All patients have the right to decline, and therefore must have the opportunity to give, informed consent for medical photography. This must be documented in order to comply with the Caldicott recommendations on data protection and patient confidentiality, and in doing so meet clinical standards of care. If confidentiality is ...

The Internet allows vast access to medical information. Unlike most plastic surgery literature, the Internet is a quagmire of unfiltered information, not subject to peer review. To assess the accuracy of medical information on the Internet the authors studied one commonly performed elective procedure, classifying and defining the information retrieved. ...

OBJECTIVE: To obtain information regarding diagnostic and treatment approaches of veterinarians and attitudes and beliefs of clients about a common clinical problem, urine marking in cats. DESIGN: Cohort study. STUDY POPULATION: 70 veterinarians providing care for urine-marking cats and 500 owners of urine-marking cats. PROCEDURE: Veterinarians were interviewed via telephone ...

During comprehension, a personal pronoun (he, she, it) refers to a preceding referent (boy, girl, child). This co-reference could be established, among other ways, by using (i). conceptual/semantic information (biological gender agreement between the pronoun and its referent), (ii). syntactic information (syntactic gender agreement), or (iii). both. This event-related brain ...

In "The Right Not to Know: Patient Autonomy or Medical Paternalism?" (2000) 7 JLM 286 Judy Gutman qualitatively examined the direction of the law relating to the duty of medical practitioners to disclose information to their patients about risks associated with medical treatment. Prompted by theoretical issues raised in that ...

The controversy over elective cesarean versus vaginal birth with regard to pelvic floor trauma has left many caregivers and patients confused. With the growing evidence to support the development of fecal incontinence as a result of childbirth, we believe that it is imperative to reevaluate modern obstetric practices both for ...

Confidentiality of personal medical information is a serious concern in occupational medicine. New regulations issued under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountablility Act (HIPAA) significantly alter procedures for protecting and managing confidential medical information. There are still questions about how much the new regulations will affect occupational medicine practices, but ...

Because the severity of most diseases can be measured nonuniquely, different medical interventions with different mechanisms of action may be evaluated differently, even in the same patient population. Complicating this further is the fact that even for a given medical intervention, it may not be clear which endpoint, if any, ...

OBJECTIVE: To examine the ethical issues raised by physicians performing, for skill development, medically nonindicated invasive medical procedures on newly dead and dying patients. DESIGN: Literature review; issue analysis employing current normative ethical obligations, and evaluation against moral rules and utilitarian assessments manifest in other common perimortem practices. RESULTS: Practicing ...

It is not uncommon for family members to thwart a doctor's attempt at disclosure of cancer diagnosis to the patient. This stems from concern and love as well as fear of the negative psychological impact of such revelation. Indeed, collusion of this nature was the norm in medical practice till ...

The World Wide Web (WWW) is continuing to grow exponentially both in terms of numbers of users and numbers of web pages. There is a trend toward the increasing use of the WWW for medical educational purposes, both among physicians and patients alike. The multimedia capabilities of this evolving medium ...

OBJECTIVE: To gather information about demographic characteristics, medical status, mode of Internet participation, and psychological well-being of participants whose only outlets (OOs) for talking about infertility are Internet medical and support forums and to compare them with persons who have additional outlets (AOs). DESIGN: Prospective Internet-based survey. SETTING: Website of ...

The ethical principles of beneficence and non-maleficence are deeply rooted in Judaism. A physician is obligated to heal and is given Divine license to do so. A patient is also obligated to seek healing. Judaism also emphasizes prevention over treatment. Avoidance of danger and thereby the preservation of life and ...

Understanding probability information about treatment risks and benefits is a vital component of patients' decision making capacity. This study demonstrates extensive misunderstanding of verbal descriptions of probability by medical inpatients of all ages, questioning the extent of their capacity for giving informed consent. Pictorial descriptions of probability were well understood, ...

The application of information technology to health care has generated growing concern about the privacy and security of medical information. Furthermore, data and communication security requirements in the field of multimedia are higher. In this paper we describe firstly the most important security requirements that must be fulfilled by multimedia ...

World Wide Web sites about hepatitis C vary from simple Web sites that provide basic information to the layperson to regularly updated medical-information portals. Medical professionals can use these Web sites to obtain up-to-date information on the epidemiological characteristics of hepatitis C and treatment of and information materials for their ...

Responses to recent concerns about perceived adverse health effects of monosodium glutamate (MSG) have included using prominent labels, e.g., "No added MSG", on products. Label information has been shown to create expectations for a food's sensory properties and acceptability, and influence evaluations of the product. To assess the impact of ...

Consent transforms an otherwise illegitimate act into a legitimate one. To be valid, however, it must be adequately informed. The legal requirement is vague and provides little assistance in predicting when it will be satisfied. This is particularly so when a patient consents to a procedure and the physician subsequently ...

BACKGROUND: To determine the availability of information concerning medical care available onboard the ships of the major cruise lines operating in the North American market. METHODS: The Web pages of the 16 members of the International Council of Cruise Lines were explored for the following types of information: ease of ...

Existing and future diagnostic technologies are providing a huge amount of data about the patient, which are to be sensibly managed by the treating physician. More than that, the sheer complexity of the interrelation between these data are calling for a radically new approach in the handling of medical data ...

In collaboration with regional partners in northwest Ohio, the Area Health Education Center (AHEC) program at the Medical College of Ohio (MCO) at Toledo is reaching out to underserved areas, helping to provide educational opportunities to health care professionals in these communities. This paper describes the development of MedReach, a ...

The aim of this study was two-fold: to make available to the medical community a fast, efficient tool for troubleshooting PCR problems, and to demonstrate that hypermedia allow one to approach this kind of problem in a new, more useful way. The Web provides access to an enormous amount of ...

Significant number of neurological patients in the pediatric age group have genetic and/or metabolic basis. It is difficult to remember details of each of them as their number is very large and the disorders are encountered infrequently. This impracticality necessitates the use of various websites and data base search. The ...

Patients are increasingly using the Internet to obtain medical information. Few practice Web sites provide services beyond information about the clinic and common medical diseases. We surveyed computer-using patients at 4 family medicine clinics in Denver, Colorado, by assessing their desire for Internet services from their providers. Patients were especially ...

BACKGROUND: The Better Medication Management System (BMMS) is a national initiative to use information technology to bring together the fragmented medication record systems currently used in Australian health care. OBJECTIVE: This article provides a brief outline of the BMMS and some of its implications for Australia's general practitioners and their ...

OBJECTIVE: To examine patients' use of the Internet to obtain medical information, their opinions on the quality of medical Web sites, and their attitudes towards Internet-based consultations. DESIGN: Questionnaire study. PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING: 398 patients, aged 10-95 years, visiting the orthopaedic outpatient clinics of a London district general hospital over ...

The 21st century is marked by advances in medical science and the rise of the 'information society'. It is possible to identify and systematize the intersections between both of these areas and point out a matrix of access to medical information from a legal perspective. There are four connecting levels: ...

A variety of direct and indirect methods have been used to evaluate written medication information; however, no published research has validated assessment tools or presented direct consumer assessment of patient information leaflets (PILs) provided in US community pharmacy (CP). We report on two new instruments: the medication information design assessment ...

OBJECTIVE: To review and update consensus-based recommendations for medical and public health professionals following a Bacillus anthracis attack against a civilian population. PARTICIPANTS: The working group included 23 experts from academic medical centers, research organizations, and governmental, military, public health, and emergency management institutions and agencies. EVIDENCE: MEDLINE databases were ...

This article reviews the principle of informed consent and the ethical and legal bases upon which it rests. The process of obtaining an appropriate informed consent is explored, and the elements that make a consent valid are delineated. The principles of substitute decision-making and the special rules applied to circumstances ...

BACKGROUND: Studies of the use of the World Wide Web to obtain medical knowledge have largely focused on patients. In particular, neither the international use of academic nephrology World Wide Web sites (websites) as primary information sources nor the use of search engines (and search strategies) to obtain medical information ...

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the accuracy and reliability of medical information available on the internet regarding medical abortion using mifepristone, with special emphasis on the possible bias of the internet websites providing the information. METHODS: A systematic search of the internet identified patient-oriented websites distributing medical information about mifepristone. The sites ...

With increasing personal access to the internet, and the mass of medical information available in cyberspace, many patients may access information before an outpatient consultation. Since this information may shape individual health beliefs and expectations, yet is acknowledged to be of very variable quality, it may be important for practitioners ...

The Internet is a rich source of medical information, but little is known about orthopaedic patients' use of the Internet for medical information. Adults accompanying children to the clinic of a pediatric orthopaedist were surveyed regarding their rates of access to and use of the Internet for orthopaedic information and ...

There has been much concern expressed in the literature about the use of medical information on the Internet by patients and families. Although much work has been done to quantify the misinformation available on the Internet, there have not been reports of actual harm to children resulting from this misinformation. ...

In the UK, the General Medical Council's new guidance on confidentiality restates the professional duty for doctors to regard personal information revealed to them as confidential. Such information can be shared only with the patient's explicit consent--the exceptions to this are narrowly defined. We believe the guidance does not adequately ...

The Internet, the fastest growing technology in society, has been driven by the public's hunger for fast, cheap communication. The modern patient increasingly presents to their doctor with an Internet diagnosis and treatment plan, obtained from a website with inaccurate or highly biased information. Doctors have limited access to the ...

Objective, quantitative information is lacking in the medical community about actual working conditions for professional singers onstage, and moreover, about which conditions are safe. Physicians, speech-language pathologists, and speech scientists focusing on laryngology should have relevant information about the opera as workplace and the medical sequelae of unhealthy environments. We ...

The Internet provides an easy and accessible way to deliver medical information about the management of various diseases, both to practitioners and to their patients. As there is no control over who posts information on the Web, there is a risk that the interests of the web producer may bias ...

The management of clinical data is a complex task. Patient related information reported in patient folders is a set of heterogeneous and structured data accessed by different users having different goals (in local or geographical networks). XML language provides a mechanism for describing, manipulating, and visualising structured data in web-based ...

Information security involves many branches of effort, including information assurance, host level security, physical security, and network security. Computer network security methods and implementations are given a top-down description to permit a medically focused audience to anchor this information to their daily practice. The depth of detail of network functionality ...

Structured documentation of medical procedures facilitates information retrieval for research and therapy and may help to improve patient care. Most medical documents until today however consist mainly of unstructured narrative text. Here we present an application for endoscopy which is not only fully integrated into a comprehensive clinical information system, ...

OBJECTIVES: Data and information in medicine are mainly represented in slightly structured or even unstructured, narrative text documents. It is nearly impossible to detect and handle relationships between data elements within narrative documents or to retrieve parts of documents that contain specific information. But information access and retrieval are essential ...

We carried out a prospective study of an Internet-based remote counselling service. A total of 15456 Internet users visited the Website over eight years. From these, 1500 users were randomly selected for analysis. Medical counselling had been granted to 901 of the people requesting it (60%). One hundred and sixty-four ...

Medical informatics is "the application of information science and information technology to the theoretical and practical problems of biomedical research, clinical practice, and medical education." A key difference between the two streams lies in their perspectives of "What Is Important in MI to Me?" MI may be seen as the ...

In cyberspace, the health webmaster could be regarded as a virtual editor-in-chief, in charge of content and design. In this circumstance, he/she must follow quality criteria when building any resource. At the Rouen University Hospital (RUH), we have chosen "Net Scoring" as an effective tool to aid the design of ...

In this article, consultation via the Internet and the use of the Internet as a source of medical information is examined from an ethical point of view. It is argued that important ethical aspects of the clinical interaction, such as dialogue and trust will be difficult to realise in an ...

Previous research found that adding stereoscopic information to radially expanding optic flow decreased vection onsets and increased vection durations (Palmisano, 1996 Perception & Psychophysics 58 1168-1176). In the current experiments, stereoscopic cues were also found to increase perceptions of vection speed and self-displacement during vection in depth--but only when these ...

Despite the massive growth of on-line information resources, many clinicians still prefer to obtain information from other clinicians, particularly those to whom they refer patients. Based on this notion and an information needs assessment, we developed the Professional's Information Link (PiL), a Web-based asynchronous consultation service to facilitate question answering ...

Healthcare networks function as a structural synergy serving the various healthcare actors, including the patient, who is the beneficiary. Medically speaking, they meet the need of healthcare professionals for targeted information sharing with regard to the medical record. Economically speaking, they may represent an added value and/or a diminution of ...