Using the extensible markup language (XML) in automated clinical practice guidelines

Much work has been done in the area of web-based clinical practice guidelines. Issues such as representation, description, architectures, and implementation have been explored previously. Most if not all of these web-based applications rely exclusively on HTML, the HyperText Markup Language. In the process of prototyping a guideline service to be used in a diabetes operations improvement project, we developed a model for a guideline engine that makes use of the Extensible Markup Language (XML), both as an interface to the engine and as a vehicle for delivering structured guideline content. We feel that XML may offer advantages in implementing guideline services that are difficult (if not impossible) to accomplish with HTML alone.

"Just-in-time" clinical information

The just-in-time (JIT) model originated in the manufacturing industry as a way to manage parts inventories process so that specific components could be made available at the appropriate times (that is, "just in time"). This JIT model can be applied to the management of clinical information inventories, so that clinicians can have more immediate access to the most current and relevant information at the time they most need it--when making clinical care decisions. The authors discuss traditional modes of managing clinical information, and then describe how a new, JIT model may be developed and implemented. They describe three modes of clinician-information interactions that a JIT model might employ, the scope of information that may be made available in a JIT model (global information or local, case-specific information), and the challenges posed by the implementation of such an information-access model. Finally, they discuss how JIT information access may change how physicians practice medicine, various ways JIT information may be delivered, and concerns about the trustworthiness of electronically published and accessed information resources.

Sharing electronic medical records across multiple heterogeneous and competing institutions

Most early reports of implemented World-Wide Web (W3) medical record systems describe single institution architectures. We describe W3-EMRS, a multi-institutional architecture, and its implementation. Thorny problems in data sharing underlined by the W3-EMRS project are reviewed.