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At least 253 records · Page 14Linked to original sources

Assessing the effectiveness of a computerized blood order "consultation" system.

To optimize blood ordering and accurately assess transfusion practice, in 1987, an "on line" computerized, knowledge-based, blood order critiquing system was integrated into the HELP Hospital Information System (HIS) at LDS Hospital. Evaluations of the computerized ordering system demonstrated its benefits and limitations on transfusion practice. Based on this experience, a second generation blood ordering system using a consultation mode was developed. A pilot test of this blood order consultant system, using historical data in the HELP system's database, was performed. This pilot test demonstrated that the consultation system provided accurate recommendations for red blood cell (RBC) and platelet orders. Comparing the appropriateness of blood orders with the recommendations made by the director of the blood bank, the orders recommended by the computer "consultant" agreed 95.5% of the time. The computer consultation system also recommended fewer RBC units for transfusion. Preliminary results obtained using the consultant approach suggest that we may be able to simplify blood ordering practice and also reduce the number of units of blood products ordered. Based on these findings we are now preparing to compare the "critiquing" and "consultation" approaches using a clinical trial.

Artificial Intelligence

Intelligent management of epidemiologic data.

In the lifecycle of epidemiologic data three steps can be identified: production, interpretation and exploitation for decision. Computerized support can be precious, if not indispensable, at any of the three levels, therefore several epidemiologic data management systems were developed. In this paper we focus on intelligent management of epidemiologic data, where intelligence is needed in order to analyze trends or to compare observed with reference value and possibly detect abnormalities. After having outlined the problems involved in such a task, we show the features of ADAMS, a system realized to manage aggregated data and implemented in a personal computer environment.

Artificial Intelligence

Evaluation of an SQL model of the HELP patient database.

We tested a new model of the HELP patient database that makes use of relational tables to store patient data and provides access to data using SQL (Structured Query Language). The SQL database required more storage space and had many more physical records than the HELP database, but it was faster and more efficient in storing data than the standard HELP utilities. The HELP utilities used disk space more efficiently and were faster than the SQL tools when retrieving data for typical clinical reports. However, the SQL model provides networking capabilities, general report writing tools, detailed user documentation, and an ability for creating secondary indexes that offset its poorer performance.

Database Management Systems

Dissemination, standardization and user-flexibility in implementing TOMRs for cardiology.

A great many clinics are interested in using software programs in daily practice. We report on the construction of a time oriented medical record unit (TOMRU). It runs on MS-DOS personal computers. TOMRU handles the follow-up data of ambulatory patients. Of the possible database customizations allowed by TOMRU, the cardiology patient database (TOMRU/C) and hypertensive patient database (TOMRU/H) were developed and are described here. Customizing TOMRU should in any case be left to an expert user, in charge of database management. The clinical information to be included in the customizations was obtained by discussing the needs of and obtaining the consensus of clinical practitioners. TOMRU/C was handed over to some hundreds of clinical centres during the computerized itinerant courses held to train users.

Ambulatory Care Information Systems

Design considerations of CareWindows, a Windows 3.0-based graphical front end to a Medical Information Management System using a pass-through-requester architecture.

The Care Windows development project demonstrated the feasibility of an approach designed to add the benefits of an event-driven, graphically-oriented user interface to an existing Medical Information Management System (MIMS) without overstepping economic and logistic constraints. The design solution selected for the Care Windows project incorporates three important design features: (1) the effective de-coupling of severs from requesters, permitting the use of an extensive pre-existing library of MIMS servers, (2) the off-loading of program control functions of the requesters to the workstation processor, reducing the load per transaction on central resources and permitting the use of object-oriented development environments available for microcomputers, (3) the selection of a low end, GUI-capable workstation consisting of a PC-compatible personal computer running Microsoft Windows 3.0, and (4) the development of a highly layered, modular workstation application, permitting the development of interchangeable modules to insure portability and adaptability.

Academic Medical Centers

Implementing the Medical Desktop: tools for the integration of independent information resources.

The increasing availability of medical information resources has moved the "Medical Desktop" from a theoretical construct to a practical necessity. Many micro-computers are becoming available in clinical and academic settings that can access several medical information applications. These computers are usually not powerful workstations that are part of a clinically oriented information support system, but are personal computers with varied capabilities. The applications on these computers come from different sources, are accessed through different user interfaces and do not share data well. The de facto "Medical Desktop" this situation presents will discourage most end-users because the combination of applications is complex, the applications are poorly integrated, and individual applications are inconsistent. At the State University of New York at Buffalo School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences we have developed several Microsoft Windows-based tools that accept a systems level diversity of resources, but work toward the construction of a coherent "Medical Desktop." These tools include a lexical term linker, a resource database, and a context sensitive help system that is tailored to locally available resources.

Databases, Factual

Casebook: a system for tracking clinical encounters.

Casebook is a clinically oriented database, written in MUMPS, and designed for recording the clinical encounters of medical students at Harvard Medical School. Its main goals are to 1) increase student use of computer technology, 2) help faculty evaluate the diversity of clinical experiences on their service, 3) provide data to the faculty on the "typical" experience of medical students on their service to aid in the evaluation of the curriculum and, 4) provide report-generation capabilities for the students to improve dialog with their preceptors. Students are able to enter information on "Problems" and "Procedures" selecting from a pop-up menu of medical terms or by entering free text. Casebook is currently in use in the Medicine, OB/GYN, Pediatric and Ambulatory rotations. At sites where the faculty take an active interest in the use of Casebook students perceive it to be valuable and subsequently use it more frequently. It is currently being expanded for use by medical students in their second, third, and fourth years of school.

Attitude to Computers

A multimedia Anatomy Browser incorporating a knowledge base and 3D images.

We describe a multimedia program for teaching anatomy. The program, called the Anatomy Browser, displays cross-sectional and topographical images, with outlines around structures and regions of interest. The user may point to these structures and retrieve text descriptions, view symbolic relationships between structures, or view spatial relationships by accessing 3-D graphics animations from videodiscs produced specifically for this program. The software also helps students exercise what they have learned by asking them to identify structures by name and location. The program is implemented in a client-server architecture, with the user interface residing on a Macintosh, while images, data, and a growing symbolic knowledge base of anatomy are stored on a fileserver. This architecture allows us to develop practical tutorial modules that are in current use, while at the same time developing the knowledge base that will lead to more intelligent tutorial systems.

Anatomy

Assessing and enhancing the value of the UMLS Knowledge Sources.

The goal of the UMLS Project is to give practitioners and researchers easy access to machine-readable information from diverse sources. Assessment of the first experimental versions of the UMLS Knowledge Sources is essential to measuring progress toward that goal and to identifying needed enhancements. As of July 30, 1991, copies of the first edition of the UMLS Knowledge Sources had been distributed to 143 individuals and institutions; 66 had provided initial feedback information. The information received indicates that the UMLS Knowledge Sources will undergo broad testing in the patient care, medical education, library service, and product development environments. Preliminary data support the hypothesis that expanded coverage of routine clinical concepts is needed. Key enhancements planned for 1992 and beyond include expanded coverage of ICD-9-CM and CPT.

National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

A graphical ICU workstation.

A workstation designed to facilitate electronic charting in the intensive care unit is described. The system design incorporates a graphical, windows-based user interface. The system captures all data formerly recorded on the paper flowsheet including direct patient measurements, nursing assessment, patient care procedures, and nursing notes. It has the ability to represent charted data in a variety of graphical formats, thereby providing additional insights to facilitate the management of the critically ill patient. Initial nursing evaluation is described.

Attitude of Health Personnel

Modelling work practices: input to the design of a physician's workstation.

To ensure tight coupling between users' work practices and the system's model of these practices, designers need methods to generate accurate descriptions of what users actually do. This paper illustrates how we model physicians' information needs and translate knowledge about these needs into design specifications.

Artificial Intelligence

Broadening our approach to evaluating medical information systems.

Evaluation in medical informatics tends to follow the paradigm of controlled clinical trials. This model carries with it a number of assumptions whose implications for medical informatics deserve examination. In this paper, we describe the conventional wisdom on evaluation, pointing out some of its underlying assumptions and suggesting that these assumptions are problematic when applied to some aspects of evaluation. In particular, we believe that these assumptions contribute to the problem of user acceptance. We then suggest a broader approach to evaluation, offering some conceptual and methodological distinctions that we believe will be of use to the medical informatics community in rethinking this issue.

Bias

Information retrieval using a "digital book shelf".

WALT (Washington University's Approach to Lots of Text), is a prototype interface designed to support information retrieval research. The WALT interface serves as a "front end" to a wide array of retrieval engines including those based on Boolean retrieval, latent semantic indexing, term frequency--inverse document frequency, and Bayesian inference techniques. The WALT interface is composed of seven distinct components: a document examination component known as the Document Browsing Area; four navigation components called the Book Shelf, the Book Spine, the Table of Contents, and the Path Clipboard; a term-based information retrieval component called Control Panel; and a relevance feedback component known as the Reader Feedback Panel. WALT's most unique feature may be it's use of "book shelf" and "book spine" metaphors both to facilitate navigation and to provide a histogram-based display showing documents deemed appropriate for answering user queries.

Books

The design of a user interface for a ventilator-management advisor.

The lack of user acceptance for many medical decision-support systems should force medical software developers to rethink strategies for user interaction with decision-support programs. Participatory design is an emerging method for the development for computer applications that emphasizes user involvement in both the design and implementation phases. We have applied participatory design to the development of a user interface for VentPlan, an application that assists physicians in the management of artificial respiration of critically ill patients. In this paper, we present a case history of the participatory design process and describe the resulting interface for the VentPlan program. As a result of applying participatory design ideas, we gained insight as to how to implement VentPlan more effectively.

Critical Care

Increasing physician acceptance and use of the computerized ambulatory medical record.

Because physicians have been reluctant to accept computerized medical records systems, we sought to identify the barriers to acceptance and redesigned our ambulatory records system accordingly. We identified several problems physicians encounter in using our computerized medical record system (COSTAR), including physicians' hesitation to use a computer in front of their patients, physicians' poor keyboard skills, and the structural organization of the computerized medical record. We formed a users group to educate users and the group has helped identify solutions to these problems. We equipped the exam room terminals with a user-friendly, patient-specific menu. We created a new physician interface for COSTAR that was organized to function similarly to a patient's chart and features user-friendly menus that provide cues to the unsophisticated user. Physician use of exam room terminals tripled after the installation of the exam room menu. The new physician interface doubled physician use of COSTAR's scheduling features. Acceptance of the new interface as gauged by a user survey was excellent, with the majority stating it improved their patient care.

Academic Medical Centers

A patient care workstation based on user centred design and a formal theory of medical terminology: PEN&PAD and the SMK formalism.

The PEN & PAD clinical workstation is for use by clinicians for direct patient care. It is based on a highly structured and detailed medical record but is intended to be simple and intuitive to use, allowing clinicians to summarise and view information in many ways, and quickly enter information through structured forms. It also provides mechanisms for tailoring the system to individual users without compromising its overall integrity. This has been achieved by following a process of user centred design and by developing a novel formalism, Structured Meta Knowledge, to represent the terminological knowledge, the medical record, and pragmatic knowledge about clinical practice.

Ambulatory Care Information Systems

An interactive report generator for bone scan studies.

An interactive report generator for bone scintigraphy will be demonstrated. It comprises a controlled reporting vocabulary, an adaptive user interface, and a text generator. The controlled vocabulary represents the relevant concepts for bone scan reports: anatomical sites, scintigraphical phenomena, and diagnoses, and various attributes for these concept domains. Within the vocabulary selectional constraints are defined that restricts to meaningful combination of concepts. The interface provides intelligent views on the vocabulary, and presents only those terms that are relevant in a certain context. Through the interface the user may choose appropriate terms and combine them to complex findings. A German text generator for a restricted finding language transforms the entered data into morpho-syntactic surface structures and produces acceptable reports.

Bone and Bones

Incorporating client-server database architecture and graphical user interface into outpatient medical records.

Computerized medical record systems require structured database architectures for information processing. However, the data must be able to be transferred across heterogeneous platform and software systems. Client-Server architecture allows for distributive processing of information among networked computers and provides the flexibility needed to link diverse systems together effectively. We have incorporated this client-server model with a graphical user interface into an outpatient medical record system, known as SuperChart, for the Department of Family Medicine at SUNY Health Science Center at Syracuse. SuperChart was developed using SuperCard and Oracle SuperCard uses modern object-oriented programming to support a hypermedia environment. Oracle is a powerful relational database management system that incorporates a client-server architecture. This provides both a distributed database and distributed processing which improves performance.

Ambulatory Care Information Systems