Cambridge, UK -- If healthcare providers are to cope with the data received from the increasing number of wireless diagnostic and monitoring devices, more intelligence must be added to the core of their IT systems. That is the one of the conclusions of a report recently published by Cambridge UK based analysts Wireless Healthcare.

The report sees manufacturers continuing to push wireless medical devices into the consumer electronics market. Wireless Healthcare acknowledges that this will help move care to the edge of the healthcare network, yielding cost savings and delivering se rvices to patients currently overlooked by incumbent providers. However, it also warns that without intelligent software applications to handle data collected from wireless monitoring devices, clinicians will become overloaded and patients’ expect ations of the system will not be met.

As Peter Kruger, Senior Analyst with Wireless Healthcare points out. “This is rather like an online banking service without software to analyse a customer’s loan application. It is not difficult to imagine what would happen if every time an online customer put in a request for a loan it had to be read and approved by a manager.”

The report identifies a number of key intelligent software components that are currently under development, but casts doubt on whether these will fit with the IT infrastructure being installed by major healthcare providers such as the UK’s NHS.

The three components are:

Analytical engines.
Diagnostic tools.
Disease monitoring software.

Duplicate Drug Alert

Is duplicate drug alert, a help or a menace?

Considering the stake holders involved. there are two ways of looking at this.

- This IS A help to the clinician, during order entry, if it is a passive alert.It can be made intrusive depending on the practice policy.
- From the pahrmacist point of view, duplicate drug orders cause duplicate entries and difficult management of the prescription.

In recent years, clinical guidelines and protocols have become the main instruments for disseminating best practice in medical practice. They are designed to promote safe practices, reduce inter-clinician practice variations and support decision-making in patient care while containing the costs of care. So far, they have been proved useful in improving the quality and consistency of healthcare by supporting healthcare quality assessment and assurance, clinical decision making, workflow and resource management etc. The benefits of using clinical guidelines are widely recognized, yet the guideline development process is time- and resource-consuming, and the size and complexity of guidelines remains a major hurdle for effectively using them in clinical care.

Several methods have been or are being developed to support the development, deployment, maintenance and use of computerised evidence-based guidelines, using techniques from Artificial Intelligence, Software Engineering, Medical Informatics and Formal Methods. Various different representation formalisms and computational techniques are used e.g. rule-based, logic-based, knowledge-based and workflow-based. Computerised guideline-related research spans a wide range of the AI community as well as other research areas.

Health informaticians "embattled", claims ASSIST

13 Sep 2006

A survey undertaken by the Association for Informatics Professionals in Health and Social Care (ASSIST) has claimed that those working in health informatics suffer from low morale and feel they have been let down by Agenda for Change.

Evaluation of healthcare informatics posts is inconsistent and pay uncompetitive, says ASSIST, and the formal establishment of healthcare informatics as a profession was necessary.

These issues are affecting staff retention, said ASSIST, with vacancy rates ranging from 12% for information managers to 4% for senior managers and clinical informatics staff.

Around 1,500 of the 6,000 informatics staff in the NHS replied to the survey, which was carried out between March and July this year.

"The strong impression from the survey is of an embattled group of staff, with low morale, feeling under-valued and unable to control their own destiny in the face of the pace of policy and organisational change," said ASSIST, a member group of the British Computer Society.

The group also predicted future skills shortages in project management, information analysis and ICT training. It recommended that staff be involved with the development of health informatics as a profession, while keeping in mind that a only a minority of staff were in favour of mandatory registration.

Andrew Haw, chair of ASSIST, said: "Front-line services rely critically on information and information technology. These depend on a skilled, professional and motivated workforce.

"With tough competition for informatics specialists from all sectors of the economy, the ASSIST survey highlights the need for urgent action across the NHS on health informatics workforce planning, recruitment and retention and the establishment of health informatics as formal profession."

ASSIST have pledged to follow the results of the survey up at a high level within Connecting for Health and the Information Centre for Health and Social Care.

Fundamental Change in the way Medical Records to be projected

Current View - A short term memory aid to facilitate encounter based healthcare
Owned by individual Physicians & Hospitals



Future View - Concept of "PATIENT" as the center of everything
Body of information which is patient focussed
Owned by the patient,hosted by an enterprise
Accessible by authorised caregivers
Workflow engine for caregivers

Proposing a study - Barriers perceived in implementation of EMR's in developing countries

Yes, will start a study soon on the below subject and then fill in the details

ROI and its value for varied levels of implementation environs - Does this make sense. Intend to say if we have some classified hospitals based on the population size they cater do we need to consider the ROI for these places differently.