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Finding documents on the World Wide Web relevant to a specific medical information need can be difficult. The goal of this work is to define a set of document content description tags, or metadata encodings, that can be used to promote disciplined search access to Internet medical documents.

Two of the greatest obstacles to the implementation of the standardized electronic medical record are physician and staff acceptance and the development of a complete standardized medical vocabulary. Physicians have found the familiar desktop computer environment cumbersome in the examination room and the coding and hierarchic structure of existing vocabulary inadequate. The author recommends the use of digital ink, the graphic form of the pen computer, in telephone messaging and [...]

Clinical practice guidelines must be implemented effectively if they are to influence the behavior of clinicians. The authors describe a model for computer-based guideline implementation that identifies eight information management services needed to integrate guideline-based decision support with clinical workflow. Recommendation services determine appropriate activities in specific clinical circumstances. Documentation services involve data capture. Registration services integrate demographic and administrative data. Explanation services enhance the credibility of automated recommendations by [...]

To support clinically relevant indexing of biomedical images and image-related information based on the attributes of image acquisition procedures and the judgments (observations) expressed by observers in the process of image interpretation.

Disaster management utilizes diverse technologies to accomplish a complex set of tasks. Despite a decade of experience, few published reports have reviewed application of telemedicine (clinical care at a distance enabled by telecommunication) in disaster situations. Appropriate new telemedicine applications can improve future disaster medicine outcomes, based on lessons learned from a decade of civilian and military disaster (wide-area) telemedicine deployments. This manuscript reviews the history of telemedicine activities in [...]

By the year 2008, a major reorganization of health care services in the United States will have evolved from the solo- and group-practice models of the 1940s, with fee-for-service and insurer-indemnification financing and paper-based information systems, to nationwide managed care plans employing enhanced computer-based information systems.

Vancomycin-resistant enterococci represent an increasingly important cause of nosocomial infections. Minimizing vancomycin use represents a key strategy in preventing the spread of these infections.

Health care in the United States has become an information-intensive industry, yet electronic health records represent patient data inconsistently for lack of clinical data standards. Classifications that have achieved common acceptance, such as the ICD-9-CM or ICD, aggregate heterogeneous patients into broad categories, which preclude their practical use in decision support, development of refined guidelines, or detailed comparison of patient outcomes or benchmarks. This document proposes a framework for the [...]