact. The objective of this study was to identify and to examine the characteristics of top 100 cited articles in the field of Medical Informatics based on data acquired from the Thomson Reuters' Web of Science (WOS) in October, 2016. The data was collected using two procedures: first we included articles published in the 24 journals listed in the "Medical Informatics" category; second, we retrieved articles using the key words: "informatics", "medical informatics", "biomedical informatics", "clinical informatics" and "health informatics". After removing duplicate records, articles were ranked by the number of citations they received. When the 100 top cited articles had been identified, we collected the following information for each record: all WOS database citations, year of publication, journal, author names, authors' affiliation, country of origin and topics indexed for each record. Citations for the top 100 articles ranged from 346 to 7875, and citations per year ranged from 11.12 to 525. The majority of articles were published in the 2000s (n=43) and 1990s (n=38). Articles were published across 10 journals, most commonly Statistics in medicine (n=71) and Medical decision making (n=28). The articles had an average of 2.47 authors. Statistics and biostatistics modeling was the most common topic (n=71), followed by artificial intelligence (n=12), and medical errors (n=3), other topics included data mining, diagnosis, bioinformatics, information retrieval, and medical imaging. Our bibliometric analysis illustrated a historical perspective on the progress of scientific research on Medical Informatics. Moreover, the findings of the current study provide an insight on the frequency of citations for top cited articles published in Medical Informatics as well as quality of the works, journals, and the trends steering Medical Informatics.

Observations on sustainable and ubiquitous healthcare informatics from Florence Nightingale.

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Betts, Helen J; Wright, Graham

2009-01-01

As nurses around the world prepare to celebrate the centenary of the death of Florence Nightingale in 2010 this paper reviews her work on using information, especially statistics, to analyze and manage patient care and links that to current developments in informatics. It then examines assistive technologies and how they may impact on nursing practice in the future and links these developments to the writings of Florence Nightingale. The paper concludes by suggesting that in progressing towards sustainable and ubiquitous healthcare informatics we need to study history in order to learn from the lessons of Florence Nightingale and other healthcare pioneers.

An Organizational Informatics Analysis of Colorectal, Breast, and Cervical Cancer Screening Clinical Decision Support and Information Systems within Community Health Centers

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Carney, Timothy Jay

2012-01-01

A study design has been developed that employs a dual modeling approach to identify factors associated with facility-level cancer screening improvement and how this is mediated by the use of clinical decision support. This dual modeling approach combines principles of (1) Health Informatics, (2) Cancer Prevention and Control, (3) Health Services…

The e-Learning Effectiveness Versus Traditional Learning on a Health Informatics Laboratory Course.

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Zogas, Spyros; Kolokathi, Aikaterini; Birbas, Konstantinos; Chondrocoukis, Gregory; Mantas, John

2016-01-01

This paper presents a comparison between e-Learning and traditional learning methods of a University course on Health Informatics domain. A pilot research took place among University students who divided on two learning groups, the e-learners and the traditional learners. A comparison of the examinations' marks for the two groups of students was conducted in order to find differences on students' performance. The study results reveal that the students scored almost the same marks independently of the learning procedure. Based on that, it can be assumed that the e-learning courses have the same effectiveness as the in-classroom learning sessions.

Integrated Personal Health Records: Transformative Tools for Consumer-Centric Care

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Raymond Brian

2008-10-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background Integrated personal health records (PHRs offer significant potential to stimulate transformational changes in health care delivery and self-care by patients. In 2006, an invitational roundtable sponsored by Kaiser Permanente Institute, the American Medical Informatics Association, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality was held to identify the transformative potential of PHRs, as well as barriers to realizing this potential and a framework for action to move them closer to the health care mainstream. This paper highlights and builds on the insights shared during the roundtable. Discussion While there is a spectrum of dominant PHR models, (standalone, tethered, integrated, the authors state that only the integrated model has true transformative potential to strengthen consumers' ability to manage their own health care. Integrated PHRs improve the quality, completeness, depth, and accessibility of health information provided by patients; enable facile communication between patients and providers; provide access to health knowledge for patients; ensure portability of medical records and other personal health information; and incorporate auto-population of content. Numerous factors impede widespread adoption of integrated PHRs: obstacles in the health care system/culture; issues of consumer confidence and trust; lack of technical standards for interoperability; lack of HIT infrastructure; the digital divide; uncertain value realization/ROI; and uncertain market demand. Recent efforts have led to progress on standards for integrated PHRs, and government agencies and private companies are offering different models to consumers, but substantial obstacles remain to be addressed. Immediate steps to advance integrated PHRs should include sharing existing knowledge and expanding knowledge about them, building on existing efforts, and continuing dialogue among public and private sector stakeholders. Summary Integrated PHRs

The role of ethics in information technology decisions: a case-based approach to biomedical informatics education.

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Anderson, James G

2004-03-18

The purpose of this paper is to propose a case-based approach to instruction regarding ethical issues raised by the use of information technology (IT) in healthcare. These issues are rarely addressed in graduate degree and continuing professional education programs in health informatics. There are important reasons why ethical issues need to be addressed in informatics training. Ethical issues raised by the introduction of information technology affect practice and are ubiquitous. These issues are frequently among the most challenging to young practitioners who are ill prepared to deal with them in practice. First, the paper provides an overview of methods of moral reasoning that can be used to identify and analyze ethical problems in health informatics. Second, we provide a framework for defining cases that involve ethical issues and outline major issues raised by the use of information technology. Specific cases are used as examples of new dilemmas that are posed by the introduction of information technology in healthcare. These cases are used to illustrate how ethics can be integrated with the other elements of informatics training. The cases discussed here reflect day-to-day situations that arise in health settings that require decisions. Third, an approach that can be used to teach ethics in health informatics programs is outlined and illustrated.

From information technology to informatics: the information revolution in dental education.

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Schleyer, Titus K; Thyvalikakath, Thankam P; Spallek, Heiko; Dziabiak, Michael P; Johnson, Lynn A

2012-01-01

The capabilities of information technology (IT) have advanced precipitously in the last fifty years. Many of these advances have enabled new and beneficial applications of IT in dental education. However, conceptually, IT use in dental schools is only in its infancy. Challenges and opportunities abound for improving how we support clinical care, education, and research with IT. In clinical care, we need to move electronic dental records beyond replicating paper, connect information on oral health to that on systemic health, facilitate collaborative care through teledentistry, and help clinicians apply evidence-based dentistry and preventive management strategies. With respect to education, we should adopt an evidence-based approach to IT use for teaching and learning, share effective educational content and methods, leverage technology-mediated changes in the balance of power between faculty and students, improve technology support for clinical teaching, and build an information infrastructure centered on learners and organizations. In research, opportunities include reusing clinical care data for research studies, helping advance computational methods for research, applying generalizable research tools in dentistry, and reusing research data and scientific workflows. In the process, we transition from a focus on IT-the mere technical aspects of applying computer technology-to one on informatics: the what, how, and why of managing information.

[Electronic data records in primary health care and aspects of their development in Bosnia and Herzegovina].

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Novo, Ahmed; Masić, Izet; Toromanović, Selim; Karić, Mediha; Zunić, Lejla

2004-01-01

In Medical Informatics medical documentation and evidention are most probably the key areas. Also, in primary health care it is very important and part of daily activity of medical staff. Bosnia and Herzegovina is trying to be close to developed countries and to modernize and computerize current systems of documentation and to cross over from manual and semi manual methods to computerized medical data analysis. The most of European countries have developed standards and classification systems in primary health care for collecting, examination, analysis and interpretation of medical data assessed. One of possibilities as well as dilemma, which data carrier should be used for storage and manipulation of patient data in primary health care, is use of electronic medical record. Most of the South East European countries use chip or smart card and some of countries in neighborhood (Italy) choose laser card as patient data carrier. Both technologies have the advantages and disadvantages what was comprehensively colaborated by the authors in this paper, with intention to help experts who make decisions in this segment to create and to correctly influence on improvement of quality, correctness and accuracy of medical documentation in primary health care.

NURSING INFORMATICS EDUCATION AND USE: CHALLENGES ...

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PROF. BARTH EKWEME

179 .... how organizations can utilize IT to progress their strategic goal from ... Clinical informatics, Veterinary informatics, Dental informatics ... In the late 1990s, the Finnish/Nigerian research ..... International Journal of Nursing &. Midwifery, 5, (5): ...

Incorporation of medical informatics and information technology as core components of undergraduate medical education - time for change!

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Otto, Anthony; Kushniruk, Andre

2009-01-01

It is generally accepted that Information Technology (IT) is a highly desirable and a very necessary ingredient of modern health care. Review of available literature reveals a paucity of medical informatics and information technology courses in undergraduate medical curricula and a lack of research to assess the effectiveness of medical informatics in undergraduate medical education. The need for such initiatives is discussed and a pilot project is described that evaluated the effectiveness of education in the use of Electronic Medical Record (EMR) applications. Educational activities, for example, could be medical students conducting virtual medical encounters or interacting with EMR applications. An EMR application, which was used in several related projects, has been adapted to the educational environment: standardized patient records can be created and cloned so that individual students can interact with a "standard" patient and alter the patient's data.

Introducing a technology-enabled problem-based learning approach into a health informatics curriculum.

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Green, Carolyn J; van Gyn, Geraldine H; Moehr, Jochen R; Lau, Francis Y; Coward, Patricia M

2004-03-18

To investigate the effect on learner satisfaction of introducing a technology-enabled problem-based learning (PBL) approach into a health informatics curriculum. Course redesign was undertaken to prepare students for three 4-month work terms and a rapidly changing professional environment upon graduation. Twenty-six Canadian undergraduate students of a redesigned course in biomedical fundamentals completed a midterm questionnaire in 2002. Eight of these students participated in a focus group. Students agreed that seven of nine functions provided by the web-based online course management system enhanced their learning: private email (92.3%), calendaring (88.5%), course notes (88.5%), discussion forums (84.5%), online grades (84.5%) assignment descriptions (80.8%) and online quizzes (80.8%). Although students agreed that two PBL activities enhanced learning (learning to present information) (84.5%) and learning to identify information needed (73.1%), the majority of students (69.2%) expressed a preference for the traditional lecture approach over the PBL approach. Students reported feeling uncertain of what was required of them and related anxiety accounted for most of the negative feedback. These findings give us clear goals for improvement in the course beginning with a comprehensive, carefully guided introduction to the processes of PBL. The positive trends are encouraging for the use of web-enabled courseware and for the further development of the PBL approach.

A survey of informatics platforms that enable distributed comparative effectiveness research using multi-institutional heterogeneous clinical data

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Sittig, Dean F.; Hazlehurst, Brian L.; Brown, Jeffrey; Murphy, Shawn; Rosenman, Marc; Tarczy-Hornoch, Peter; Wilcox, Adam B.

2012-01-01

Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER) has the potential to transform the current healthcare delivery system by identifying the most effective medical and surgical treatments, diagnostic tests, disease prevention methods and ways to deliver care for specific clinical conditions. To be successful, such research requires the identification, capture, aggregation, integration, and analysis of disparate data sources held by different institutions with diverse representations of the relevant clinical events. In an effort to address these diverse demands, there have been multiple new designs and implementations of informatics platforms that provide access to electronic clinical data and the governance infrastructure required for inter-institutional CER. The goal of this manuscript is to help investigators understand why these informatics platforms are required and to compare and contrast six, large-scale, recently funded, CER-focused informatics platform development efforts. We utilized an 8-dimension, socio-technical model of health information technology use to help guide our work. We identified six generic steps that are necessary in any distributed, multi-institutional CER project: data identification, extraction, modeling, aggregation, analysis, and dissemination. We expect that over the next several years these projects will provide answers to many important, and heretofore unanswerable, clinical research questions. PMID:22692259

The Future Impact of Healthcare Services Digitalization on Health Workforce: The Increasing Role of Medical Informatics.

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Lapão, Luís Velez

2016-01-01

The digital revolution is gradually transforming our society. What about the effects of digitalization and Internet of Things in healthcare? Among researchers two ideas are dominating, opposing each other. These arguments will be explored and analyzed. A mix-method approach combining literature review with the results from a focus group on eHealth impact on employment is used. Several experts from the WHO and from Health Professional Associations contributed for this analysis. Depending on the type of service it will entail reductions or more need of healthcare workers, yet whatever the scenario medical informatics will play an increasing role.

Assessing the current state of dental informatics in saudi arabia: the new frontier.

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Al-Nasser, Lubna; Al-Ehaideb, Ali; Househ, Mowafa

2014-01-01

Dental informatics is an emerging field that has the potential to transform the dental profession. This study aims to summarize the current applications of dental informatics in Saudi Arabia and to identify the challenges facing expansion of dental informatics in the Saudi context. Search for published articles and specialized forum entries was conducted, as well as interviews with dental professionals familiar with the topic. Results indicated that digital radiography/analysis and administrative management of dental practice are the commonest applications used. Applications in Saudi dental education included: web-based learning systems, computer-based assessments and virtual technology for clinical skills' teaching. Patients' education software, electronic dental/oral health records and the potential of dental research output from electronic databases are yet to be achieved in Saudi Arabia. Challenges facing Saudi dental informatics include: lack of IT infrastructure/support, social acceptability and financial cost. Several initiatives are taken towards the research in dental informatics. Still, more investments are needed to fully achieve the potential of various application of informatics in dental education, practice and research.

Clinical exome sequencing reports: current informatics practice and future opportunities.

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Swaminathan, Rajeswari; Huang, Yungui; Astbury, Caroline; Fitzgerald-Butt, Sara; Miller, Katherine; Cole, Justin; Bartlett, Christopher; Lin, Simon

2017-11-01

The increased adoption of clinical whole exome sequencing (WES) has improved the diagnostic yield for patients with complex genetic conditions. However, the informatics practice for handling information contained in whole exome reports is still in its infancy, as evidenced by the lack of a common vocabulary within clinical sequencing reports generated across genetic laboratories. Genetic testing results are mostly transmitted using portable document format, which can make secondary analysis and data extraction challenging. This paper reviews a sample of clinical exome reports generated by Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments-certified genetic testing laboratories at tertiary-care facilities to assess and identify common data elements. Like structured radiology reports, which enable faster information retrieval and reuse, structuring genetic information within clinical WES reports would help facilitate integration of genetic information into electronic health records and enable retrospective research on the clinical utility of WES. We identify elements listed as mandatory according to practice guidelines but are currently missing from some of the clinical reports, which might help to organize the data when stored within structured databases. We also highlight elements, such as patient consent, that, although they do not appear within any of the current reports, may help in interpreting some of the information within the reports. Integrating genetic and clinical information would assist the adoption of personalized medicine for improved patient care and outcomes. © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Medical Informatics Association. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Critical Care Health Informatics Collaborative (CCHIC): Data, tools and methods for reproducible research: A multi-centre UK intensive care database.

Science.gov (United States)

Harris, Steve; Shi, Sinan; Brealey, David; MacCallum, Niall S; Denaxas, Spiros; Perez-Suarez, David; Ercole, Ari; Watkinson, Peter; Jones, Andrew; Ashworth, Simon; Beale, Richard; Young, Duncan; Brett, Stephen; Singer, Mervyn

2018-04-01

To build and curate a linkable multi-centre database of high resolution longitudinal electronic health records (EHR) from adult Intensive Care Units (ICU). To develop a set of open-source tools to make these data 'research ready' while protecting patient's privacy with a particular focus on anonymisation. We developed a scalable EHR processing pipeline for extracting, linking, normalising and curating and anonymising EHR data. Patient and public involvement was sought from the outset, and approval to hold these data was granted by the NHS Health Research Authority's Confidentiality Advisory Group (CAG). The data are held in a certified Data Safe Haven. We followed sustainable software development principles throughout, and defined and populated a common data model that links to other clinical areas. Longitudinal EHR data were loaded into the CCHIC database from eleven adult ICUs at 5 UK teaching hospitals. From January 2014 to January 2017, this amounted to 21,930 and admissions (18,074 unique patients). Typical admissions have 70 data-items pertaining to admission and discharge, and a median of 1030 (IQR 481-2335) time-varying measures. Training datasets were made available through virtual machine images emulating the data processing environment. An open source R package, cleanEHR, was developed and released that transforms the data into a square table readily analysable by most statistical packages. A simple language agnostic configuration file will allow the user to select and clean variables, and impute missing data. An audit trail makes clear the provenance of the data at all times. Making health care data available for research is problematic. CCHIC is a unique multi-centre longitudinal and linkable resource that prioritises patient privacy through the highest standards of data security, but also provides tools to clean, organise, and anonymise the data. We believe the development of such tools are essential if we are to meet the twin requirements of

Challenges and Opportunities of Big Data in Health Care: A Systematic Review.

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Kruse, Clemens Scott; Goswamy, Rishi; Raval, Yesha; Marawi, Sarah

2016-11-21

Big data analytics offers promise in many business sectors, and health care is looking at big data to provide answers to many age-related issues, particularly dementia and chronic disease management. The purpose of this review was to summarize the challenges faced by big data analytics and the opportunities that big data opens in health care. A total of 3 searches were performed for publications between January 1, 2010 and January 1, 2016 (PubMed/MEDLINE, CINAHL, and Google Scholar), and an assessment was made on content germane to big data in health care. From the results of the searches in research databases and Google Scholar (N=28), the authors summarized content and identified 9 and 14 themes under the categories Challenges and Opportunities, respectively. We rank-ordered and analyzed the themes based on the frequency of occurrence. The top challenges were issues of data structure, security, data standardization, storage and transfers, and managerial skills such as data governance. The top opportunities revealed were quality improvement, population management and health, early detection of disease, data quality, structure, and accessibility, improved decision making, and cost reduction. Big data analytics has the potential for positive impact and global implications; however, it must overcome some legitimate obstacles. ©Clemens Scott Kruse, Rishi Goswamy, Yesha Raval, Sarah Marawi. Originally published in JMIR Medical Informatics (http://medinform.jmir.org), 21.11.2016.

Integrating Informatics into the Undergraduate Curriculum: A Report on a Pilot Project.

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Ingram, D; Murphy, J

1996-01-01

Previous case reports in this series on Education and Training have looked at specialist courses for postgraduate students seeking an in-depth knowledge of informatics and a career in the field. By contrast, this review describes a project designed to pilot a series of learning opportunities for undergraduate medical students. Although some UK medical colleges have opted to introduce informatics into the curriculum as a discipline in its own right, the Informatics Department at St Bartholomew's Hospital Medical College chose a different approach. When a new curriculum was introduced at St Bartholomew's and at The London Hospital Medical College, the Head of the Informatics Department saw this as an ideal opportunity to explore ways of integrating informatics into the curriculum. The initiatives described in this paper were made possible as a result of an award from the UK government Department of Employment. Money from an Enterprise in Higher Education grant funded a range of programmes, one of which was designed to introduce students to selected aspects of informatics and to demonstrate what is feasible in the undergraduate curriculum. The work carried out over a period of three and a half years was intended to provide the basis for the next phase of curriculum development. However, in the wake of the restructuring which has taken place in London medical colleges, the Informatics Department at what was St Bartholomew's has relocated to University College London Medical School, and is now called The Centre for Health Informatics and Multiprofessional Education (CHIME). University College is designing a new medical curriculum and CHIME is drawing on the experience gained through the Enterprise Project to find the best way to integrate informatics into this curriculum.

Current Status of Nursing Informatics Education in Korea.

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Jeon, Eunjoo; Kim, Jeongeun; Park, Hyeoun-Ae; Lee, Ji-Hyun; Kim, Jungha; Jin, Meiling; Ahn, Shinae; Jun, Jooyeon; Song, Healim; On, Jeongah; Jung, Hyesil; Hong, Yeong Joo; Yim, Suran

2016-04-01

This study presents the current status of nursing informatics education, the content covered in nursing informatics courses, the faculty efficacy, and the barriers to and additional supports for teaching nursing informatics in Korea. A set of questionnaires consisting of an 18-item questionnaire for nursing informatics education, a 6-item questionnaire for faculty efficacy, and 2 open-ended questions for barriers and additional supports were sent to 204 nursing schools via email and the postal service. Nursing schools offering nursing informatics were further asked to send their syllabuses. The subjects taught were analyzed using nursing informatics competency categories and other responses were tailed using descriptive statistics. A total of 72 schools (35.3%) responded to the survey, of which 38 reported that they offered nursing informatics courses in their undergraduate nursing programs. Nursing informatics courses at 11 schools were taught by a professor with a degree majoring in nursing informatics. Computer technology was the most frequently taught subject (27 schools), followed by information systems used for practice (25 schools). The faculty efficacy was 3.76 ± 0.86 (out of 5). The most frequently reported barrier to teaching nursing informatics (n = 9) was lack of awareness of the importance of nursing informatics. Training and educational opportunities was the most requested additional support. Nursing informatics education has increased during the last decade in Korea. However, the proportions of faculty with degrees in nursing informatics and number of schools offering nursing informatics courses have not increased much. Thus, a greater focus is needed on training faculty and developing the courses.

A needs assessment of health information technology for improving care coordination in three leading patient-centered medical homes.

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Richardson, Joshua E; Vest, Joshua R; Green, Cori M; Kern, Lisa M; Kaushal, Rainu

2015-07-01

We investigated ways that patient-centered medical homes (PCMHs) are currently using health information technology (IT) for care coordination and what types of health IT are needed to improve care coordination. A multi-disciplinary team of researchers conducted semi-structured telephone interviews with 28 participants from 3 PCMHs in the United States. Participants included administrators and clinicians from PCMHs, electronic health record (EHR) and health information exchange (HIE) representatives, and policy makers. Participants identified multiple barriers to care coordination using current health IT tools. We identified five areas in which health IT can improve care coordination in PCMHs: 1) monitoring patient populations, 2) notifying clinicians and other staff when specific patients move across care settings, 3) collaborating around patients, 4) reporting activities, and 5) interoperability. To accomplish these tasks, many participants described using homegrown care coordination systems separate from EHRs. The participants in this study have resources, experience, and expertise with using health IT for care coordination, yet they still identified multiple areas for improvement. We hypothesize that focusing health IT development in the five areas we identified can enable more effective care coordination. Key findings from this work are that homegrown systems apart from EHRs are currently used to support care coordination and, also, that reporting tools are key components of care coordination. New health IT that enables monitoring, notifying, collaborating, reporting, and interoperability would enhance care coordination within PCMHs beyond what current health IT enables. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Medical Informatics Association. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

Current Status of Nursing Informatics Education in Korea

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Jeon, Eunjoo; Kim, Jeongeun; Lee, Ji-Hyun; Kim, Jungha; Jin, Meiling; Ahn, Shinae; Jun, Jooyeon; Song, Healim; On, Jeongah; Jung, Hyesil; Hong, Yeong Joo; Yim, Suran

2016-01-01

Objectives This study presents the current status of nursing informatics education, the content covered in nursing informatics courses, the faculty efficacy, and the barriers to and additional supports for teaching nursing informatics in Korea. Methods A set of questionnaires consisting of an 18-item questionnaire for nursing informatics education, a 6-item questionnaire for faculty efficacy, and 2 open-ended questions for barriers and additional supports were sent to 204 nursing schools via email and the postal service. Nursing schools offering nursing informatics were further asked to send their syllabuses. The subjects taught were analyzed using nursing informatics competency categories and other responses were tailed using descriptive statistics. Results A total of 72 schools (35.3%) responded to the survey, of which 38 reported that they offered nursing informatics courses in their undergraduate nursing programs. Nursing informatics courses at 11 schools were taught by a professor with a degree majoring in nursing informatics. Computer technology was the most frequently taught subject (27 schools), followed by information systems used for practice (25 schools). The faculty efficacy was 3.76 ± 0.86 (out of 5). The most frequently reported barrier to teaching nursing informatics (n = 9) was lack of awareness of the importance of nursing informatics. Training and educational opportunities was the most requested additional support. Conclusions Nursing informatics education has increased during the last decade in Korea. However, the proportions of faculty with degrees in nursing informatics and number of schools offering nursing informatics courses have not increased much. Thus, a greater focus is needed on training faculty and developing the courses. PMID:27200224

A national survey on the current status of informatics residency education in pharmacy.

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Blash, Anthony; Saltsman, Connie L; Steil, Condit

2017-11-01

Upon completion of their post-graduate training, pharmacy informatics residents need to be prepared to interact with clinical and technology experts in the new healthcare environment. This study describes pharmacy informatics residency programs within the United States. Preliminary information for all pharmacy informatics residency programs was accessed from program webpages. An email was sent out to programs asking them to respond to a six-item questionnaire. This questionnaire was designed to elicit information on attributes of the program, behaviors of the preceptors and residents, and attitudes of the residency directors. Of 22 pharmacy informatics residencies identified, nineteen (86%) participated. Twenty (91%) were second post-graduate year (PGY2) residencies. Ten (45%) were accredited by the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP), while eight (36%) were candidates for accreditation. Hospital (17/22, 77%) and administrative offices (3/22, 14%) were the predominant training sites for pharmacy informatics residents. Large institutions were the predominant training environment for the pharmacy informatics resident, with 19 of 22 (86%) institutions reporting a licensed bed count of 500 or more. The median (range) number of informatics preceptors at a site was six to eight. Regarding barriers to pharmacy informatics residency education, residency directors reported that residents did not feel prepared based on the limited availability of curricular offerings. In the United States, relatively few residencies are explicitly focused on pharmacy informatics. Most of these are accredited and hospital affiliated, especially with large institutions (>500 beds). Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The role of informatics in patient-centered care and personalized medicine.

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Hanna, Matthew G; Pantanowitz, Liron

2017-06-01

The practice of cytopathology has dramatically changed due to advances in genomics and information technology. Cytology laboratories have accordingly become increasingly dependent on pathology informatics support to meet the emerging demands of precision medicine. Pathology informatics deals with information technology in the laboratory, and the impact of this technology on workflow processes and staff who interact with these tools. This article covers the critical role that laboratory information systems, electronic medical records, and digital imaging plays in patient-centered personalized medicine. The value of integrated diagnostic reports, clinical decision support, and the use of whole-slide imaging to better evaluate cytology samples destined for molecular testing is discussed. Image analysis that offers more precise and quantitative measurements in cytology is addressed, as well as the role of bioinformatics tools to cope with Big Data from next-generation sequencing. This article also highlights the barriers to the widespread adoption of these disruptive technologies due to regulatory obstacles, limited commercial solutions, poor interoperability, and lack of standardization. Cancer Cytopathol 2017;125(6 suppl):494-501. © 2017 American Cancer Society. © 2017 American Cancer Society.

Information technology for clinical, translational and comparative effectiveness research. Findings from the section clinical research informatics.

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Daniel, C; Choquet, R

2013-01-01

To summarize advances of excellent current research in the new emerging field of Clinical Research Informatics. Synopsis of four key articles selected for the IMIA Yearbook 2013. The selection was performed by querying PubMed and Web of Science with predefined keywords. From the original set of 590 papers, a first subset of 461 articles which was in the scope of Clinical Research Informatics was refined into a second subset of 79 relevant articles from which 15 articles were retained for peer-review. The four selected articles exemplify current research efforts conducted in the areas of data representation and management in clinical trials, secondary use of EHR data for clinical research, information technology platforms for translational and comparative effectiveness research and implementation of privacy control. The selected articles not only illustrate how innovative information technology supports classically organized randomized controlled trials but also demonstrate that the long promised benefits of electronic health care data for research are becoming a reality through concrete platforms and projects.

A core curriculum for clinical fellowship training in pathology informatics

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David S McClintock

2012-01-01

Full Text Available Background: In 2007, our healthcare system established a clinical fellowship program in Pathology Informatics. In 2010 a core didactic course was implemented to supplement the fellowship research and operational rotations. In 2011, the course was enhanced by a formal, structured core curriculum and reading list. We present and discuss our rationale and development process for the Core Curriculum and the role it plays in our Pathology Informatics Fellowship Training Program. Materials and Methods: The Core Curriculum for Pathology Informatics was developed, and is maintained, through the combined efforts of our Pathology Informatics Fellows and Faculty. The curriculum was created with a three-tiered structure, consisting of divisions, topics, and subtopics. Primary (required and suggested readings were selected for each subtopic in the curriculum and incorporated into a curated reading list, which is reviewed and maintained on a regular basis. Results: Our Core Curriculum is composed of four major divisions, 22 topics, and 92 subtopics that cover the wide breadth of Pathology Informatics. The four major divisions include: (1 Information Fundamentals, (2 Information Systems, (3 Workflow and Process, and (4 Governance and Management. A detailed, comprehensive reading list for the curriculum is presented in the Appendix to the manuscript and contains 570 total readings (current as of March 2012. Discussion: The adoption of a formal, core curriculum in a Pathology Informatics fellowship has significant impacts on both fellowship training and the general field of Pathology Informatics itself. For a fellowship, a core curriculum defines a basic, common scope of knowledge that the fellowship expects all of its graduates will know, while at the same time enhancing and broadening the traditional fellowship experience of research and operational rotations. For the field of Pathology Informatics itself, a core curriculum defines to the outside world

Interdisciplinary training to build an informatics workforce for precision medicine

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Marc S. Williams

2015-09-01

Full Text Available The proposed Precision Medicine Initiative has the potential to transform medical care in the future through a shift from interventions based on evidence from population studies and empiric response to ones that account for a range of individual factors that more reliably predict response and outcomes for the patient. Many things are needed to realize this vision, but one of the most critical is an informatics workforce that has broad interdisciplinary training in basic science, applied research and clinical implementation. Current approaches to informatics training do not support this requirement. We present a collaborative model of training that has the potential to produce a workforce prepared for the challenges of implementing precision medicine.

Scenario for a patient at home in health and social care

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Winge M

2014-10-01

Full Text Available Monica Winge,1 Eva Lindh-Waterworth2 1Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden; 2Department of Informatics, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden Abstract: This paper describes and discusses the situation for a typical patient with multiple illnesses and how his case would benefit from improved coordination, communication, and collaboration among all involved care providers. The paper is built around a patient case presented in a current scenario. The authors identified that for a single patient with several problems and diagnoses and the involvement of several care actors, the common issues concern lack of collaboration, lack of coordination, and awareness of what others have done to assess, plan, perform, and evaluate care. This presumably leads to a lack of care quality and a lack of effective use of care resources. The scenario and the findings are based on a patient-oriented perspective, on an analysis expressed in focus groups, and on interviews with key actors in health and social care. The paper also discusses the fact that an increasing number of patients are treated in their homes by a variety of organizations, and how this fact raises new and more intense demands on the various stakeholders forming the care staff to collaborate and coordinate care. We point to the need for managers in and between organizations to agree on the ways of collaborating at the operational level. Most importantly, by taking a basic set of issues as the starting point for reasoning, we derived a set of related problems and suggest solutions to deal with these. The literature currently lacks scenario descriptions that put the patient's situation into focus with respect to collaboration between health and social care. Finally, the paper presents a future case for collaboration including support by new e-services. Keywords: multisectorial collaboration, coordination, communication, patient-centered care, home care, health

Towards open collaborative health informatics - The Role of free/libre open source principles. Contribution of the IMIA Open Source Health Informatics Working Group.

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Karopka, T; Schmuhl, H; Marcelo, A; Molin, J Dal; Wright, G

2011-01-01

: To analyze the contribution of Free/Libre Open Source Software in health care (FLOSS-HC) and to give perspectives for future developments. The paper summarizes FLOSS-related trends in health care as anticipated by members of the IMIA Open Source Working Group. Data were obtained through literature review and personal experience and observations of the authors in the last two decades. A status quo is given by a frequency analysis of the database of Medfloss.org, one of the world's largest platforms dedicated to FLOSS-HC. The authors discuss current problems in the field of health care and finally give a prospective roadmap, a projection of the potential influences of FLOSS in health care. FLOSS-HC already exists for more than 2 decades. Several projects have shown that FLOSS may produce highly competitive alternatives to proprietary solutions that are at least equivalent in usability and have a better total cost of ownership ratio. The Medfloss.org database currently lists 221 projects of diverse application types. FLOSS principles hold a great potential for addressing several of the most critical problems in health care IT. The authors argue that an ecosystem perspective is relevant and that FLOSS principles are best suited to create health IT systems that are able to evolve over time as medical knowledge, technologies, insights, workflows etc. continuously change. All these factors that inherently influence the development of health IT systems are changing at an ever growing pace. Traditional models of software engineering are not able to follow these changes and provide up-to-date systems for an acceptable cost/value ratio. To allow FLOSS to positively influence Health IT in the future a "FLOSS-friendly" environment has to be provided. Policy makers should resolve uncertainties in the legal framework that disfavor FLOSS. Certification procedures should be specified in a way that they do not raise additional barriers for FLOSS.

Earth Science Informatics - Overview

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Ramapriyan, H. K.

2017-01-01

Over the last 10-15 years, significant advances have been made in information management, there are an increasing number of individuals entering the field of information management as it applies to Geoscience and Remote Sensing data, and the field of informatics has come to its own. Informatics is the science and technology of applying computers and computational methods to the systematic analysis, management, interchange, and representation of science data, information, and knowledge. Informatics also includes the use of computers and computational methods to support decision making and applications. Earth Science Informatics (ESI, a.k.a. geoinformatics) is the application of informatics in the Earth science domain. ESI is a rapidly developing discipline integrating computer science, information science, and Earth science. Major national and international research and infrastructure projects in ESI have been carried out or are on-going. Notable among these are: the Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), the European Commissions INSPIRE, the U.S. NSDI and Geospatial One-Stop, the NASA EOSDIS, and the NSF DataONE, EarthCube and Cyberinfrastructure for Geoinformatics. More than 18 departments and agencies in the U.S. federal government have been active in Earth science informatics. All major space agencies in the world, have been involved in ESI research and application activities. In the United States, the Federation of Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP), whose membership includes over 180 organizations (government, academic and commercial) dedicated to managing, delivering and applying Earth science data, has been working on many ESI topics since 1998. The Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS)s Working Group on Information Systems and Services (WGISS) has been actively coordinating the ESI activities among the space agencies.The talk will present an overview of current efforts in ESI, the role members of IEEE GRSS play, and discuss

eHealth and IMIA's Strategic Planning Process - IMIA conference introductory address.

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Murray, Peter; Haux, Reinhold; Lorenzi, Nancy

2008-01-01

The International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) is the only organization in health and biomedical informatics which is fully international in scope, bridging the academic, health practice, education, and health industry worlds through conferences, working groups, special interest groups and publications. Authored by the IMIA Interim Vice President for Strategic Planning Implementation and co-authored by the current IMIA President and the IMIA Past-President, the intention of this paper is to introduce IMIA's current strategic planning process and to set this process in relation to 'eHealth: Combining Health Telematics, Telemedicine, Biomedical Engineering and Bioinformatics to the Edge', the theme of this conference. From the viewpoint of an international organization such as IMIA, an eHealth strategy needs to be considered in a comprehensive way, including broadly stimulating high-quality health and biomedical informatics research and education, as well as providing support to bridging outcomes towards a new practice of health care in a changing world.

Health informatics to improve the health of homeless and marginalised populations

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Fatima Wurie

2016-01-01

Full Text Available BACKGROUND: Marginalised populations experience extremes of poor health due to a combination of poverty, social exclusion, addiction and multi-morbidity. Homeless people (one exemplar group have a broad range of health problems and difficulties accessing services. Specialist services to support the coordination of homeless health care have been established. The use of electronic health records provides an opportunity to evaluate the success of these services and understand the needs of the populations better but there are important privacy issues which require engagement with patients and relevant services to explore views about use of data and information sharing. A specific example of an important health problem in homeless people is tuberculosis (TB. Because of the documented high levels of poor adherence to treatment, directly observed therapy (DOT whereby each dose of treatment is observed by a healthcare professional, is recommended for homeless people and others in whom poor adherence is a concern. Advances in information and communication technology have enabled us to make use of Video Observed Therapy (VOT on smartphones and is currently being evaluated in a NIHR-funded randomised controlled trial (RCT in London, UK. The technology also has the potential to support the management of other conditions such as Hepatitis C in homeless populations. There is a paucity of evidence on the application of behavioural interventions like VOT to marginalised groups to understand what the critical drivers might be to support medication adherence in unsupported homeless populations. For this reason there is a need to understand patients’ and healthcare professionals’ views; firstly to explore the array of practical and ethical aspects of health informatics use but also to understand their contribution and relevance to homeless and marginalised groups to support implementation. AIM: to explore patients’ and healthcare professionals’ views of

National findings regarding health IT use and participation in health care delivery reform programs among office-based physicians.

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Heisey-Grove, Dawn; Patel, Vaishali

2017-01-01

Our objective was to characterize physicians' participation in delivery and payment reform programs over time and describe how participants in these programs were using health information technology (IT) to coordinate care, engage patients, manage patient populations, and improve quality. A nationally representative cohort of physicians was surveyed in 2012 (unweighted N = 2567) and 2013 (unweighted N = 2399). Regression analyses used those survey responses to identify associations between health IT use and participation in and attrition from patient-centered medical homes (PCMHs), accountable care organizations (ACOs), and pay-for-performance programs (P4Ps). In 2013, 45% of physicians participated in PCMHs, ACOs, or P4Ps. While participation in each program increased (P payment reform programs increased between 2012 and 2013. Participating physicians were more likely to use health IT. There was significant attrition from and switching between PCMHs, ACOs, and P4Ps. This work provides the basis for understanding physician participation in and attrition from delivery and payment reform programs, as well as how health IT was used to support those programs. Understanding health IT use by program participants may help to identify factors enabling a smooth transition to alternative payment models. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Medical Informatics Association 2016. This work is written by US Government employees and is in the public domain in the United States.

Patient Privacy, Consent, and Identity Management in Health Information Exchange: Issues for the Military Health System

Science.gov (United States)

2013-01-01

JPC-1b Joint Program Committee-1b on Health Information Technology and Medical Informatics MAeHC Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative MHS Military...efficiency of care. The second study, by the eHealth Initiative (2011), surveyed communities across the United States with initiatives to share health...Simon et al. (2009) conducted focus groups involving 64 participants in several rural towns participating in the Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative

Informatics competencies for nurse leaders: protocol for a scoping review.

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Kassam, Iman; Nagle, Lynn; Strudwick, Gillian

2017-12-14

Globally, health information technologies are now being used by nurses in a variety of settings. However, nurse leaders often do not have the necessary strategic and tactical informatics competencies to adequately ensure their effective adoption and use. Although informatics competencies and competency frameworks have been identified and developed, to date there has not been review or consolidation of the work completed in this area. In order to address this gap, a scoping review is being conducted. The objectives of this scoping review are to: (1) identify informatics competencies of relevance to nurse leaders, (2) identify frameworks or theories that have been used to develop informatics competencies for nurse leaders, (3) identify instruments used to assess the informatics competencies of nurse leaders and (4) examine the psychometric properties of identified instruments. Using the Arksey and O'Malley five-step framework, a literature review will be conducted using a scoping review methodology. The search will encompass academic and grey literature and include two primary databases and five secondary databases. Identified studies and documents will be independently screened for eligibility by two reviewers. Data from the studies and documents will be extracted and compiled into a chart. Qualitative data will be subject to a thematic analysis and descriptive statistics applied to the quantitative data. Ethical approval was not required for this study. Results will be used to inform a future study designed to validate an instrument used to evaluate informatics competencies for nurse leaders within a Canadian context. © Article author(s) (or their employer(s) unless otherwise stated in the text of the article) 2017. All rights reserved. No commercial use is permitted unless otherwise expressly granted.

Integrating best evidence into patient care: a process facilitated by a seamless integration with informatics tools.

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Giuse, Nunzia B; Williams, Annette M; Giuse, Dario A

2010-07-01

The Vanderbilt University paper discusses how the Eskind Biomedical Library at Vanderbilt University Medical Center transitioned from a simplistic approach that linked resources to the institutional electronic medical record system, StarPanel, to a value-added service that is designed to deliver highly relevant information. Clinical teams formulate complex patient-specific questions via an evidence-based medicine literature request basket linked to individual patient records. The paper transitions into discussing how the StarPanel approach acted as a springboard for two additional projects that use highly trained knowledge management librarians with informatics expertise to integrate evidence into both order sets and a patient portal, MyHealth@Vanderbilt.

[Looking for evidence-based medical informatics].

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Coiera, Enrico

2016-03-01

e-Health is experiencing a difficult time. On the one side, the forecast is for a bright digital health future created by precision medicine and smart devices. On the other hand, most large scale e-health projects struggle to make a difference and are often controversial. Both futures fail because they are not evidence-based. Medical informatics should follow the example of evidence-based medicine, i.e. conduct rigorous research that gives us evidence to solve real world problems, synthesise that evidence and then apply it strictly. We already have the tools for creating a different universe. What we need is evidence, will, a culture of learning, and hard work.

Craniofacial imaging informatics and technology development.

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Vannier, M W

2003-01-01

'Craniofacial imaging informatics' refers to image and related scientific data from the dentomaxillofacial complex, and application of 'informatics techniques' (derived from disciplines such as applied mathematics, computer science and statistics) to understand and organize the information associated with the data. Major trends in information technology determine the progress made in craniofacial imaging and informatics. These trends include industry consolidation, disruptive technologies, Moore's law, electronic atlases and on-line databases. Each of these trends is explained and documented, relative to their influence on craniofacial imaging. Craniofacial imaging is influenced by major trends that affect all medical imaging and related informatics applications. The introduction of cone beam craniofacial computed tomography scanners is an example of a disruptive technology entering the field. An important opportunity lies in the integration of biologic knowledge repositories with craniofacial images. The progress of craniofacial imaging will continue subject to limitations imposed by the underlying technologies, especially imaging informatics. Disruptive technologies will play a major role in the evolution of this field.

Clinical research informatics

CERN Document Server

Richesson, Rachel L

2012-01-01

This book provides foundational coverage of key areas, concepts, constructs, and approaches of medical informatics as it applies to clinical research activities, in both current settings and in light of emerging policies. The field of clinical research is fully characterized (in terms of study design and overarching business processes), and there is emphasis on information management aspects and informatics implications (including needed activities) within various clinical research environments. The purpose of the book is to provide an overview of clinical research (types), activities, and are

osni.info-Using free/libre/open source software to build a virtual international community for open source nursing informatics.

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Oyri, Karl; Murray, Peter J

2005-12-01

Many health informatics organizations seem to be slow to take up the advantages of dynamic, web-based technologies for providing services to, and interaction with, their members; these are often the very technologies they promote for use within healthcare environments. This paper aims to introduce some of the many free/libre/open source (FLOSS) applications that are now available to develop interactive websites and dynamic online communities as part of the structure of health informatics organizations, and to show how the Open Source Nursing Informatics Working Group (OSNI) of the special interest group in nursing informatics of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA-NI) is using some of these tools to develop an online community of nurse informaticians through their website, at . Some background introduction to FLOSS applications is used for the benefit of those less familiar with such tools, and examples of some of the FLOSS content management systems (CMS) being used by OSNI are described. The experiences of the OSNI will facilitate a knowledgeable nursing contribution to the wider discussions on the applications of FLOSS within health and healthcare, and provides a model that many other groups could adopt.

Biomedical Informatics Research for Individualized Life - Long Shared Healthcare

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Zvárová, Jana; Hanzlíček, Petr; Nagy, Miroslav; Přečková, Petra; Zvára, K.; Seidl, L.; Bureš, V.; Šubrt, D.; Dostálová, T.; Seydlová, M.

2009-01-01

Roč. 29, č. 2 (2009), s. 31-41 ISSN 0208-5216 R&D Projects: GA AV ČR 1ET200300413 Institutional research plan: CEZ:AV0Z10300504 Keywords : electronic health record * semantic interoperability * dentistry * cardiology Subject RIV: IN - Informatics, Computer Science

The Informatics Security Cost of Distributed Applications

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Ion IVAN

2010-01-01

Full Text Available The objective, necessity, means and estimated efficiency of information security cost modeling are presented. The security requirements of distributed informatics applications are determined. Aspects regarding design, development and implementation are established. Influence factors for informatics security are presented and their correlation is analyzed. The costs associated to security processes are studied. Optimal criteria for informatics security are established. The security cost of the informatics application for validating organizational identifiers is determined using theoretical assumptions made for cost models. The conclusions highlight the validity of research results and offer perspectives for future research.

Pathology informatics fellowship training: Focus on molecular pathology

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Diana Mandelker

2014-01-01

Full Text Available Background: Pathology informatics is both emerging as a distinct subspecialty and simultaneously becoming deeply integrated within the breadth of pathology practice. As specialists, pathology informaticians need a broad skill set, including aptitude with information fundamentals, information systems, workflow and process, and governance and management. Currently, many of those seeking training in pathology informatics additionally choose training in a second subspecialty. Combining pathology informatics training with molecular pathology is a natural extension, as molecular pathology is a subspecialty with high potential for application of modern biomedical informatics techniques. Methods and Results: Pathology informatics and molecular pathology fellows and faculty evaluated the current fellowship program′s core curriculum topics and subtopics for relevance to molecular pathology. By focusing on the overlap between the two disciplines, a structured curriculum consisting of didactics, operational rotations, and research projects was developed for those fellows interested in both pathology informatics and molecular pathology. Conclusions: The scope of molecular diagnostics is expanding dramatically as technology advances and our understanding of disease extends to the genetic level. Here, we highlight many of the informatics challenges facing molecular pathology today, and outline specific informatics principles necessary for the training of future molecular pathologists.

Pathology informatics fellowship training: Focus on molecular pathology.

Science.gov (United States)

Mandelker, Diana; Lee, Roy E; Platt, Mia Y; Riedlinger, Gregory; Quinn, Andrew; Rao, Luigi K F; Klepeis, Veronica E; Mahowald, Michael; Lane, William J; Beckwith, Bruce A; Baron, Jason M; McClintock, David S; Kuo, Frank C; Lebo, Matthew S; Gilbertson, John R

2014-01-01

Pathology informatics is both emerging as a distinct subspecialty and simultaneously becoming deeply integrated within the breadth of pathology practice. As specialists, pathology informaticians need a broad skill set, including aptitude with information fundamentals, information systems, workflow and process, and governance and management. Currently, many of those seeking training in pathology informatics additionally choose training in a second subspecialty. Combining pathology informatics training with molecular pathology is a natural extension, as molecular pathology is a subspecialty with high potential for application of modern biomedical informatics techniques. Pathology informatics and molecular pathology fellows and faculty evaluated the current fellowship program's core curriculum topics and subtopics for relevance to molecular pathology. By focusing on the overlap between the two disciplines, a structured curriculum consisting of didactics, operational rotations, and research projects was developed for those fellows interested in both pathology informatics and molecular pathology. The scope of molecular diagnostics is expanding dramatically as technology advances and our understanding of disease extends to the genetic level. Here, we highlight many of the informatics challenges facing molecular pathology today, and outline specific informatics principles necessary for the training of future molecular pathologists.

Information retrieval pathways for health information exchange in multiple care settings.

Science.gov (United States)

Kierkegaard, Patrick; Kaushal, Rainu; Vest, Joshua R

2014-11-01

To determine which health information exchange (HIE) technologies and information retrieval pathways healthcare professionals relied on to meet their information needs in the context of laboratory test results, radiological images and reports, and medication histories. Primary data was collected over a 2-month period across 3 emergency departments, 7 primary care practices, and 2 public health clinics in New York state. Qualitative research methods were used to collect and analyze data from semi-structured interviews and participant observation. The study reveals that healthcare professionals used a complex combination of information retrieval pathways for HIE to obtain clinical information from external organizations. The choice for each approach was setting- and information-specific, but was also highly dynamic across users and their information needs. Our findings about the complex nature of information sharing in healthcare provide insights for informatics professionals about the usage of information; indicate the need for managerial support within each organization; and suggest approaches to improve systems for organizations and agencies working to expand HIE adoption.

Examining the need & potential for biomedical engineering to strengthen health care delivery for displaced populations & victims of conflict.

Science.gov (United States)

Nadkarni, Devika; Elhajj, Imad; Dawy, Zaher; Ghattas, Hala; Zaman, Muhammad H

2017-01-01

Conflict and the subsequent displacement of populations creates unique challenges in the delivery of quality health care to the affected population. Equitable access to quality care demands a multi-pronged strategy with a growing need, and role, for technological innovation to address these challenges. While there have been significant contributions towards alleviating the burden of conflict via data informatics and analytics, communication technology, and geographic information systems, little has been done within biomedical engineering. This article elaborates on the causes for gaps in biomedical innovation for refugee populations affected by conflict, tackles preconceived notions, takes stock of recent developments in promising technologies to address these challenges, and identifies tangible action items to create a stronger and sustainable pipeline for biomedical technological innovation to improve the health and well-being of an increasing group of vulnerable people around the world.

The Challenges of Electronic Health Records and Diabetes Electronic Prescribing: Implications for Safety Net Care for Diverse Populations

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Neda Ratanawongsa

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Widespread electronic health record (EHR implementation creates new challenges in the diabetes care of complex and diverse populations, including safe medication prescribing for patients with limited health literacy and limited English proficiency. This review highlights how the EHR electronic prescribing transformation has affected diabetes care for vulnerable patients and offers recommendations for improving patient safety through EHR electronic prescribing design, implementation, policy, and research. Specifically, we present evidence for (1 the adoption of RxNorm; (2 standardized naming and picklist options for high alert medications such as insulin; (3 the widespread implementation of universal medication schedule and language-concordant labels, with the expansion of electronic prescription 140-character limit; (4 enhanced bidirectional communication with pharmacy partners; and (5 informatics and implementation research in safety net healthcare systems to examine how EHR tools and practices affect diverse vulnerable populations.

E-health in graduate and postgraduate medical education: illusions, expectations and reality.

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Bari, Ferenc; Forczek, Erzsébet; Hantos, Zoltán

2011-01-01

With the overall growth of informatics, the medical education system should also provide programs at both graduate and post-graduate levels. While there is a wide consensus as to the importance of this urgent need, several factors slow down the construction and operation of effective education programs in medical and nursing schools. The increasing need for better and more comprehensive training in informatics is strongly limited by several factors including undefined output skills, tight time frame etc. An efficient development of partnerships within the health care system assumes that all professionals involved must possess strong informatics and interpersonal knowledge, and skills reaching beyond their own individual fields. There is an emerging need to define the basic skills and knowledge for each level of the health care education. Trans-border cooperation offers a unique opportunity for the establishment of common criteria for basic skills and knowledge, via joint discussions, collaborative thinking and concerted action.

Open Access Publishing in the Field of Medical Informatics.

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Kuballa, Stefanie

2017-05-01

The open access paradigm has become an important approach in today's information and communication society. Funders and governments in different countries stipulate open access publications of funded research results. Medical informatics as part of the science, technology and medicine disciplines benefits from many research funds, such as National Institutes of Health in the US, Wellcome Trust in UK, German Research Foundation in Germany and many more. In this study an overview of the current open access programs and conditions of major journals in the field of medical informatics is presented. It was investigated whether there are suitable options and how they are shaped. Therefore all journals in Thomson Reuters Web of Science that were listed in the subject category "Medical Informatics" in 2014 were examined. An Internet research was conducted by investigating the journals' websites. It was reviewed whether journals offer an open access option with a subsequent check of conditions as for example the type of open access, the fees and the licensing. As a result all journals in the field of medical informatics that had an impact factor in 2014 offer an open access option. A predominantly consistent pricing range was determined with an average fee of 2.248 € and a median fee of 2.207 €. The height of a journals' open access fee did not correlate with the height of its Impact Factor. Hence, medical informatics journals have recognized the trend of open access publishing, though the vast majority of them are working with the hybrid method. Hybrid open access may however lead to problems in questions of double dipping and the often stipulated gold open access.

Electronic health records and support for primary care teamwork.

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O'Malley, Ann S; Draper, Kevin; Gourevitch, Rebecca; Cross, Dori A; Scholle, Sarah Hudson

2015-03-01

Consensus that enhanced teamwork is necessary for efficient and effective primary care delivery is growing. We sought to identify how electronic health records (EHRs) facilitate and pose challenges to primary care teams as well as how practices are overcoming these challenges. Practices in this qualitative study were selected from those recognized as patient-centered medical homes via the National Committee for Quality Assurance 2011 tool, which included a section on practice teamwork. We interviewed 63 respondents, ranging from physicians to front-desk staff, from 27 primary care practices ranging in size, type, geography, and population size. EHRs were found to facilitate communication and task delegation in primary care teams through instant messaging, task management software, and the ability to create evidence-based templates for symptom-specific data collection from patients by medical assistants and nurses (which can offload work from physicians). Areas where respondents felt that electronic medical record EHR functionalities were weakest and posed challenges to teamwork included the lack of integrated care manager software and care plans in EHRs, poor practice registry functionality and interoperability, and inadequate ease of tracking patient data in the EHR over time. Practices developed solutions for some of the challenges they faced when attempting to use EHRs to support teamwork but wanted more permanent vendor and policy solutions for other challenges. EHR vendors in the United States need to work alongside practicing primary care teams to create more clinically useful EHRs that support dynamic care plans, integrated care management software, more functional and interoperable practice registries, and greater ease of data tracking over time. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Medical Informatics Association.

X-Informatics: Practical Semantic Science

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Borne, K. D.

2009-12-01

The discipline of data science is merging with multiple science disciplines to form new X-informatics research disciplines. They are almost too numerous to name, but they include geoinformatics, bioinformatics, cheminformatics, biodiversity informatics, ecoinformatics, materials informatics, and the emerging discipline of astroinformatics. Within any X-informatics discipline, the information granules are unique to that discipline -- e.g., gene sequences in bio, the sky object in astro, and the spatial object in geo (such as points, lines, and polygons in the vector model, and pixels in the raster model). Nevertheless the goals are similar: transparent data re-use across subdisciplines and within education settings, information and data integration and fusion, personalization of user interactions with the data collection, semantic search and retrieval, and knowledge discovery. The implementation of an X-informatics framework enables these semantic e-science research goals. We describe the concepts, challenges, and new developments associated with the new discipline of astroinformatics, and how geoinformatics provides valuable lessons learned and a model for practical semantic science within a traditional science discipline through the accretion of data science methodologies (such as formal metadata creation, data models, data mining, information retrieval, knowledge engineering, provenance, taxonomies, and ontologies). The emerging concept of data-as-a-service (DaaS) builds upon the concept of smart data (or data DNA) for intelligent data management, automated workflows, and intelligent processing. Smart data, defined through X-informatics, enables several practical semantic science use cases, including self-discovery, data intelligence, automatic recommendations, relevance analysis, dimension reduction, feature selection, constraint-based mining, interdisciplinary data re-use, knowledge-sharing, data use in education, and more. We describe these concepts within the

Health Information Technology, Patient Safety, and Professional Nursing Care Documentation in Acute Care Settings.

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Lavin, Mary Ann; Harper, Ellen; Barr, Nancy

2015-04-14

The electronic health record (EHR) is a documentation tool that yields data useful in enhancing patient safety, evaluating care quality, maximizing efficiency, and measuring staffing needs. Although nurses applaud the EHR, they also indicate dissatisfaction with its design and cumbersome electronic processes. This article describes the views of nurses shared by members of the Nursing Practice Committee of the Missouri Nurses Association; it encourages nurses to share their EHR concerns with Information Technology (IT) staff and vendors and to take their place at the table when nursing-related IT decisions are made. In this article, we describe the experiential-reflective reasoning and action model used to understand staff nurses' perspectives, share committee reflections and recommendations for improving both documentation and documentation technology, and conclude by encouraging nurses to develop their documentation and informatics skills. Nursing issues include medication safety, documentation and standards of practice, and EHR efficiency. IT concerns include interoperability, vendors, innovation, nursing voice, education, and collaboration.

[Smart cards in health services].

Science.gov (United States)

Rienhoff, O

2001-10-01

Since the early 1980-ties it has been tried to utilise smart cards in health care. All industrialised countries participated in those efforts. The most sustainable analyses took place in Europe--specifically in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. The first systems installed (the service access cards in F and G, the Health Professional Card in F) are already conceptionally outdated today. The senior understanding of the great importance of smart cards for security of electronic communication in health care does contrast to a hesitating behaviour of the key players in health care and health politics in Germany. There are clear hints that this may relate to the low informatics knowledge of current senior management.

Creating a pipeline of talent for informatics: STEM initiative for high school students in computer science, biology, and biomedical informatics

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Joyeeta Dutta-Moscato

2014-01-01

Full Text Available This editorial provides insights into how informatics can attract highly trained students by involving them in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM training at the high school level and continuing to provide mentorship and research opportunities through the formative years of their education. Our central premise is that the trajectory necessary to be expert in the emergent fields in front of them requires acceleration at an early time point. Both pathology (and biomedical informatics are new disciplines which would benefit from involvement by students at an early stage of their education. In 2009, Michael T Lotze MD, Kirsten Livesey (then a medical student, now a medical resident at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC, Richard Hersheberger, PhD (Currently, Dean at Roswell Park, and Megan Seippel, MS (the administrator launched the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI Summer Academy to bring high school students for an 8 week summer academy focused on Cancer Biology. Initially, pathology and biomedical informatics were involved only in the classroom component of the UPCI Summer Academy. In 2011, due to popular interest, an informatics track called Computer Science, Biology and Biomedical Informatics (CoSBBI was launched. CoSBBI currently acts as a feeder program for the undergraduate degree program in bioinformatics at the University of Pittsburgh, which is a joint degree offered by the Departments of Biology and Computer Science. We believe training in bioinformatics is the best foundation for students interested in future careers in pathology informatics or biomedical informatics. We describe our approach to the recruitment, training and research mentoring of high school students to create a pipeline of exceptionally well-trained applicants for both the disciplines of pathology informatics and biomedical informatics. We emphasize here how mentoring of high school students in pathology informatics and biomedical

Creating a pipeline of talent for informatics: STEM initiative for high school students in computer science, biology, and biomedical informatics.

Science.gov (United States)

Dutta-Moscato, Joyeeta; Gopalakrishnan, Vanathi; Lotze, Michael T; Becich, Michael J

2014-01-01

This editorial provides insights into how informatics can attract highly trained students by involving them in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) training at the high school level and continuing to provide mentorship and research opportunities through the formative years of their education. Our central premise is that the trajectory necessary to be expert in the emergent fields in front of them requires acceleration at an early time point. Both pathology (and biomedical) informatics are new disciplines which would benefit from involvement by students at an early stage of their education. In 2009, Michael T Lotze MD, Kirsten Livesey (then a medical student, now a medical resident at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC)), Richard Hersheberger, PhD (Currently, Dean at Roswell Park), and Megan Seippel, MS (the administrator) launched the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI) Summer Academy to bring high school students for an 8 week summer academy focused on Cancer Biology. Initially, pathology and biomedical informatics were involved only in the classroom component of the UPCI Summer Academy. In 2011, due to popular interest, an informatics track called Computer Science, Biology and Biomedical Informatics (CoSBBI) was launched. CoSBBI currently acts as a feeder program for the undergraduate degree program in bioinformatics at the University of Pittsburgh, which is a joint degree offered by the Departments of Biology and Computer Science. We believe training in bioinformatics is the best foundation for students interested in future careers in pathology informatics or biomedical informatics. We describe our approach to the recruitment, training and research mentoring of high school students to create a pipeline of exceptionally well-trained applicants for both the disciplines of pathology informatics and biomedical informatics. We emphasize here how mentoring of high school students in pathology informatics and biomedical informatics

Predicting Consumer Effort in Finding and Paying for Health Care: Expert Interviews and Claims Data Analysis.

Science.gov (United States)

Long, Sandra; Monsen, Karen A; Pieczkiewicz, David; Wolfson, Julian; Khairat, Saif

2017-10-12

For consumers to accept and use a health care information system, it must be easy to use, and the consumer must perceive it as being free from effort. Finding health care providers and paying for care are tasks that must be done to access treatment. These tasks require effort on the part of the consumer and can be frustrating when the goal of the consumer is primarily to receive treatments for better health. The aim of this study was to determine the factors that result in consumer effort when finding accessible health care. Having an understanding of these factors will help define requirements when designing health information systems. A panel of 12 subject matter experts was consulted and the data from 60 million medical claims were used to determine the factors contributing to effort. Approximately 60 million claims were processed by the health care insurance organization in a 12-month duration with the population defined. Over 292 million diagnoses from claims were used to validate the panel input. The results of the study showed that the number of people in the consumer's household, number of visits to providers outside the consumer's insurance network, number of adjusted and denied medical claims, and number of consumer inquiries are a proxy for the level of effort in finding and paying for care. The effort level, so measured and weighted per expert panel recommendations, differed by diagnosis. This study provides an understanding of how consumers must put forth effort when engaging with a health care system to access care. For higher satisfaction and acceptance results, health care payers ideally will design and develop systems that facilitate an understanding of how to avoid denied claims, educate on the payment of claims to avoid adjustments, and quickly find providers of affordable care. ©Sandra Long, Karen A. Monsen, David Pieczkiewicz, Julian Wolfson, Saif Khairat. Originally published in JMIR Medical Informatics (http://medinform.jmir.org), 12.10.2017.

The role of social media for patients and consumer health. Contribution of the IMIA Consumer Health Informatics Working Group.

Science.gov (United States)

Lau, A Y S; Siek, K A; Fernandez-Luque, L; Tange, H; Chhanabhai, P; Li, S Y W; Elkin, P L; Arjabi, A; Walczowski, L; Ang, C S; Eysenbach, G

2011-01-01

: To provide an overview on social media for consumers and patients in areas of health behaviours and outcomes. A directed review of recent literature. : We discuss the limitations and challenges of social media, ranging from social network sites (SNSs), computer games, mobile applications, to online videos. An overview of current users of social media (Generation Y), and potential users (such as low socioeconomic status and the chronically ill populations) is also presented. Future directions in social media research are also discussed. : We encourage the health informatics community to consider the socioeconomic class, age, culture, and literacy level of their populations, and select an appropriate medium and platform when designing social networked interventions for health. Little is known about the impact of second-hand experiences faciliated by social media, nor the quality and safety of social networks on health. Methodologies and theories from human computer interaction, human factors engineering and psychology may help guide the challenges in designing and evaluating social networked interventions for health. Further, by analysing how people search and navigate social media for health purposes, infodemiology and infoveillance are promising areas of research that should provide valuable insights on present and emergening health behaviours on a population scale.

Educating medical students as competent users of health information technologies: the MSOP data.

Science.gov (United States)

McGowan, Julie J; Passiment, Morgan; Hoffman, Helene M

2007-01-01

As more health information technologies become part of the health care environment, the need for physicians with medical informatics competencies is growing. In 2006, a survey was created to determine the degree to which the Association of American Medical College's Medical School Objectives Project (MSOP) medical informatics competencies had been incorporated into medical school curricula in the United States. a web-based tool was used to create the survey; medical education deans or their designees were requested to complete the survey. Analysis focused on the clinician, researcher, and manager roles of physicians. Seventy usable surveys were returned. Many of the objectives were stated in the schools' respective curricula and the competencies were being evaluated. However, only a few schools taught and assessed the medical informatics objectives that required interaction with health information. To insure that physicians have the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to effectively and efficiently interact with today's health information technologies, more medical informatics concepts need to be included and assessed in all undergraduate medical education curricula in the United States.

Approaches, requirements and trends in teacher training informatics to attestation of pedagogical stuff under conditions of informatization

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ольга Юрьевна Заславская

2013-12-01

Full Text Available This article describes the requirements for the training of teachers of Informatics, the need for managerial competence. Recommendations to the teacher of Informatics for the attestation of pedagogical staff.

Practicing radiation oncology today - Part I: Meeting the challenge of managed care

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Botnick, Leslie E.; Cohen, Hilary H.; Hinkle, Milton; Rose, Christopher M.

1996-01-01

Objective: The change in health care delivery is forcing radiation oncologists to examine every aspect of how they organize themselves, deliver care, evaluate the quality of that care, and how they are reimbursed for this process. While managed care has been implicated as the new paradigm that will change the way that health care is delivered, the authors maintain that outcomes research may be just as important a stimulus for change. This course will attempt to examine how managed care and outcomes research are impacting upon radiation oncology practice, and what radiation oncologists can do to maintain patient care standards. This course will introduce certain concepts that will be discussed in subsequent courses on Informatics and Evaluating New Technology. Topics Covered: 1. The Managed Care Nomenclature Explained: HMO's, PPO's, POS's, Carve-Outs 2. Outcomes Research: What it can and cannot do 3. Moving from QA to CQI to Benchmarking 4. Using Analytical Tools to Evaluate Capital Purchases and Operational Requirements 5. Evaluating Staffing Needs: Traditional jobs, Cross-training, Outsourcing, Physician extenders 6. Introduction to Evaluation of Technology 7. Introduction to Evaluation of Informatics 8. Potential gains from Shared Services 9. Networking vs. Mergers vs. Oncology IPA's vs. MSO's 10. Evaluating Managed Care Strategies and Contracts

[Informatics and health, from digitization to information and communication technologies (TIC)].

Science.gov (United States)

Cabanis, Emmanuel Alain; de Kervasdoué, Jean

2014-01-01

Integrating the progress that has been made on a daily basis since it was jointly commissioned in 2013 by the French National Academy of Medicine (Biotechnology Committee XX, Prof Emmanuel-Alain Cabanis) and the Technologies Academy (Pr Jean de Kervasdoué), this report, covering such a vast subject, can only represent one step in a long process. Summarized here in a volume compatible with the Bulletin, it makes reference to the full report (52 pages ; 22 pages of text, 4 pages of references, a 20-page glossary for physicians, plus 522 figures spanning 6 pages), which is available on the Academy's website. The six chapters first define "health" (WHO) and "informatics" and provide a brief history. The first chapter, on technologies, is divided into "bad" news (cybercrime, ecological risks) and advances relevant to health. The next four chapters describe the contribution of digitization to patient management, ranging from "fragile" individuals (from the gamete to old age and dependency) to healthy subjects trained to work in hostile situations (scuba diving to space exploration), and finally research. The last chapter proposes 7 areas for progress: expansion of the national imaging and communications platforms, stimulation of the medical robotics industry, extension of telemedicine to all medical and surgical specialties, support for drug dispensing and therapeutic education, and foundation of a European portal for m-health certification, research prioritization according to multiyear health plans, and reinforcement of mathematic education, starting in primary school (see: "La main à la pâte" ("Going hands-on").

Aligning Education With Health Care Transformation: Identifying a Shared Mental Model of "New" Faculty Competencies for Academic Faculty.

Science.gov (United States)

Gonzalo, Jed D; Ahluwalia, Amarpreet; Hamilton, Maria; Wolf, Heidi; Wolpaw, Daniel R; Thompson, Britta M

2018-02-01

To develop a potential competency framework for faculty development programs aligned with the needs of faculty in academic health centers (AHCs). In 2014 and 2015, the authors interviewed 23 health system leaders and analyzed transcripts using constant comparative analysis and thematic analysis. They coded competencies and curricular concepts into subcategories. Lead investigators reviewed drafts of the categorization themes and subthemes related to gaps in faculty knowledge and skills, collapsed and combined competency domains, and resolved disagreements via discussion. Through analysis, the authors identified four themes. The first was core functional competencies and curricular domains for conceptual learning, including patient-centered care, health care processes, clinical informatics, population and public health, policy and payment, value-based care, and health system improvement. The second was the need for foundational competency domains, including systems thinking, change agency/management, teaming, and leadership. The third theme was paradigm shifts in how academic faculty should approach health care, categorized into four areas: delivery, transformation, provider characteristics and skills, and education. The fourth theme was the need for faculty to be aware of challenges in the culture of AHCs as an influential context for change. This broad competency framework for faculty development programs expands existing curricula by including a comprehensive scope of health systems science content and skills. AHC leaders can use these results to better align faculty education with the real-time needs of their health systems. Future work should focus on optimal prioritization and methods for teaching.

MO-C-BRCD-03: The Role of Informatics in Medical Physics and Vice Versa.

Science.gov (United States)

Andriole, K

2012-06-01

Like Medical Physics, Imaging Informatics encompasses concepts touching every aspect of the imaging chain from image creation, acquisition, management and archival, to image processing, analysis, display and interpretation. The two disciplines are in fact quite complementary, with similar goals to improve the quality of care provided to patients using an evidence-based approach, to assure safety in the clinical and research environments, to facilitate efficiency in the workplace, and to accelerate knowledge discovery. Use-cases describing several areas of informatics activity will be given to illustrate current limitations that would benefit from medical physicist participation, and conversely areas in which informaticists may contribute to the solution. Topics to be discussed include radiation dose monitoring, process management and quality control, display technologies, business analytics techniques, and quantitative imaging. Quantitative imaging is increasingly becoming an essential part of biomedicalresearch as well as being incorporated into clinical diagnostic activities. Referring clinicians are asking for more objective information to be gleaned from the imaging tests that they order so that they may make the best clinical management decisions for their patients. Medical Physicists may be called upon to identify existing issues as well as develop, validate and implement new approaches and technologies to help move the field further toward quantitative imaging methods for the future. Biomedical imaging informatics tools and techniques such as standards, integration, data mining, cloud computing and new systems architectures, ontologies and lexicons, data visualization and navigation tools, and business analytics applications can be used to overcome some of the existing limitations. 1. Describe what is meant by Medical Imaging Informatics and understand why the medical physicist should care. 2. Identify existing limitations in information technologies with

An overview of medical informatics education in China.

Science.gov (United States)

Hu, Dehua; Sun, Zhenling; Li, Houqing

2013-05-01

To outline the history of medical informatics education in the People's Republic of China, systematically analyze the current status of medical informatics education at different academic levels (bachelor's, master's, and doctoral), and suggest reasonable strategies for the further development of the field in China. The development of medical informatics education was divided into three stages, defined by changes in the specialty's name. Systematic searches of websites for material related to the specialty of medical informatics were then conducted. For undergraduate education, the websites surveyed included the website of the Ministry of Education of the People's Republic of China (MOE) and those of universities or colleges identified using the baidu.com search engine. For postgraduate education, the websites included China's Graduate Admissions Information Network (CGAIN) and the websites of the universities or their schools or faculties. Specialties were selected on the basis of three criteria: (1) for undergraduate education, the name of specialty or program was medical informatics or medical information or information management and information system; for postgraduate education, medical informatics or medical information; (2) the specialty was approved and listed by the MOE; (3) the specialty was set up by a medical college or medical university, or a school of medicine of a comprehensive university. The information abstracted from the websites included the year of program approval and listing, the university/college, discipline catalog, discipline, specialty, specialty code, objectives, and main courses. A total of 55 program offerings for undergraduate education, 27 for master's-level education, and 5 for PhD-level education in medical informatics were identified and assessed in China. The results indicate that medical informatics education, a specialty rooted in medical library and information science education in China, has grown significantly in that

Moving from trust to trustworthiness: Experiences of public engagement in the Scottish Health Informatics Programme.

Science.gov (United States)

Aitken, Mhairi; Cunningham-Burley, Sarah; Pagliari, Claudia

2016-10-01

The Scottish Health Informatics Programme (SHIP) was a Scotland-wide research programme exploring ways of collecting, managing and analysing electronic patient records for health research. As part of the SHIP public engagement work stream, a series of eight focus groups and a stakeholder workshop were conducted to explore perceptions of the role, relevance and functions of trust (or trustworthiness) in relation to research practices. The findings demonstrate that the public's relationships of trust and/or mistrust in science and research are not straightforward. This paper aims to move beyond simple descriptions of whether publics trust researchers, or in whom members of the public place their trust, and to explore more fully the bases of public trust/mistrust in science, what trust implies and equally what it means for research/researchers to be trustworthy. This has important implications for public engagement in interdisciplinary projects.

Personal informatics in practice: Improving quality of life through data

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Li, Ian; Medynskiy, Yevgeniy; Froehlich, Jon

2012-01-01

of personal informatics applications poses new challenges for human-computer interaction and creates opportunities for applications in various domains related to quality of life, such as fitness, nutrition, wellness, mental health, and sustainability. This workshop will continue the conversations from the CHI...

Energy Decision Science and Informatics | Integrated Energy Solutions |

Science.gov (United States)

NREL Decision Science and Informatics Energy Decision Science and Informatics NREL utilizes and advances state-of-the-art decision science and informatics to help partners make well-informed energy decisions backed by credible, objective data analysis and insights to maximize the impact of energy

Different tracks for pathology informatics fellowship training: Experiences of and input from trainees in a large multisite fellowship program

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Bruce P Levy

2012-01-01

Informatics candidates. Increasingly, these fellowships must be able to accommodate the needs of candidates anticipating a wide range of Pathology Informatics career paths, be able to accommodate Pathology′s increasingly subspecialized structure, and do this in a way that respects the multiple fellowships needed to become a subspecialty pathologist and informatician. This is further complicated as Pathology Informatics begins to look outward and takes its place in the growing, and still ill-defined, field of Clinical Informatics, a field that is not confined to just one medical specialty, to one way of practicing medicine, or to one way of providing patient care.

The Use of Data Analytics to Build an Australian Context-Sensitive Health Informatics Framework for Consumer-Directed Community Aged Care.

Science.gov (United States)

Georgiou, Andrew; Jorgensen, Mikaela; Siette, Joyce; Westbrook, Johanna I

2017-01-01

The challenge of providing services that meet the growing needs of an ageing population is one confronted by communities across Australia and internationally. The aim of this study was to: a) undertake semi-structured interviews and focus groups across a sample of service and technical staff to identify the interconnection between communication, information, work practices and performance; and b) carry out a comprehensive review of existing data sources to identify the data linkages required to identify and monitor performance across different dimensions of the quality of aged care spectrum. The results from this study provided empirical evidence of the interconnection between communication, information, work practices and performance; and highlighted numerous potential data linkages which can be used to monitor performance across different dimensions of aged care. These included: the uptake and utilisation of community care services, community aged care client interactions and transitions (with hospitals and other health care providers), and quality of life measures (e.g., health and safety status, symptoms of depression and anxiety, social integration and mortality rates).

Using Technology, Bioinformatics and Health Informatics Approaches to Improve Learning Experiences in Optometry Education, Research and Practice

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Vivek K. Gupta

2016-11-01

Full Text Available Rapid advances in ocular diagnostic approaches and emerging links of pathological changes in the eye with systemic disorders have widened the scope of optometry as the front line of eye health care. Expanding professional requirements stipulate that optometry students get a meticulous training in relevant information and communication technologies (ICT and various bioinformatics and health informatics software to meet current and future challenges. Greater incorporation of ICT approaches in optometry education can facilitate increased student engagement in shared learning experiences and improve collaborative learning. This, in turn, will enable students to participate in and prepare for the complex real-world situations. A judicious use of ICTs by teachers in learning endeavors can help students develop innovative patterns of thinking to be a successful optometry professional. ICT-facilitated learning enables students and professionals to carry out their own research and take initiatives and thus shifts the equilibrium towards self-education. It is important that optometry and allied vision science schools adapt to the changing professional requirements with pedagogical evolution and react appropriately to provide the best educational experience for the students and teachers. This review aims to highlight the scope of ICT applications in optometry education and professional development drawing from similar experiences in other disciplines. Further, while enhanced use of ICT in optometry has the potential to create opportunities for transformative learning experiences, many schools use it merely to reinforce conventional teaching practices. Tremendous developments in ICT should allow educators to consider using ICT tools to enhance communication as well as providing a novel, richer, and more meaningful medium for the comprehensive knowledge construction in optometry and allied health disciplines.

Using Technology, Bioinformatics and Health Informatics Approaches to Improve Learning Experiences in Optometry Education, Research and Practice.

Science.gov (United States)

Gupta, Vivek K; Gupta, Veer B

2016-11-15

Rapid advances in ocular diagnostic approaches and emerging links of pathological changes in the eye with systemic disorders have widened the scope of optometry as the front line of eye health care. Expanding professional requirements stipulate that optometry students get a meticulous training in relevant information and communication technologies (ICT) and various bioinformatics and health informatics software to meet current and future challenges. Greater incorporation of ICT approaches in optometry education can facilitate increased student engagement in shared learning experiences and improve collaborative learning. This, in turn, will enable students to participate in and prepare for the complex real-world situations. A judicious use of ICTs by teachers in learning endeavors can help students develop innovative patterns of thinking to be a successful optometry professional. ICT-facilitated learning enables students and professionals to carry out their own research and take initiatives and thus shifts the equilibrium towards self-education. It is important that optometry and allied vision science schools adapt to the changing professional requirements with pedagogical evolution and react appropriately to provide the best educational experience for the students and teachers. This review aims to highlight the scope of ICT applications in optometry education and professional development drawing from similar experiences in other disciplines. Further, while enhanced use of ICT in optometry has the potential to create opportunities for transformative learning experiences, many schools use it merely to reinforce conventional teaching practices. Tremendous developments in ICT should allow educators to consider using ICT tools to enhance communication as well as providing a novel, richer, and more meaningful medium for the comprehensive knowledge construction in optometry and allied health disciplines.

Decision Support for Mental Health: Towards the Information-based Psychiatry

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Kalina, Jan; Zvárová, Jana

2014-01-01

Roč. 4, č. 2 (2014), s. 53-65 ISSN 1947-3133 Grant - others:GA MŠk(CZ) ED2.1.00/03.0078 Institutional support: RVO:67985807 Keywords : big data * classification rule * decision support systems * e-health * mental health care Subject RIV: IN - Informatics, Computer Science

Improving diagnosis in health care: perspectives from the American College of Radiology.

Science.gov (United States)

Allen, Bibb; Chatfield, Mythreyi; Burleson, Judy; Thorwarth, William T

2017-09-26

In September of 2014, the American College of Radiology joined a number of other organizations in sponsoring the 2015 National Academy of Medicine report, Improving Diagnosis In Health Care. Our presentation to the Academy emphasized that although diagnostic errors in imaging are commonly considered to result only from failures in disease detection or misinterpretation of a perceived abnormality, most errors in diagnosis result from failures in information gathering, aggregation, dissemination and ultimately integration of that information into our patients' clinical problems. Diagnostic errors can occur at any point on the continuum of imaging care from when imaging is first considered until results and recommendations are fully understood by our referring physicians and patients. We used the concept of the Imaging Value Chain and the ACR's Imaging 3.0 initiative to illustrate how better information gathering and integration at each step in imaging care can mitigate many of the causes of diagnostic errors. Radiologists are in a unique position to be the aggregators, brokers and disseminators of information critical to making an informed diagnosis, and if radiologists were empowered to use our expertise and informatics tools to manage the entire imaging chain, diagnostic errors would be reduced and patient outcomes improved. Heath care teams should take advantage of radiologists' ability to fully manage information related to medical imaging, and simultaneously, radiologists must be ready to meet these new challenges as health care evolves. The radiology community stands ready work with all stakeholders to design and implement solutions that minimize diagnostic errors.

Health Information Technology as a Universal Donor to Bioethics Education.

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Goodman, Kenneth W

2017-04-01

Health information technology, sometimes called biomedical informatics, is the use of computers and networks in the health professions. This technology has become widespread, from electronic health records to decision support tools to patient access through personal health records. These computational and information-based tools have engendered their own ethics literature and now present an opportunity to shape the standard medical and nursing ethics curricula. It is suggested that each of four core components in the professional education of clinicians-privacy, end-of-life care, access to healthcare and valid consent, and clinician-patient communication-offers an opportunity to leverage health information technology for curricular improvement. Using informatics in ethics education freshens ethics pedagogy and increases its utility, and does so without additional demands on overburdened curricula.

Perceptions and Experiences of Baccalaureate Nursing Program Leaders Related to Nursing Informatics

Science.gov (United States)

Larson, Lisa R.

2017-01-01

Nursing program leadership for integrating nursing informatics (NI) into curricula is essential. NI is a specialty that combines nursing science, computer science, and information science to manage health information and improve patient health outcomes (American Nurses Association, 2008). Approximately 98,000 patient deaths per year occur due to…

Cyborgs, biotechnologies, and informatics in health care - new paradigms in nursing sciences.

Science.gov (United States)

Monteiro, Ana Paula Teixeira de Almeida Vieira

2016-01-01

Nursing Sciences are at a moment of paradigmatic transition. The aim of this paper is to reflect on the new epistemological paradigms of nursing science from a critical approach. In this paper, we identified and analysed some new research lines and trends which anticipate the reorganization of nursing sciences and the paradigms emerging from nursing care: biotechnology-centred knowledge; the interface between nursing knowledge and new information technologies; body care centred knowledge; the human body as a cyborg body; and the rediscovery of an aesthetic knowledge in nursing care. © 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Evaluating the Effect of Software Quality Characteristics on Health Care Quality Indicators

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sakineh Aghazadeh

2015-07-01

Full Text Available Introduction: Various types of software are used in health care organizations to manage information and care processes. The quality of software has been an important concern for both health authorities and designers of Health Information Technology. Thus, assessing the effect of software quality on the performance quality of healthcare institutions is essential. Method: The most important health care quality indicators in relation to software quality characteristics are provided via an already performed literature review. ISO 9126 standard model is used for definition and integration of various characteristics of software quality. The effects of software quality characteristics and sub-characteristics on the healthcare indicators are evaluated through expert opinion analyses. A questionnaire comprising of 126 questions of 10-point Likert scale was used to gather opinions of experts in the field of Medical/Health Informatics. The data was analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling. Results: Our findings showed that software Maintainability was rated as the most effective factor on user satisfaction (R2 =0.89 and Functionality as the most important and independent variable affecting patient care quality (R2 =0.98. Efficiency was considered as the most effective factor on workflow (R2 =0.97, and Maintainability as the most important factor that affects healthcare communication (R2 =0.95. Usability and Efficiency were rated as the most effectual factor affecting patient satisfaction (R2 =0.80, 0.81. Reliability, Maintainability, and Efficiency were considered as the main factors affecting care costs (R2 =0.87, 0.74, 0.87. Conclusion: We presented a new model based on ISO standards. The model demonstrates and weighs the relations between software quality characteristics and healthcare quality indicators. The clear relationships between variables and the type of the metrics and measurement methods used in the model make it a reliable method to assess

Medical Imaging Informatics in Nuclear Medicine

NARCIS (Netherlands)

van Ooijen, Peter; Glaudemans, Andor W.J.M.; Medema, Jitze; van Zanten, Annie K.; Dierckx, Rudi A.J.O.; Ahaus, C.T.B. (Kees)

2016-01-01

Medical imaging informatics is gaining importance in medicine both in clinical practice and in scientific research. Besides radiology, nuclear medicine is also a major stakeholder in medical imaging informatics because of the variety of available imaging modalities and the imaging-oriented operation

Energy informatics: Fundamentals and standardization

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Biyao Huang

2017-06-01

Full Text Available Based on international standardization and power utility practices, this paper presents a preliminary and systematic study on the field of energy informatics and analyzes boundary expansion of information and energy system, and the convergence of energy system and ICT. A comprehensive introduction of the fundamentals and standardization of energy informatics is provided, and several key open issues are identified.

BACHELOR OF INFORMATICS COMPETENCE IN PROGRAMMING

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Andrii M. Striuk

2015-04-01

Full Text Available Based on the analysis of approaches to the definition of professional competencies of IT students the competence in programming of bachelor of informatics is proposed. Due to the standard of training in 040302 “Informatics” and Computing Curricula 2001 it was defined the content and structure of the competence in programming of bachelor of informatics. The system of content modules providing its formation was designed. The contribution of regulatory competencies of bachelor of informatics in the formation of competence in programming is defined. The directions of formation of competence in programming in the cloudy-oriented learning environment are proposed.

Reforming the health care system: implications for health care marketers.

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Petrochuk, M A; Javalgi, R G

1996-01-01

Health care reform has become the dominant domestic policy issue in the United States. President Clinton, and the Democratic leaders in the House and Senate have all proposed legislation to reform the system. Regardless of the plan which is ultimately enacted, health care delivery will be radically changed. Health care marketers, given their perspective, have a unique opportunity to ensure their own institutions' success. Organizational, managerial, and marketing strategies can be employed to deal with the changes which will occur. Marketers can utilize personal strategies to remain proactive and successful during an era of health care reform. As outlined in this article, responding to the health care reform changes requires strategic urgency and action. However, the strategies proposed are practical regardless of the version of health care reform legislation which is ultimately enacted.

Examining Tensions That Affect the Evaluation of Technology in Health Care: Considerations for System Decision Makers From the Perspective of Industry and Evaluators.

Science.gov (United States)

Desveaux, Laura; Shaw, James; Wallace, Ross; Bhattacharyya, Onil; Bhatia, R Sacha; Jamieson, Trevor

2017-12-08

Virtual technologies have the potential to mitigate a range of challenges for health care systems. Despite the widespread use of mobile devices in everyday life, they currently have a limited role in health service delivery and clinical care. Efforts to integrate the fast-paced consumer technology market with health care delivery exposes tensions among patients, providers, vendors, evaluators, and system decision makers. This paper explores the key tensions between the high bar for evidence prior to market approval that guides health care regulatory decisions and the "fail fast" reality of the technology industry. We examine three core tensions: balancing user needs versus system needs, rigor versus responsiveness, and the role of pre- versus postmarket evidence generation. We use these to elaborate on the structure and appropriateness of evaluation mechanisms for virtual care solutions. Virtual technologies provide a foundation for personalized, patient-centered medicine on the user side, coupled with a broader understanding of impact on the system side. However, mechanisms for stakeholder discussion are needed to clarify the nature of the health technology marketplace and the drivers of evaluation priorities. ©Laura Desveaux, James Shaw, Ross Wallace, Onil Bhattacharyya, R Sacha Bhatia, Trevor Jamieson. Originally published in JMIR Medical Informatics (http://medinform.jmir.org), 08.12.2017.

Global health leadership training in resource-limited settings: a collaborative approach by academic institutions and local health care programs in Uganda.

Science.gov (United States)

Nakanjako, Damalie; Namagala, Elizabeth; Semeere, Aggrey; Kigozi, Joanitor; Sempa, Joseph; Ddamulira, John Bosco; Katamba, Achilles; Biraro, Sam; Naikoba, Sarah; Mashalla, Yohana; Farquhar, Carey; Sewankambo, Nelson

2015-11-18

Due to a limited health workforce, many health care providers in Africa must take on health leadership roles with minimal formal training in leadership. Hence, the need to equip health care providers with practical skills required to lead high-impact health care programs. In Uganda, the Afya Bora Global Health Leadership Fellowship is implemented through the Makerere University College of Health Sciences (MakCHS) and her partner institutions. Lessons learned from the program, presented in this paper, may guide development of in-service training opportunities to enhance leadership skills of health workers in resource-limited settings. The Afya Bora Consortium, a consortium of four African and four U.S. academic institutions, offers 1-year global health leadership-training opportunities for nurses and doctors. Applications are received and vetted internationally by members of the consortium institutions in Botswana, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, and the USA. Fellows have 3 months of didactic modules and 9 months of mentored field attachment with 80% time dedicated to fellowship activities. Fellows' projects and experiences, documented during weekly mentor-fellow meetings and monthly mentoring team meetings, were compiled and analyzed manually using pre-determined themes to assess the effect of the program on fellows' daily leadership opportunities. Between January 2011 and January 2015, 15 Ugandan fellows (nine doctors and six nurses) participated in the program. Each fellow received 8 weeks of didactic modules held at one of the African partner institutions and three online modules to enhance fellows' foundation in leadership, communication, monitoring and evaluation, health informatics, research methodology, grant writing, implementation science, and responsible conduct of research. In addition, fellows embarked on innovative projects that covered a wide spectrum of global health challenges including critical analysis of policy formulation and review processes

Health information technology interventions enhance care completion, engagement in HIV care and treatment, and viral suppression among HIV-infected patients in publicly funded settings.

Science.gov (United States)

Shade, Starley B; Steward, Wayne T; Koester, Kimberly A; Chakravarty, Deepalika; Myers, Janet J

2015-04-01

The National HIV/AIDS Strategy (NHAS) emphasizes the use of technology to facilitate coordination of comprehensive care for people with HIV. We examined the effect of six health information technology (HIT) interventions in a Ryan White-funded Special Projects of National Significance (SPNS) on care completion services, engagement in HIV care, and viral suppression. Interventions included use of surveillance data to identify out-of-care individuals, extending access to electronic health records to support service providers, use of electronic laboratory ordering and prescribing, and development of a patient portal. Data from a sample of electronic patient records from each site were analyzed to assess changes in utilization of comprehensive care (prevention screening, support service utilization), engagement in primary HIV medical care (receipt of services and use of antiretroviral therapy), and viral suppression. We used weighted generalized estimating equations to estimate outcomes while accounting for the unequal contribution of data and differences in the distribution of patient characteristics across sites and over time. We observed statistically significant changes in the desired direction in comprehensive care utilization and engagement in primary care outcomes targeted by each site. Five of six sites experienced statistically significant increases in viral suppression. These results provide additional support for the use of HIT as a valuable tool for achieving the NHAS goal of providing comprehensive care for all people living with HIV. HIT has the potential to increase utilization of services, improve health outcomes for people with HIV, and reduce community viral load and subsequent transmission of HIV. © The Author 2014. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Medical Informatics Association. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com For affiliation see end of article.

COMMUNITY HEALTH & PRIMARY HEALTH CARE

African Journals Online (AJOL)

care policy which was intended to make health care which of the two alternative methods of health care available to individuals and families in the financing options of free health or DRF was community at very little or no cost at all. However, preferred by the community members within most health facilities would appear to ...

Discussion on informatization teaching of certain radar transmitter

Science.gov (United States)

Liang, Guanhui; Lv, Guizhou; Meng, Yafeng

2017-04-01

With the development of informatization, the traditional teaching method of certain radar transmitter is more and more difficult to meet the need of cultivating new type of high-quality military talents. This paper first analyzes the problems traditional teaching method of certain radar transmitter, and then puts forward the strategy of informatization teaching, and finally elaborates the concrete steps and contents of informatization teaching. Using the multimedia maintenance training system, information simulation training system and network courses and other informatization means, effectively improves the master degree to radar transmitter by trainees, but also lays a good foundation for repair in the next step.

Improving Self-Care of Patients with Chronic Disease using Online Personal Health Record

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Amol Wagholikar

2012-09-01

Full Text Available Background Effective management of chronic diseases such as prostate cancer is important. Research suggests a tendency to use self-care treatment options such as over-the-counter (OTC complementary medications among prostate cancer patients. The current trend in patient-driven recording of health data in an online Personal Health Record (PHR presents an opportunity to develop new data-driven approaches for improving prostate cancer patient care. However, the ability of current online solutions to share patients’ data for better decision support is limited. An informatics approach may improve online sharing of self-care interventions among these patients. It can also provide better evidence to support decisions made during their self-managed care.Aims To identify requirements for an online system and describe a new case-based reasoning (CBR method for improving self-care of advanced prostate cancer patients in an online PHR environment. Method A non-identifying online survey was conducted to understand self-care patterns among prostate cancer patients and to identify requirements for an online information system. The pilot study was carried out between August 2010 and December 2010. A case-base of 52 patients was developed. Results The data analysis showed self-care patterns among the prostate cancer patients. Selenium (55% was the common complementary supplement used by the patients. Paracetamol (about 45% was the commonly used OTC by the patients. Conclusion The results of this study specified requirements for an online case-based reasoning information system. The outcomes of this study are being incorporated in design of the proposed Artificial Intelligence (AI driven patient journey browser system. A basic version of the proposed system is currently being considered for implementation.

Enabling Open Science for Health Research: Collaborative Informatics Environment for Learning on Health Outcomes (CIELO).

Science.gov (United States)

Payne, Philip; Lele, Omkar; Johnson, Beth; Holve, Erin

2017-07-31

There is an emergent and intensive dialogue in the United States with regard to the accessibility, reproducibility, and rigor of health research. This discussion is also closely aligned with the need to identify sustainable ways to expand the national research enterprise and to generate actionable results that can be applied to improve the nation's health. The principles and practices of Open Science offer a promising path to address both goals by facilitating (1) increased transparency of data and methods, which promotes research reproducibility and rigor; and (2) cumulative efficiencies wherein research tools and the output of research are combined to accelerate the delivery of new knowledge in proximal domains, thereby resulting in greater productivity and a reduction in redundant research investments. AcademyHealth's Electronic Data Methods (EDM) Forum implemented a proof-of-concept open science platform for health research called the Collaborative Informatics Environment for Learning on Health Outcomes (CIELO). The EDM Forum conducted a user-centered design process to elucidate important and high-level requirements for creating and sustaining an open science paradigm. By implementing CIELO and engaging a variety of potential users in its public beta testing, the EDM Forum has been able to elucidate a broad range of stakeholder needs and requirements related to the use of an open science platform focused on health research in a variety of "real world" settings. Our initial design and development experience over the course of the CIELO project has provided the basis for a vigorous dialogue between stakeholder community members regarding the capabilities that will add the greatest value to an open science platform for the health research community. A number of important questions around user incentives, sustainability, and scalability will require further community dialogue and agreement. ©Philip Payne, Omkar Lele, Beth Johnson, Erin Holve. Originally published

Making big data useful for health care: a summary of the inaugural mit critical data conference.

Science.gov (United States)

Badawi, Omar; Brennan, Thomas; Celi, Leo Anthony; Feng, Mengling; Ghassemi, Marzyeh; Ippolito, Andrea; Johnson, Alistair; Mark, Roger G; Mayaud, Louis; Moody, George; Moses, Christopher; Naumann, Tristan; Pimentel, Marco; Pollard, Tom J; Santos, Mauro; Stone, David J; Zimolzak, Andrew

2014-08-22

With growing concerns that big data will only augment the problem of unreliable research, the Laboratory of Computational Physiology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology organized the Critical Data Conference in January 2014. Thought leaders from academia, government, and industry across disciplines-including clinical medicine, computer science, public health, informatics, biomedical research, health technology, statistics, and epidemiology-gathered and discussed the pitfalls and challenges of big data in health care. The key message from the conference is that the value of large amounts of data hinges on the ability of researchers to share data, methodologies, and findings in an open setting. If empirical value is to be from the analysis of retrospective data, groups must continuously work together on similar problems to create more effective peer review. This will lead to improvement in methodology and quality, with each iteration of analysis resulting in more reliability.

Implementing an Open Source Electronic Health Record System in Kenyan Health Care Facilities: Case Study.

Science.gov (United States)

Muinga, Naomi; Magare, Steve; Monda, Jonathan; Kamau, Onesmus; Houston, Stuart; Fraser, Hamish; Powell, John; English, Mike; Paton, Chris

2018-04-18

The Kenyan government, working with international partners and local organizations, has developed an eHealth strategy, specified standards, and guidelines for electronic health record adoption in public hospitals and implemented two major health information technology projects: District Health Information Software Version 2, for collating national health care indicators and a rollout of the KenyaEMR and International Quality Care Health Management Information Systems, for managing 600 HIV clinics across the country. Following these projects, a modified version of the Open Medical Record System electronic health record was specified and developed to fulfill the clinical and administrative requirements of health care facilities operated by devolved counties in Kenya and to automate the process of collating health care indicators and entering them into the District Health Information Software Version 2 system. We aimed to present a descriptive case study of the implementation of an open source electronic health record system in public health care facilities in Kenya. We conducted a landscape review of existing literature concerning eHealth policies and electronic health record development in Kenya. Following initial discussions with the Ministry of Health, the World Health Organization, and implementing partners, we conducted a series of visits to implementing sites to conduct semistructured individual interviews and group discussions with stakeholders to produce a historical case study of the implementation. This case study describes how consultants based in Kenya, working with developers in India and project stakeholders, implemented the new system into several public hospitals in a county in rural Kenya. The implementation process included upgrading the hospital information technology infrastructure, training users, and attempting to garner administrative and clinical buy-in for adoption of the system. The initial deployment was ultimately scaled back due to a

Historical Roots of International Biomedical and Health Informatics: The Road to IFIP-TC4 and IMIA through Cybernetic Medicine and the Elsinore Meetings.

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Kulikowski, C A

2017-08-01

Background: It is 50 years since the International Federation of Information Processing (IFIP) Societies approved the formation of a new Technical Committee (TC) 4 on Medical Information Processing under the leadership of Professor Francois Grémy, which was the direct precursor of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA). Objectives: The goals of this paper are to give a very brief overview of early international developments leading to informatics in medicine, with the origins of the applications of computers to medicine in the USA and Europe, and two meetings - of the International Society of Cybernetic Medicine, and the Elsinore Meetings on Hospital Information Systems-that took place in 1966. These set the stage for the formation of IFIP-TC4 the following year, with later sponsorship of the first MEDINFO in 1974, setting the path for the evolution to IMIA. Methods: This paper reviews and analyzes some of the earliest research and publications, together with two critical contrasting meetings in 1966 involving international activities in what evolved into biomedical and health informatics in terms of their probable influence on the formation of IFIP-TC4. Conclusion: The formation of IFIP-TC 4 in 1967 by Francois Grémy arose out of his concerns for merging, at an international level, the diverse strands from the more abstract work on cybernetic medicine and its basis in biophysical and neural modeling, with the more concrete and health-oriented medical information processing that was developing at the time for hospitals and clinical decision-making. Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart.

An information technology emphasis in biomedical informatics education.

Science.gov (United States)

Kane, Michael D; Brewer, Jeffrey L

2007-02-01

Unprecedented growth in the interdisciplinary domain of biomedical informatics reflects the recent advancements in genomic sequence availability, high-content biotechnology screening systems, as well as the expectations of computational biology to command a leading role in drug discovery and disease characterization. These forces have moved much of life sciences research almost completely into the computational domain. Importantly, educational training in biomedical informatics has been limited to students enrolled in the life sciences curricula, yet much of the skills needed to succeed in biomedical informatics involve or augment training in information technology curricula. This manuscript describes the methods and rationale for training students enrolled in information technology curricula in the field of biomedical informatics, which augments the existing information technology curriculum and provides training on specific subjects in Biomedical Informatics not emphasized in bioinformatics courses offered in life science programs, and does not require prerequisite courses in the life sciences.

What Makes Health Care Special?: An Argument for Health Care Insurance.

Science.gov (United States)

Horne, L Chad

2017-01-01

While citizens in a liberal democracy are generally expected to see to their basic needs out of their own income shares, health care is treated differently. Most rich liberal democracies provide their citizens with health care or health care insurance in kind. Is this "special" treatment justified? The predominant liberal account of justice in health care holds that the moral importance of health justifies treating health care as special in this way. I reject this approach and offer an alternative account. Health needs are not more important than other basic needs, but they are more unpredictable. I argue that citizens are owed access to insurance against health risks to provide stability in their future expectations and thus to protect their capacities for self-determination.

Perspectives for medical informatics. Reusing the electronic medical record for clinical research.

Science.gov (United States)

Prokosch, H U; Ganslandt, T

2009-01-01

Even though today most university hospitals have already implemented commercial hospital information systems and started to build up comprehensive electronic medical records, reuse of such data for data warehousing and research purposes is still very rare. Given this situation, the focus of this paper is to present an overview on exemplary projects, which have already tackled this challenge, reflect on current initiatives within the United States of America and the European Union to establish IT infrastructures for clinical and translational research, and draw attention to new challenges in this area. This paper does not intend to provide a fully comprehensive review on all the issues of clinical routine data reuse. It is based, however, on a presentation of a large variety of historical, but also most recent activities in data warehousing, data retrieval and linking medical informatics with translational research. The article presents an overview of the various international approaches to this issue and illustrates concepts and solutions which have been published, thus giving an impression of activities pursued in this field of medical informatics. Further, problems and open questions, which have also been named in the literature, are presented and three challenges (to establish comprehensive clinical data warehouses, to establish professional IT infrastructure applications supporting clinical trial data capture and to integrate medical record systems and clinical trial databases) related to this area of medical informatics are identified and presented. Translational biomedical research with the aim "to integrate bedside and biology" and to bridge the gap between clinical care and medical research today and in the years to come, provides a large and interesting field for medical informatics researchers. Especially the need for integrating clinical research projects with data repositories built up during documentation of routine clinical care, today still leaves

Harmonizing and consolidating the measurement of patient-reported information at health care institutions: a position statement of the Mayo Clinic

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Eton DT

2014-02-01

Full Text Available David T Eton,1,2 Timothy J Beebe,1,2 Philip T Hagen,3 Michele Y Halyard,4 Victor M Montori,1,5 James M Naessens,1,2 Jeff A Sloan,6 Carrie A Thompson,7 Douglas L Wood1,81Division of Heath Care Policy and Research, Department of Health Sciences Research, 2Mayo Clinic Robert D. and Patricia E. Kern Center for the Science of Health Care Delivery, 3Department of Preventive, Occupational, and Aerospace Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, 4Department of Radiation Oncology, Mayo Clinic, Scottsdale, AZ, 5Knowledge and Evaluation Research Unit, 6Division of Biomedical Statistics and Informatics, Department of Health Sciences Research, 7Division of Hematology, Department of Medicine, 8Center for Innovation, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN, USAAbstract: Patient-reported outcomes (PROs capture how patients perceive their health and their health care; their use in clinical research is longstanding. Today, however, PROs increasingly are being used to inform the care of individual patients, and document the performance of health care entities. We recently wrote and internally distributed an institutional position statement titled "Harmonizing and Consolidating the Measurement of Patient-Reported Outcomes at Mayo Clinic: A Position Statement for the Center for the Science of Health Care Delivery". The statement is meant to educate clinicians, clinical teams, and institutional administrators about the merits of using PROs in a systematic manner for clinical care and quality measurement throughout the institution. The present article summarizes the most important messages from the statement, describing PROs and their use, identifying practical considerations for implementing them in routine practice, elucidating potential barriers to their use, and formulating strategies to overcome these barriers. The lessons learned from our experience – including pitfalls, challenges, and successes – may inform other health care institutions that are interested in

INFORMATIZATION: PHILOSOPHICAL AND ANTHROPOLOGICAL PROBLEMS

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

A. A. Kosolapov

2015-07-01

Full Text Available Purpose.Computerization and informatization in recent decades gave the mankind automated electronic document management systems, automated process of production, Internet and network information resources WWW, expanded the communications capabilities and led to the globalization of the information society. At the same time gives rise to a number of processes of informatization philosophical and anthropological problems, that has become an existential character. It is necessary to identify and understanding of these issues on the basis of the gnoseological model of the evolution informatization paradigms and determine their main characteristics. Methodology. The system-activity approach was used; it allowed identifying and analyzing the impact of the main components of information and communication technologies (ICT for educational activities. And further to present them as a unified system of human activity in conditions computerization/informatization. The philosophical principles: a comprehensive review of the subject, the unity of the logical and historical, ascending from the abstract to the concrete was used. The general scientific principles: unity and development of the system, the decomposition hierarchy, individualization and cooperation, diversity and taxonomy were applied. Findings.The three-stage gnoseological model of the paradigms computerization/informatization evolution was proposed by the author. It is based on three information system characteristics: speed, interface and data access. The seven-bar anthrop-centric model, which is called the architecture of information systems (AIS, which describes the changes in their types of procuring, was proposed for each paradigm. The philosophical-anthropological problems that affect negatively its progress were formulated for each stage of modern information society transformation. Originality. The gnoseological model of development processes of informatization in the form of three

The Biodiversity Informatics Potential Index

Science.gov (United States)

2011-01-01

Background Biodiversity informatics is a relatively new discipline extending computer science in the context of biodiversity data, and its development to date has not been uniform throughout the world. Digitizing effort and capacity building are costly, and ways should be found to prioritize them rationally. The proposed 'Biodiversity Informatics Potential (BIP) Index' seeks to fulfill such a prioritization role. We propose that the potential for biodiversity informatics be assessed through three concepts: (a) the intrinsic biodiversity potential (the biological richness or ecological diversity) of a country; (b) the capacity of the country to generate biodiversity data records; and (c) the availability of technical infrastructure in a country for managing and publishing such records. Methods Broadly, the techniques used to construct the BIP Index were rank correlation, multiple regression analysis, principal components analysis and optimization by linear programming. We built the BIP Index by finding a parsimonious set of country-level human, economic and environmental variables that best predicted the availability of primary biodiversity data accessible through the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) network, and constructing an optimized model with these variables. The model was then applied to all countries for which sufficient data existed, to obtain a score for each country. Countries were ranked according to that score. Results Many of the current GBIF participants ranked highly in the BIP Index, although some of them seemed not to have realized their biodiversity informatics potential. The BIP Index attributed low ranking to most non-participant countries; however, a few of them scored highly, suggesting that these would be high-return new participants if encouraged to contribute towards the GBIF mission of free and open access to biodiversity data. Conclusions The BIP Index could potentially help in (a) identifying countries most likely to

Pathology informatics fellowship retreats: The use of interactive scenarios and case studies as pathology informatics teaching tools.

Science.gov (United States)

Lee, Roy E; McClintock, David S; Balis, Ulysses J; Baron, Jason M; Becich, Michael J; Beckwith, Bruce A; Brodsky, Victor B; Carter, Alexis B; Dighe, Anand S; Haghighi, Mehrvash; Hipp, Jason D; Henricks, Walter H; Kim, Jiyeon Y; Klepseis, Veronica E; Kuo, Frank C; Lane, William J; Levy, Bruce P; Onozato, Maristela L; Park, Seung L; Sinard, John H; Tuthill, Mark J; Gilbertson, John R

2012-01-01

Last year, our pathology informatics fellowship added informatics-based interactive case studies to its existing educational platform of operational and research rotations, clinical conferences, a common core curriculum with an accompanying didactic course, and national meetings. The structure of the informatics case studies was based on the traditional business school case study format. Three different formats were used, varying in length from short, 15-minute scenarios to more formal multiple hour-long case studies. Case studies were presented over the course of three retreats (Fall 2011, Winter 2012, and Spring 2012) and involved both local and visiting faculty and fellows. Both faculty and fellows found the case studies and the retreats educational, valuable, and enjoyable. From this positive feedback, we plan to incorporate the retreats in future academic years as an educational component of our fellowship program. Interactive case studies appear to be valuable in teaching several aspects of pathology informatics that are difficult to teach in more traditional venues (rotations and didactic class sessions). Case studies have become an important component of our fellowship's educational platform.

Informatics for Metabolomics.

Science.gov (United States)

Kusonmano, Kanthida; Vongsangnak, Wanwipa; Chumnanpuen, Pramote

2016-01-01

Metabolome profiling of biological systems has the powerful ability to provide the biological understanding of their metabolic functional states responding to the environmental factors or other perturbations. Tons of accumulative metabolomics data have thus been established since pre-metabolomics era. This is directly influenced by the high-throughput analytical techniques, especially mass spectrometry (MS)- and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR)-based techniques. Continuously, the significant numbers of informatics techniques for data processing, statistical analysis, and data mining have been developed. The following tools and databases are advanced for the metabolomics society which provide the useful metabolomics information, e.g., the chemical structures, mass spectrum patterns for peak identification, metabolite profiles, biological functions, dynamic metabolite changes, and biochemical transformations of thousands of small molecules. In this chapter, we aim to introduce overall metabolomics studies from pre- to post-metabolomics era and their impact on society. Directing on post-metabolomics era, we provide a conceptual framework of informatics techniques for metabolomics and show useful examples of techniques, tools, and databases for metabolomics data analysis starting from preprocessing toward functional interpretation. Throughout the framework of informatics techniques for metabolomics provided, it can be further used as a scaffold for translational biomedical research which can thus lead to reveal new metabolite biomarkers, potential metabolic targets, or key metabolic pathways for future disease therapy.

Integrating Informatics Technologies into Oracle

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Manole VELICANU

2006-01-01

Full Text Available A characteristic of the actual informatics’ context is the interference of the technologies, which assumes that for creating an informatics product, is necessary to use integrate many technologies. This thing is also used for database systems which had integrated, in the past few years, almost everything is new in informatics technology. The idea is that when using database management systems - DBMS the user can benefit all the necessary interfaces and instruments for developing an application with databases from the very beginning to the end, no matter the type of application and the work environment. For example, if the database application needs any Internet facilities these could be appealed from the products that the DBMS is working with offers. The concept of the interference of informatics technologies has many advantages, which all contribute to increasing the efficiency of the activities that develop and maintain complex databases applications.

Medical Imaging Informatics: Towards a Personalized Computational Patient.

Science.gov (United States)

Ayache, N

2016-05-20

Medical Imaging Informatics has become a fast evolving discipline at the crossing of Informatics, Computational Sciences, and Medicine that is profoundly changing medical practices, for the patients' benefit.

Informatization Level Assessment Framework and Educational Policy Implications

OpenAIRE

Ana Sekulovska; Pece Mitrevski

2018-01-01

Seeing the informatization as a measure of the educational policy, we propose an informatization level assessment framework and introduce a composite indicator – Education Informatization Index, calculated as a weighted sum by applying the Rank-Order Centroid method for weight designation. Although it is made up of only two main categories (Educational Policy Implementation subindex and Educational Policy Creation subindex) and a total of six individual indicators, it captures well all the so...

Case-based medical informatics

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Arocha José F

2004-11-01

Full Text Available Abstract Background The "applied" nature distinguishes applied sciences from theoretical sciences. To emphasize this distinction, we begin with a general, meta-level overview of the scientific endeavor. We introduce the knowledge spectrum and four interconnected modalities of knowledge. In addition to the traditional differentiation between implicit and explicit knowledge we outline the concepts of general and individual knowledge. We connect general knowledge with the "frame problem," a fundamental issue of artificial intelligence, and individual knowledge with another important paradigm of artificial intelligence, case-based reasoning, a method of individual knowledge processing that aims at solving new problems based on the solutions to similar past problems. We outline the fundamental differences between Medical Informatics and theoretical sciences and propose that Medical Informatics research should advance individual knowledge processing (case-based reasoning and that natural language processing research is an important step towards this goal that may have ethical implications for patient-centered health medicine. Discussion We focus on fundamental aspects of decision-making, which connect human expertise with individual knowledge processing. We continue with a knowledge spectrum perspective on biomedical knowledge and conclude that case-based reasoning is the paradigm that can advance towards personalized healthcare and that can enable the education of patients and providers. We center the discussion on formal methods of knowledge representation around the frame problem. We propose a context-dependent view on the notion of "meaning" and advocate the need for case-based reasoning research and natural language processing. In the context of memory based knowledge processing, pattern recognition, comparison and analogy-making, we conclude that while humans seem to naturally support the case-based reasoning paradigm (memory of past experiences

Strategic leadership will be essential for dietitian eHealth readiness: A qualitative study exploring dietitian perspectives of eHealth readiness.

Science.gov (United States)

Maunder, Kirsty; Walton, Karen; Williams, Peter; Ferguson, Maree; Beck, Eleanor

2018-05-16

To explore dietitians' perspectives on the eHealth readiness of Australian dietitians, and to identify strategies to improve eHealth readiness of the profession. Dietitians who met the criteria for nutrition informatics experts participated in semi-structured interviews between June 2016 and March 2017. The interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Thematic analysis using coding was undertaken until consensus was reached by the researchers regarding key themes, topics and exemplar quotes. Interviews with 10 nutrition informatics experts revealed 25 discussion topics grouped into four main themes: benefits of eHealth for dietitians; risks of dietitians not being involved in eHealth; dietitians are not ready for eHealth; and strategies to improve eHealth readiness. The strategies identified for improving eHealth readiness included: collaboration and representation, education, offering of incentives and mentoring, as well as development of a national strategy, organisational leaders, nutrition informatics champions and a supportive environment. These findings suggest that dietitians may not be ready for eHealth. Strategic leadership and the actioning of other identified strategies will be imperative to preparing dietitians for eHealth to ensure the profession can practice effectively in the digital age, optimise nutrition care and support research for eHealth. If dietitians do not engage in eHealth, others may take their place, or dietitians may be forced to use eHealth in ways that are not the most effective for practice or maximising patient outcomes. © 2018 Dietitians Association of Australia.

Machine learning in healthcare informatics

CERN Document Server

Acharya, U; Dua, Prerna

2014-01-01

The book is a unique effort to represent a variety of techniques designed to represent, enhance, and empower multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional machine learning research in healthcare informatics. The book provides a unique compendium of current and emerging machine learning paradigms for healthcare informatics and reflects the diversity, complexity and the depth and breath of this multi-disciplinary area. The integrated, panoramic view of data and machine learning techniques can provide an opportunity for novel clinical insights and discoveries.

The future of health IT innovation and informatics: a report from AMIA's 2010 policy meeting

Science.gov (United States)

McGowan, Julie J; Cusack, Caitlin M

2012-01-01

While much attention has been paid to the short-term impact that widespread adoption of health information technology (health IT) will have on the healthcare system, there is a corresponding need to look at the long-term effects that extant policies may have on health IT system resilience, innovation, and related ethical, social/legal issues. The American Medical Informatics Association's 2010 Health Policy Conference was convened to further the national discourse on the issues surrounding these longer-term considerations. Conference participants self-selected into three broad categories: resilience in healthcare and health IT; ethical, legal, and social challenges; and innovation, adoption, and sustainability. The discussions about problem areas lead to findings focusing on the lack of encouragement for long-term IT innovation that may result from current health IT policies; the potential impact of uneven adoption of health IT based on the exclusions of the current financial incentives; the weaknesses of contingency and risk mitigation planning that threaten system resilience; and evolving standards developed in response to challenges relating to the security, integrity, and availability of electronic health information. This paper discusses these findings and also offers recommendations that address the interwoven topics of innovation, resilience, and adoption. The goal of this paper is to encourage public and private sector organizations that have a role in shaping health information policy to increase attention to developing a national strategy that assures that health IT innovation and resilience are not impeded by shorter-term efforts to implement current approaches emphasizing adoption and meaningful use of electronic health records. PMID:22037887

Associations of family-centered care with health care outcomes for children with special health care needs.

Science.gov (United States)

Kuo, Dennis Z; Bird, T Mac; Tilford, J Mick

2011-08-01

The objective of this study is to examine the association of family-centered care (FCC) with specific health care service outcomes for children with special health care needs (CSHCN). The study is a secondary analysis of the 2005-2006 National Survey of Children with Special Health Care Needs. Receipt of FCC was determined by five questions regarding how well health care providers addressed family concerns in the prior 12 months. We measured family burden by reports of delayed health care, unmet need, financial costs, and time devoted to care; health status, by stability of health care needs; and emergency department and outpatient service use. All statistical analyses used propensity score-based matching models to address selection bias. FCC was reported by 65.6% of respondents (N = 38,915). FCC was associated with less delayed health care (AOR: 0.56; 95% CI: 0.48, 0.66), fewer unmet service needs (AOR: 0.53; 95% CI: 0.47, 0.60), reduced odds of ≥1 h/week coordinating care (AOR: 0.83; 95% CI: 0.74, 0.93) and reductions in out of pocket costs (AOR: 0.88; 95% CI: 0.80, 0.96). FCC was associated with more stable health care needs (AOR: 1.11; 95% CI: 1.01, 1.21), reduced odds of emergency room visits (AOR: 0.90; 95% CI: 0.82, 0.99) and increased odds of doctor visits (AOR: 1.25; 95% CI: 1.14, 1.37). Our study demonstrates associations of positive health and family outcomes with FCC. Realizing the health care delivery benefits of FCC may require additional encounters to build key elements of trust and partnership.

How to Teach Health IT Evaluation: Recommendations for Health IT Evaluation Courses

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Ammenwerth, Elske; de Keizer, Nicolet; Brender McNair, Jytte; Craven, Catherine K.; Eisenstein, Eric; Georgiou, Andrew; Khairat, Saif; Magrabi, Farah; Nykänen, Pirkko; Otero, Paula; Rigby, Michael; Scott, Philip; Weir, Charlene

2017-01-01

Systematic health IT evaluation studies are needed to ensure system quality and safety and to provide the basis for evidence-based health informatics. Well-trained health informatics specialists are required to guarantee that health IT evaluation studies are conducted in accordance with robust

Biomedical signals, imaging, and informatics

CERN Document Server

Bronzino, Joseph D

2014-01-01

Known as the bible of biomedical engineering, The Biomedical Engineering Handbook, Fourth Edition, sets the standard against which all other references of this nature are measured. As such, it has served as a major resource for both skilled professionals and novices to biomedical engineering.Biomedical Signals, Imaging, and Informatics, the third volume of the handbook, presents material from respected scientists with diverse backgrounds in biosignal processing, medical imaging, infrared imaging, and medical informatics.More than three dozen specific topics are examined, including biomedical s

Pathology informatics fellowship retreats: The use of interactive scenarios and case studies as pathology informatics teaching tools

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Roy E Lee

2012-01-01

Full Text Available Background: Last year, our pathology informatics fellowship added informatics-based interactive case studies to its existing educational platform of operational and research rotations, clinical conferences, a common core curriculum with an accompanying didactic course, and national meetings. Methods: The structure of the informatics case studies was based on the traditional business school case study format. Three different formats were used, varying in length from short, 15-minute scenarios to more formal multiple hour-long case studies. Case studies were presented over the course of three retreats (Fall 2011, Winter 2012, and Spring 2012 and involved both local and visiting faculty and fellows. Results: Both faculty and fellows found the case studies and the retreats educational, valuable, and enjoyable. From this positive feedback, we plan to incorporate the retreats in future academic years as an educational component of our fellowship program. Conclusions: Interactive case studies appear to be valuable in teaching several aspects of pathology informatics that are difficult to teach in more traditional venues (rotations and didactic class sessions. Case studies have become an important component of our fellowship′s educational platform.

Monitoring Technology Meets Care Work

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kanstrup, Anne Marie; Bygholm, Ann

2015-01-01

's ability to meet the complexity of care work. Understanding intersectional challenges between these care technologies and care work is fundamental to improve design and use of health informatics. In this paper we present an analysis of interaction challenges between a wet-sensor at the task of monitoring......Monitoring technology, especially sensor-based technology, is increasingly taken into use in care work. Despite the simplicity of these technologies – aimed to automate what appear as mundane monitoring tasks – recent research has identified major challenges primarily related to the technology...... wet beds at a nursing home. The analysis identifies the multifaceted nature of monitoring work and the intricacy of integrating sensor technology into the complex knowledge system of monitoring work....

Possible Sources of Bias in Primary Care Electronic Health Record Data Use and Reuse.

Science.gov (United States)

Verheij, Robert A; Curcin, Vasa; Delaney, Brendan C; McGilchrist, Mark M

2018-05-29

Enormous amounts of data are recorded routinely in health care as part of the care process, primarily for managing individual patient care. There are significant opportunities to use these data for other purposes, many of which would contribute to establishing a learning health system. This is particularly true for data recorded in primary care settings, as in many countries, these are the first place patients turn to for most health problems. In this paper, we discuss whether data that are recorded routinely as part of the health care process in primary care are actually fit to use for other purposes such as research and quality of health care indicators, how the original purpose may affect the extent to which the data are fit for another purpose, and the mechanisms behind these effects. In doing so, we want to identify possible sources of bias that are relevant for the use and reuse of these type of data. This paper is based on the authors' experience as users of electronic health records data, as general practitioners, health informatics experts, and health services researchers. It is a product of the discussions they had during the Translational Research and Patient Safety in Europe (TRANSFoRm) project, which was funded by the European Commission and sought to develop, pilot, and evaluate a core information architecture for the learning health system in Europe, based on primary care electronic health records. We first describe the different stages in the processing of electronic health record data, as well as the different purposes for which these data are used. Given the different data processing steps and purposes, we then discuss the possible mechanisms for each individual data processing step that can generate biased outcomes. We identified 13 possible sources of bias. Four of them are related to the organization of a health care system, whereas some are of a more technical nature. There are a substantial number of possible sources of bias; very little is

Introduction to Metagenomics at DOE JGI: Program Overview and Program Informatics (Metagenomics Informatics Challenges Workshop: 10K Genomes at a Time)

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Tringe, Susannah

2011-10-12

Susannah Tringe of the DOE Joint Genome Institute talks about the Program Overview and Program Informatics at the Metagenomics Informatics Challenges Workshop held at the DOE JGI on October 12-13, 2011.

"A constant struggle to receive mental health care": health care professionals' acquired experience of barriers to mental health care services in Rwanda.

Science.gov (United States)

Rugema, Lawrence; Krantz, Gunilla; Mogren, Ingrid; Ntaganira, Joseph; Persson, Margareta

2015-12-16

In Rwanda, many people are still mentally affected by the consequences of the genocide and yet mental health care facilities are scarce. While available literature explains the prevalence and consequences of mental disorders, there is lack of knowledge from low-income countries on health care seeking behavior due to common mental disorders. Therefore, this study sought to explore health care professionals' acquired experiences of barriers and facilitators that people with common mental disorders face when seeking mental health care services in Rwanda. A qualitative approach was applied and data was collected from six focus group discussions (FGDs) conducted in October 2012, including a total of 43 health care professionals, men and women in different health professions. The FGDs were performed at health facilities at different care levels. Data was analyzed using manifest and latent content analysis. The emerging theme "A constant struggle to receive mental health care for mental disorders" embraced a number of barriers and few facilitators at individual, family, community and structural levels that people faced when seeking mental health care services. Identified barriers people needed to overcome were: Poverty and lack of family support, Fear of stigmatization, Poor community awareness of mental disorders, Societal beliefs in traditional healers and prayers, Scarce resources in mental health care and Gender imbalance in care seeking behavior. The few facilitators to receive mental health care were: Collaboration between authorities and organizations in mental health and having a Family with awareness of mental disorders and health insurance. From a public health perspective, this study revealed important findings of the numerous barriers and the few facilitating factors available to people seeking health for mental disorders. Having a supportive family with awareness of mental disorders who also were equipped with a health insurance was perceived as vital for

Combining medical informatics and bioinformatics toward tools for personalized medicine.

Science.gov (United States)

Sarachan, B D; Simmons, M K; Subramanian, P; Temkin, J M

2003-01-01

Key bioinformatics and medical informatics research areas need to be identified to advance knowledge and understanding of disease risk factors and molecular disease pathology in the 21 st century toward new diagnoses, prognoses, and treatments. Three high-impact informatics areas are identified: predictive medicine (to identify significant correlations within clinical data using statistical and artificial intelligence methods), along with pathway informatics and cellular simulations (that combine biological knowledge with advanced informatics to elucidate molecular disease pathology). Initial predictive models have been developed for a pilot study in Huntington's disease. An initial bioinformatics platform has been developed for the reconstruction and analysis of pathways, and work has begun on pathway simulation. A bioinformatics research program has been established at GE Global Research Center as an important technology toward next generation medical diagnostics. We anticipate that 21 st century medical research will be a combination of informatics tools with traditional biology wet lab research, and that this will translate to increased use of informatics techniques in the clinic.

Research and development and industrial informatization

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

1995-08-01

This book deals with research and development and industrial informatization with development of technology international trend, the present conditions of scientific technology in the major nations, politics of technical development and trend, process of national research and development, research for industrial research and development, strengthen cooperation for scientific technology among nations, current situation and development of technology by field such as energy, software and system, and technology for industrial informatization.