Architecture for intensive care data processing and visualization in real-time

Clinical data is growing every day. Ergo, to treat, store and publish such data is an emergent task. Furthermore, analysing data in real-time using streaming and processing technologies and methods, in order to obtain quality data, prepared to support decision making is of extreme value. Big Data emerged with the introduction of real-time processing, thus revolutionizing traditional technologies and techniques through the ability to deal with the volume, speed and variety of data. Countless studies have been proposed in the healthcare domain in search of solutions that allow the flow of data in real-time. However, the work presented hereby is distinguished by allowing the collection, processing, storage and analysis of Intensive Care Units (ICU) data, both collected in real-time from bedside monitors but also stored in a historical repository. The architecture proposed makes use of current technologies, like Nextgen Connector as message supplier and integrator, Elasticsearch as a search index, Kibana for viewing stored data and Grafana for real-time streaming. This article is part of the ICDS4IM project - Intelligent Clinical Decision Support in Intensive Care Medicine to support the experimentation of data processing techniques and technologies, based in HL7 format and collected in real-time so that it can be made available through Health Information Systems across the healthcare institutions.The work has been supported by FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope: DSAIPA/DS/0084/2018

Usability analysis of contending electronic health record systems

In this paper, we report measured usability of two leading EHR systems during procurement. A total of 18 users participated in paired-usability testing of three scenarios: ordering and managing medications by an outpatient physician, medicine administration by an inpatient nurse and scheduling of appointments by nursing staff. Data for audio, screen capture, satisfaction rating, task success and errors made was collected during testing. We found a clear difference between the systems for percentage of successfully completed tasks, two different satisfaction measures and perceived learnability when looking at the results over all scenarios. We conclude that usability should be evaluated during procurement and the difference in usability between systems could be revealed even with fewer measures than were used in our study. © 2019 American Psychological Association Inc. All rights reserved.Peer reviewe