Are doctors the structural weakness in the e-health building?

Progressive evaluations by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) demonstrate that health care is now or becoming unaffordable. This means nations must change the way they manage health care. The costly nature of health care in most nations, as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) seems independent of the national funding models. Increasing evidence is demonstrating that the lack of involvement by clinicians (doctors, nurses, pharmacists, ancillary care and patients) in e-health projects is a major factor for the costly failures of many of these projects. The essential change in focus required to improve healthcare delivery using e-health technologies has to be on clinical care. To achieve this change clinicians must be involved at all stages of e-health implementations. From a clinicians perspective medicine is not a business. Our business is clinical medicine and e-health must be focussed on clinical decision making. This paper views the roles of physicians in e-health structural reforms.

The MOSORIOT medical record system (MMRS) phase I to phase II implementation: an outpatient computer-based medical record system in rural Kenya.

The authors of this paper describe the second phase of the implementation of the Mosoriot Medical Record System (MMRS) in a remote health care facility on the outskirts of Eldoret, Kenya, located in sub-Saharan Africa. We describe of the collaboration between Indiana University (IU) and the Moi University (MU), and the process that led to the development of the computer-based Mosoriot Medical Record System (MMRS) is provided. We then provide the conceptualization and initial implementation of this basic electronic medical record system. We also describe the different processes for assessing the MMRS' effects on health care, including time-motion studies and a strict implementation plan that is necessary for the successful implementation of the system. The MMRS project has many features that make it significant in the domain of CBPR systems. It may serve as a model for establishing similar, basic electronic record systems in the developed and developing world. In developing countries there are few (if any) projects that have attempted to implement such a system. This paper describes the planning, end-user education to new technologies, and time-motion studies necessary for the successful implementation of the MMRS. The system will be used to improve the quality of health data collection and subsequently patient care. It will also be used to link data from ongoing public health surveys and this can be used in public health research programs of the Moi University.

The Mosoriot medical record system: design and initial implementation of an outpatient electronic record system in rural Kenya.

Mosoriot Health Center is a rural primary care facility situated on the outskirts of Eldoret, Kenya in sub-Saharan Africa. The region is characterised by widespread poverty and a very poor technology infrastructure. Many houses do not have electricity, telephones or tap water. The health center does have electricity and tap water. In a collaborative project between Indiana University and the Moi University Faculty of Health Sciences (MUFHS), we designed a core electronic medical record system within the Mosoriot Health Center, with the intention of improving the quality of health data collection and, subsequently, patient care. The electronic medical record system will also be used to link clinical data from the health center to information collected from the public health surveys performed by medical students participating in the public health research programs of Moi University. This paper describes the processes involved in the development of the computer-based Mosoriot medical record system (MMRS) up to the point of implementation. It particularly focuses on the decisions and trade-offs that must be made when introducing this technology into an established health care system in a developing country.

The Westmead Pediatric TBI Multidisciplinary Outcome study: use of functional outcomes data to determine resource prioritization.

OBJECTIVE: To measure functional outcome in the 2 years after traumatic brain injury (TBI) in 2 groups of children and to determine the usefulness of a TBI severity classification system for resource allocation. DESIGN: Prospective inception cohort study with 3 assessment points during the 2 years after trauma. SETTING: Tertiary pediatric trauma center in Sydney, Australia. PARTICIPANTS: Eighty-one consecutive admissions aged 0 to 14 years. Fifty-one were allocated to the Mild (n = 26) or Severe (n = 25) TBI groups, according to preset determinants of severity; 30 admissions with non-TBI trauma constituted the control group. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Standardized psychometric and clinical assessments of cognition, communication and feeding ability, motor performance (ambulation, fine and gross motor), neurologic status, self-care independence, and school/academic performance. RESULTS: Those with Mild TBI severity had no significant deficits at the 2-year data point. In contrast, those in the Severe TBI group demonstrated continued problems with fine motor performance, neurologic status, self care, and school/academic performance. CONCLUSIONS: A classification system has been developed that may be useful in the allocation of children with a TBI, age younger than 15 years, to 1 of 2 severity groups early in their rehabilitation. This classification system may be useful in determining areas of high and low resource prioritization.

Detecting adverse drug reactions to improve patient outcomes.

Adverse drug reactions and inappropriate administration of medications account for poor outcomes for patients. They place patients in life-threatening situations, lead to increased health care costs, extend length of stay in hospitals, as well as increasing litigation. This paper will highlight the incidence of adverse drug events (ADE) in health care and show the low rate of detection within conventional medical records. I will also show how electronic medical records (EMR) improve detection of ADE, enhance clinician compliance to their management, improve patient outcomes, and reduce health care costs.

Variation in health care--the roles of the electronic medical record.

Variation in the use of clinical resources, outcomes, costs, access to health care and quality is a well recognized, ever present feature of health care. It is a phenomenon that affects all sectors of the health care delivery process and is important to clinicians, administrators and patients. As a phenomenon variation can be appropriate or inappropriate and the elimination of inappropriate variation is a fundamental principal behind continuous quality improvement in health care. The primary tools for the management of variation exists within the electronic medical record (EMR). The EMR utilizes the existing and evolving information storage technologies (data repositories) and information management tools (applications), to integrate the elements within this long-term data storage. Through this integration the EMR systems are able to provide knowledge representation in differing formats to the decision-makers and this will facilitate more accurate and appropriate decision-making with subsequent improvements in health care delivery.

Transporting an electronic patient record system across international boundaries--the lessons learnt.

This paper will outline the tasks involved, completed and not achieved over an eight year period involving the implementation of the Johns Hopkins Oncology Center Information System (OCIS) in an oncology department of a secondary/tertiary care hospital in Australia.

Relationships between symptom relief, quality of life, and satisfaction with hospice care.

Hospices were founded to alleviate suffering at the end of life. Quality improvement in hospices should, therefore, target patients' subjective assessments of their care and its outcomes. However, little is known about the relationships among subjective measures of care among hospice patients. The aim was to assess the relationships between hospice patients' physical and psychological symptoms, quality of life, and satisfaction with inpatient care. This was achieved with a prospective cohort study of 42 patients admitted to an Australian hospice's inpatient service during a two-month study period. The Edmonton symptom assessment system, McGill quality of life questionnaire, and a new measure of patients satisfaction with hospice inpatient care were used. It was shown that while there were marked variations in symptoms and quality of life scores, most patients were satisfied with their care. Satisfaction on the day after admission was lower among patients with worse quality of life scores (r = -0.40, P = 0.008), but there was no correlation with symptoms (r = -0.12, P = 0.43). Among the 26 patients (62%) with at least one subsequent inpatient interview, satisfaction was correlated with both worse quality of life (r = -0.51, P = 0.01) and symptoms (r = -0.41, P = 0.05). The symptom, quality of life, and satisfaction scales all had sufficient precision to identify patients with significant changes between the two interviews. It can be concluded that satisfaction with hospice care was associated with quality of life more than symptoms, although symptoms became important later during inpatient stays. Patients can assess their care and can provide valuable information for improving palliative care.

Introduction of a computer-based oncology patient-care system in a teaching hospital.

This report describes a computer-based patient-care system for oncology that provides physicians, nurses, medical students and associated health-care personnel with the means to retrieve data and reports that will enhance greatly their capacity to make informed decisions regarding patient management; at the same time such a system provides adequate safeguards for the confidentiality of information. The system provides information from all clinical laboratories, nursing staff observations, and pharmacy, radiology, pathology and outpatients departments. In addition, the system generates treatment plans that relate directly to day-to-day patient management, covering all aspects of patient care. More extensive research data, demographic data and reports are available from the computer's large database. This computer system is called the Oncology Research Centre Information System (ORCIS). The development of ORCIS has been a major initiative of the NSW State Cancer Council, which is encouraging teaching hospitals in New South Wales to consider this system. The aim of this initiative is to try to prevent the development of many different computer systems in New South Wales, which would cause further confusion in the management of medical information.

Constant low-dose insulin infusion in severe diabetes mellitus.

Eight patients with diabetic ketoacidosis and two patients with hyperosmolar non-ketotic coma have been treated with a constant low-dose insulin infusion technique (2-4 units/hour). In all cases a rapid, smooth control of blood glucose levels was obtained in conjunction with a similar improvement in clinical status and remedying of other biochemical defects. At no stage of therapy did hypoglycaemia or hypokalaemia occur. In the majority of cases control of the patient's metabolic state was achieved within eight to 12 hours. The insulin regime is simple to institute and maintain.