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Medicine in the 21st century: global problems, global solutions.

OBJECTIVES: To discuss application areas of information technology in medicine and health care on the occasion of the opening of the Private Universität für Medizinische Informatik und Technik Tirol/University for Health Informatics and Technology Tyrol (UMIT) at Innsbruck, Tyrol, Austria. RESULTS AND CONCLUSIONS: Important application areas of information technology in medicine and health are appropriate individual access to medical knowledge, new engineering developments such as new radiant imaging methods and the implantable pacemaker/defibrillator devices, mathematical modeling for understanding the workings of the human body, the computer-based patient record, as well as new knowledge in molecular biology, human genetics, and biotechnology. Challenges and responsibilities for medical informatics research include medical data privacy and intellectual property rights inherent in the content of the information systems.

Confidentiality↗

European standards development in healthcare informatics: actual and future challenges.

This paper focuses on the current and future standardisation activities in CEN TC251 (European Standardisation Committee, Technical Committee on Medical Informatics). The progress of the Committee's standards development is summarized per working group. The main challenges of the next years are enumerated: coordination across working groups and project teams, quality management, and international harmonisation (especially with the USA).

Accreditation↗

Harnessing and controlling the information deluge.

A number of information management tools are available to assist the general practitioner to cope more readily with the deluge of information presented to them. These tools can also enable the practitioner to seek out relevant pieces of information in a timely fashion to assist with patient care.

Humans↗

Toward an informatics research agenda: key people and organizational issues.

As we have advanced in medical informatics and created many impressive innovations, we also have learned that technologic developments are not sufficient to bring the value of computer and information technologies to health care systems. This paper proposes a model for improving how we develop and deploy information technology. The authors focus on trends in people, organizational, and social issues (POI/OSI), which are becoming more complex as both health care institutions and information technologies are changing rapidly. They outline key issues and suggest high-priority research areas. One dimension of the model concerns different organizational levels at which informatics applications are used. The other dimension draws on social science disciplines for their approaches to studying implications of POI/OSI in informatics. By drawing on a wide variety of research approaches and asking questions based in social science disciplines, the authors propose a research agenda for high-priority issues, so that the challenges they see ahead for informatics may be met better.

Delivery of Health Care↗

A quantitative ranking of the Biomedical Informatics serials.

We have developed a quantitative serial ranking system based on multiple citation analysis techniques, library use statistics, expert opinion, and selected distinguishing publication characteristics. Evaluation criteria categories include: average Science Citation Index (Impact Factor, Immediacy Index, Total citations) rankings from 1987 to 1992; citation source counts of multiple "core" biomedical informatics publications; a questionnaire sent to American College of Medical Informatics Fellows; publication delay; distinguishing characteristics (e.g., subscription cost, total circulation, year established, places indexed, affiliation with a professional society, major biomedical resource library holdings); and the total number of interlibrary loan requests to the U. S. National Library of Medicine. The top serials were Computers and Biomedical Research, MD Computing, Methods of Information in Medicine, Medical Decision Making and Computers in Biology and Medicine.

Abstracting and Indexing↗

Design of a virtual reality laboratory for interdisciplinary medical application.

The Department of Medical Informatics of the University of Goettingen sets up a medical interdisciplinary Virtual Reality (VR) laboratory. The interdisciplinary approach for the design of the laboratory is based on a systematic, technical and application-orientated analysis. Its result led to the decision for a CAVE-like multi wall stereo projection (MWSP) system with networked workstation hardware. Within the boundary of an exemplary evaluation of the laboratory, its technical specifications and the validity in neuropsychological tests are supposed to be improved. Both techniques, Head Mounted Display (HMD) as well as multi wall stereo projection (MWSP) systems have a high degree of immersion. MWSP systems have a lower ratio of simulator sickness and a good visual fidelity. They can also be used as a multi-user environment. Networked workstations and high-end-computers are compared in view of their costs and possible expansibility.

Computer Simulation↗

Strategy in a fishbowl: an invitation to determine the shape of IMIA in 2015.

OBJECTIVES: The International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) today is an inclusive organization that represents the medical and health informatics world through its multiple member countries as well as affiliate, corporate and academic institutions, plus working groups and regions. The IMIA leadership deemed this is an excellent time to create a strategic alignment of IMIA's goals and in turn to create a framework of the IMIA agenda for the future. METHODS: The process began in early 2004, with a survey distributed to all IMIA members seeking members' views. The initial views were presented to the IMIA Board and General Assembly at Medinfo 2004 in San Francisco, USA. A Strategic Planning Task Force was established to take forward the development of a Strategic Plan. Through a combination of e-mail exchanges, face-to-face planning-discussion sessions in Geneva, Switzerland, and Washington DC, USA, and use of mediated conference calls, the IMIA Strategic Plan was evolved. RESULTS: The framework model (also known as the IMIA rainbow umbrella) seeks to represent, in visual and descriptive terms, the numerous possibilities for connections and integration. Knowledge is the central core of IMIA. All of our strategies, interactions and efforts, emanate from this knowledge core. Using a concentric circle model, the next circle (from the central core) represents science. This is followed by the application layer circle, then the impact layer/circle and finally the outermost circle represents the people layer. Another dimensionality of the IMIA Strategic Plan is the need to represent various key sectors. There are six sectors superimposed on the five concentric circle layers of IMIA's integration and connection to others. These sectors represent: health (our vision), research and science, behavioral responsibility, education, relationships and reach. CONCLUSION: We are still at a relatively early stage of planning. The Strategic Framework and Plan will be discussed by the IMIA Board and the IMIA General Assembly meeting (November 2006).

Data Collection↗

A consumer health informatics (CHI) toolbox: challenges and implications.

Consumer health informatics (CHI) is a rapidly evolving sub-discipline of medical informatics. Such developing fields typically share common needs, such as harmonizing terms and building a common foundation of research methods and instruments. The authors describe a pilot study to conceptualize and develop a "CHI toolbox," a repository of existing methods and instruments across relevant established fields. The challenges encountered in attempting to organize concepts in a nascent, interdisciplinary field are discussed. The authors' experiences in creating a comprehensive CHI toolbox suggest that a larger, concerted effort to develop a similar product by members of the relevant research communities could accelerate the development of common terms, operational definitions, variables, and instruments within the CHI field.

Health↗

AIM: a personal view of where I have been and where we might be going.

My own career in medical informatics and AI in medicine has oscillated between concerns with medical records and concerns with knowledge representation with decision support as a pivotal integrating issue. It has focused on using AI to organise information and reduce 'muddle' and improve the user interfaces to produce 'useful and usable systems' to help doctors with a 'humanly impossible task'. Increasingly knowledge representation and ontologies have become the fulcrum for orchestrating re-use of information and integration of systems. Encouragingly, the dilemma between computational tractability and expressiveness is lessening, and ontologies and description logics are joining the mainstream both in AI in Medicine and in Intelligent Information Management generally. It has been shown possible to scale up ontologies to meet medical needs, and increasingly ontologies are playing a key role in meeting the requirements to scale up the complexity of clinical systems to meet the ever increasing demands brought about by new emphasis on reduction of errors, clinical accountability, and the explosion of knowledge on the Web.

Artificial Intelligence↗

How the open-source development model can improve medical software.

The current system of proprietary software development for healthcare applications is inadequate to meet the needs of providers, administrators, and patients. A recent advance in the field of Internet programming is the release of large-scale software projects as "open-source". The advantages of this method of development include higher quality, lower cost, and increased adherence to established standards. There are several hurdles to be overcome before the healthcare field can take full advantage of this development model. The implementation of open-source development of medical software could greatly improve clinical and research software and elevate the academic standards of the field of medical informatics.

Copyright↗

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↗

Research opportunities and challenges in 2005.

OBJECTIVES: Biomedical informatics practice and research have become so broad that I will comment on only three areas. These are the electronic health record; prospective population studies; and interactive publications. METHODS: Review of the literature, Internet resources and material and reports generated by internal and external research projects. RESULTS: Development of an electronic health record continues to be problematic in the U.S. A number of large-scale prospective cohort studies of normal populations are now actively occurring or in planning stage in a number of countries; these present special research opportunities in biomedical informatics. Although there are engineering challenges to the implementation of interactive publications, they have the potential to enhance understanding, learning, and memory of scientific and health concepts. CONCLUSIONS: Three areas of bio-medical informatics challenge us and offer interesting and worthy research opportunities. These include the electronic health record, prospective cohort studies, and interactive publications.

Diffusion of Innovation↗

Implementing computerized physician order entry: the importance of special people.

OBJECTIVE: To articulate important lessons learned during a study to identify success factors for implementing computerized physician order entry (CPOE) in inpatient and outpatient settings. DESIGN: Qualitative study by a multidisciplinary team using data from observation, focus groups, and both formal and informal interviews. Data were analyzed using a grounded approach to develop a taxonomy of patterns and themes from the transcripts and field notes. RESULTS: The theme we call Special People is explored here in detail. A taxonomy of types of Special People includes administrative leaders, clinical leaders (champions, opinion leaders, and curmudgeons), and bridgers or support staff who interface directly with users. CONCLUSION: The recognition and nurturing of Special People should be among the highest priorities of those implementing computerized physician order entry. Their education and training must be a goal of teaching programs in health administration and medical informatics.

Focus Groups↗

[IT systems for clinical databases--status and perspectives].

Generally, the use of clinical databases for quality development in the hospital sector has not been satisfactory. A substantial problem attaches to the IT systems used hitherto. This article describes a number of requirements which the National Indicator Project has specified for a forthcoming second generation of clinical database system. Besides, the second generation system Clinical Performance Measurements which is used in the Copenhagen Hospital Corporation for several disease areas and for The Danish Vascular Registry is described. This experience emphasizes the need for central management of development initiatives within clinical quality databases. The management must allow for coordination, rational management and experience-based further development of IT systems for the clinical databases and integration with present and forthcoming systems including electronic patient record systems. The management should also allow for the decisive interaction between clinical quality development and medical informatics.

Data Collection↗

Evaluation in health informatics: social network analysis.

Social network analysis comprises a set of research methods that can be used to analyze the relationships among entities such as people, departments, and organizations. The purpose of the analysis is to discover patterns of relationships that affect both individual and organizational attitudes and behavior such as the adoption, diffusion, and use of new medical informatics applications. This paper presents an introduction to the concepts and methods of social network analysis. Several applications to health informatics are described.

Attitude↗

Integration of information literacy into a revised medical school curriculum.

The Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California's newly revised Year I-II curriculum integrates information literacy components based on the AAMC's medical informatics objectives throughout the two-year continuum. Students are required to participate in various components taught by librarians from the Norris Medical Library including (1) an information skills workshop, (2) a yearlong literature search project, and (3) an evidence-based medicine resources workshop. Critical appraisal of literature also is included in the curriculum to ensure that the students are familiar with the various research study designs. Librarians also provide resources to assist students in researching learning issues related to cases presented in the curriculum. To encourage the faculty mentors to serve as good models of information users, librarians offer brief training sessions on information resources to faculty.

California↗

On the necessity of systematically planning clinical tumor documentation.

Tumor documentation is an important task for both clinical research and patient care. Documentation systems for these purposes have to be planned systematically and should be goal oriented. We applied the method of a so-called 'standardized documentation protocol' for systematically planning two documentation systems in oncology: one for the tumor center Heidelberg/Mannheim and the other for a nationwide project in the field of documentation and therapy planning in pediatric oncology. The method proved to be helpful in both cases even though the resulting documentation protocols are completely different and although they served different objectives. Therefore, the aim of the paper is to motivate and help medical informatics professionals to systematically plan other documentation systems using this method.

Child↗