Medical Informatics

Information technology has been revolutionizing the everyday life of the common man, while medical science has been making rapid strides in understanding disease mechanisms, developing diagnostic techniques and effecting successful treatment regimen, even for those cases which would have been classified as a poor prognosis a decade earlier. The confluence of information technology and biomedicine has brought into its ambit additional dimensions of computerized databases for patient conditions, revolutionizing the way health care and patient information is recorded, processed, interpreted and utilized for improving the quality of life. This book consists of seven chapters dealing with the three primary issues of medical information acquisition from a patient's and health care professional's perspective, translational approaches from a researcher's point of view, and finally the application potential as required by the clinicians/physician. The book covers modern issues in Information Technology, Bioinformatics Methods and Clinical Applications. The chapters describe the basic process of acquisition of information in a health system, recent technological developments in biomedicine and the realistic evaluation of medical informatics

Data completeness in healthcare: A literature survey.

As the adoption of eHealth has made it easier to access and aggregate healthcare data, there has been growing application for clinical decisions, health services planning, and public health monitoring with daily collected data in clinical care. Reliable data quality is a precursor of the aforementioned tasks. There is a body of research on data quality in healthcare, however, a clear picture of data completeness in this field is missing. This research aims to identify and classify current research themes related to data completeness in healthcare. In addition, the paper presents problems with data completeness in the reviewed literature and identifies methods that have been adopted to address those problems. This study has reviewed 24 papers (January 2011–April 2016) published in information and computing sciences, biomedical engineering, and medicine and health sciences journals. The paper uncovers three main research themes, including design and development, evaluation, and determinants. In conclusion, this paper improves our understanding of the current state of the art of data completeness in healthcare records and indicates future research directions.N

Print Journal Analysis and Journal Removal Projects

The Health Sciences Library and Informatics Center\u27s main objectives were: To analyze the print journal holdings to determine which titles should be retained, donated, or discarded. To develop a plan for retaining, removing, and consolidating selected material on both the 3rd floor of the library and in offsite storage in HSSB

Tweeting biomedicine: an analysis of tweets and citations in the biomedical literature

Data collected by social media platforms have recently been introduced as a new source for indicators to help measure the impact of scholarly research in ways that are complementary to traditional citation-based indicators. Data generated from social media activities related to scholarly content can be used to reflect broad types of impact. This paper aims to provide systematic evidence regarding how often Twitter is used to diffuse journal articles in the biomedical and life sciences. The analysis is based on a set of 1.4 million documents covered by both PubMed and Web of Science (WoS) and published between 2010 and 2012. The number of tweets containing links to these documents was analyzed to evaluate the degree to which certain journals, disciplines, and specialties were represented on Twitter. It is shown that, with less than 10% of PubMed articles mentioned on Twitter, its uptake is low in general. The relationship between tweets and WoS citations was examined for each document at the level of journals and specialties. The results show that tweeting behavior varies between journals and specialties and correlations between tweets and citations are low, implying that impact metrics based on tweets are different from those based on citations. A framework utilizing the coverage of articles and the correlation between Twitter mentions and citations is proposed to facilitate the evaluation of novel social-media based metrics and to shed light on the question in how far the number of tweets is a valid metric to measure research impact.Comment: 22 pages, 4 figures, 5 table

The experience of students in the South African-Cuban medical training program : an encounter with medical pluralism

The Cuban Medical Training program is an initiative that provides bursaries to international students from disadvantaged backgrounds. Understanding the experiences of South African participants, particularly those who complete their transitional component at University of Cape Town (UCT), and how they are prepared to meet the aims of the South African-Cuban Medical Training Program (SACMTP), the needs of their local communities, and ultimately, the needs of the South African health system, is the focus of my research

Facilitating Academic Writing in Postgraduate Medical Education: Tips for Instructors

The article summarizes the contents of a workshop prepared for and delivered during the 2nd English for Healthcare Conference in Bern, Switzerland. It demonstrates three approaches to teaching academic writing in English in the context of postgraduate medical education, focusing on the author, the text, and the reader

"Waking up" the sleeping metaphor of normality in connection to intersex or DSD: a scoping review of medical literature

The aim of the study is to encourage a critical debate on the use of normality in the medical literature on DSD or intersex. For this purpose, a scoping review was conducted to identify and map the various ways in which "normal" is used in the medical literature on DSD between 2016 and 2020. We identified 75 studies, many of which were case studies highlighting rare cases of DSD, others, mainly retrospective observational studies, focused on improving diagnosis or treatment. The most common use of the adjective normal was in association with phenotypic sex. Overall, appearance was the most commonly cited criteria to evaluate the normality of sex organs. More than 1/3 of the studies included also medical photographs of sex organs. This persistent use of normality in reference to phenotypic sex is worrisome given the long-term medicalization of intersex bodies in the name of a "normal" appearance or leading a "normal" life. Healthcare professionals should be more careful about the ethical implications of using photographs in publications given that many intersex persons describe their experience with medical photography as dehumanizing. Keywords: DSD; Ethics; Intersex; Normality; Phenotyp

Telesurgery information management systems in university hospitals of Tehran

    This is a descriptive study with research population coming from "telesurgery information management systems" in 23 teaching hospitals  of  Shahid  Beheshti and Tehran universities of medical sciences in 2011.The study used stratified and simple random sampling methods for subject selection, followed by observation and interview for data collection.  According to the results, video camera with 100%  application, was the most frequently used equipment in the hospitals for telesurgery data gathering.  Visual data analysis for developing three dimensional models was common just in 10% of hospitals.  Fiber Optic and satellite, with 40% application rate, were the most frequently used telecommunication equipments in the hospitals. The study indicated the significance of accurate and appropriate management of telesurgery information as the first step for appropriate implementation of telesurgery programs in Iran

InMD-X: Large Language Models for Internal Medicine Doctors

In this paper, we introduce InMD-X, a collection of multiple large language models specifically designed to cater to the unique characteristics and demands of Internal Medicine Doctors (IMD). InMD-X represents a groundbreaking development in natural language processing, offering a suite of language models fine-tuned for various aspects of the internal medicine field. These models encompass a wide range of medical sub-specialties, enabling IMDs to perform more efficient and accurate research, diagnosis, and documentation. InMD-X's versatility and adaptability make it a valuable tool for improving the healthcare industry, enhancing communication between healthcare professionals, and advancing medical research. Each model within InMD-X is meticulously tailored to address specific challenges faced by IMDs, ensuring the highest level of precision and comprehensiveness in clinical text analysis and decision support. This paper provides an overview of the design, development, and evaluation of InMD-X, showcasing its potential to revolutionize the way internal medicine practitioners interact with medical data and information. We present results from extensive testing, demonstrating the effectiveness and practical utility of InMD-X in real-world medical scenarios

The Diagnosis Narratives & The Healing Ritual

ABSTRACT THE DIAGNOSIS NARRATIVES & THE HEALING RITUAL by JAMES PETER MEZA December 2013 Advisor: Dr. Andrea Sankar Major: Anthropology (medical) Degree: Doctor of Philosophy The goal of this dissertation was to describe healing practices in the setting of clinical encounters between patients and doctors. The theoretical background for this research began with the theory of the mind and using concepts from cognitive anthropology described the anthropological self as distinguished from person or identity. Additionally, the conceptual framework of cognitive anthropology was used to describe narrative theory. Narrative theory in the form of the narrative structure of experience, particularly the experience of ritual formed the basis for investigation. The fieldwork setting was a urological practice and all of the clinical sites associated with this practice, including two hospitals, satellite clinics, related disciplines of urogynecologic oncology and radiation oncology. The majority of the data was obtained using participant observation. Analysis was accomplished by sorting the data using Atlas ti v6.2 and generating themes by codes. These themes were then re-examined using the theoretical framework. The major finding was that diagnosis narratives were an essential part of the healing ritual. This was in contrast to current anthropological emphasis on illness narratives. The theoretical and practical aspects of these findings were discussed in the results. Diagnosis narratives contributed to the healing ritual and successful completion of the ritual resulted in healing relationships. This research has implication for future anthropological research using narrative theory for investigating narrative components of healing rituals in Western biomedicine. Additionally, it has applications for cultural communication in clinical practice