A cloud-based healthcare infrastructure for neonatal intensive-care units

Intensive medical attention of preterm babies is crucial to avoid short-term and long- term complications. Within neonatal intensive care units (NICUs), cribs are equipped with electronic devices aimed at: monitoring, administering drugs and supporting clinician in making diagnosis and offer treatments. To manage this huge data flux, a cloud-based healthcare infrastructure that allows data collection from different devices (i.e., patient monitors, bilirubinometers, and transcutaneous bilirubinometers), storage, processing and transferring will be presented. Communication protocols were designed to enable the communication and data transfer between the three different devices and a unique database and an easy to use graphical user interface (GUI) was implemented. The infrastructure is currently used in the “Women’s and Children’s Hospital G.Salesi” in Ancona (Italy), supporting clinicians and health opertators in their daily activities

Interventions to reduce medication errors in neonatal care: a systematic review

Background: Medication errors represent a significant but often preventable cause of morbidity and mortality in neonates. The objective of this systematic review was to determine the effectiveness of interventions to reduce neonatal medication errors. Methods: A systematic review was undertaken of all comparative and noncomparative studies published in any language, identified from searches of PubMed and EMBASE and referencelist checking. Eligible studies were those investigating the impact of any medication safety interventions aimed at reducing medication errors in neonates in the hospital setting. Results: A total of 102 studies were identified that met the inclusion criteria, including 86 comparative and 16 noncomparative studies. Medication safety interventions were classified into six themes: technology (n = 38; e.g. electronic prescribing), organizational (n = 16; e.g. guidelines, policies, and procedures), personnel (n = 13; e.g. staff education), pharmacy (n = 9; e.g. clinical pharmacy service), hazard and risk analysis (n = 8; e.g. error detection tools), and multifactorial (n = 18; e.g. any combination of previous interventions). Significant variability was evident across all included studies, with differences in intervention strategies, trial methods, types of medication errors evaluated, and how medication errors were identified and evaluated. Most studies demonstrated an appreciable risk of bias. The vast majority of studies (>90%) demonstrated a reduction in medication errors. A similar median reduction of 50–70% in medication errors was evident across studies included within each of the identified themes, but findings varied considerably from a 16% increase in medication errors to a 100% reduction in medication errors. Conclusion: While neonatal medication errors can be reduced through multiple interventions aimed at improving the medication use process, no single intervention appeared clearly superior. Further research is required to evaluate the relative cost-effectiveness of the various medication safety interventions to facilitate decisions regarding uptake and implementation into clinical practice.Minh-Nha Rhylie Nguyen, Cassandra Mosel and Luke E. Grzeskowia

Information Systems and Healthcare XXXIV: Clinical Knowledge Management Systems—Literature Review and Research Issues for Information Systems

Knowledge Management (KM) has emerged as a possible solution to many of the challenges facing U.S. and international healthcare systems. These challenges include concerns regarding the safety and quality of patient care, critical inefficiency, disparate technologies and information standards, rapidly rising costs and clinical information overload. In this paper, we focus on clinical knowledge management systems (CKMS) research. The objectives of the paper are to evaluate the current state of knowledge management systems diffusion in the clinical setting, assess the present status and focus of CKMS research efforts, and identify research gaps and opportunities for future work across the medical informatics and information systems disciplines. The study analyzes the literature along two dimensions: (1) the knowledge management processes of creation, capture, transfer, and application, and (2) the clinical processes of diagnosis, treatment, monitoring and prognosis. The study reveals that the vast majority of CKMS research has been conducted by the medical and health informatics communities. Information systems (IS) researchers have played a limited role in past CKMS research. Overall, the results indicate that there is considerable potential for IS researchers to contribute their expertise to the improvement of clinical process through technology-based KM approaches

Outcome prediction in intensive care with special reference to cardiac surgery

The development, use, and understanding of severity of illness scoring systems has advanced rapidly in the last decade; their weaknesses and limitations have also become apparent. This work follows some of this development and explores some of these aspects. It was undertaken in three stages and in two countries. The first study investigated three severity of illness scoring systems in a general Intensive Care Unit (ICU) in Cape Town, namely the Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation (APACHE II) score, the Therapeutic Intervention Scoring System (TISS), and a locally developed organ failure score. All of these showed a good relationship with mortality, with the organ failure score the best predictor of outcome. The TISS score was felt to be more likely to be representative of intensiveness of medical and nursing management than severity of illness. The APACHE II score was already becoming widely used world-wide and although it performed less well in some diagnostic categories (for example Adult Respiratory Distress Syndrome) than had been hoped, it clearly warranted further investigation. Some of the diagnosis-specific problems were eliminated in the next study which concentrated on the application of the APACHE II score in a cardiothoracic surgical ICU in London. Although group predictive ability was statistically impressive, the predictive ability of APACHE II in the individual patient was limited as only very high APACHE II scores confidently predicted death and then only in a small number of patients. However, there were no deaths associated with an APACHE II score of less than 5 and the mortality was less than 1 % when the APACHE II score was less than 10. Finally, having recognised the inadequacies in mortality prediction of the APACHE II score in this scenario, a study was undertaken to evaluate a novel concept: a combination of preoperative, intraoperative, and postoperative (including APACHE II and III) variables in cardiac surgery patients admitted to the same ICU. The aim was to develop a more precise method of predicting length of stay, incidence of complications, and ICU and hospital outcome for these patients. There were 1008 patients entered into the study. There was a statistically significant relationship between increasing Parsonnet (a cardiac surgery risk prediction score), APACHE II, and APACHE III scores and mortality. By forward stepwise logistic regression a model was developed for the probability of hospital death. This model included bypass time, need for inotropes, mean arterial pressure, urea, and Glasgow Coma Scale. Predictive performance was evaluated by calculating the area under the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve. The derived model had an area under the ROC curve 0.87, while the Parsonnet score had an area of 0.82 and the APACHE II risk of dying 0.84. It was concluded that a combination of intraoperative and postoperative variables can improve predictive ability

Neonatal inpatient dataset for small and sick newborn care in low- and middle-income countries: systematic development and multi-country operationalisation with NEST360.

BACKGROUND: Every Newborn Action Plan (ENAP) coverage target 4 necessitates national scale-up of Level-2 Small and Sick Newborn Care (SSNC) (with Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP)) in 80% of districts by 2025. Routine neonatal inpatient data is important for improving quality of care, targeting equity gaps, and enabling data-driven decision-making at individual, district, and national-levels. Existing neonatal inpatient datasets vary in purpose, size, definitions, and collection processes. We describe the co-design and operationalisation of a core inpatient dataset for use to track outcomes and improve quality of care for small and sick newborns in high-mortality settings. METHODS: A three-step systematic framework was used to review, co-design, and operationalise this novel neonatal inpatient dataset in four countries (Malawi, Kenya, Tanzania, and Nigeria) implementing with the Newborn Essential Solutions and Technologies (NEST360) Alliance. Existing global and national datasets were identified, and variables were mapped according to categories. A priori considerations for variable inclusion were determined by clinicians and policymakers from the four African governments by facilitated group discussions. These included prioritising clinical care and newborn outcomes data, a parsimonious variable list, and electronic data entry. The tool was designed and refined by > 40 implementers and policymakers during a multi-stakeholder workshop and online interactions. RESULTS: Identified national and international datasets (n = 6) contained a median of 89 (IQR:61-154) variables, with many relating to research-specific initiatives. Maternal antenatal/intrapartum history was the largest variable category (21, 23.3%). The Neonatal Inpatient Dataset (NID) includes 60 core variables organised in six categories: (1) birth details/maternal history; (2) admission details/identifiers; (3) clinical complications/observations; (4) interventions/investigations; (5) discharge outcomes; and (6) diagnosis/cause-of-death. Categories were informed through the mapping process. The NID has been implemented at 69 neonatal units in four African countries and links to a facility-level quality improvement (QI) dashboard used in real-time by facility staff. CONCLUSION: The NEST360 NID is a novel, parsimonious tool for use in routine information systems to inform inpatient SSNC quality. Available on the NEST360/United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) Implementation Toolkit for SSNC, this adaptable tool enables facility and country-level comparisons to accelerate progress toward ENAP targets. Additional linked modules could include neonatal at-risk follow-up, retinopathy of prematurity, and Level-3 intensive care

Clinical epidemiology and development of novel multilocus sequence typing scheme for candida parapsilosis associated with catheter-related bloodstream infections

Candida parapsilosis has been increasingly reported as an important pathogen causing healthcare associated infections, including catheter-related bloodstream infections (CRBSIs). Given the paucity of information on this pathogen, this study aimed to determine the prevalence of C. parapsilosis CRBSI and the associated risk factors. As there is lack of genotyping method to study the molecular characteristics of C. parapsilosis, this study included the development of multilocus sequence typing (MLST) scheme for C. parapsilosis sensu stricto population. In this study, data for 208 C. parapsilosis candidemia were collected and recorded in a standard proforma. After exclusion of 31 cases that were not catheterized, 177 episodes of C. parapsilosis candidemia were included in analysis, from which, 30 cases of CRBSI were compared to 147 non-CRBSI cases in terms of demographic, underlying diseases, invasive medical procedures, and laboratory test values. The prevalence, clinical characteristics and risk factors of C. parapsilosis CRBSIs were determined. Species identification of C. parapsilosis sensu stricto was confirmed by sequencing the ITS region of the ribosomal RNA genes. A novel MLST scheme was developed for genotyping clinical C. parapsilosis population. Five representative non-related C. parapsilosis isolates were used to test the potentially polymorphic loci for the presence of polymorphism. In MLST development phase, a number of loci were screened based on previously published MLST schemes and data from C. parapsilosis whole genome sequences. Seven most polymorphic loci were selected. Neutrality test was performed on the selected loci and discriminatory power of the scheme was determined. Genetic diversity among C. parapsilosis population and correlation with clinical outcomes and antifungal resistance were determined. Results of this study revealed that C. parapsilosis was the most predominant Candida species causing candidemia contributing to 29.2% of all candidemia cases. The prevalence of C. parapsilosis CRBSI was 14.4% of all C. parapsilosis candidemia, and 17.7% of catheterized candidemia patients. Out of 208 cases of C. parapsilosis candidemia, 30 cases were CRBSI, 112 were BSI and 66 were catheter colonizer. Intensive care unit (ICU) admission and receipt of total parenteral nutrition (TPN) were reported as independent risk factors of C. parapsilosis CRBSI. Admission in non-ICU and receipt of TPN were significantly associated with the development of C. parapsilosis CRBSI compared to non-CRBSI. Death due to C. parapsilosis candidemia was reported in 19.1% of patients. The developed MLST scheme demonstrated the ability to discriminate 19 C. parapsilosis sensu stricto strains into 15 different DSTs with a discriminatory power of 0.942. Phylogenetic analysis based on 4735 concatenated nucleotides of 19 C. parapsilosis sensu stricto strains were grouped into four clusters. The associations of C. parapsilosis DSTs with outcomes and antifungal resistance cannot be determined due to small number of strains in each genotype. In conclusion, the prevalence of C. parapsilosis candidemia was the highest among other Candida species, while the prevalence of C. parapsilosis CRBSI was low compared to all C. parapsilosis candidemia. Admission to ICU and receiving TPN were independent risk factors for C. parapsilosis CRBSI, where non-ICU admission and TPN receipt were significantly associated with development of CRBSI compared to non- CRBSI. A novel MLST scheme for C. parapsilosis has been successfully developed. This robust, highly discriminatory novel MLST scheme could be used as a molecular genotyping tool for C. parapsilosis sensu stricto strains worldwide

Nutritional Evaluation and Optimisation in Neonates (NEON) trial of amino acid regimen and intravenous lipid composition in preterm parenteral nutrition: a randomised double-blind controlled trial

Background Parenteral nutrition (PN) is central to the care of very immature infants. Early intakes of higher amounts of amino acids and the use of lipid emulsions containing fish oils are recommended by current international recommendations. Objective To confirm the safety and demonstrate efficacy of the immediate introduction of the recommended daily intake of amino acids (Imm-RDI) and soya bean oil, medium-chain triglycerides, olive oil and fish oil lipid in PN to increase non-adipose (lean) body mass and decrease intrahepatocellular lipid (IHCL) content. Design Multicentre, double-blind, 2 × 2 factorial and randomised controlled trial (RCT). Setting Neonatal units in London and south-east England, UK. Participants Extremely preterm infants born before 31 weeks of gestation without major congenital or life-threatening abnormalities who could to be randomised to receive PN within 24 hours of birth. Interventions Infants were randomised within 24 hours of birth to receive PN containing either high [RDI of amino acids (Imm-RDI)] or low [incremental amino acids (Inc-AA) control] levels of amino acids. In addition, infants were randomised to receive either 20% SMOFlipid® (Fresenius Kabi AG, Richmond Hill, ON, Canada) or 20% Intralipid® (Fresenius Kabi AG, Richmond Hill, ON, Canada) (control). This resulted in four groups: (1) Inc-AA/Intralipid, (2) Inc-AA/SMOFlipid, (3) Imm-RDI/Intralipid and (4) Imm-RDI/SMOFlipid. The intervention was continued until infants were receiving 150 ml/kg/day of enteral feeds for 24 hours. Primary outcome measure For the amino acid intervention, this was non-adipose or lean body mass measured by magnetic resonance imaging. For the lipid composition intervention, this was IHCL content as measured by hepatic magnetic resonance spectroscopy. Primary outcomes were measured at term age equivalent, between 37 and 44 weeks postmenstrual age. Results We randomised 168 infants born before 31 weeks of gestation. We evaluated outcomes, at term, in 133 infants. There were no significant differences in non-adipose mass between the Imm-RDI and Inc-AA groups [adjusted mean difference 1.0 g, 95% confidence interval (CI) –108 to 111 g] or in levels of IHCLs between the SMOFlipid and Intralipid groups (adjusted mean SMOFlipid to Intralipid ratio 1.1, 95% CI 0.8 to 1.6). Infants receiving the Imm-RDI were more likely than Inc-AA infants to have blood urea nitrogen levels > 7 mmol/l [75% vs. 49% (p  10 mmol/l [49% vs. 18% (p < 0.01)]. Furthermore, head circumference at term was smaller in the Imm-RDI group (mean difference –0.8 cm, 95% CI –1.5 to –0.1 cm; p = 0.02). There were no significant differences in any prespecified secondary outcomes, including adiposity, liver function tests, weight, length and mortality. Limitations Not all eligible babies were available for recruitment, as pharmacy staff trained in clinical trial procedures were unavailable at weekends in three of the four centres. We were able to assess brain volumes in only one-third of participants, as imaging was carried out while the participants were sleeping naturally and we measured primary outcomes first and continued to brain imaging only if the infant remained asleep. Conclusions Immediate delivery of the recommended daily intake of parenteral amino acids does not benefit body composition or growth to term and may be harmful; SMOFlipid does not affect IHCL content. Future work The long-term functional outcomes of early administration of RDI of amino acids and the use of SMOFlipid, including neurodevelopment, body composition and metabolic health, should be evaluated. Trial registration Current Controlled Trials ISRCTN29665319 and EudraCT 2009-016731-34. Funding This project was funded by the Efficacy and Mechanism Evaluation programme, a Medical Research Council and National Institute for Health Research partnership

Innovative ICT solutions in telemedicine to support clinical practice and research in hospitals

2010/2011The scope of this study was to examine ICT telemedicine innovations and potentialities in web-portals, intranet services and tele-radiology topics respectively, in order to design, develop and, possibly, realize apposite telemedicine systems and solutions for healthcare and in particular for the hospitals. ICT techniques and technologies are nowadays applied in every area of our common living from work places to our homes, our free-time, schools, universities and so on. The healthcare services offered by hospitals are heavily supported by technologies and, behind them, by a wide research both in ICT and biomedical sciences. Thanks to these advances telemedicine is now becoming a fundamental part of services offered by hospitals and healthcare structures. The healthcare management, the doctors and the common people are now experimenting how telemedicine is an added value to all the services offered in terms of the quality of care, the patient follow up, the early diagnose and treatment of pathologies and diseases. In this research is presented an all-inclusive approach to telemedicine problems and challenges in particular studying, developing and proposing ICT methods and technologies in the above mentioned three areas of interest: •innovative healthcare and telemedicine-ready hospital website or portal design and development; •analysis and study of models for the realization of intranet healthcare services to enhance both quality of care and the management of healthcare personnel evaluation; •tele-radiology and some of its actual new perspectives as the study and the evaluation of the “mobile” tele-radiology approach using commercial tablets (and what it could mean).For the first topic the results may be summarized in the development of a more interactive and “social” hospital web-portal offering original solutions and services to all the categories of users (audience, professionals, researchers), allowing them – through the use of advanced tools - to configure and select their own pages and interests. The originality of this approach consists in a good cost/effective result in the respect of the last and worldwide accepted Internet regulations and policies too. A similar approach regarded the intranet services and the design of web interfaces for the clinical practice and the executive evaluation. These kind of innovative systems regard a limited and selected number of more skilled users, typically belonging to a corporation or to specific offices. As above the approach is important: interactive services, innovative tools and affordable instruments are the keywords of the systems designed or proposed to solve specific problems or needs. The last research topic concerned the proposal of a protocol for the assessment of medical images on commercial displays, interesting the stakeholders and the groups involved in medical images treatment, visualization and communication. The potentialities of the mobile tablet devices improve day after day and new devices are marketed every week and the innovation is round the corner. These potentialities must encounter the medical diagnostics world and meet the standards and the regulations the international community established. It will be difficult for a commercial tablet to obtain the medical device CE mark not only for commercial reasons, but the technical limits may be reached and even surpassed adopting objective measures and evaluations. This study demonstrates that commercial tablets may be used in clinical practice for the correct visualization and diagnose of medical images. The measures of some display characteristics may be considered acceptable for mobile interpretation (even report?) of medical images, but if and only if the ambient lighting conditions are under objective control and integrated automated systems in tablets warns physicians about bad or borderline technical and ambient restrictions or bonds.XXIII Ciclo197

Investigating the immune system of extremely preterm infants and the effect of diet

M. D. Thesis.Extremely preterm infants are susceptible to life-threatening diseases, specifically late onset sepsis (LOS) and necrotising enterocolitis (NEC). Both these diseases are associated with changes in the gut microbiota and an immature immune response. Mother’s own milk (MOM) has been shown to reduce the incidence of both NEC and LOS. When MOM is not available, the alternatives are donor human milk (DHM) or cow’s milk formula (CMF). Clinical trials have shown an inconsistent effect on rates of NEC or LOS when DHM is used instead of CMF to make up any shortfall of MOM, although the use of DHM or CMF as sole diet tends to favour DHM. Inconsistencies or lack of effect could be due to differences in the concentration of bioactive components of DHM compared to MOM, as DHM is usually from donors who are longer post-partum, and is usually pasteurised and frozen. The diet of preterm infants affects both their gut microbiota and gut mucosal T cells, which may be instrumental to any impact on LOS and NEC. This study aimed to identify differences in gut microbial or T cell composition if infants were fed an exclusively human milk (MOM+/-DHM) diet (Intervention) compared to a diet containing bovine products (MOM+/-CMF) (Control). The hypothesis was that an exclusively human milk diet would be associated with changes in microbial diversity, abundance of Bifidobacteria, Regulatory T cells, Mucosa-associated invariant T cells and invariant natural killer T cells. Infants of less than 30 weeks gestational age (GA) were recruited to a randomised controlled trial comparing the two diets until 34 weeks GA. Stool samples were taken throughout the trial period, which were analysed using 16S rRNA sequencing at 5 time-points, and blood samples taken at 2 time-points were analysed using mass cytometry. This report provides data from a pilot study of 59 infants. Infants in the intervention group paradoxically received less MOM overall and had decreased rate of growth (weight). There was a significant difference in unweighted microbial beta-diversity at 34 weeks GA and a significantly increased abundance of lactobacillus at 34 weeks GA in the control group. There was no difference in T cell populations between the trial populations, however clear differences were noted when compared to adult control samples. In conclusion, an exclusively human milk diet did not result in measurable changes in gut bacterial community structure or changes in T cell immunophenotype when compared to a diet containing bovine products. However, the routine use of supplemental probiotics containing Bifidobacteria and Lactobacillus in this study population may mask important effect