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This paper presents a model for analysis of chronic disease prescribing action over time in terms of transitions in status of therapy as indicated in electronic prescribing records. The quality of alerts derived from these therapeutic state transitions is assessed in the context of antihypertensive prescribing.

The purpose of this review is to organize various published conceptions of health numeracy and to discuss how health numeracy contributes to the productive use of quantitative information for health. We define health numeracy as the individual-level skills needed to understand and use quantitative health information, including basic computation skills, ability to use information in documents and non-text formats such as graphs, and ability to communicate orally. We also identify [...]

Bioterrorism and emerging infectious diseases such as influenza have spurred research into rapid outbreak detection. One primary thrust of this research has been to identify data sources that provide early indication of a disease outbreak by being leading indicators relative to other established data sources. Researchers tend to rely on the sample cross-correlation function (CCF) to quantify the association between two data sources. There has been, however, little consideration by [...]

Data sparsity and schema evolution issues affecting clinical informatics and bioinformatics communities have led to the adoption of vertical or object-attribute-value-based database schemas to overcome limitations posed when using conventional relational database technology. This paper explores these issues and discusses why biomedical data are difficult to model using conventional relational techniques. The authors propose a solution to these obstacles based on a relational database engine using a sparse, column-store architecture [...]

The distinction between authorship and other forms of credit for contribution to a publication has been a persisting controversy that has resulted in numerous guidelines outlining the expected contributions of those claiming authorship. While there have been flagrant, well-publicized deviations from widely accepted standards, they are largely outnumbered by cases that are not publicity-worthy, and therefore remain known to only those directly involved with the inappropriate conduct. We discuss the [...]

This study sought to define a scalable architecture to support the National Health Information Network (NHIN). This architecture must concurrently support a wide range of public health, research, and clinical care activities.

This study sought to determine whether a computerized tool that alerted pharmacists when pregnant patients were prescribed U.S. Food and Drug Administration pregnancy risk category D or X medications was effective in decreasing dispensings of these medications.

The use of health information technology (HIT) for the support of communication processes and data and information access in acute care settings is a relatively new phenomenon. A means of evaluating the impact of HIT in hospital settings is needed. The purpose of this research was to design and psychometrically evaluate the Impact of Health Information Technology scale (I-HIT). I-HIT was designed to measure the perception of nurses regarding the [...]

The anonymization of medical records is of great importance in the human life sciences because a de-identified text can be made publicly available for non-hospital researchers as well, to facilitate research on human diseases. Here the authors have developed a de-identification model that can successfully remove personal health information (PHI) from discharge records to make them conform to the guidelines of the Health Information Portability and Accountability Act.