Understanding how each individual's genetics and physiology influences pharmaceutical response is crucial to the realization of personalized medicine and the discovery and validation of pharmacogenomic biomarkers is key to its success. However, integration of genotype and phenotype knowledge in medical information systems remains a critical challenge. The inability to easily ...

The Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) is the largest thesaurus in the biomedical informatics domain. Previous works have shown that knowledge constructs comprised of transitively-associated UMLS concepts are effective for discovering potentially novel biomedical hypotheses. However, the extremely large size of the UMLS becomes a major challenge for these applications. ...

Hypertension is an important condition among adults, affecting nearly one billion people worldwide. Treatment with appropriate medication is a key factor in the control of hypertension and reduction in associated risk of complications. However, compliance with treatment is often sub-optimal, especially in developing countries. The present study investigated the factors ...

Therapy decision making and support in medicine deals with uncertainty and needs to take into account the patient's clinical parameters, the context of illness and the medical knowledge of the physician and guidelines to recommend a treatment therapy. This research study is focused on the formalization of medical knowledge using ...

The purpose of this study is to explore possibility of information sharing between the medical and nursing domains. Narrative medical records of 281 hospitalization days of 36 gastrectomy patients were decomposed into single-meaning statements. These single-meaning statements were combined into unique statements by removing semantically redundant statements. Concepts from the ...

The need for annotating the continuously increasing volume of medical image data is recognized from medical experts for a variety of purposes, regardless if this is medical practice, research or education. The rich information content latent in medical images can be made explicit and formal with the use of well-defined ...

As cases of 2009 novel H1N1 influenza became prevalent in Cincinnati, Ohio, Hamilton County Public Health called upon the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine to enhance its surge capacity in vaccination administration. Although the collaboration was well organized, it became evident that a system should exist for medical students' ...

The use of medical devices containing highly criticized phthalates including di(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (DEHP) has been challenged by European directive 2007/47/CE, put into effect in March 2010. New plasticizers are now being used to soften PVC in medical devices: trioctyltrimellitate (TOTM), di-isononyl-cyclohexan-1,2-dicarboxilate (DINCH) and di(2-ethylhexyl) terephthalate (DEHT). To quantify DEHP in ...

This narrative review includes a summary of research examining prescribing errors, prescription decision making and the role computerized decision support plays in this decision-making process. A reduction in medication prescribing errors, specifically a reduction in the selection of inappropriate medications, is expected to result from the implementation of an effective ...

Medical Education 2011: 45: 298-307 Context  The introduction of aptitude testing in the selection of applicants for medical and dental school, in the UK, has led to growing scrutiny of current selection practices. There is increasing difficulty in discriminating between the high numbers of very able candidates who apply to ...

This article reviews the most recent studies of the pharmacologic treatment of borderline personality disorder (BPD). Although research continues using randomized controlled trials with a placebo arm as well as active medication, meta-analyses and systematic reviews have revealed that the use of any specific medication or medication class in BPD ...

The purpose of this study is to explore the ability of SNOMED CT to represent narrative statements of medical records. Narrative medical records of 281 hospitalization days of 36 patients with Gastrectomy were decomposed into single-meaning statements, and these single-meaning statements were combined into unique statements by removing semantically redundant ...

Information extraction is a complex task which is necessary to develop high-precision information retrieval tools. In this paper, we present the platform MeTAE (Medical Texts Annotation and Exploration). MeTAE allows (i) to extract and annotate medical entities and relationships from medical texts and (ii) to explore semantically the produced RDF ...

Although direct medical costs for constipation-related medical visits are thought to be high, to date there have been no studies examining whether longitudinal resource use is persistently elevated in children with constipation. Our aim was to estimate the incremental direct medical costs and types of health care use associated with ...

To estimate per-person and aggregate direct medical costs of overweight and obesity and to examine the effect of study design factors. PubMed (1968-2009), EconLit (1969-2009) and Business Source Premier (1995-2009) were searched for original studies. Results were standardized to compute the incremental cost per overweight person and per obese person, ...

Medical travel is travel outside of an individual's home region or country in pursuit of medical care that is more accessible, of higher quality and/or of lower cost. This paper estimates the inflows of foreign residents seeking medical care in the U.S. and outflows of U.S. residents seeking care abroad. ...

Substitution of antiepileptic drugs with generic formulations may affect individual people, as well as healthcare systems. Analyses of large medical claims databases suggest that generic substitution of antiepileptic drugs is associated with increased morbidity and greater use of healthcare resources. While a single brand-to-generic switch may be associated with a ...

It was shown that physicians working at the Swedish emergency department (ED) are unaware of the costs for investigations performed. This study evaluated the possible impact of price lists on the overall laboratory and radiology costs at the ED of a Swedish university hospital. Price lists including the most common ...

Numerous studies performed over the last 30 years suggest that doctors have poor knowledge of the costs of medical care. In most graduate medical education programmes, trainees do not receive formal training in cost-effective medical practice. Comprehensive literature search of electronic bibliographic databases for articles that describe health economics, cost-containment ...

The objective of this study was to evaluate cost-reduction efficacy of a palliative care unit (PCU) by analyzing medical expenses of terminal cancer patients. Hospital bills and medical records of 656 patients who died of cancer from January to December 2007 at one university hospital in Seoul were analyzed. Of ...

This paper estimates medical resource use, direct costs, and productivity losses and costs (indirect costs) during episodes of acute otitis media (AOM) in young children. A 24-item Internet questionnaire was developed for parents in Belgium (Flanders), France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, Spain, and the United Kingdom (UK) to report health ...

To calculate and compare the direct medical costs of guideline-recommended prophylaxis with prophylaxis that does not fully adhere with guideline recommendations in a large, real-world population. Discharge records were retrieved from the US Premier Perspective™ database (January 2003-December 2003) for patients aged≥40 years with a primary diagnosis of cancer, chronic ...

This study examined the prevalence of cerebral palsy (CP) in South Korea, and the attributable lifetime medical cost according to physiological types and extent of involvement. The number of medical service use and medical cost of CP were obtained from the national health insurance review and assessment (HIRA) service. The ...

A ultrasensitive, simple and convenient electrochemical method was firstly developed for the determination of prochloraz and its metabolites as 2,4,6-trichlorophenol (2,4,6-TCP) using nano-aperture medical stone. Compared with the undoped disposable electrode (UDE), nano-aperture medical stone doped disposable electrode (MSDDE) not only significantly enhances the oxidation peak current of 2,4,6-TCP but ...

Stroke is a heavy economic and health burden for the patients and society. This study aimed to evaluate hospital length of stay (LOS) by admission characteristics and costs correlated with medical insurance status for cerebral infarction in a medium-sized city in China. A total of 557 consecutive patients with principal ...

Although prior authorization (PA) for prescription medications is widely employed for cost-containment for third-party insurers, it is a frustrating aspect of outpatient clinical care that imposes uncompensated costs to medical providers. To characterize these costs, we monitored the PA-associated administrative and operational process at the University of Alabama at Birmingham ...

to evaluate specialist geriatric input and medication review in patients in high-dependency continuing care. prospective, randomised, controlled trial. two residential continuing care hospitals. Participants: two hundred and twenty-five permanent patients. Intervention: patients were randomised to either specialist geriatric input or regular input. The specialist group had a medical assessment by ...

Concerns about reducing the rate of growth of health expenditures have reignited interest in medical liability reforms and their potential to save money by reducing the practice of defensive medicine. It is not easy to estimate the costs of the medical liability system, however. This article identifies the various components ...

To estimate the societal costs of obstructive sleep apnoea syndrome (OSAS) in New Zealand and develop a simulation tool to evaluate treatment options. Treatment profiles, availability, uptake, and costs were based on services in the Wellington Region, and were used to develop a decision analytic model with micro costing of ...

The aging of the population will make fecal incontinence an increasingly important socioeconomic problem in the coming decades. Already today, the cost to society of treating incontinence with inserts, diapers, and closed systems exceeds the total cost of all cardiac and anti-inflammatory medications. This article is based on a selective ...

PURPOSE: To assess the relationship between patient cost-sharing (e.g., copayments or coinsurance) and adherence and persistence to second-generation (atypical) antipsychotic (SGA) medications. DESIGN AND METHODOLOGY: A retrospective, observational study of adults aged 18-64 years with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder (n = 7,910) who initiated SGA medications with employer-sponsored insurance in ...

Gastroesophageal reflux disease is one of the most common and frequent chronic disease requiring considerable cost. We investigated the medical care costs in the erosive reflux disease (ERD) and non-erosive reflux disease (NERD). The risk factors and the direct medical care costs were analyzed retrospectively in the ERD (178 patients) ...

Advances in medical technology and practices have been associated with increasing medical specialization, but they have developed at a price. This price has included not only enormous financial costs, but the additional cost of dehumanized patient care, diminished confidence in the medical staff and, consequently, human suffering. Burn injuries are ...

Estimating the value of a medical education is a difficult undertaking. Purpose: As student debt levels rise and the role of managed care in price-setting increases, the financial benefit of an MD degree comes into question. We developed a model using net present value (NPV) analysis for a range of ...

Low back pain (LBP) is the most prevalent health problem in Switzerland and a leading cause of reduced work performance and disability. This study estimated the total cost of LBP in Switzerland in 2005 from a societal perspective using a bottom-up prevalence-based cost-of-illness approach. The study considers more cost categories ...

OBJECTIVE: To investigate whether compliance during the first 2 years of statin therapy is associated with reduced hospitalization rates and direct medical costs during year 3. STUDY DESIGN: An integrated pharmacy and medical claims database was used to identify adult patients with a new statin prescription between July 1, 2001, ...

BACKGROUND: Overweight and obesity was responsible for 7.5% of the total burden of disease and injury in Australia in 2003, and was estimated in 2008 to cost the community $58.2 billion. More than half of the adult, and up to a third of the child, population in Australia is now ...

To demonstrate whether the use of videophone technology is an effective alternative method to direct observation of tuberculosis (TB) medication administration, a retrospective chart review and data analysis were performed on records for 57 patients with active TB in two Washington state counties who utilized videophone technology for the administration ...

To examine whether alcohol and other drug (AOD) treatment is related to reduced medical costs of family members. Using the administrative databases of a private, integrated health plan, we matched AOD treatment patients with health plan members without AOD disorders on age, gender and utilization, identifying family members of each ...

Obesity has been described as the health crisis of the 21st century. It is a chronic lifelong medical condition, whose pattern often starts in childhood, and is demographically worsening in every developed country. The cost of treating the many medical conditions associated with obesity threatens to overwhelm healthcare resources. Medical ...

OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the impact of implementing cost-control measures on drug use and financial performance of a student-run safety net clinic and to assess the effect of the measures on patient care. METHODS: Medication histories and patient information were obtained from the University of Nebraska Medical Center's student-run safety net ...

Phil Giles of Becker Pumps Australia examines the use of variable frequency drives for medical suction plant, and explains the many potential benefits--both practical and economic. The paper on which this article is based was presented at the Institute of Hospital Engineering Australia's (IHEA) 60th National Conference in 2009.

OBJECTIVE: To compare healthcare utilization and costs between subjects with and without fibromyalgia (FM) using claims data from a large health benefits company in the United States. STUDY DESIGN: Retrospective cohort. METHODS: We analyzed 24 months of medical and pharmacy claims data comparing healthcare utilization and costs among Humana members ...

Clinically and economically, venous thromboembolic (VTE) disease represents a significant burden to the US healthcare system. This analysis compares the total direct medical costs associated with VTE prophylaxis with enoxaparin and unfractionated heparin (UFH). Hospital discharge and billing records were extracted from the Premier Perspective database (January 2002-December 2006). The ...

OBJECTIVE: To examine the frequency with which medication costs are discussed, and the predictors of these discussions, during visits between rheumatologists and their patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). METHODS: Audiotapes of medical visits, patient questionnaires, medical records, and physician questionnaires were collected from March 2003 to December 2005. Data were ...

The cost of undergraduate medical education has been rising at more than twice the rate of inflation in recent years. A leveling off of the cost of medical education is unlikely to be realized any time soon. Rather, current economic circumstances are likely to further increase the upward pressure on ...

BACKGROUND: The approaching availability of lower-cost generic angiotensin receptor blockers (ARBs) may affect formulary policies for patients maintained on the ARB valsartan. OBJECTIVE: Estimate the economic impact of switching from valsartan (including valsartan-based single-pill combinations) to other ARBs without apparent medical reasons. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: Patients with essential hypertension ...

OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the economic viability of shared medical appointments (SMAs) in dermatology. Secondary objectives include a comparison of the hourly adjusted census levels generated by SMAs compared with regular clinic appointments (RCAs), as well as a comparison between the economic viability of dermatology SMAs and SMAs in other fields ...

To examine the effect of a lifestyle intervention to produce weight loss and increased physical fitness on use and cost of medications to treat cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factors in people with type 2 diabetes. Look AHEAD is a multicenter randomized controlled trial of 5,145 overweight or obese individuals with ...

We estimated the prevalence of medication nonadherence in Parkinson's disease (PD) and the association between treatment nonadherence and healthcare costs. Insurance claims from over 30 US health plans were analyzed. Inclusion criteria were as follows: PD diagnosis, >or=1 PD-related prescription between 1/1/1997 and 12/31/2004, continuous health plan enrollment for >or=6 ...