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The Read Thesaurus (Version 3 of the Read Codes) is a controlled medical vocabulary produced during the Clinical Terms Projects with the involvement of over 2,000 health care professionals from all United Kingdom specialties. In addition to allowing the transfer of clinical information in a meaningful way, it supports analysis of this information and provides a basis for the development of shareable medical knowledge bases. The thesaurus includes a comprehensive [...]

Telemedicine is being used by physicians at the member hospitals of the Jefferson Cancer Network (JCN) for consultations regarding the diagnosis and management of cancer patients. The technology employed for this telemedicine system was chosen to meet three related specifications: low capital and operating cost, internal maintainability by community hospital data processing staffs, and compatibility with the existing technologic infrastructure. The solution selected is the ubiquitous desktop personal computer and [...]

The definition of health information is growing to include multimedia audio, video, and high-resolution still images. This article describes the telemedicine program at East Carolina University School of Medicine, including the telemedicine applications presently in use and the virtual reality applications currently under development' Included are the major design criteria that shape the telemedicine network some of the lessons learned in developing the network, and a discussion of the future [...]

Inappropriate utilization of diagnostic testing has been well documented. The purpose of this study was to measure the impact of presenting real time, evidence-based critiques about the appropriateness of abdominal radiograph (KUB) orders on physician decision making.

To determine the extent to which a combination of existing machine-readable health terminologies cover the concepts and terms needed for a comprehensive controlled vocabulary for health information systems by carrying out a distributed national experiment using the Internet and the UMLS Knowledge Sources, lexical programs, and server.

The Read Codes are a hierarchically-arranged controlled clinical vocabulary introduced in the early 1980s and now consisting of three maintained versions of differing complexity. The code sets are dynamic, and are updated quarterly in response to requests from users including clinicians in both primary and secondary care, software suppliers, and advice from a network of specialist healthcare professionals. The codes' continual evolution of content, both across and within versions, highlights [...]

In mid-1996, the FDA called for discussions on regulation of clinical software programs as medical devices. In response, a consortium of organizations dedicated to improving health care through information technology has developed recommendations for the responsible regulation and monitoring of clinical software systems by users, vendors, and regulatory agencies. Organizations assisting in development of recommendations, or endorsing the consortium position include the American Medical Informatics Association, the Computer-based Patient Record [...]

The World Wide Web (WWW) is a new communications medium that permits investigators to contact patients in nonmedical settings and study the effects of disease on quality of life through self-administered questionnaires. However, little is known about the feasibility and, what is more important, the validity of this approach. An on-line survey for patients with ulcerative colitis (UC) and patients whose UC had been treated with surgical procedures was developed [...]

Health care is shifting from a focus on hospital-based acute care toward prevention, promotion of wellness, and maintenance of function in community and home-based facilities. Telemedicine can facilitate this shifted focus, but the bulk of the current projects emphasize academic medical center consultations to rural hospitals. Home-based projects encounter barriers of cost and inadequate infrastructure. The 1996 Telecommunications Act as implemented by the Federal Communications commission holds out significant promise [...]