Physician-patient encounter for HMIS & eHealth
I have tried to summarize basic steps in a physician-patient encounter.
Bell Eapen MD, PhD.
Bringing Digital health & Gen AI research to life!
The Context-Aware Knowledge Retrieval – Infobutton
Image Credit: By Roberth Edberg (Own work (Original text: self-made)) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons. Image altered and text added.
Infobutton implementation can be either URL (REST) based or SOAP based. The information provided by the client system include patient characteristics such as age and sex, provider, care setting, clinical task and diagnosis. The OpenInfobutton project is an initiative led by the United States Veterans Health Administration (VHA) and the University of Utah that provides the infobutton manager that brokers the interaction between client information systems and online knowledge providers.
Understanding of Infobutton standard is important to Clinical information system developers, Clinical knowledge resource publishers and health care organizations such as regional clinical viewers. Several studies have demonstrated an increase in productivity for physicians with Infobutton adoption. Since infobutton standard is based on well-known protocols such as SOAP and REST, it is relatively easy to implement.
2015 National Change Management Survey (Canada)
(Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In 2010 Infoway conducted a change management survey, which was the catalyst to establishing the Pan Canadian Change Management Network and development of the National Change Management Framework.
Fast forward 5 years…Canada Health Infoway’s (Infoway) Clinical Adoption Team is conducting a survey to gain insight on how change management is currently being conducted across the country. Change management is an essential driver of adoption and benefits realized from the use of digital health. Infoway’s multifaceted approach to change management is guided by an evidence-informed change management framework that was developed with input from experts across Canada in 2011.
The purpose of this survey is to assess how change management is currently being conducted across the country and the usefulness of the Change Management framework and associated toolkit. The survey takes between 10-15 minutes to complete. Upon completion of the survey, you can enter the participant’s draw, where you could win one of five $200 Visa cards. The survey will be available until February 12, 2015. Your input will help provide direction on how to shape the ongoing development of change management resources for the adoption of digital health solutions across the country in 2015 and beyond.
Link to 2015 National Change Management Survey: https://ipsospasurveys.com/s/2015NationalChangeManagement/
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If Ebola Spreads to Canada
While reading the news about the public health agency of Canada taking all possible steps to prevent the spread of Ebola to Canada, with a glass of Ontario wine in my hands, I for a brief moment thought, what if ………
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| Picture credit DFID @ Flikr (Image altered and text added) – If Ebola spreads to Canada |
So let me set the context right. I am not an infectious disease expert, though my post on cutaneous signs of Ebola virus infection got more attention that it deserved. I am not an epidemiologist either to comment authoritatively on what healthmap is doing. To me it is the social media version of what John Snow did two centuries back to identify the epicentre of the cholera outbreak and established epidemiology as a speciality.
So if Ebola spreads to Canada, How do we identify the epicentre and take preventive measures? Turn to healthmaps and see where it originated and take measures to contain? Healthmaps will get that information from Google news and similar services. We have half a dozen major Health Information Exchange (HIE) initiatives in the country and would probably have accurate records of where each case presented with the characteristic symptoms. But we would look up to healthmaps and google since we cannot use HIE data for research!
i wonder how long it wil take for #ebola to hit #canada? which city first? and wil it get #outofcontrol? #crazy :headshaking:
— 411inToronto (@411inToronto) October 10, 2014
I am not a health policy expert neither am I an HIE architecture expert. But to me, if we have to realize the benefits of the ever increasing number of HIE initiatives, we have to find a way to use the wealth of the information there for population health. If we get it right, privacy is not even a concern.
HIE, built to abolish silos, paradoxically created larger silos, because of fragmented systems. The utopian population health requires a glue to bring these silos together. We got it wrong the first time, with data-centric HIS that offered little clinical workflow support and were (inadvertently) rejected by doctors. (We always have the doctors to blame as the universal slow technology adopters. BTW India’s mission to Mars discovered that all doctors in the planet originated from Mars!). We are sure to get it wrong again if we don’t change the data-centric HIE models.
HIE should be versatile, structureless and scalable enough to support disparate clinical use cases. The only option that comes to my mind is RDF.