Biomedical subjects

Nathan C Hulse

Publications and source records attributed to Nathan C Hulse.

6 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Knowledge management strategies: Enhancing knowledge transfer to clinicians and patients.

At Intermountain Healthcare (Intermountain), executive clinical content experts are responsible for disseminating consistent evidence-based clinical content throughout the enterprise at the point-of-care. With a paper-based system it was difficult to ensure that current information was received and was being used in practice. With electronic information systems multiple applications were supplying similar, but different, vendor-licensed and locally-developed content. These issues influenced the consistency of clinical practice within the enterprise, jeopardized patient and clinician safety, and exposed the enterprise and its employees to potential financial penalties. In response to these issues Intermountain is developing a knowledge management infrastructure providing tools and services to support clinical content development, deployment, maintenance, and communication. The Intermountain knowledge management philosophy includes strategies guiding clinicians and consumers of health information to relevant best practice information with the intention of changing behaviors. This paper presents three case studies describing different information management problems identified within Intermountain, methods used to solve the problems, implementation challenges, and the current status of each project.

Decision Support Systems, Clinical↗

PubMed2005

KAT: a flexible XML-based knowledge authoring environment.

As part of an enterprise effort to develop new clinical information systems at Intermountain Health Care, the authors have built a knowledge authoring tool that facilitates the development and refinement of medical knowledge content. At present, users of the application can compose order sets and an assortment of other structured clinical knowledge documents based on XML schemas. The flexible nature of the application allows the immediate authoring of new types of documents once an appropriate XML schema and accompanying Web form have been developed and stored in a shared repository. The need for a knowledge acquisition tool stems largely from the desire for medical practitioners to be able to write their own content for use within clinical applications. We hypothesize that medical knowledge content for clinical use can be successfully created and maintained through XML-based document frameworks containing structured and coded knowledge.

Artificial Intelligence↗

PubMed2005

An XML model that enables the development of complex order sets by clinical experts.

Medication errors are significant and well-known problems in health care. Despite the evidence supporting the use of computerized physician order entering (CPOE) to help reduce medication errors, only a small number of hospitals in the U.S. have successfully implemented a CPOE system. Different authors have indicated that the utilization of order sets derived from best-practice standards can reduce medication errors and improve physicians' acceptance of CPOE systems. However, a variety of issues related to the development and continuous maintenance of best-practice order sets still need to be understood. This paper presents a model that supports an order set development process driven by clinical experts. Model requirements and details are presented and discussed.

Computer Simulation↗

PubMed2005

Customized document validation to support a flexible XML-based knowledge management framework.

This paper describes a validation architecture used within Intermountain Health Care's Clinical Knowledge Repository (CKR). The architecture provides additional functionality that complements XML Schema validation, producing user-friendly error messages and enabling validation rules reuse. The validation architecture helps document authors to fix their own errors. As a result, less than 1% of all documents in the CKR are considered invalid.

Information Management↗

PubMed2005

Development and validation of XML-based calculations within order sets.

We have developed two XML Schemas to support the implementation of calculations within XML-based order sets. The models support the representation of variable-based algorithms and include data elements designed to support ancillary functions such as input range checking, rounding, and minimum/maximum value constraints. Two clinicians successfully authored 57 unique calculated orders derived from a set of 11 calculations using the models within our authoring environment. The resultant knowledge base content was subsequently tested and found to produce the desired results within the electronic physician order entry environment.

Algorithms↗

PubMed2003

Application of an XML-based document framework to knowledge content authoring and clinical information system development.

The role of XML in health care is evolving rapidly. Coupled with other W3C standards, informaticists can design systems that may be used not only for storage and retrieval of structured knowledge, but also for quick transformation of such knowledge into many different usable formats. At Intermountain Health Care, we are currently developing an XML-based document framework to accommodate both the capture of structured knowledge as well as its transformation into several usable formats. Our objective relies upon the premise that information systems can be implemented using workflows based on structured documents.

Artificial Intelligence↗