Digital Libraries and Recent Medical Informatics Research

Information architecture for a patient-specific dashboard in head and neck tumor boards

PURPOSE

Overcoming the flaws of current data management conditions in head and neck oncology could enable integrated information systems specifically tailored to the needs of medical experts in a tumor board meeting. Clinical dashboards are a promising method to assist various aspects of the decision-making process in such cognitively demanding scenarios. However, in order to provide extensive and intuitive assistance to the participating physicians, the design and development of such a system have to be user-centric. To accomplish this task, conceptual methods need to be performed prior to the technical development and integration stages.

METHODS

We have conducted a qualitative survey including eight clinical experts with different levels of expertise in the field of head and neck oncology. According to the principles of information architecture, the survey focused on the identification and causal interconnection of necessary metrics for information assessment in the tumor board.

RESULTS

Based on the feedback by the clinical experts, we have constructed a detailed map of the required information items for a tumor board dashboard in head and neck oncology. Furthermore, we have identified three distinct groups of metrics (patient, disease and therapy metrics) as well as specific recommendations for their structural and graphical implementation.

CONCLUSION

By using the information architecture, we were able to gather valuable feedback about the requirements and cognitive processes of the tumor board members. Those insights have helped us to develop a dashboard application that closely adapts to the specified needs and characteristics, and thus is primarily user-centric.

Soarian™ – Workflow Management Applied for Health Care

Objectives: To describe and comment on functionality and architecture of the software product Soarian™ developed by Siemens, to identify key differentiators to related products, and to comment on predecessor systems and beta versions. This has been done in the framework of a conference on health information systems of the IMIA.

Methods: Analyzing existing literature. Site visit of a predecessor system at Haukeland Sykehus, Bergen. Pilot of a beta version at the Erlangen University Medical Center, elaborating on major characteristics in discussion rounds.

Results: Soarian is a functional comprehensive, clinically oriented software product to support health care processes and to be used for health care professional workstations. It is a software product, designed and written completely new. Three major key differentiators were identified in comparison to related software products: Soarian’s workflow engine, its embedded analytics, and its ‘smart’ user interface. The targeted reduced installation time is stated to be 12 months or less.

Conclusions: Soarian has good chances to become one of the major software products for health care professional workstations in the international market to support patient-centered, shared care. Its global design may help to better support and maintain national or language specific versions. The first installations of Soarian will be critical, as they will show how the system will be accepted. To use such software products efficiently, organizational aspects within hospitals as well as between health care institutions have to be considered, e.g. strategic IT planning.

Design and evaluation of a multimedia electronic patient record "oncoflow" with clinical workflow assistance for head and neck tumor therapy

OBJECTIVES

The management of patient-specific information is a challenging task for surgeons and physicians because existing clinical information systems are insufficiently integrated into daily clinical routine and contained information entities are distributed across different proprietary databases. Thus, existing information is hardly usable for further electronic processing, workflow support or clinical studies.

METHODS

A Web-based clinical information system has been developed that automatically imports patient-specific information from different information systems. The system is tailored to the existing workflow for the treatment of patients with head and neck cancer. In this paper, the clinical assistance functions and a quantitative as well as a qualitative system evaluation are presented.

RESULTS

The information system has been deployed at a clinical site and is in use in daily clinical routine. Two evaluation studies show that the information integration, the structured information presentation in the Web browser and the assistance functions improve the physician's workflow. The studies also show that the usage of the new information system does not impair the time physicians need for a process step compared with the usage of the existing information system.

CONCLUSIONS

Information integration is crucial for efficient workflow support in the clinic. The central access to information within a modern and structured user interface saves valuable time for the physician. The comprehensive database allows an instant usage of the existing information clinical workflow support or the conduction of trial studies.

Developing and evaluating criteria to help reviewers of biomedical informatics manuscripts

Peer-reviewed publication of scientific research results represents the most important means of their communication. The authors have annually reviewed a large heterogeneous set of papers to produce the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) Yearbook of Medical Informatics. To support an objective and high-quality review process, the authors attempted to provide reviewers with a set of refined quality criteria, comprised of 80 general criteria and an additional 60 criteria for specific types of manuscripts. Authors conducted a randomized controlled trial, with 18 reviewers, to evaluate application of the refined criteria on review outcomes. Whereas the trial found that reviewers applying the criteria graded papers more strictly (lower overall scores), and that junior reviewers appreciated the availability of the criteria, there was no overall change in the interrater variability in reviewing the manuscripts. The authors describe their experience as a "case report" and provide a reference to the refined quality review criteria without claiming that the criteria represent a validated instrument for quantitative quality measurement.

Health care in the information society. A prognosis for the year 2013

Our society is increasingly influenced by modern information and communication technology (ICT). Health care has profited greatly by this development. How could health care provision look in the near future, in 10 years, or more precisely, in the year 2013? What measures must be undertaken by political and self-governing health institutions, and by medical informatics research, to ensure an efficient, medically advanced and yet affordable future health care system? Three factors will greatly influence the further development of information processing in health care within the near future: the development of the population, medical advances, and advances in informatics. These factors have motivated us to set up 30 theses for health care provision in the year 2013. The theses cover areas of health care, such as its people, its information systems, and its ICT tools. Three major goals requiring achievement have been identified: patient-centered recording and use of medical data for cooperative care, process-integrated decision support through current medical knowledge, comprehensive use of patient data for research and health care reporting. In consequence, political institutions should provide a framework for networked, patient-centered health care. They are called on to regulate the storage and exchange of health care data and of appropriate information system architectures. Finally, the health care institutions themselves must emphasize professional information management more strongly. Relevant research topics in medical informatics are: comprehensive electronic patient records, modern health information system architectures, architectures for medical knowledge centers, specific data processing methods ('medical data mining'), and multi-functional, mobile ICT tools.