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Statistical aberrancy-detection algorithms play a central role in automated public health systems, analyzing large volumes of clinical and administrative data in real-time with the goal of detecting disease outbreaks rapidly and accurately. Not all algorithms perform equally well in terms of sensitivity, specificity, and timeliness in detecting disease outbreaks and the evidence describing the relative performance of different methods is fragmented and mainly qualitative.

To investigate the agreement among clinical experts in their judgments of monitoring data with respect to artifacts, and to examine the effect of reference standards that consist of individual and joint expert judgments on the performance of artifact filters.

Unstructured electronic information sources, such as news reports, are proving to be valuable inputs for public health surveillance. However, staying abreast of current disease outbreaks requires scouring a continually growing number of disparate news sources and alert services, resulting in information overload. Our objective is to address this challenge through the HealthMap.org Web application, an automated system for querying, filtering, integrating and visualizing unstructured reports on disease outbreaks.

Infobuttons are decision support tools that provide links within electronic medical record systems to relevant content in online information resources. The aim of infobuttons is to help clinicians promptly meet their information needs. The objective of this study was to determine whether infobutton links that direct to specific content topics ("topic links") are more effective than links that point to general overview content ("nonspecific links").

Family health history is a complex, multifaceted tool for assessing disease risk that can offer insight into the interplay between inherited and social factors relevant to patient care. Family health history tools in electronic health records can enable the user to collect, represent, and interpret structured data that properly supports clinical decisions. If these data can be made interoperable, important health information can be shared with minimal duplication of effort [...]

The American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) recently augmented the scope of its activities to encompass translational bioinformatics as a third major domain of informatics. The AMIA has defined translational bioinformatics as "... the development of storage, analytic, and interpretive methods to optimize the transformation of increasingly voluminous biomedical data into proactive, predictive, preventative, and participatory health." In this perspective, I will list eight reasons why this is an excellent time [...]

The fields of health informatics and biomedical research increasingly depend on the availability of aggregated health data. Yet, despite over fifteen years of policy work on health data issues, the United States (U.S.) lacks coherent policy to guide users striving to navigate the ethical, political, technical, and economic challenges associated with health data use. In 2007, building on more than a decade of previous work, the American Medical Informatics Association [...]

To measure critical order check override rates in VA Puget Sound Health Care System's computerized practitioner order entry (CPOE) system and to compare 2006 results to a similar 2001 study.

Innovative approaches can strengthen patient-caregiver-clinician information exchange and more effectively address the physical and psychosocial challenges of advanced disease. This study reports initial findings from implementation of the Clinician Report (CR)-a patient and caregiver status report tool accessible by the oncology clinic team.