Informatics for Health 2017 : advancing both science and practice

Conference report, The Informatics for Health congress, 24-26 April 2017, in Manchester, UK.Introduction : The Informatics for Health congress, 24-26 April 2017, in Manchester, UK, brought together the Medical Informatics Europe (MIE) conference and the Farr Institute International Conference. This special issue of the Journal of Innovation in Health Informatics contains 113 presentation abstracts and 149 poster abstracts from the congress. Discussion : The twin programmes of “Big Data” and “Digital Health” are not always joined up by coherent policy and investment priorities. Substantial global investment in health IT and data science has led to sound progress but highly variable outcomes. Society needs an approach that brings together the science and the practice of health informatics. The goal is multi-level Learning Health Systems that consume and intelligently act upon both patient data and organizational intervention outcomes. Conclusions : Informatics for Health demonstrated the art of the possible, seen in the breadth and depth of our contributions. We call upon policy makers, research funders and programme leaders to learn from this joined-up approach.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Optimizing digital health informatics interventions through unobtrusive quantitative process evaluations

Health informatics interventions such as clinical decision support (CDS) and audit and feedback (A&F) are variably effective at improving care because the underlying mechanisms through which these interventions bring about change are poorly understood. This limits our possibilities to design better interventions. Process evaluations can be used to improve this understanding by assessing fidelity and quality of implementation, clarifying causal mechanisms, and identifying contextual factors associated with variation in outcomes. Coiera describes the intervention process as a series of stages extending from interactions to outcomes: the "information value chain". However, past process evaluations often did not assess the relationships between those stages. In this paper we argue that the chain can be measured quantitatively and unobtrusively in digital interventions thanks to the availability of electronic data that are a by-product of their use. This provides novel possibilities to study the mechanisms of informatics interventions in detail and inform essential design choices to optimize their efficacy.5 page(s

Inside the Black Box of Audit and Feedback:a Laboratory Study to Explore Determinants of Improvement Target Selection by Healthcare Professionals in Cardiac Rehabilitation

Audit and feedback (A&F) is widely used to aid healthcare professionals in improving clinical performance, but there is little understanding of the underlying mechanism that determines its effectiveness. The aim of this paper is to investigate the process by which healthcare professionals select indicators as improvement targets based on A&F. We performed a laboratory study among 41 healthcare professionals in the context of a web-based A&F intervention designed to improve the quality of cardiac rehabilitation care in the Netherlands. Feedback was provided on eighteen quality indicators, including a score and a colour (representing a recommendation for selection (red and yellow) or non-selection (green)). Indicators with more room for improvement were more likely to be selected, although this varied substantially between participants. In more than a quarter of the cases, participants did not select indicators with obvious room for improvement (yellow or red colour), or selected indicators without apparent room for improvement (green colour). We conclude that personal preferences and beliefs concerning quality and performance targets may dilute the efficiency of A&

Understanding the utilisation of a novel interactive electronic medication safety dashboard in general practice: a mixed methods study

Background: Improving medication safety is a major concern in primary care settings worldwide. The Salford Medication safety dASHboard (SMASH) intervention provided general practices in Salford (Greater Manchester, UK) with feedback on their safe prescribing and monitoring of medications through an online dashboard, and input from practice-based trained clinical pharmacists. In this study we explored how staff working in general practices used the SMASH dashboard to improve medication safety, through interactions with the dashboard to identify potential medication safety hazards and their workflow to resolve identified hazards.Methods: We used a mixed-methods study design involving quantitative data from dashboard user interaction logs from 43 general practices during the first year of receiving the SMASH intervention, and qualitative data from semi-structured interviews with 22 pharmacists and physicians from 18 practices in Salford.Results: Practices interacted with the dashboard a median of 12.0 (interquartile range, 5.0–15.2) times per month during the first quarter of use to identify and resolve potential medication safety hazards, typically starting with the most prevalent hazards or those they perceived to be most serious. Having observed a potential hazard, pharmacists and practice staff worked together to resolve that in a sequence of steps (1) verifying the dashboard information, (2) reviewing the patient’s clinical records, and (3) deciding potential changes to the patient’s medicines. Over time, dashboard use transitioned towards regular but less frequent (median of 5.5 [3.5–7.9] times per month) checks to identify and resolve new cases. The frequency of dashboard use was higher in practices with a larger number of at-risk patients. In 24 (56%) practices only pharmacists used the dashboard; in 12 (28%) use by other practice staff increased as pharmacist use declined after the initial intervention period; and in 7 (16%) there was mixed use by both pharmacists and practice staff over time.Conclusions: An online medication safety dashboard enabled pharmacists to identify patients at risk of potentially hazardous prescribing. They subsequently worked with GPs to resolve risks on a case-by-case basis, but there were marked variations in processes between some practices. Workload diminished over time as it shifted towards resolving new cases of hazardous prescribing

Development of actionable quality indicators and an action implementation toolbox for appropriate antibiotic use at intensive care units: A modified-RAND Delphi study

Contains fulltext : 199462.pdf (publisher's version ) (Open Access

Safety and usability evaluation of a web-based insulin self-titration system for patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus

The rising incidence of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) induces severe challenges for the health care system. Our research group developed a web-based system named PANDIT that provides T2DM patients with insulin dosing advice using state of the art clinical decision support technology. The PANDIT interface resembles a glucose diary and provides advice through pop-up messages. Diabetes nurses (DNs) also have access to the system, allowing them to intervene when needed. The objective of this study was to establish whether T2DM patients can safely use PANDIT at home. To this end, we assessed whether patients experience usability problems with a high risk of compromising patient safety when interacting with the system, and whether PANDIT's insulin dosing advice are clinically safe. The study population consisted of patients with T2DM (aged 18-80) who used a once daily basal insulin as well as DNs from a university hospital. The usability evaluation consisted of think-aloud sessions with four patients and three DNs. Video data, audio data and verbal utterances were analyzed for usability problems encountered during PANDIT interactions. Usability problems were rated by a physician and a usability expert according to their potential impact on patient safety. The usability evaluation was followed by an implementation with a duration of four weeks. This implementation took place at the patients' homes with ten patients to evaluate clinical safety of PANDIT advice. PANDIT advice were systematically compared with DN advice. Deviating advice were evaluated with respect to patient safety by a panel of experienced physicians, which specialized in diabetes care. We detected seventeen unique usability problems, none of which was judged to have a high risk of compromising patient safety. Most usability problems concerned the lay-out of the diary, which did not clearly indicate which data entry fields had to be entered in order to obtain an advice. 27 out of 74 (36.5%) PANDIT advice differed from those provided by DNs. However, only one of these (1.4%) was considered unsafe by the panel. T2DM patients with no prior experience with the web-based self-management system were capable of consulting the system without encountering significant usability problems. Furthermore, the large majority of PANDIT advice were considered clinically safe according to the expert panel. One advice was considered unsafe. This could however easily be corrected by implementing a small modification to the system's knowledge bas