Next generation assisting clinical applications by using semantic-aware electronic health records

The health care sector is no longer imaginable without electronic health records. However; since the original idea of electronic health records was focused on data storage and not on data processing, a lot of current implementations do not take full advantage of the opportunities provided by computerization. This paper introduces the Patient Summary Ontology for the representation of electronic health records and demonstrates the possibility to create next generation assisting clinical applications based on these semantic-aware electronic health records. Also, an architecture to interoperate with electronic health records formatted using other standards is presented

Electronic health records to facilitate clinical research

Electronic health records (EHRs) provide opportunities to enhance patient care, embed performance measures in clinical practice, and facilitate clinical research. Concerns have been raised about the increasing recruitment challenges in trials, burdensome and obtrusive data collection, and uncertain generalizability of the results. Leveraging electronic health records to counterbalance these trends is an area of intense interest. The initial applications of electronic health records, as the primary data source is envisioned for observational studies, embedded pragmatic or post-marketing registry-based randomized studies, or comparative effectiveness studies. Advancing this approach to randomized clinical trials, electronic health records may potentially be used to assess study feasibility, to facilitate patient recruitment, and streamline data collection at baseline and follow-up. Ensuring data security and privacy, overcoming the challenges associated with linking diverse systems and maintaining infrastructure for repeat use of high quality data, are some of the challenges associated with using electronic health records in clinical research. Collaboration between academia, industry, regulatory bodies, policy makers, patients, and electronic health record vendors is critical for the greater use of electronic health records in clinical research. This manuscript identifies the key steps required to advance the role of electronic health records in cardiovascular clinical research

Electronic Health Records and Rural Hospitals

Nearly 20% of the U.S. population lives in rural areas and are not resistant to many of the U.S. healthcare challenges such as cost, quality, and access. In fact, the distinguishing cultural, social, economic, and geographic traits which characterize rural America place rural populations at greater risk for many diseases and health disorders. Like those in urban settings, people from rural areas have been affected by the use of health information technology, where treatment is now data-intensive, and there are more options and greater expectations of quality and accountability. Due to cost, geographic and social traits, and the digital divide between urban and rural communities, the rapid changes in health information technology have not affected rural communities in the same way they have affected more central and populous areas. The irony is that rural communities are often the ones with the poorest health outcomes and most in need of assistance. Implementation of EHRs is more difficult in rural areas, in comparison to urban ones due to certain barriers. But, with a little more time and effort on behalf of hospital staff, policy makers, and patients, these rural areas can overcome the barriers of implementation and succeed in meeting the meaningful use requirements. Ultimately, this will transform the quality of care within rural healthcare facilities and furthermore improve the health outcomes of rural patients

Electronic Health Records: Cure-all or Chronic Condition?

Computer-based information systems feature in almost every aspect of our lives, and yet most of us receive handwritten prescriptions when we visit our doctors and rely on paper-based medical records in our healthcare. Although electronic health record (EHR) systems have long been promoted as a cost-effective and efficient alternative to this situation, clear-cut evidence of their success has not been forthcoming. An examination of some of the underlying problems that prevent EHR systems from delivering the benefits that their proponents tout identifies four broad objectives - reducing cost, reducing errors, improving coordination and improving adherence to standards - and shows that they are not always met. The three possible causes for this failure to deliver involve problems with the codification of knowledge, group and tacit knowledge, and coordination and communication. There is, however, reason to be optimistic that EHR systems can fulfil a healthy part, if not all, of their potential

Hybrid electronic health records

The research related with digital health records has been a hot topic since the last two decades, producing diverse results, particularly in two main types – Electronic Health Records and Personal Health Records. With the current wider citizen mobility, the liberalization of health care providing, as well as alternative medicine, elderly care and remote patient monitoring, new challenges had emerged. These brought more actors to the scene that can belong to different healthcare networks, private or public sector even from different countries. For creating a true patient-centric electronic health record, those actors need to collaborate in the creation and maintenance of the record. In this work, the Hybrid Electronic Health Record (HEHR) is presented, describing how information can be created and used, as well as focusing on how the patient defines the access control. Some new services are also discussed