Search AMIA.org

Cancer research involves numerous disciplines. The multiplicity of data sources and their heterogeneous nature render the integration and the exploration of the data more and more complex. Translational research platforms are a promising way to assist scientists in these tasks. In this article, we identify a set of scientific and technical principles needed to build a translational research platform compatible with ethical requirements, data protection and data-integration problems. We describe [...]

The reduction of all-cause hospital readmission among heart failure (HF) patients is a national priority. Telehealth is one strategy employed to impact this sought-after patient outcome. Prior research indicates varied results on all-cause hospital readmission highlighting the need to understand telehealth processes and optimal strategies in improving patient outcomes.

To help manage the risk of falls in home care, this study aimed to (i) identify home care clinicians' information needs and how they manage missing or inaccurate data, (ii) identify problems that impact effectiveness and efficiency associated with retaining, exchanging, or processing information about fall risks in existing workflows and currently adopted health information technology (IT) solutions, and (iii) offer informatics-based recommendations to improve fall risk management interventions.

Hospital stays for patients with pressure ulcers (PU) increased nearly 80% from 1992 to 2006. Most PU's developed during an admission, often despite preventive efforts from clinical staff. Data from Electronic medical records (EMR's) were used to prepare daily patient risk factor and PU information for nurses to help prevent PU development and exacerbations.

The slow adoption of electronic health record (EHR) systems has been linked to physician resistance to change and the expense of EHR adoption. This qualitative study was conducted to evaluate benefits, and clarify limitations of two mature, robust, comprehensive EHR Systems by tech-savvy physicians where resistance and expense are not at issue.

Expert surveillance of healthcare-associated infections (HCAIs) is a key parameter for good clinical practice, especially in intensive care medicine. Assessment of clinical entities such as HCAIs is a time-consuming task for highly trained experts. Such are neither available nor affordable in sufficient numbers for continuous surveillance services. Intelligent information technology (IT) tools are in urgent demand.

Multi-disciplinary and multi-site biomedical research programs frequently require infrastructures capable of enabling the collection, management, analysis, and dissemination of heterogeneous, multi-dimensional, and distributed data and knowledge collections spanning organizational boundaries. We report on the design and initial deployment of an extensible biomedical informatics platform that is intended to address such requirements.

Emergency physicians are trained to make decisions quickly and with limited patient information. Health Information Exchange (HIE) has the potential to improve emergency care by bringing relevant patient data from non-affiliated organizations to the bedside. NYCLIX (New York CLinical Information eXchange) offers HIE functionality among multiple New York metropolitan area provider organizations and has pilot users in several member emergency departments (EDs).

Effective communication is essential to safe and efficient patient care. Additionally, many health information technology (HIT) developments, innovations, and standards aim to implement processes to improve data quality and integrity of electronic health records (EHR) for the purpose of clinical information exchange and communication.