The Informatics Review, latest items

The Informatics Review

The latest issue of the Informatics Review which is the e-journal of the Association of Medical Directors of Information Systems and The Improve-IT Institute, includes the following items:

"An Endless Frontier Postponed". This editorial describes how U.S. IT research grew largely under DARPA and the National Science Foundation (NSF).

* High rates of adverse drug events in a highly computerized hospital

* eHealth Initiative Announces Parallel Pathways for Quality Healthcares

* An Integrated Standard of Care for Healthcare Information Security:
Risk Management, HIPAA, and Beyond

* Expectations of Patients and Physicians Regarding Patient-Accessible
Medical Records

* UPMC pulls online drug form -- 'Unsecured nature' of prescription
request page causes concern

* The Challenges of Creating a Global Health Resource Tracking System

* Swedish researchers first in the world to gain access to BIMS

* Managed Care Executive Group Names Top Ten Technology Issues

* Researchers Use Maps to Research Obesity

Privacy vs Usability: A Qualitative Exploration of Patients' Experiences with Secure Internet Communication wit

Privacy vs Usability: A Qualitative Exploration of Patients' Experiences with Secure Internet Communication with Their General Practitioner

This intersting paper by Aksel Tjora, Trung Tran & Arild Faxvaag has just been published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research

Privacy vs Usability: A Qualitative Exploration of Patients' Experiences with Secure Internet Communication with Their General Practitioner

This has implication for the use of electronic communication between patients and their doctors and as the authors say in their conclusion " Despite a perceived need for secure electronic patient-physician communication systems, security barriers may diminish their overall usefulness. A dual approach is necessary to improve this situation: patients need to be better informed about security issues, and, at the same time, their experiences of using secure systems must be studied and used to improve user interfaces".

Expectations of Patients and Physicians Regarding Patient-Accessible Medical Records

Expectations of Patients and Physicians Regarding Patient-Accessible Medical Records

This paper by Stephen E Ross,; Jamie Todd; Laurie A Moore; Brenda L Beaty; Loretta Wittevrongel & Chen-Tan Lin, which has just been published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, reports a US study of patients attitudes to internet accessibile patient records.

ehealth2005

ehealth2005.no

The European eHealth conference has been held over the last couple of days in Tromso, Norway. I have not been able to attend but some of the abstracts are available on the web site & some sessions have been streamed.

"This Conference focused on important health issues, and the way in which they can be supported by eHealth, and to make major advances that benefit the people of Europe."

It will be interesting to see if issues of closer European integration of ehealth have been progressed, when the reports of the conference emerge.

New rules on patient control over access to their health record promised

According to a DoH press release, and information on the C4H website, 'tough new rules will ensure patients keep control over access to their health records in databases to be launched next year, Health Minister Lord Warner announced today'. These will be contained in the 'Care Record Guarantee', which will set out rules governing information held in the NHS Care Records Service.

The DoH press release is at: tinyurl.com/b3vrg (tiny url created from long DoH url).

The information on C4H website is at:
www.connectingforhealth.nhs.uk/crdb/

According to the press release, among the 12 commitments to patients about their records, are that :
* NHS staff's access to records will be strictly limited on a 'need to know' basis for providing treatment
* Eventually, patients will be able to block off parts of their record (the virtual 'sealed envelope' idea that has been around for a while)
* Patients will even be able to stop their information being seen by anyone outside the organisation which created it - although doing so may have an impact on the quality of care they receive.

On a sceptical note, one wonders about the degree of joined-up thinking across government when one then looks at the proposal for using data obtained viaNPfIT (and thus, by implication, CRDB) within the 2011 census (see May 18 item in this blog).

The world's biggest IT project - book review

Guardian Unlimited | Online | The world's biggest IT project

Michael Cross writing in today's Guardian has reviewed Sean Brennan's new book "The NHS It Project" - I'm half way through reading ti myself & will post my comments when I've finished it.

Open meeting with Heather Tierney-Moore (Nursing Clinical Lead for NPfIT)

BCS Nursing Specialist Group Open meeting with Heather Tierney-Moore (Nursing Clinical Lead for NPfIT)

The British Computer Society Nursing Specialist Group has organised an Open meeting with Heather Tierney-Moore
Nursing Clinical lead for the NPfIT

Date: Tuesday 14th June 2005

Venue: Radisson Edwardian Grafton Hotel 130 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 9HP

Format

· 5.30 - 6.00 Registration and refreshments
· 6.00 - 6.45 Heather Tierney Moore - The role of a Clinical Lead
· 6.45 - 7.30 Question and answer session
· 7.30 Close

For further Information

Richard Hayward, Chair BCS Nursing Specialist Group, Tel: 01227 782240
Email: rjh7@cant.ac.uk

Entry is free but places are limited. Please confirm your attendance with:

Sue Tueton, BCS HQ, 1 Sanford Street, Swindon, Wiltshire SN1 1HJ Tel: 01793 417417
Email: STueton@HQ.BCS.ORG.UK

Informatics in Primary Care Volume 13, Issue 1, February 2005

Informatics in Primary Care Volume 13, Issue 1, February 2005

The latest issue of Informatics in Primary Care has been published on the web it includes articles on:

TI: Health and medical informatics in the 21st century: will the future be about EbM2C?
AU: Protti, Denis J.

TI: Identifying and establishing consensus on the most important safety features of GP computer systems: e-Delphi study
AU: Avery, Anthony J.; Savelyich, Boki S.P.; Sheikh, Aziz; Cantrill,; Morris, Caroline J.; Fernando, Bernard; Bainbridge, Mike; Horsfield, Pete; Teasdale, Sheila

TI: Communicating about medications during primary care outpatient visits: the role of electronic medical records
AU: Arar, Nedal H.; Wen, Lonnie; McGrath, John; Steinbach, Rebecca; Pugh, Jacqueline A.

TI: Application of fuzzy classification in modern primary dental care
AU: Veryha, Yauheni; Adamczyk, Katarzyna

TI: Design and development of a web-based application for diabetes patient data management
AU: Deo, S.S.; Deobagkar, D.N.; Deobagkar, Deepti D.

TI: Web-based health applications provide useful and cost-effective tools; however, they should include key clinical variables and incorporate a coding or classification system
AU: de Lusignan, Simon

TI: Multi-ontology sense making: a new simplicity in decision making
AU: Snowden, David J.

TI: Potential impacts of patient access to their electronic care records
AU: Honeyman, Alasdair; Cox, Benita; Fisher, Brian

TI: Bringing SNOMED-CT into use within primary care
AU: Herbert, Ian; Hawking, Mary

TI: Codes, classifications, terminologies and nomenclatures: definition, development and application in practice
AU: de Lusignan, Simon

Health Informatics Journal -- Table of Contents (June 1 2005, 11 [2])

Health Informatics Journal -- Table of Contents (June 1 2005, 11 [2])

The latest issue of Health Informatics Journal is now available. It contains papers on:

Information management in health visitors' public health and community development activities
Ruth Bacigalupo, Nick Fox, and Philippa Levy
Health Informatics Journal 2005;11 83-94

Augmenting GEM-encoded clinical practice guidelines with relevant best evidence autonomously retrieved from MEDLINE
Syed Sibte Raza Abidi, Michael Kershaw, and Evangelos Milios
Health Informatics Journal 2005;11 95-110

Stakeholders' experience of teledermatology in a nurse-led community clinic: a case study
Sandra Lawton and Stephen Timmons
Health Informatics Journal 2005;11 111-122

What's so different about mobile information communication technologies (MICTs) for clinical work practices? A review of selected pilot studies
Henrique M. G. Martins and Matthew R. Jones
Health Informatics Journal 2005;11 123-134

Performance of surgical services within a diagnostic and treatment centre: an analysis of Trust X
Steve Page and Christopher Howard
Health Informatics Journal 2005;11 135-145

Knowledge support for interdisciplinary models of healthcare delivery: a study of knowledge needs and roles in managed clinical networks
Simon M. Burnett, Dorothy A. Williams, and Linda Webster
Health Informatics Journal 2005;11 146-160

The Information Architecture of Behavior Change Websites

The Information Architecture of Behavior Change Websites

This article by Brian G Danaher, H Garth McKay & John R Seeley in the Journal of Medical internet Research discusses the design of web sites to affect users behaviour using Web-based smoking cessation interventions as examples.

NHS IT patient data to aid 2011 census

NHS IT patient data to aid 2011 census

This report from silicon.com suggests that health data from the NPfIT could be used in the 2011 census. This could have advantages in reducing the burden of form filling and increase response rates, however as this data will be identifiable, I think it could be a breach of the clause in the Data Protection Act which stipulates data should only be used for the purpose it was collected for, and an example of "data creep" within government agencies.

The story is based on a consultation document from the Office of National Statistics on which comments are requested by 5th August.

NHS-HE Forum Meeting 12th May 2005

NHS-HE Forum Meeting 12th May 2005
My personal notes of this meeting which i attend last week are now available.

The Informatics Review

The Informatics Review 8:10is now available.

This issue includes links to the following Clinical Computing and Informatics News items.

* ELINCS: Developing a National Lab Data Standard for EHRs

* HEALTH INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY LEADERSHIP PANEL -- FINAL REPORT

* Secure, online personal health record available to every American at no cost!

* Business Process Automation: Closing the Automation Gap

* Vaccine safety websites meeting essential and important good information practices criteria

* HL7 Receives ANSI Approval of Three Version 3 Specifications Including CDA, Release 2

* Ambulatory Care Quality Alliance Approves Uniform Starter Set of Performance Measures

* Evaluation of electronic decision support systems

LORENZO. Application software for the healthcare industry

LORENZO. Application software for the healthcare industry

This site gives access to a Flash demonstration of the records screens in the Lorenzo software to be used in North West and West Midlands (NWWM) cluster of the National Porgramme for IT (NPfIT).

I have sent an email to IDX to find out whether a similar demo will be available of their Carecast software which will be used in the Southern Cluster.

The Inquirer - latest issue

The Inquirer

The latest edition of The Inquirer has just been published. This is the bulletin on the progress of IM&T in the local Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire health community.

The latest edition includes items on:

Get Smart
Registration is what all NHS staff who need to use NPfIT systems for things like Choose and Book and the Electronic transfer of prescriptions need to do.

Dawn of a new era for Pharmacy as new contract ushers in Electronic transfer of Prescriptions and a lot of new services for patients

NPfIT update May 2005

Short updates
New faces, Training opportunities and new GP helpdesk contract

Virtual Pathology Laboratory Goes Live at RUH

Frequently asked questions about Smart Card Registration

New British Standard for online learning is published

New British Standard for online learning is published

This report from PublicTechnology.net describes the publication of a new British Standard (BS 8419 Interoperability between metadata systems used for learning, education and training) with guidance on the use of metadata for interoperability in learning systems.

What the doctor ordered

What the doctor ordered

This article from Computer Weekly by Robin Guenier makes some interesting points about the current state of the National Programme for IT (NPfIT), now part of the NHS Connecting for Health.

He sumarises some of the developments so far and welcomes moves to involve clinicians, and makes a cogent argument for an independent audit.