Search AMIA.org

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.

To introduce the Q-methodology research technique to the field of health informatics. Q-methodology--the systematic study of subjectivity--was used to identify and categorize the opinions of primary care physicians and medical students that contributed to our understanding of their reasons for acceptance of and/or resistance to adapting information technologies in the health care workplace.

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 [...]

Kurzweil Applied Intelligence received a research grant from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Advanced Technology Program to develop a prototype voice-enabled, structured medical reporting system. In typical usage, the physician dictates to the system, which then uses automatic speech recognition and medical knowledge bases to produce a structured report. This report can then be formatted and viewed on a computer screen, stored in databases of patient information [...]

In March of 1997, the National Research Council (NRC) of the National Academy of Sciences issued the report, "For the Record: Protecting Electronic Health Information." Concluding that the current practices at the majority of health care facilities in the United States are insufficient, the Council delineated both technical and organizational approaches to protecting electronic health information. The Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center recently implemented a proof-of-concept, Web-based, cross-institutional medical 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 [...]

Errors of omission are a common cause of systems failures. Physicians often fail to order tests or treatments needed to monitor/ameliorate the effects of other tests or treatments. The authors hypothesized that automated, guideline-based reminders to physicians, provided as they wrote orders, could reduce these omissions.

The authors provide a survey of how images are used in radiation therapy to improve the precision of radiation therapy plans, and delivery of radiation treatment. In contrast to diagnostic radiology, where the focus is on interpretation of the images to decide if disease is present, radiation therapy quantifies the extent of the region to be treated, and relates it to the proposed treatment using a quantitative modeling system called [...]

Develop the methodological foundation for interactive use of Markov process decision models by patients and physicians at the bedside.