MedsInfo-ED is a model health information exchange project for a network of emergency departments (EDs) in the state of Massachusetts. In this initiative, claims data from pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) were made available at the point of care to clinicians in the EDs. We performed a qualitative assessment of respondents' ...

Package inserts are the most frequent source of patient information about medicines aside from doctors and pharmacists. A representative selection of 271 German package inserts available in 2005 was investigated, using 152 validated quality criteria and by measuring 242 further values. A significant increase in package insert texts over recent ...

With the progress and the development of information technology, the internal data in medical organizations have become computerized and are further established the medical information system. Moreover, the use of the Internet enhances the information communication as well as affects the development of the medical information system that a lot ...

Anemia is an early indicator of many diseases, yet blood donors with low hematocrit (Hct) often receive inadequate information about its medical importance. We sought to understand the types of information that are and should be provided to these donors. Two companion studies were performed. The first investigated blood center ...

In contemporary Western biomedical ethics, informed consent practices are commonly justified in terms of the intrinsic value of patient autonomy. James Stacey Taylor maintains that this conception of the moral grounding of medical informed consent is mistaken. On the basis of his reasoning to that effect, Taylor argues that medical ...

Medical librarians have often been overlooked as important contributors to hospital disaster preparedness. Recognizing the importance of medical libraries and their potential in disaster planning and management, the National Library of Medicine (NLM), Disaster Information Management Research Center (DIMRC), formed a pilot Disaster Information Specialist Project. This paper describes the ...

Electronic information is becoming prevalent worldwide, and its use is growing exponentially as more and more users are recognizing the potential that it offers in terms of access and delivery. However, with the introduction of new tools for e-information searching and retrieval, users have to readjust their information-seeking behavior to ...

Healthcare services integration is a critical task as it attempts to reform the user practices. In response to the request of facilities upgrade, we perform a usability evaluation of the mobile medical treatment carts (MMTC) installed in the Emergency Medicine Department of our healthcare enterprise. A survey conducted in August ...

This manuscript studies in detail, following a discourse analytical approach, medical consultations in which a patient's religious belief does not allow blood transfusion to be administered. The patient is a young Jehovah's Witness suffering myeloid leukaemia who is being treated in a Catholic cancer hospital where the practice of blood ...

The term informed consent does not have long historical roots. Until recent centuries, healthcare professionals were not held responsible for providing information to patients. The author reports a written consent from Anatolia dated almost five centuries ago. The contract was signed in 1539 in Gaziantep, Turkey (formerly known as Aintab, ...

While essential for patient care, information related to medication is often written as free text in clinical records and, therefore, difficult to use in computerized systems. This paper describes an approach to automatically extract medication information from clinical records, which was developed to participate in the i2b2 2009 challenge, as ...

Every year there are new medications approved by the Federal Food & Drug Administration. Some medications are removed from the market, and new information or warnings about existing medications become available. Some of the information about these changes makes its way into public media and can cause concern among patients ...

This aims of this study are to describe current practice in the administration of medication in an acute psychiatric unit and explore factors that influence nurses' decisions regarding the administration of medication during 'rounds'. Background.  Medication 'rounds' form part of the ward routine in many inpatient mental health settings. Nurses ...

the internet as a source of medical information has emerged during the last years. There is a confusing amount of medical websites with a great diversity of quality. Websites of radiotherapy institutions could offer a safe and an easy-to-control way to assist patients' requests. 205 internet appearances of German radiotherapy ...

Most patients with chronic rhinosinusitis (CRS) are treated by internists, yet the information available to internists about CRS is rarely assessed. The author undertook a study to evaluate the amount and quality of information about CRS that is available to internists. Four information sources were analyzed: (1) five journals routinely ...

Documentation of language usage in medical settings could be effective in identifying and addressing language barriers and would improve understanding of health disparities. This study evaluated the availability and accuracy of medical records information on language for 1,664 cancer patients likely to have poor English proficiency. Accuracy was assessed by ...

This study aimed to examine the nature and extent of use of the social networking service Facebook by young medical graduates, and their utilisation of privacy options. We carried out a cross-sectional survey of the use of Facebook by recent medical graduates, accessing material potentially available to a wider public. ...

Until 2008, if doctors followed the General Medical Council's (GMC's) guidance on providing information prior to obtaining a patient's consent to treatment, they would be going beyond what was technically required by the law. It was hoped that the common law would catch up with this guidance and encourage respect ...

There is no denying that the Internet has become the marketplace of choice for a vast number of consumers, a number which continues to grow year after year. It is particularly true for the medical community as prospective patients often conduct extensive online research before they even consider picking up ...

Informed consent (IC) in clinical experimentation is a process by which a subject voluntarily and freely confirms his/her willingness to participate in a trial, after having been informed of all involved aspects. IC is a concept enough recent within medical tradition. Unquestionably, Nuremberg trials (1945-1947) influenced thought about consent in ...

Medication regimens change during hospital admission, and these discrepancies can lead to an increased risk of patient harm after hospital discharge. Information about medication according to the patient's needs may contribute to patient safety by improvement of knowledge and adherence. The goal of this study is to explore the patient's ...

Mapping medical concepts from a terminology system to the concepts in the narrative text of a medical document is necessary to provide semantically accurate information for further processing steps. The MetaMap Transfer (MMTx) program is a semantic annotation system that generates a rough mapping of concepts from the Unified Medical ...

The authors examined the validity of documentation produced during paediatric emergency care to determine if a patient-driven health information technology called ParentLink produced higher-quality data than documentation completed by nurses and physicians. The authors analysed the quality of information across elements of allergies to medications and the history of present ...

The EU Tissues and Cells Directive (2004/23/EC, 2006/17/EC, 2006/86/EC) (EUTCD) provides standards for quality and safety for all aspects of banking of tissues and cells for clinical applications. Commission Directive 2006/17/EC stipulates that the complete donor record with all the medical information is assessed for suitability before releasing tissues for ...

The requirement that doctors obtain valid consent from patients before providing medical treatment has long been ingrained in both legal doctrine and medical ethics. We summarize the foundations of the informed consent doctrine and discuss the recent evolution in thinking about consent and medical decision making. We show how consent ...

Sensitive paper documents, such as patient records, customer data, and legal information, must be securely stored and destroyed when no longer needed. This is not only a good business practice that reduces costs and protects reputations, but also a legal and regulatory imperative. According to some experts, medical identity theft ...

Since the Internet's inception in 1969, neurologists have witnessed a continuous parade of innovative phases. There is tremendous potential for near-instantaneous dissemination of the latest developments in neurologic knowledge, although their value is dependent on the degree of awareness of neurologists and is limited by the reluctance of some sources ...

OBJECTIVES: To describe the process used by a pharmacy in Minnesota to develop a drug disposal option for its patients and the surrounding community to safely dispose of unwanted medications and to describe the current barriers to continuing activities. DATA SOURCES: Information on rules and regulations regarding hazardous waste management ...

Modern technology has revolutionized the clinician's ability to have vast information resources available literally at one's fingertips. The advent of the smartphone--an integration of the mobile phone with an ultraportable computer, web browser, multimedia player, and camera, has given clinicians the capability to merge their information and communication resources into ...

AIM: To assess the reliability and accuracy of medical advice, over a range of types of websites, found using the Google search engine, thus simulating a patient's experience. DESIGN: Advice was sought for five common paediatric questions using the Google search engine. The first 100 results of each question were ...

Health care organizations have redesigned existing and implemented new work processes intended to improve patient safety. As a consequence of these process changes, there are now intentionally designed "blocks" or barriers that limit how specific work actions, such as ordering and administering medication, are to be carried out. Health care ...

BACKGROUND CONTEXT: Many Americans seek and are influenced in their decision making by medical information on the Internet. Past studies have repeatedly found information on most medical Web sites to be deficient and of low quality. Physicians must remain aware of the quality and reliability of the information available on ...

Choosing to use mesh in vaginal reconstructive surgery for pelvic organ prolapse or stress urinary incontinence is perplexing in the face of recent US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warnings. In October 2008, the FDA alerted practitioners to complications associated with transvaginal placement of surgical mesh. Litigation is another concern. ...

The rapid development of healthcare information management for 3D digital medical libraries, 3D PACS, and 3D medical diagnosis has addressed the security issues pertaining to medical IT technology. This paper presents multiple watermarking schemes for a healthcare information management system for 3D medical image data for the protection, authentication, indexing, ...

The internet has become an important source of medical information and a great amount of information related to allergic rhinitis (AR) is available on the internet. However, the quality of this information is still a matter of debate. Therefore, this study was conducted to assess the AR-related information on Korean ...

The goal of this study was to compare prose and pictorial-based information pamphlets about the medication methotrexate in the domains of free recall, cued recall, comprehension and utility. A single blind, randomized trial of picture versus prose-based information pamphlets including 100 participants aged 18-65 years of age, who had not ...

OBJECTIVES: The aim of this paper was to determine if patients undergoing treatment at an older adolescent inpatient unit receive psychoeducation according to the unit philosophy of providing timely and pertinent information regarding illness/diagnosis, medication, diet, outpatient follow-up, and alcohol/ drug use. METHODS: Data were gathered prospectively as part of ...

Sir William Robert Willis Wilde (1815-1876) made many contributions to otology. Perhaps his greatest, and the one least appreciated, was his performing, analyzing, and reporting of the 1851 census of the deaf of Ireland. He is the first to recognize and document genetic deafness as a major cause in early-onset ...

Sharing of relevant medical data can help prevent potentially deadly drug interactions. Storing all information in a single EHR network can be a big time-saver for providers. Using an outside vendor can help ensure objective measurement of outcomes.

EBP (evidence-based practice) is becoming the standard paradigm in modern healthcare. Therefore different healthcare providers have the need for easily accessible evidence-based information. The Internet creates new opportunities to fill the gaps in education that are experienced by healthcare workers. Contributing to solutions and filling in the needs in the ...

Nowadays, medical practice needs, at the patient Point-of-Care (POC), personalised knowledge adjustable in each moment to the clinical needs of each patient, in order to provide support to decision-making processes, taking into account personalised information. To achieve this, adapting the hospital information systems is necessary. Thus, there is a need ...

An emerging trend is what has become commonly known as 'Medical Tourism' where patients travel to overseas destinations for specialised surgical treatments and other forms of medical care. With the rise of more affordable cross-border travel and rapid technological developments these movements are becoming more commonplace. A key driver is ...

BACKGROUND: Despite the importance of incident reporting for promoting patient safety, the extent to which residents and fellows (trainees) in graduate medical education (GME) programs report incidents is not well understood. A study was conducted to determine the prevalence of and variations in incident reporting across hospitals in an academic ...

BACKGROUND: Formulating a clinical information need in terms of the four atomic parts which are Population/Problem, Intervention, Comparison and Outcome (known as PICO elements) facilitates searching for a precise answer within a large medical citation database. However, using PICO defined items in the information retrieval process requires a search engine ...

An important proportion of the information about the medications a patient is taking is mentioned only in narrative text in the electronic health record. Automated information extraction can make this information accessible for decision support, research, or any other automated processing. In the context of the "i2b2 medication extraction challenge," ...

To test the impact of nonverbal behaviour on the assessment of a clinician's level of empathic communication. One hundred volunteers were asked to assess a clinician's level of empathic communication using the Rating Scales for the Assessment of Empathic Communication in Medical Interviews (REM). Participants were randomly assigned to three ...

The aim of this study was to offer a comparative analysis of informal interpreters during medical consultations with both good and poor mutual understanding between general practitioners (GPs) and patients. Sixteen video-registered medical interviews of Turkish immigrant patients were analysed. Stretches of discourse of eight interviews with good mutual understanding ...

This study sought to elicit challenges and solutions in the provision of health care to those with chronic diseases after Hurricane Katrina in coastal Alabama and Mississippi. In-depth interviews with 30 health and social service providers (key informants) and 4 focus groups with patients with chronic diseases were conducted. Subsequently ...

The aim of this study was to assess the accuracy of information provided by medical practitioners to families regarding the efficacy and limitations of prophylaxis with palivizumab for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection in infants. A single-question survey was distributed to medical practitioners who described themselves as having both prescribed ...

BACKGROUND: First-person reports of oocyte donors, years after their donation, can give valuable information about medical complications of oocyte donation, as well as changes potentially required in procedures and priorities of US-based in vitro fertilization (IVF) centers. This paper reports findings from an online survey of former oocyte donors. METHODS: ...