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Alerts and prompts represent promising types of decision support in electronic prescribing to tackle inadequacies in prescribing. A systematic review was conducted to evaluate the efficacy of computerized drug alerts and prompts searching EMBASE, CINHAL, MEDLINE, and PsychINFO up to May 2007. Studies assessing the impact of electronic alerts and prompts on clinicians' prescribing behavior were selected and categorized by decision support type. Most alerts and prompts (23 out of [...]

Advances in high-throughput and mass-storage technologies have led to an information explosion in both biology and medicine, presenting novel challenges for analysis and modeling. With regards to multivariate analysis techniques such as clustering, classification, and regression, large datasets present unique and often misunderstood challenges. The authors' goal is to provide a discussion of the salient problems encountered in the analysis of large datasets as they relate to modeling and inference [...]

The authors developed "DIET", a computerized system preparing dietary prescriptions in clinical settings. "DIET" has the ability to calculate the nutritional requirements and to produce daily menus of patients automatically. Also, it serves as an electronic medical and dietetic record and it can produce daily reports regarding portions, quantities and cost of meals. The authors also conducted a preliminary evaluation of the system by comparing the design of nutritional plans [...]

For the success of clinical and translational science, a seamless interoperation is required between clinical and research information technology. Addressing this need, the Michigan Clinical Research Collaboratory (MCRC) was created. The MCRC employed a standards-driven Web Services architecture to create the U-M Honest Broker, which enabled sharing of clinical and research data among medical disciplines and separate institutions. Design objectives were to facilitate sharing of data, maintain a master patient [...]

Clinical notes, typically written in natural language, often contain substructure that divides them into sections, such as "History of Present Illness" or "Family Medical History." The authors designed and evaluated an algorithm ("SecTag") to identify both labeled and unlabeled (implied) note section headers in "history and physical examination" documents ("H&P notes").

This study evaluated the performance of an electronic screening (E-screening) method and used it to recruit patients for the NIH sponsored ACCORD trial. Out of the 193 E-screened patients, 125 met the age criterion ("age>or=40"). For all of these 125 patients, the performance of E-screening was compared with investigator review. E-screening achieved a negative predictive accuracy of 100% (95% CI: 98-100%), a positive predictive accuracy of 13% (95% CI: 6-13%) [...]

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has a system-wide, patient-centric electronic medical record system (EMR) within which the authors developed the Clinical Case Registries (CCR) to support population-centric delivery and evaluation of VA medical care. To date, the authors have applied the CCR to populations with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV). Local components use diagnosis codes and laboratory test results to identify patients who may have [...]

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 devise an automated approach for integrating federated database information using database ontologies constructed from their extended metadata.

Previous reviews have examined evidence of the impact of CPOE on medication errors, but have used highly variable definitions of "error". We attempted to answer a very focused question, namely, what evidence exists that CPOE systems reduce prescribing errors among hospital inpatients? We identified 13 papers (reporting 12 studies) published between 1998 and 2007. Nine demonstrated a significant reduction in prescribing error rates for all or some drug types. Few [...]