Patient Lifecycle Management: An Approach for Clinical Processes

Clinical processes can be described, inside the Biomedical scope, like a systematic guideline to assist practitioner and patient decisions about appropriate health care for specific clinical circumstances. In industry, Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) is the process of managing the entire lifecycle of a product from inception, through engineering design and manufacture, to service and disposal of manufactured products. Applying the concepts of PLM to Biomedical processes we create a synergy between the product’s concept in the industrial case and the patient into the health care environment. This point of view improves the actual clinical processes with a most specific treatment for each patient, by modifying the statements to assist the patient according to the needs of the patient and his illness. This research proposal tries to shift the focus of the eHealth systems onto the patient, adapts the existing and defined clinical processes or clinical paths to the patient’s needs, applies Big Data principles to bring even more attentions for the patient, and provides an easy to use system for the medical staff.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2013-46928-C3-3-RMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2014-52382-

An architecture for interoperability and ubiquity of medical information

In critical situations, such as decision making in healthcare, is necessary to have access to all the patient’s information, this information must be reliable, and must be accessed in an easy and fast way. These requirements make medical information systems of extreme importance. However in today’s molds and with the advent of the Internet and mobile devices, a paradigm shift, from the current isolated systems to interoperable distributed systems, that take advantage of ubiquitous computing, is needed. The present work proposes an architecture that aims to answer the needs of interoperability between heterogeneous systems and the need of ubiquity of medical information systems

Electronic health record in dermatology service

In this paper we describe the implementation of an Electronic Health Record in the Dermatology service of a Portuguese hospital. This system must follow the principle of simplicity, enabling recording quality and analytical processing. Standards and norms were also followed and it is shown that interoperability has a key role in the whole process. This project is a good example of cooperation between academic and healthcare institutions and shows the impact of new technology on healthcare organizations.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT

Promoting ubiquity and interoperability among health information systems using an soa based architecture

Health information systems are of extreme importance and they became an intrinsic part of the healthcare sector. However, in today’s molds and with the advent of the Internet and mobile devices, a paradigm shift, from the current isolated systems to interoperable distributed systems, that take advantage of ubiquitous computing, is needed. In critical situations, such as decision making in healthcare, it is necessary to have access to all of the patient’s information; for the information must be reliable and must be accessed in an easy and fast way. The present work proposes an architecture that aims to answer the needs of interoperability between heterogeneous health information systems and the need for ubiquity of medical information. A prototype was developed that tries to provide interoperability through a service-oriented architecture using web services. A mobile component was also developed to enable ubiquitous access to medical information. This work is based on the authors’ knowledge about the Portuguese National Health Service

A SOA based architecture to promote ubiquity and interoperability among health information systems

In critical situations, such as decision making in healthcare, is necessary to have access to all of the patient’s information, the information must be reliable, and must be accessed in an easy and fast way. These requirements make medical information systems of extreme importance. However in today’s molds and with the advent of the Internet and mobile devices, a paradigm shift, from the current isolated systems to interoperable distributed systems, that take advantage of ubiquitous computing, is needed. The present work proposes an architecture that aims to answer the needs of interoperability between heterogeneous systems and the need of ubiquity of medical information systems. A prototype was developed that tries to provide interoperability through a service-oriented architecture using web services. A mobile component was also developed to enable ubiquitous access to medical information. This work was based on the author’s knowledge about the Portuguese National Health Service

Exploring the Use of Mobile Devices for Knowledge Sharing in Healthcare: A Hospital Case Study

This study formulates and empirically tests a theoretical model involving factors in the use of mobile devices for knowledge sharing in hospitals. The research model is derived from two important studies, Kankanhalli et al.’s (2005a, 2005b) studies on electronic knowledge repositories, and is adapted to the healthcare context. We conduct an exploratory case study of three mobile devices in two units of a hospital. The preliminary results reveal that factors such as image, privacy, reciprocity, quality of output, resource availability and portability influence the use of these devices for knowledge sharing

Health Informatics for Healthcare Quality Improvement: A Literature Review of Issues, Challenges and Findings

Healthcare providers in the United States are facing increasing pressures to provide high quality healthcare at affordable prices, while being compliant with a multitude of complex laws. Recent legal developments have highlighted the role of Information Technology and related systems in providing evidence based healthcare in an efficient manner. Health Informatics has become an integral part of the rapidly advancing healthcare technology scenario, and is emerging as a key resource for healthcare quality improvement in the United States. Considering the rapid pace at which the field of health informatics is advancing, it is important for researchers and the practitioners alike to stay abreast of current literature and developments in the field. This literature review paper captures and summarizes from research literature the most significant issues, challenges and findings pertaining to the field of health informatics with a focus on healthcare quality improvement

Healthcare interoperability through intelligent agent technology

With technological advances, the amount of data and the information systems in healthcare units has been increasing exponentially. The accessibility and availability of patients’ clinical information are a constant need. The Agency for Integration, Diffusion and Archive of Medical Information (AIDA) was developed to fulfill this need and it was implemented at the Centro Hospitalar do Porto (CHP), revealing a highly successful, ensuring interoperability among CHP healthcare information systems. This paper presents a new AIDA module, which aims to monitor the activity of its agents. It revealed its usefulness, providing to the user the functionalities and the necessary data for it to make a complete monitoring of the activities of each AIDA agent. It was still considered an efficient system, since it does not compromise the resources of the machine where it was implemented. In addition, this module increases AIDA functionality and efficiency

Biomedical informatics and translational medicine

Biomedical informatics involves a core set of methodologies that can provide a foundation for crossing the "translational barriers" associated with translational medicine. To this end, the fundamental aspects of biomedical informatics (e.g., bioinformatics, imaging informatics, clinical informatics, and public health informatics) may be essential in helping improve the ability to bring basic research findings to the bedside, evaluate the efficacy of interventions across communities, and enable the assessment of the eventual impact of translational medicine innovations on health policies. Here, a brief description is provided for a selection of key biomedical informatics topics (Decision Support, Natural Language Processing, Standards, Information Retrieval, and Electronic Health Records) and their relevance to translational medicine. Based on contributions and advancements in each of these topic areas, the article proposes that biomedical informatics practitioners ("biomedical informaticians") can be essential members of translational medicine teams