Multi-resistant pathogens are a serious problem on a considerable scale for the health sector. Patients with infections induced by multi-resistant bacteria cause enormous additional treatment costs of around 20,500 € per insured. Due to the recently used billing and documentation system there is a significant shortage of information transparency. The ...

One of the most important issues in today's health sector is productivity, and more attention should be paid to this topic by health managers and correspondingly by those in charge. It is believed that providing a suitable culture is necessary to improve productivity. We tried to provide this culture by ...

Physicians often do not provide adequate medication counseling. To develop and evaluate an educational program to improve physicians' assessment of adherence and their medication counseling skills, with attention to health literacy. We compared internal medicine residents' confidence and counseling behaviors, measured by self-report at baseline and one month after participation ...

In the study described in this article, the authors performed safety walk-throughs or inspections for 20 clinics located both inside a major medical center clinic (onsite) and away from the main clinic site (offsite). A checklist was used to evaluate compliance with institutional, local, state, and federal guidelines and regulations. ...

The conceptual framework of statistical tests and statistical inferences are discussed, and the epidemiological background of statistics is briefly reviewed. This study is one of a series in which we survey the basics of statistics and practical methods used in medical statistics. Arguments related to actual statistical analysis procedures will ...

For many pathologists, the roles of the medical director are not clearly distinguished from other medical leadership and management duties, such as those of the chair of pathology or a section head of anatomic pathology. We describe the evolution in the understanding of the roles of the medical director as ...

Medical tourism, thought of as patients seeking non-emergency medical care outside of their home countries, is a growing industry worldwide. Canadians are amongst those engaging in medical tourism, and many are helped in the process of accessing care abroad by medical tourism brokers - agents who specialize in making international ...

The AMA Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs (CEJA) has initiated an important discussion on medical professionalism and the use of social media by issuing thoughtful and practical guidance for physicians and medical students. The implications of online activities for trust in the profession, as well as for trust between ...

Recently, the importance of medical information for radiologic technologists has increased. The purpose of this questionnaire survey was to clarify the method of acquiring skill in medical information for radiologic technologists from the point of view of the managers of radiology departments. The questionnaire was sent to 260 hospitals that ...

Extracting medication information from clinical records has many potential applications, and recently published research, systems, and competitions reflect an interest therein. Much of the early extraction work involved rules and lexicons, but more recently machine learning has been applied to the task. We present a hybrid system consisting of two ...

Pillbox is a tool that can be used to rapidly identify solid dosage medications. The database, created and maintained by the National Library of Medicine with the support of the Food and Drug Administration, seeks to enhance patient safety through the identification of solid dosage medication. Users enter physical characteristics ...

This paper suggests a solution to acquire medical data from hospitals located in a region (addressing especially the DKMT Euroregion), and then perform data mining. The medical data from the hospital databases are exported in XML format, according to HL7 CDA standard. Afterwards, they are automatically centralized on a server ...

Two different information systems with respect to their ability to afford clinicians' needs in the chemotherapy medication process were implemented in a large Dutch academic hospital. A commercially available Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE) system was not appreciated because clinicians believed that it could not support complex chemotherapy process. Later, ...

In this article, the authors highlight an incident that involved a mix-up between the oral anticoagulant medication Pradax (dabigatran etexilate) and the antiplatelet medication Plavix (clopidogrel). Because critical care nurses may admit or care for patients who are receiving (or have received) one of these medications, it is important that ...

Prevention and rehabilitation efficiency can greatly benefit from the application of intelligent, 24 hour tele-diagnostics and tele-care information systems. Tele-monitoring also supports a new level of medical supervision over the patient's lifestyle. In this paper we briefly present the architecture and development phase results of the Alpha remote monitoring system. ...

Today, the Web is a media with increasing pervasiveness around the world. Its use is constantly growing and the medical field is no exception. With this large amount of information, the problem is no longer about finding information but assessing the credibility of the publishers as well as the relevance ...

: When dealing with medical data sharing, in particular within telemedicine applications, there is a need to ensure information security. Being able to verify that the information belongs to the right patient and is from the right source or that it has been rerouted or modified is a major concern. ...

Examining the quality of medical laboratory services using the perspective of the six IOM aims provides laboratory professionals with numerous opportunities to improve the quality of healthcare and validate the value of medical laboratory test information in improving patients' lives. This necessitates exploring the effects of other healthcare processes upon ...

Marine microorganisms are rich source for natural products which play important roles in pharmaceutical industry. Over the past decade, genome-based studies of marine microorganisms have unveiled the tremendous diversity of the producers of natural products and also contributed to the efficiency of harness the strain diversity and chemical diversity, as ...

The AMA's social media guidelines provide physicians with some basic rules for maintaining professional boundaries when engaging in online activities. Left unanswered are questions about how these guidelines are to be implemented by physicians of different generations. By examining the issues of privacy and technological skill through the eyes of ...

A brief review intended as information to the readership of Clinics on papers recently published under various medical headings in Brazilian scientific journals recently indexed or about to be indexed in ISI-THOMSON Journal Citation Reports. Journals covered in this review are Acta Ortopédica Brasileira, Arquivos Brasileiros de Cardiologia, Jornal Brasileiro ...

Telemedicine has emerged as an efficient means of distributing professional medical expertise over a broad geographic area with few limitations to the various services that can be provided around the globe. Telepathology is particularly well suited to distributing subspecialty expertise in certain environments in an economical fashion, while preserving centers ...

Volatile substance misuse is a prevalent and often overlooked behavior among adolescents, including reported use among young pregnant women. Several medical repercussions can arise from the improper use of volatile substances, yet they are often underappreciated among scientists and health professionals. This brief review reports on the recent advances made ...

This editorial celebrates the re-launch of PMC Biophysics previously published by PhysMath Central, in its new format as BMC Biophysics published by BioMed Central with an expanded scope and Editorial Board. BMC Biophysics will fill its own niche in the BMC series alongside complementary companion journals including BMC Bioinformatics, BMC ...

The paper describes the design of a module that manages Serious Adverse Events (SAEs) reporting within a Clinical investigation on Medical devices. This module is integrated in a Medical Device Information System (MEDIS) that collects data and documents exchanged between applicants and the National Competent Authority during the clinical investigation ...

Electronic Medical Records (EMRs) provide convenient access to patient data for parties who should have it, but, unless managed properly, may also provide it to those who should not. Distinguishing the two is a core security challenge for EMRs. Strategies proposed to address these problems include Role Based Access Control ...

A SOUND EVALUATION OF EVERY BIOETHICAL PROBLEM SHOULD BE PREDICATED ON A CAREFUL ANALYSIS OF AT LEAST TWO BASIC ELEMENTS: (i) reliable scientific information and (ii) the ethical principles and values at stake. A thorough evaluation of both elements also calls for a careful examination of statements by authoritative institutions. ...

Information extraction from clinical free text is one of the key elements in medical informatics research. In this paper we propose a general framework to improve learning-based information extraction systems with the help of rich annotations (i.e., annotators provide the medical assertion as well as evidences that support the assertion). ...

This study is part of a research project aiming at developing advanced functions of medication related CDSS to support the monitoring of patients' therapeutic treatments based mainly on corresponding lab values. We adopted a user-centred approach to the design of these advanced CDSS functions. We collected existing recommendations in the ...

Synchrotron radiation (SR) X-ray has great potential for its applications in both diagnosis and treatment of diseases, due to its characteristic properties including coherence, collimation, monochromaticity, and exceptional brightness. Great advances have been made regarding potential medical applications of SR X-ray in recent years, particularly with the development of the ...

The Medical Civil Action Program (MEDCAP) is an important tool that is utilized to support the larger missions in all areas of current operations. In Ethiopia, MEDCAPs are one of many tools commanders use to earn the trust and confidence of the local population. There are many ways to implement ...

Social accountability as an outcome must be measured at institutional (evaluation) and individual (assessment) level. The definitions used in the measurement will be dependent on the social setting of the medical school being scrutinised. A formal framework is needed so that comparisons can be made and progress measured. The World ...

This letter comments on the issues raised by an article on this subject in the May 2011 issue of the South African Medical Journal. Comments deal with the need for longer Obstetric attachments for trainees preparing for work in peripheral hospitals, the use of Advanced midwives in operating theaters and ...

Current studies, dedicated to metallic (gold, silver, iron, and copper) nanomaterials are reviewed in this paper. This metals own unique physical and chemical properties which determine their application. The medical application of metallic nanomaterials includes therapy and prophylaxis of diseases, development of new drugs and improvement of conventional ones, nanodiagnostics. ...

In this paper we present a detailed scheme for annotating medical web pages designed for health care consumers. The annotation is along two axes: first, by reliability (the extent to which the medical information on the page can be trusted), second, by the type of page (patient leaflet, commercial, link, ...

Objective: To examine the self-reported prevalence of aggressive and/or disruptive behaviors by patients as related to their medical care.Method: In a cross-sectional, consecutive sample of internal medicine outpatients (N = 397), respondents reported on 17 aggressive and/or disruptive behaviors related to their medical care. Data were collected during November 2010.Results: ...

This article explores colonial representations of the crime of cattle poisoning and uses it as a starting point to investigate questions related to the formation of Chamar identity. Starting from the 1850s, it looks at the process whereby the caste group was imbued with certain undesirable traits of character. Simultaneously, ...

In contrast to several other European countries, German law provides only insufficient regulations on who is responsible for the medical assessment of persons in police custody. The police frequently report that doctors refuse to assess fitness for custody. Under consideration of the current legal background, we will discuss whether and, ...

The implementation of a computer-assisted prescription is interesting for the laboratory to achieve requirements of NF EN ISO 15189 standard. The test redundancies are also studied and guidelines, founded on validated studies, are proposed. Some solutions concerning the management of orally-formulated prescriptions are given. Finally, a model of collaboration contract ...

The use of indwelling medical devices is rapidly growing and is often complicated by infections with biofilm-forming microbes that are resistant to antimicrobial agents and host defense mechanisms. Fungal biofilms have emerged as a clinical problem associated with these medical device infections, causing significant morbidity and mortality. This review discusses ...

To develop effective ways of sharing patients' medical information, we developed a new medical information exchange system (MIES) based on a registry server, which enabled us to exchange different types of data generated by various systems. To assure that patient's medical information can be effectively exchanged under different system environments, ...

In the September 2010 issue of JGME, the Pediatric Milestones Working Group published "The Pediatrics Milestones: Conceptual Framework, Guiding Principles, and Approach to Development", a document that describes the construction of the first iteration of the Pediatric Milestones. These Milestones were developed by the Working Group as a group of ...

The internal quality control is a key technical requirement through accreditation by the NF EN ISO 15189. This document presents recommendations to assist the medical laboratory to design, implement and operate daily and retrospectively an efficient system of internal control quality. It identifies the important issues attached to these different ...

The principle of autonomy underpins legal regulation of advance directives that refuse life-sustaining medical treatment. The primacy of autonomy in this domain is recognised expressly in the case law, through judicial pronouncement, and implicitly in most Australian jurisdictions, through enactment into statute of the right to make an advance directive. ...

The worldwide volume of surgery is huge and the number of interventions performed is increasing as a result of advances in technological resources and refinement of medical teams' expertise, in a progressively elderly and sick population. Consequently, half of the general surgical patients take medications unrelated to surgery. Evidence-based guidelines ...

The medical education system is in infancy in Nepal. There are many constrains at various levels. The numbers ofmedical colleges are increasing every year without considering for its quality by the concerned authorities. Nepal Medical Council is the authorized body to look for medical professionals in the country. Even though, ...

Statistical evidence has direct effects on the practice of medicine and the standards set by the profession. In turn, this has implications in medical negligence, particularly with respect to the standard of care expected of health care providers. In this article, we investigate the role that statistical evidence plays in ...

This study reviews forensic entomological specimens analysed by the Department of Parasitology & Medical Entomology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia for the year 2004. A total of 10 cases (6 males and 4 females) were observed for the entomological specimens. Various types of death scenes were obtained including indoor and outdoor area ...

This purpose of this paper is to introduce the status of the Asan Medical Center (AMC) medical information system with respect to healthcare quality improvement. Asan Medical Information System (AMIS) is projected to become a completely electronic and digital information hospital. AMIS has played a role in improving the health ...

Every medical interference could be interpreted as an intervention into one's physical integrity and physical autonomy. This fact has brought along the necessity of determining the responsibilities of physicians, apotheosized throughout history from time to time, and to define the limits of the medical profession. The Turkish Penal Code (TPC) ...