2 research outputs found
HEALTH INFORMATION STANDARDISATION AS A BASIS FOR LEARNING HEALTH SYSTEMS
PhD ThesisStandardisation of healthcare has been the focus of hospital management and clinicians since the
1990’s. Electronic health records were already intended to provide clinicians with real-time access to
clinical knowledge and care plans while also recording and storing vast amounts of patient data. It took
more than three decades for electronic health records to start to become ubiquitous in all aspects of
healthcare. Learning health systems are the next stage in health information systems whose potential
benefits have been promoted for more than a decade - yet few are seen in clinical practice. Clinical care
process specifications are a primary form of clinical documentation used in all aspects of healthcare,
but they lack standardisation. This thesis contends that this lack of standardisation was inherited by
electronic health records and that this is a significant issue holding back the development and adoption
of learning health systems. Standardisation of clinical documents is used to mitigate issues in electronic
health records as a basis for enabling learning health systems. One type of clinical document, the
caremap, is standardised in order to achieve an effective approach to containing resources and ensuring
consistency and quality. This led not only to improved clinicians’ comprehension and acceptance of the
clinical document, but also to reduced time expended in developing complicated learning health systems
built using the input of clinical experts