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Despite emerging evidence that electronic health records (EHRs) can improve the efficiency and quality of medical care, most physicians in office practice in the United States do not currently use an EHR. We sought to measure the correlates of EHR adoption.

Data sparsity and schema evolution issues affecting clinical informatics and bioinformatics communities have led to the adoption of vertical or object-attribute-value-based database schemas to overcome limitations posed when using conventional relational database technology. This paper explores these issues and discusses why biomedical data are difficult to model using conventional relational techniques. The authors propose a solution to these obstacles based on a relational database engine using a sparse, column-store architecture [...]

New reimbursement policies and pay-for-performance programs to reward providers for producing better outcomes are proliferating. Although electronic health record (EHR) systems could provide essential clinical data upon which to base quality measures, most metrics in use were derived from administrative claims data. We compared commonly used quality measures calculated from administrative data to those derived from clinical data in an EHR based on a random sample of 125 charts of [...]

Podcasting is a recent creation combining old and new technologies allowing rapid, inexpensive delivery of media content (primarily audio) to the end user, both via the desktop environment and personal media players. The authors' group (the Society of Critical Care Medicine) saw the educational and communication potential for the podcasting concept, and have successfully designed and implemented the first podcast of a national medical society. As of this writing, there [...]

The distinction between authorship and other forms of credit for contribution to a publication has been a persisting controversy that has resulted in numerous guidelines outlining the expected contributions of those claiming authorship. While there have been flagrant, well-publicized deviations from widely accepted standards, they are largely outnumbered by cases that are not publicity-worthy, and therefore remain known to only those directly involved with the inappropriate conduct. We discuss the [...]

To assess Veterans Affairs (VA) prescribers' and pharmacists' opinions about computer-generated drug-drug interaction (DDI) alerts and obtain suggestions for improving DDI alerts.

Computerized Provider Order Entry (CPOE) with electronic documentation, and computerized decision support dramatically changes the information environment of the practicing clinician. Prior work patterns based on paper, verbal exchange, and manual methods are replaced with automated, computerized, and potentially less flexible systems. The objective of this study is to explore the information management strategies that clinicians use in the process of adapting to a CPOE system using cognitive task analysis [...]

The VeriChip is a Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) tag produced commercially for implantation in human beings. Its proposed uses include identification of medical patients, physical access control, contactless retail payment, and even the tracing of kidnapping victims. As the authors explain, the VeriChip is vulnerable to simple, over-the-air spoofing attacks. In particular, an attacker capable of scanning a VeriChip, eavesdropping on its signal, or simply learning its serial number can create [...]

This study evaluated the domain completeness and expressiveness issues of the International Classification for Nursing Practice-based (ICNP) nursing data dictionary (NDD) through its application in an enterprise electronic medical record (EMR) system as a standard vocabulary at a single tertiary hospital in Korea. Data from 2,262 inpatients obtained over a period of 9 weeks (May to July 2003) were extracted from the EMR system for analysis. Among the 530,218 data-input [...]