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Given the slow adoption of medical informatics in Hong Kong and Asia, we sought to understand the contributory barriers and potential incentives associated with information technology implementation.

A multipoint videoconference was webcast live to an audience who could communicate with conference panelists and each other via chat. The videoconference, webcast, and chat were done entirely over the Internet. Seven panelists at four conference sites that had Internet2 connectivity and were located in different time zones within the continental United States discussed the topic of "Evaluating Health Professions Education and Information Resources on the Web." This discussion was [...]

The Health Insurance Privacy and Portability Act (HIPPA) stipulates that patients must be permitted to review and amend their medical records. As information technology makes medical records more accessible to patients, it may become more commonplace for patients to review their records routinely. This article analyzes the potential benefits and drawbacks of facilitating patient access to the medical record by reviewing previously published research. Previous research includes analysis of clinical [...]

The documentation of the nursing process is an important but often neglected part of clinical documentation. Paper-based systems have been introduced to support nursing process documentation. Frequently, however, problems such as low quality of documentation are reported. It is unclear whether computer-based documentation systems can reduce these problems and which factors influence their acceptance by users.

To identify key features contributing to trainees' development of expertise in microscopic pathology diagnosis, a complex visual task, and to provide new insights to help create computer-based training systems in pathology.

Limited information is available on personal digital assistant (PDA) use patterns in medical settings. Recognizing that use patterns may be important considerations for development of handheld-based information systems, the authors characterized PDA use at their institution. A survey was mailed to all internal medicine physicians at the Mayo Clinic, Rochester, Minnesota, in May 2002. PDA use prevalence, user demographics, hardware preferences, and work setting and application use frequencies were assessed [...]

Few previous studies evaluating the benefits of diagnostic decision support systems have simultaneously measured changes in diagnostic quality and clinical management prompted by use of the system. This report describes a reliable and valid scoring technique to measure the quality of clinical decision plans in an acute medical setting, where diagnostic decision support tools might prove most useful.

Medical error reporting systems are important information sources for designing strategies to improve the safety of health care. Applied Strategies for Improving Patient Safety (ASIPS) is a multi-institutional, practice-based research project that collects and analyzes data on primary care medical errors and develops interventions to reduce error. The voluntary ASIPS Patient Safety Reporting System captures anonymous and confidential reports of medical errors. Confidential reports, which are quickly de-identified, provide better [...]