Legal aspects of data protection in medical informatics.
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Computer Security↗
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Results for “Medical Informatics Computing”
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Medical libraries and computers. The role of medical libraries in medical informatics.
The classic function of health sciences libraries is to build and maintain a knowledge base and to provide timely access to that collective memory for the purpose of learning, teaching, caring for patients, conducting research or managing an organization. The formats and representation of that knowledge base are changing rapidly, as are the methods and techniques for gaining access to information. Medical libraries have long used computers for cataloging and controlling records but are now shifting to acquiring, managing and distributing bibliographic and full-text information to local library "networks."
Computer Communication Networks↗
On medical informatics.
This paper summarizes the author's point of view of defining medical informatics, to stimulate further discussions on how this "newly emerging discipline" should further proceed. We realize that the term "informatics" is related rather to the term "information science" than to "computer science". Accordingly, medical informatics deals with the systematic processing of information in medicine. Many information systems in medicine are interrelated and can hardly be regarded as independent systems. As a result, medicine becomes gradually more an "empirical science of extreme complexity". Because of its complexity and wide range of applications, medical informatics should be considered as a separate discipline, its aim being to contribute to the systematic processing of information in medicine. The contribution of medical informatics should be a better understanding of the human being and means for the provision of high quality patient care.
Electronic Data Processing↗
Commentary on Reinhold Haux: aims and tasks of medical informatics.
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Computer Communication Networks↗
IPHIE: an International Partnership in Health Informatics Education.
Medical informatics contributes significantly to high quality and efficient health care and medical research. The need for well educated professionals in the field of medical informatics therefore is now worldwide recognized. Students of medicine, computer science/informatics are educated in the field of medical informatics and dedicated curricula on medical informatics have emerged. To advance and further develop the beneficial role of medical informatics in the medical field, an international orientation of health and medical informatics students seems an indispensable part of their training. An international orientation and education of medical informatics students may help to accelerate the dissemination of acquired knowledge and skills in the field and the promotion of medical informatics research results on a more global level. Some years ago, the departments of medical informatics of the university of Heidelberg/university of applied sciences Heilbronn and the university of Amsterdam decided to co-operate in the field of medical informatics. Now, this co-operation has grown out to an International Partnership of Health Informatics Education (IPHIE) of 5 universities, i.e. the university of Heidelberg, the university of Heilbronn, the university of Minnesota, the university of Utah and the university of Amsterdam. This paper presents the rationale behind this international partnership, the state of the art of the co-operation and our future plans for expanding this international co-operation.
Curriculum↗
Continuous quality improvement and medical informatics: the convergent synergy.
Continuous quality improvement (CQI) and medical informatics specialists need to converge their efforts to create synergy for improving health care. Health care CQI needs medical informatics' expertise and technology to build the information systems needed to manage health care organizations according to quality improvement principles. Medical informatics needs CQI's philosophy and methods to build health care information systems that can evolve to meet the changing needs of clinicians and other stakeholders. This paper explores the philosophical basis for convergence of CQI and medical informatics efforts, and then examines a clinical computer workstation development project that is applying a combined approach.
Computer Security↗
Computer education: attitudes and opinions of first-year medical students.
Students' attitudes toward medical informatics were evaluated with self-administered questionnaires, answered by 140 (77%) first-year medical and dental students. Fourteen per cent classified their computer literacy as negligible and 49% as deficient. Ninety-six per cent had used a computer before and 59% used one regularly. Nineteen per cent had computer education in secondary school and a further 16% attended courses given by a computer company. Only 16% read regularly about informatics. These results are similar to those observed in more industrialized countries, except that high-school education is more deficient. To 93% of these students, computer literacy is important for doctors, and to 85% computers may be very useful in many areas of health care. In the opinion of 66% of students, the computer-based patient record will be available within the next 3 to 10 years. Women showed lesser computer literacy (77% computer illiteracy to 39% in men), but there were no relevant differences in attitudes, behaviour and beliefs towards medical informatics between gender, for the same level of computer literacy. Computer education in the undergraduate curriculum was demanded by 92%, and 75% of these preferred an elective course. Weekly hours suggested for lectures should be 1 (54%) or 2 (42%), and for hands-on practice 2 (54%) or 4 (31%) hours. The curriculum should include medical applications (83% of students), information science theory and technology (44%), micro-informatics (44%), bibliographic database search (27%), programming languages (23%) and statistical packages (23%). Gender, computer literacy or course did not correlate significantly with students' opinions about the contents of undergraduate education.
Attitude of Health Personnel↗
Neural computation in medicine.
During the last decade there has been a great revival of interest in neural modelling. Powerful new computational methods have resulted from work in this area and are being applied to an increasing range of medical problems. This paper briefly explains the nature of a neural model and then reviews work in neural computation involving problems in medical informatics (e.g. expert systems) and modelling of psychiatric and neurological phenomena. The state of the art is assessed, and speculation about future developments is given.
Medical Informatics↗
[The development of resources in informatics, computer technology and management automation in the medical service of the armed forces of the main NATO-block countries].
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Computer Systems↗
Probabilistic graphical models for computational biomedicine.
BACKGROUND: As genomics becomes increasingly relevant to medicine, medical informatics and bioinformatics are gradually converging into a larger field that we call computational biomedicine. OBJECTIVES: Developing a computational framework that is common to the different disciplines that compose computational biomedicine will be a major enabler of the further development and integration of this research domain. METHODS: Probabilistic graphical models such as Hidden Markov Models, belief networks, and missing-data models together with computational methods such as dynamic programming, Expectation-Maximization, data-augmentation Gibbs sampling, and the Metropolis-Hastings algorithm provide the tools for an integrated probabilistic approach to computational biomedicine. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: We show how graphical models have already found a broad application in different fields composing computational biomedicine. We also indicate several challenges that lie at the interface between medical informatics, statistical genomics, and bioinformatics. We also argue that graphical models offer a unified framework making it possible to integrate in a statistically meaningful way multiple models ranging from the molecular level to cellular and to clinical levels. Because of their versatility and firm statistical underpinning, we assert that probabilistic graphical models can serve as the lingua franca for many computationally intensive approaches to biology and medicine. As such, graphical models should be a foundation of the curriculum of students in these fields. From such a foundation, students could then build towards specific computational methods in medical informatics, medical image analysis, statistical genetics, or bioinformatics while keeping the communication open between these areas.
Computational Biology↗
Impact of medical informatics on medical education.
In recent years, medical informatics has become a well-recognized branch of medicine. It is a multidisciplinary science that combines information technology and various specialties of medicine. The impact of medical informatics on medical education is advancing along with the rapid developments in computer science. Departments of medical informatics or similar divisions have appeared in schools of medicine in Taiwan in the past 5 years. At National Taiwan University College of Medicine, we offer curricula in basic computer concepts, network concepts, operating systems, word processing, database and data processing, computer media resources, multimedia computer statistics, intelligent health information systems, medical diagnostic support systems, and electronic medical record systems. Distance learning has also been favorably accepted on this campus. Recently, we proposed the concept of a virtual medical campus, which will break the physical barriers of time and space. We expect this revolution to influence every aspect of medicine, especially medical education.
Education, Medical↗
The challenge of ubiquitous computing in health care: technology, concepts and solutions. Findings from the IMIA Yearbook of Medical Informatics 2005.
OBJECTIVES: To review recent research efforts in the field of ubiquitous computing in health care. To identify current research trends and further challenges for medical informatics. METHODS: Analysis of the contents of the Yearbook on Medical Informatics 2005 of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA). RESULTS: The Yearbook of Medical Informatics 2005 includes 34 original papers selected from 22 peer-reviewed scientific journals related to several distinct research areas: health and clinical management, patient records, health information systems, medical signal processing and biomedical imaging, decision support, knowledge representation and management, education and consumer informatics as well as bioinformatics. A special section on ubiquitous health care systems is devoted to recent developments in the application of ubiquitous computing in health care. Besides additional synoptical reviews of each of the sections the Yearbook includes invited reviews concerning E-Health strategies, primary care informatics and wearable healthcare. CONCLUSIONS: Several publications demonstrate the potential of ubiquitous computing to enhance effectiveness of health services delivery and organization. But ubiquitous computing is also a societal challenge, caused by the surrounding but unobtrusive character of this technology. Contributions from nearly all of the established sub-disciplines of medical informatics are demanded to turn the visions of this promising new research field into reality.
Biomedical Technology↗
Evaluating black-boxes as medical decision aids: issues arising from a study of neural networks.
The rigorous evaluation of medical decision aids will be critical to promoting their development, establishing their clinical value and legalizing their use. Many decision aids are transparent in the sense that their internal structure and function can be examined and verified. Some decision aids, however, use complex models of associations in training data to construct 'black-box' systems whose workings are largely impenetrable and inexplicable. The issues surrounding the evaluation of such systems, as exemplified by connectionist (neural network) models, are discussed. For such systems the two major aspects that can be evaluated are the training data from which the system is derived, and its performance on test data. A number of questions about the use of black-box systems as medical decision aids are posed which require consideration by the medical informatics community.
Diagnosis, Computer-Assisted↗
[Modern methods of medical informatics in pediatric science and practice].
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Child↗
Hypermedia and randomized algorithms for medical expert systems.
KNET is an environment for constructing probabilistic, knowledge-intensive systems within the axiomatic framework of decision theory. The KNET architecture defines a complete separation between the hypermedia user interface on the one hand, and the representation and management of expert opinion on the other. KNET offers a choice of algorithms for probabilistic inference. We and our coworkers have used KNET to build consultation systems for lymph-node pathology, bone-marrow transplantation therapy, clinical epidemiology, and alarm management in the intensive-care unit. Most important, KNET contains a randomized approximation scheme (RAS) for the difficult and almost certainly intractable problem of Bayesian inference. Our algorithm can, in many circumstances, perform efficient approximate inference in large and richly interconnected models of medical diagnosis. In this article, we describe the architecture of KNET, construct a randomized algorithm for probabilistic inference, and analyze the algorithm's performance. Finally, we characterize our algorithms' empiric behavior and explore its potential for parallel speedups. From design to implementation, then, KNET demonstrates the crucial interaction between theoretical computer science and medical informatics.
Algorithms↗
Medical informatics.
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Computer Communication Networks↗
Early assessment of medical students' clinical skills.
OBJECTIVE: To provide first-year medical students with a non-threatening, standardized, clinical-skills assessment at the end of the first year (M1CSA), and provide resources to help them build on their strengths and address any weaknesses before starting the second year. DESCRIPTION: Implemented for the first time in April 2001, the M1CSA was designed to help first-year students identify strengths and weaknesses in their developing repertoire of clinical skills. It was composed of five stations (abdominal exam, cardiovascular exam, lung exam, informed consent, social history) and a self-assessment. Each station involved working with a standardized patient (SP), and all SP encounters were videotaped so students could review their work during the self-assessment. The M1CSA was truly formative in nature; there was no passing or failing mark. To help students prepare for the abdominal, cardiovascular, and lung examinations, we distributed via Blackboard(R) an electronic copy of the same exam-skills checklists that the SPs would be using in the exam stations. To facilitate preparation for the social history and informed consent stations, we used Blackboard to provide the scenarios in advance. While students were not allowed to bring these checklists or scenario descriptions into the stations, they did know exactly what was expected. Immediately after each student encounter, SPs completed skills checklists and entered evaluative comments via computer workstations. Upon completing all five stations, students were provided with printouts of the checklists and comments, and proceeded to review their videotapes and write self-assessments indicating specific areas for improvement. Faculty members were available on-site to review portions of the videotapes, answer questions, and offer suggestions. Students also received a resource sheet, which listed faculty members and clinics where they could obtain help developing their clinical skills over the summer months. The M1CSA was designed by a clinical-skills assessment committee and refined through discussion with students. The committee was composed of all four of the first-and second-year clinical skills unit directors, as well as the Patient, Physician & Society course coordinator, the associate dean for medical informatics and computer-assisted learning, the two staff members of Northwestern's Clinical Education and Evaluation Center, the office of medical education's director of evaluation, and the associate dean for education (ex-officio). Students evaluated this first iteration of the M1CSA very positively, and provided useful feedback for making specific improvements. DISCUSSION: The primary motivation for implementing the M1CSA was the fact that, over the past several years, many students reported starting the second year with considerable uncertainty about their clinical skills. The M1CSA was designed to offer a standardized inventory of students' proficiencies, and to encourage continued development in anticipation of working with real patients in the second year. The content reflects a broad view of clinical skills, encompassing communication and ethics, as well as the physical examination. The formative nature of the M1CSA complements the long-standing M2CSA, which is summative (i.e., students must demonstrate proficiency before beginning clerkships).
Clinical Competence↗
Human aspects of medical computer application.
Most of the research activities in the field of medical informatics are directed toward technological-technical problems. Human factors of computer use are often a neglected topic. Even the application of the tiniest microcomputer embedded in a medical diagnostic equipment may pose user acceptance and motivation problems but to mention larger scale hospital information systems. In this paper the author presents some aspects of the human-computer interaction problems in a medicinal computer application setting.
Attitude to Computers↗