Search AMIA.org

If nurses, physicians, and health care planners knew more about patients' health-related preferences, care would most likely be cheaper, more effective, and closer to the individuals' desires. In order for patient preferences to be effectively used in the delivery of health care, it is important that patients be able to formulate and express preferences, that these judgments be made known to the clinician at the time of care, and that [...]

Clinical guidelines are heralded as a positive contribution to improving quality of care and ensuring the effectiveness of care. From the perspective of the health services researcher, the authors propose a model of how informatics can support the implementation of clinical guidelines and their integration into systems for decision support and clinical audit. Each element of the model is discussed in turn.

To study the objectives, processes, and ideologies expressed during participatory design of information systems (PDIS) in health care.

Guidelines regarding patient-provider electronic mail are presented. The intent is to provide guidance concerning computer-based communications between clinicians and patients within a contractual relationship in which the health-care provider has taken on an explicit measure of responsibility for the client's care. The guidelines address two interrelated aspects: effective interaction between the clinician and patient, and observance of medicolegal prudence. Recommendations for site-specific policy formulation are included.

The aim of the project ARIANE is to model and implement seamless, natural, and easy-to-use interfaces with various kinds of heterogeneous biomedical information databases.

Conceptualization of the physical objects and spaces that constitute the human body at the macroscopic level of organization, specified as a machine-parseable ontology that, in its human-readable form, is comprehensible to both expert and novice users of anatomical information.

To understand and address patients' need for information surrounding ambulatory-care visits.

An evaluation of Internet end-to-end performance was conducted for the purpose of better understanding the overall performance of Internet pathways typical of those used to access information in National Library of Medicine (NLM) databases and, by extension, other Internet-based biomedical information resources.