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Integration of electronic information is a challenge for multitasking emergency providers, with implications for patient safety. Visual representations can assist sense-making of complex data sets; however, benefit and acceptability in emergency care is unproven.

Numerous attempts have been made to create a standardized "presenting problem" or "chief complaint" list to characterize the nature of an emergency department visit. Previous attempts have failed to gain widespread adoption as they were not freely shareable or did not contain the right level of specificity, structure, and clinical relevance to gain acceptance by the larger emergency medicine community. Using real-world data, we constructed a presenting problem list that [...]

Health care-associated infections, specifically catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTIs), can cause significant mortality and morbidity. However, the process of collecting CAUTI surveillance data, storing it, and visualizing the data to inform health policy has been fraught with challenges.

With the pervasive use of health information technology (HIT) there has been increased concern over the usability and safety of this technology. Identifying HIT usability and safety hazards, mitigating those hazards to prevent patient harm, and using this knowledge to improve future HIT systems are critical to advancing health care.

Electronic health record (EHR) downtime is any period during which the EHR system is fully or partially unavailable. These periods are operationally disruptive and pose risks to patients. EHR downtime has not sufficiently been studied in the literature, and most hospitals are not adequately prepared.

This study attempts to characterize the inpatient communication network within a quaternary pediatric academic medical center by applying network analysis methods to secure text-messaging data.

The contribution of usability flaws to patient safety issues is acknowledged but not well-investigated. Free-text descriptions of incident reports may provide useful data to identify the connection between health information technology (HIT) usability flaws and patient safety.

Electronic prescribing (e-prescribing) technology was introduced as an alternative to handwritten prescriptions allowing health care professionals to send prescriptions directly to pharmacies. While the technology has many advantages, such as improving pharmacy workflow and reducing medication errors, some limitations have been realized.

Crohn's disease and colitis are chronic conditions that affect every facet of patients' lives (e.g., social interaction, family, work, diet, and sleep). Thus, treatment consists largely of disease management. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill chapter of the Crohn's and Colitis Foundation-IBD Partners-has created an interactive website that, in addition to providing helpful information and disease management tools, provides a discussion forum for patients to talk about their [...]

Electronic health records (EHRs) are rarely shared among medical and dental providers. The purpose of this study was to assess current information sharing and the value of improved electronic information sharing among physicians and dentists in Germany and the United States.