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Asthma is a common condition associated with significant patient morbidity and health care costs. Although widely accepted evidence-based guidelines for asthma management exist, unnecessary variation in patient care remains. Application of biomedical informatics techniques is one potential way to improve care for asthmatic patients. We performed a systematic literature review to identify computerized applications for clinical asthma care. Studies were evaluated for their clinical domain, developmental stage and study design [...]

The development and application of data-driven decision-support systems for medical triage, diagnostics, and prognostics pose special requirements on physiologic data. In particular, that data are reliable in order to produce meaningful results. The authors describe a method that automatically estimates the reliability of reference heart rates (HRr) derived from electrocardiogram (ECG) waveforms and photoplethysmogram (PPG) waveforms recorded by vital-signs monitors. The reliability is quantitatively expressed through a quality index (QI) [...]

Health care provides many opportunities in which the sharing of data between independent sites is highly desirable. Several standards are required to produce the functional and semantic interoperability necessary to support the exchange of such data: a common reference information model, a common set of data elements, a common terminology, common data structures, and a common transport standard. This paper addresses one component of that set of standards: the ability [...]

Multidisciplinary rounds (MDR) have become important mechanisms for communication and coordination of care. To guide design of tools supporting MDR, we reviewed the literature published from 1990 to 2005 about MDR on information tools used, information needs, impact of information tools, and evaluation measures. Fifty-one papers met inclusion criteria and were included. In addition to patient-centric information tools (e.g., medical chart) and decision-support tools (e.g., clinical pathway), process-oriented tools (e.g [...]

Massachusetts payers and providers have encouraged clinician usage of e-Prescribing technology to improve patient safety, enhance office practice efficiencies, and reduce medical costs. This report describes three early pilot e-Prescribing projects as case studies. These projects identified the e-Prescribing needs of clinicians, illustrated key issues that made implementation difficult, and clarified the impact of various types of functionality. The authors identified ten key barriers: (1) previous negative technology experiences, (2) [...]

In the context of an inpatient care provider order entry (CPOE) system, to evaluate the impact of a decision support tool on integration of cardiology "best of care" order sets into clinicians' admission workflow, and on quality measures for the management of acute myocardial infarction (AMI) patients.

This paper illustrates the use of biometrics through the application of an iris-based biometrics system for identifying twins and their parents in a longitudinal research study. It explores the use of biometrics (science of measuring physical or anatomical characteristics of individuals) as a technology for correct identification of individuals during longitudinal studies to help ensure data fidelity. Examples of these circumstances include longitudinal epidemiological and genetic studies, clinical trials, and [...]

Many computerized physician order entry (CPOE) systems have integrated drug safety alerts. The authors reviewed the literature on physician response to drug safety alerts and interpreted the results using Reason's framework of accident causation. In total, 17 papers met the inclusion criteria. Drug safety alerts are overridden by clinicians in 49% to 96% of cases. Alert overriding may often be justified and adverse drug events due to overridden alerts are [...]

To develop and evaluate the acceptability and use of an integrated electronic prescribing and drug management system (MOXXI) for primary care physicians.