Using Business Intelligence Tools to Support Medical Validation of Laboratory Tests

Modern clinical laboratories have to confirm that the procedures used for specific tests are reliable and valid. There are several sources of errors and interferences that can invalidate the results. Medical validation refers to the plausibility check of the test results. Implausible results indicate that something might went wrong with a sample retrieved from the patient, e.g., the blood sample got contaminated with another fluid, which requires re-examination. Here, we describe how an integrated R-based business intelligence (BI) tool can be developed that increase the efficiency of the medical validation at the Institute of Clinical Chemistry (ICC) of the University Hospital Zurich. A BI software environment allowed us to digitalize steps in the validation process that were manually done in Excel worksheets, e.g., importing the data, calculating percentiles, and producing graphical outputs

From laboratory bench to benchmark: technology transfer in laboratory medicine

Background: Life Sciences research, enhancing the occurrence of innovation, is able to impact clinical decision-making, both at diagnosis and therapy. Indeed, starting from the knowledge of specific needs and of technical-scientific demands, researchers can conceive and experiment innovative solutions. Despite these strengths, transferring research to the market in Life Sciences shows considerable criticalities. The aim of this paper is to provide concrete evidences on the processes of technology transfer based on the exploitation of the results obtained by KronosDNAsrl, an academic spin-off focused on reproductive medicine. Methods: Different tools were used to evaluate the technical feasibility (validation of the results obtained with the prototype) and to manage the technology transfer process of One4Two®. Results: The different analyses we carried out showed the feasibility of the proposed solution. As a result, the One4Two® prototype has been developed and validated. Conclusions: Here, we provide a strength of evidences on how knowledge obtained by translational research on "bench" can be used to be transferred to the market on "benchmark" enabling innovation in Laboratory Medicine. In addition, the model described for One4Two® can be easily transferred to other products

Developing a distributed electronic health-record store for India

The DIGHT project is addressing the problem of building a scalable and highly available information store for the Electronic Health Records (EHRs) of the over one billion citizens of India

Information Technology Sophistication in Hospitals: A Field Study in Quebec

The Quebec health sector has been experiencing a period of great turmoil over the last five years. Among other institutions, hospitals are faced with huge pressures from government funding cuts. Several empirical studies in the information systems field have shown that the use of computer-based information systems could have positive impacts on organizational performance. Many agree to say that health care institutions are no exceptions. But if one wishes to identify the effects of IT on the delivery of care, one must be able to characterize IT for operationalization purposes. The objective of this research project is twofold. Our first aim consists in developing and validating a measurement instrument of IT sophistication in hospitals. Such instrument should provide hospital managers with a diagnostic tool capable of indicating the profile of their respective institutions in regard to IT use and comparing this profile to those of other similar health institutions. In this line of thought, our second objective consists in presenting the IT sophistication profile of Quebec hospitals. Le secteur de la santé au Québec vit à l'heure des grands bouleversements. Plusieurs s'entendent à dire que les hôpitaux n'ont d'autre alternative que de faire appel aux technologies de pointe afin d'assurer un niveau de qualité des soins adéquat tout en minimisant les coûts associés à ces mêmes soins. Or, si l'on veut identifier les effets de la TI sur la performance des hôpitaux, il faut être capable de définir cette TI en tant que construit et caractériser cette dernière dans un but d'opérationalisation en tant que variable indépendante, dépendante ou modératrice dans un cadre conceptuel de recherche. Cette étude vise deux objectifs particuliers. Le premier consiste à développer un questionnaire mesurant le degré de sophistication des TI en milieu hospitalier et à le valider auprès de la population des hôpitaux québécois. Notre second objectif est de présenter, de façon sommaire, le profil des hôpitaux du Québec en matière de sophistication des TI.IT sophistication, measurement instrument, hospital information systems, Sophistication des TI, instrument de mesure, SI en milieu hospitalier

Artificial intelligence in digital pathology: a roadmap to routine use in clinical practice

The use of artificial intelligence will likely transform clinical practice over the next decade and the early impact of this will likely be the integration of image analysis and machine learning into routine histopathology. In the UK and around the world, a digital revolution is transforming the reporting practice of diagnostic histopathology and this has sparked a proliferation of image analysis software tools. While this is an exciting development that could discover novel predictive clinical information and potentially address international pathology work-force shortages, there is a clear need for a robust and evidence-based framework in which to develop these new tools in a collaborative manner that meets regulatory approval. With these issues in mind, the NCRI Cellular Molecular Pathology (CM-Path) initiative and the British In Vitro Diagnostics Association (BIVDA) has set out a roadmap to help academia, industry and clinicians develop new software tools to the point of approved clinical use. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. [Abstract copyright: This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

An overview of decision table literature 1982-1995.

This report gives an overview of the literature on decision tables over the past 15 years. As much as possible, for each reference, an author supplied abstract, a number of keywords and a classification are provided. In some cases own comments are added. The purpose of these comments is to show where, how and why decision tables are used. The literature is classified according to application area, theoretical versus practical character, year of publication, country or origin (not necessarily country of publication) and the language of the document. After a description of the scope of the interview, classification results and the classification by topic are presented. The main body of the paper is the ordered list of publications with abstract, classification and comments.