Versatile Clinical Information System Design for Emergency Departments

Abstract

Compared to other hospital units, the emergency department presents some distinguishing characteristics of its own. Emergency health-care delivery is a collaborative process involving the contribution of several individuals who accomplish their tasks while working autonomously under pressure and sometimes with limited resources. Effective computerization of the emergency department information system presents a real challenge due to the complexity of the scenario. Current computerized support suffers from several problems, including inadequate data models, clumsy user interfaces, and poor integration with other clinical information systems. To tackle such complexity, we propose an approach combining three points of view, namely the transactions (in and out of the department), the (mono and multi) user interfaces and data management. Unlike current systems, we pay particular attention to the user-friendliness and versatility of our system. This means that intuitive user interfaces have been conceived and specific software modeling methodologies have been applied to provide our system with the flexibility and adaptability necessary for the individual and group coordinated tasks. Our approach has been implemented by prototyping a web-based, multiplatform, multiuser, and versatile clinical information system built upon multitier software architecture, using the Java programming language.

Making Human-Computer Interaction Usable: Thinking from Healthcare Perspective

“…Computerization of information management is an effective way to help medical staff to perform their job better in clinical environment [29].…”

“…EHRs are Clinical support tools with the potential to reduce the burden on clinical memory and cognition while improving efficiency in workflow and effectiveness in healthcare quality. The interface should also ensure that the privacy and integration of the medical records will not be getting affected [25][26] [29].…”

“…The indirect patient care and resource management focuses on definition of clinical protocols, extraction of statistics and management of access rights [29]. The challenge is to bring HCI and information retrieval to work together and to achieve the maximum benefits, so that it will improve the healthcare field even more [30].…”

La informatización en urgencias y emergencias

“…Algunas experiencias publica-das informan que algunos de los sistemas informáticos aplicados adolecían de varios problemas: insuficiencia de los modelos de bases de datos por problemas en las interfaces electrónicas entre el servicio de urgencias y los sistemas de datos del hospital, la presentación de interfaces de usuario torpes o de una la mala integración con otros sistemas de información clínica 4 , punto de vital importancia para que el trabajo en el área de urgencias sea realmente eficaz.…”

Mobile Web Application Development to Access to Psychiatric Electronic Health Records

“…Previous studies addressing this issue have been done in primary care (Lo et al, 2007). Before launch effort on developing a system, we performed a deep analysis about webbased EHR systems in specialties like pediatrics (Ginsburg, 2007), urgency (Amouh, et al, 2005), oncology (James, et al, 2001), etc. In the telematic system for oncology, they used a data warehouse as EHR server however the authors did not present an EHR standardization process.…”