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1.
Rev Med Suisse ; 20(865): 557-561, 2024 Mar 13.
Article in French | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-38482764

ABSTRACT

The future of a machine writing our reports for us could also lead to it carrying out our consultations, a scenario whose relevance is open to debate. Nevertheless, the present offers us new artificial intelligence tools that can support us in our daily activities. The publication in 2017 of Transformers initiated a disruptive revolution by enabling the emergence of major language models, of which ChatGPT is the best known. In view of their growing adoption, the authors felt it would be useful to offer some pragmatic advice on how to improve the use of these tools. In this article, we first look at how ChatGPT works and its potential applications in medicine, before providing a practical guide to using it to get the best results.


Le futur d'une machine rédigeant nos rapports à notre place pourrait également l'amener à effectuer nos consultations, un scénario dont la pertinence reste à débattre. Le présent nous offre néanmoins de nouveaux instruments d'intelligence artificielle qui peuvent nous soutenir dans nos activités quotidiennes. La publication en 2017 des Transformers a initié une révolution disruptive en permettant l'émergence de grands modèles de langages, dont ChatGPT est le plus connu. Face à leur adoption grandissante, il est apparu utile aux auteurs d'apporter quelques conseils pragmatiques pour améliorer l'utilisation de ces outils. Dans cet article, nous abordons d'abord le fonctionnement de ChatGPT, ses applications potentielles en médecine avant de fournir un guide pratique d'utilisation pour en tirer les meilleurs résultats.


Subject(s)
Artificial Intelligence , Medicine , Humans , Emotions , Language , Referral and Consultation
2.
Philos Ethics Humanit Med ; 19(1): 2, 2024 Mar 06.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-38443971

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Informed consent is one of the key principles of conducting research involving humans. When research participants give consent, they perform an act in which they utter, write or otherwise provide an authorisation to somebody to do something. This paper proposes a new understanding of the informed consent as a compositional act. This conceptualisation departs from a modular conceptualisation of informed consent procedures. METHODS: This paper is a conceptual analysis that explores what consent is and what it does or does not do. It presents a framework that explores the basic elements of consent and breaks it down into its component parts. It analyses the consent act by first identifying its basic elements, namely: a) data subjects or legal representative that provides the authorisation of consent; b) a specific thing that is being consented to; and c) specific agent(s) to whom the consent is given. RESULTS: This paper presents a framework that explores the basic elements of consent and breaks it down into its component parts. It goes beyond only providing choices to potential research participants; it explains the rationale of those choices or consenting acts that are taking place when speaking or writing an authorisation to do something to somebody. CONCLUSIONS: We argue that by clearly differentiating the goals, the procedures of implementation, and what is being done or undone when one consent, one can better face the challenges of contemporary data-intensive biomedical research, particularly regarding the retention and use of data. Conceptualising consent as a compositional act enhances more efficient communication and accountability and, therefore, could enable more trustworthy acts of consent in biomedical science.


Subject(s)
Biomedical Research , Humans , Communication , Concept Formation , Informed Consent , Social Responsibility
3.
Eur Radiol ; 34(3): 2096-2109, 2024 Mar.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-37658895

ABSTRACT

OBJECTIVE: Although artificial intelligence (AI) has demonstrated promise in enhancing breast cancer diagnosis, the implementation of AI algorithms in clinical practice encounters various barriers. This scoping review aims to identify these barriers and facilitators to highlight key considerations for developing and implementing AI solutions in breast cancer imaging. METHOD: A literature search was conducted from 2012 to 2022 in six databases (PubMed, Web of Science, CINHAL, Embase, IEEE, and ArXiv). The articles were included if some barriers and/or facilitators in the conception or implementation of AI in breast clinical imaging were described. We excluded research only focusing on performance, or with data not acquired in a clinical radiology setup and not involving real patients. RESULTS: A total of 107 articles were included. We identified six major barriers related to data (B1), black box and trust (B2), algorithms and conception (B3), evaluation and validation (B4), legal, ethical, and economic issues (B5), and education (B6), and five major facilitators covering data (F1), clinical impact (F2), algorithms and conception (F3), evaluation and validation (F4), and education (F5). CONCLUSION: This scoping review highlighted the need to carefully design, deploy, and evaluate AI solutions in clinical practice, involving all stakeholders to yield improvement in healthcare. CLINICAL RELEVANCE STATEMENT: The identification of barriers and facilitators with suggested solutions can guide and inform future research, and stakeholders to improve the design and implementation of AI for breast cancer detection in clinical practice. KEY POINTS: • Six major identified barriers were related to data; black-box and trust; algorithms and conception; evaluation and validation; legal, ethical, and economic issues; and education. • Five major identified facilitators were related to data, clinical impact, algorithms and conception, evaluation and validation, and education. • Coordinated implication of all stakeholders is required to improve breast cancer diagnosis with AI.


Subject(s)
Artificial Intelligence , Breast Neoplasms , Humans , Female , Algorithms , Educational Status , Breast , Breast Neoplasms/diagnostic imaging
4.
JMIR Med Inform ; 11: e53785, 2023 Dec 21.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-38127431

ABSTRACT

The realm of health care is on the cusp of a significant technological leap, courtesy of the advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) language models, but ensuring the ethical design, deployment, and use of these technologies is imperative to truly realize their potential in improving health care delivery and promoting human well-being and safety. Indeed, these models have demonstrated remarkable prowess in generating humanlike text, evidenced by a growing body of research and real-world applications. This capability paves the way for enhanced patient engagement, clinical decision support, and a plethora of other applications that were once considered beyond reach. However, the journey from potential to real-world application is laden with challenges ranging from ensuring reliability and transparency to navigating a complex regulatory landscape. There is still a need for comprehensive evaluation and rigorous validation to ensure that these models are reliable, transparent, and ethically sound. This editorial introduces the new section, titled "AI Language Models in Health Care." This section seeks to create a platform for academics, practitioners, and innovators to share their insights, research findings, and real-world applications of AI language models in health care. The aim is to foster a community that is not only excited about the possibilities but also critically engaged with the ethical, practical, and regulatory challenges that lie ahead.

5.
JMIR Med Inform ; 11: e44639, 2023 Nov 28.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-38015588

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Information overflow, a common problem in the present clinical environment, can be mitigated by summarizing clinical data. Although there are several solutions for clinical summarization, there is a lack of a complete overview of the research relevant to this field. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to identify state-of-the-art solutions for clinical summarization, to analyze their capabilities, and to identify their properties. METHODS: A scoping review of articles published between 2005 and 2022 was conducted. With a clinical focus, PubMed and Web of Science were queried to find an initial set of reports, later extended by articles found through a chain of citations. The included reports were analyzed to answer the questions of where, what, and how medical information is summarized; whether summarization conserves temporality, uncertainty, and medical pertinence; and how the propositions are evaluated and deployed. To answer how information is summarized, methods were compared through a new framework "collect-synthesize-communicate" referring to information gathering from data, its synthesis, and communication to the end user. RESULTS: Overall, 128 articles were included, representing various medical fields. Exclusively structured data were used as input in 46.1% (59/128) of papers, text in 41.4% (53/128) of articles, and both in 10.2% (13/128) of papers. Using the proposed framework, 42.2% (54/128) of the records contributed to information collection, 27.3% (35/128) contributed to information synthesis, and 46.1% (59/128) presented solutions for summary communication. Numerous summarization approaches have been presented, including extractive (n=13) and abstractive summarization (n=19); topic modeling (n=5); summary specification (n=11); concept and relation extraction (n=30); visual design considerations (n=59); and complete pipelines (n=7) using information extraction, synthesis, and communication. Graphical displays (n=53), short texts (n=41), static reports (n=7), and problem-oriented views (n=7) were the most common types in terms of summary communication. Although temporality and uncertainty information were usually not conserved in most studies (74/128, 57.8% and 113/128, 88.3%, respectively), some studies presented solutions to treat this information. Overall, 115 (89.8%) articles showed results of an evaluation, and methods included evaluations with human participants (median 15, IQR 24 participants): measurements in experiments with human participants (n=31), real situations (n=8), and usability studies (n=28). Methods without human involvement included intrinsic evaluation (n=24), performance on a proxy (n=10), or domain-specific tasks (n=11). Overall, 11 (8.6%) reports described a system deployed in clinical settings. CONCLUSIONS: The scientific literature contains many propositions for summarizing patient information but reports very few comparisons of these proposals. This work proposes to compare these algorithms through how they conserve essential aspects of clinical information and through the "collect-synthesize-communicate" framework. We found that current propositions usually address these 3 steps only partially. Moreover, they conserve and use temporality, uncertainty, and pertinent medical aspects to varying extents, and solutions are often preliminary.

6.
Front Digit Health ; 5: 1195017, 2023.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-37388252

ABSTRACT

Objectives: The objective of this study is the exploration of Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing techniques to support the automatic assignment of the four Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors (RECIST) scales based on radiology reports. We also aim at evaluating how languages and institutional specificities of Swiss teaching hospitals are likely to affect the quality of the classification in French and German languages. Methods: In our approach, 7 machine learning methods were evaluated to establish a strong baseline. Then, robust models were built, fine-tuned according to the language (French and German), and compared with the expert annotation. Results: The best strategies yield average F1-scores of 90% and 86% respectively for the 2-classes (Progressive/Non-progressive) and the 4-classes (Progressive Disease, Stable Disease, Partial Response, Complete Response) RECIST classification tasks. Conclusions: These results are competitive with the manual labeling as measured by Matthew's correlation coefficient and Cohen's Kappa (79% and 76%). On this basis, we confirm the capacity of specific models to generalize on new unseen data and we assess the impact of using Pre-trained Language Models (PLMs) on the accuracy of the classifiers.

7.
J Med Internet Res ; 25: e46694, 2023 05 10.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-37163336

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Implementation of digital health technologies has grown rapidly, but many remain limited to pilot studies due to challenges, such as a lack of evidence or barriers to implementation. Overcoming these challenges requires learning from previous implementations and systematically documenting implementation processes to better understand the real-world impact of a technology and identify effective strategies for future implementation. OBJECTIVE: A group of global experts, facilitated by the Geneva Digital Health Hub, developed the Guidelines and Checklist for the Reporting on Digital Health Implementations (iCHECK-DH, pronounced "I checked") to improve the completeness of reporting on digital health implementations. METHODS: A guideline development group was convened to define key considerations and criteria for reporting on digital health implementations. To ensure the practicality and effectiveness of the checklist, it was pilot-tested by applying it to several real-world digital health implementations, and adjustments were made based on the feedback received. The guiding principle for the development of iCHECK-DH was to identify the minimum set of information needed to comprehensively define a digital health implementation, to support the identification of key factors for success and failure, and to enable others to replicate it in different settings. RESULTS: The result was a 20-item checklist with detailed explanations and examples in this paper. The authors anticipate that widespread adoption will standardize the quality of reporting and, indirectly, improve implementation standards and best practices. CONCLUSIONS: Guidelines for reporting on digital health implementations are important to ensure the accuracy, completeness, and consistency of reported information. This allows for meaningful comparison and evaluation of results, transparency, and accountability and informs stakeholder decision-making. i-CHECK-DH facilitates standardization of the way information is collected and reported, improving systematic documentation and knowledge transfer that can lead to the development of more effective digital health interventions and better health outcomes.


Subject(s)
Checklist , Knowledge Management , Telemedicine , Humans , Research Design , Health Plan Implementation , Implementation Science , Guidelines as Topic
9.
Sci Rep ; 13(1): 6013, 2023 04 12.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-37045983

ABSTRACT

Two successive COVID-19 flares occurred in Switzerland in spring and autumn 2020. During these periods, therapeutic strategies have been constantly adapted based on emerging evidence. We aimed to describe these adaptations and evaluate their association with patient outcomes in a cohort of COVID-19 patients admitted to the hospital. Consecutive patients admitted to the Geneva Hospitals during two successive COVID-19 flares were included. Characteristics of patients admitted during these two periods were compared as well as therapeutic management including medications, respiratory support strategies and admission to the ICU and intermediate care unit (IMCU). A mutivariable model was computed to compare outcomes across the two successive waves adjusted for demographic characteristics, co-morbidities and severity at baseline. The main outcome was in-hospital mortality. Secondary outcomes included ICU admission, Intermediate care (IMCU) admission, and length of hospital stay. A total of 2'983 patients were included. Of these, 165 patients (16.3%, n = 1014) died during the first wave and 314 (16.0%, n = 1969) during the second (p = 0.819). The proportion of patients admitted to the ICU was lower in second wave compared to first (7.4 vs. 13.9%, p < 0.001) but their mortality was increased (33.6% vs. 25.5%, p < 0.001). Conversely, a greater proportion of patients was admitted to the IMCU in second wave compared to first (26.6% vs. 22.3%, p = 0.011). A third of patients received lopinavir (30.7%) or hydroxychloroquine (33.1%) during the first wave and none during second wave, while corticosteroids were mainly prescribed during second wave (58.1% vs. 9.1%, p < 0.001). In the multivariable analysis, a 25% reduction of mortality was observed during the second wave (HR 0.75; 95% confidence interval 0.59 to 0.96). Among deceased patients, 82.3% (78.2% during first wave and 84.4% during second wave) died without beeing admitted to the ICU. The proportion of patients with therapeutic limitations regarding ICU admission increased during the second wave (48.6% vs. 38.7%, p < 0.001). Adaptation of therapeutic strategies including corticosteroids therapy and higher admission to the IMCU to receive non-invasive respiratory support was associated with a reduction of hospital mortality in multivariable analysis, ICU admission and LOS during the second wave of COVID-19 despite an increased number of admitted patients. More patients had medical decisions restraining ICU admission during the second wave which may reflect better patient selection or implicit triaging.


Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Humans , COVID-19/epidemiology , COVID-19/therapy , Tertiary Care Centers , Switzerland/epidemiology , Hospitalization , Length of Stay , Intensive Care Units , Hospital Mortality , Retrospective Studies
10.
JMIR Med Inform ; 11: e47695, 2023 Apr 04.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-37014675

ABSTRACT

JMIR Medical Informatics is pleased to offer implementation reports as a new article type. Implementation reports present real-world accounts of the implementation of health technologies and clinical interventions. This new article type is intended to promote the rapid documentation and dissemination of the perspectives and experiences of those involved in implementing digital health interventions and assessing the effectiveness of digital health projects.

11.
Front Digit Health ; 5: 1074961, 2023.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-37021064

ABSTRACT

Introduction: Drug utilization is currently assessed through traditional data sources such as big electronic medical records (EMRs) databases, surveys, and medication sales. Social media and internet data have been reported to provide more accessible and more timely access to medications' utilization. Objective: This review aims at providing evidence comparing web data on drug utilization to other sources before the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: We searched Medline, EMBASE, Web of Science, and Scopus until November 25th, 2019, using a predefined search strategy. Two independent reviewers conducted screening and data extraction. Results: Of 6,563 (64%) deduplicated publications retrieved, 14 (0.2%) were included. All studies showed positive associations between drug utilization information from web and comparison data using very different methods. A total of nine (64%) studies found positive linear correlations in drug utilization between web and comparison data. Five studies reported association using other methods: One study reported similar drug popularity rankings using both data sources. Two studies developed prediction models for future drug consumption, including both web and comparison data, and two studies conducted ecological analyses but did not quantitatively compare data sources. According to the STROBE, RECORD, and RECORD-PE checklists, overall reporting quality was mediocre. Many items were left blank as they were out of scope for the type of study investigated. Conclusion: Our results demonstrate the potential of web data for assessing drug utilization, although the field is still in a nascent period of investigation. Ultimately, social media and internet search data could be used to get a quick preliminary quantification of drug use in real time. Additional studies on the topic should use more standardized methodologies on different sets of drugs in order to confirm these findings. In addition, currently available checklists for study quality of reporting would need to be adapted to these new sources of scientific information.

12.
BMC Med Ethics ; 24(1): 10, 2023 02 13.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-36782161

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: We assessed potential consent bias in a cohort of > 40,000 adult patients asked by mail after hospitalization to consent to the use of past, present and future clinical and biological data in an ongoing 'general consent' program at a large tertiary hospital in Switzerland. METHODS: In this retrospective cohort study, all adult patients hospitalized between April 2019 and March 2020 were invited to participate to the general consent program. Demographic and clinical characteristics were extracted from patients' electronic health records (EHR). Data of those who provided written consent (signatories) and non-responders were compared and analyzed with R studio. RESULTS: Of 44,819 patients approached, 10,299 (23%) signed the form. Signatories were older (median age 54 [IQR 38-72] vs. 44 years [IQR 32-60], p < .0001), more comorbid (2614/10,299 [25.4%] vs. 4912/28,676 [17.1%] with Charlson comorbidity index ≤ 4, p < .0001), and more often of Swiss nationality (6592/10,299 [64%] vs. 13,813/28,676 [48.2%], p < .0001). CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that actively seeking consent creates a bias and compromises the external validity of data obtained via 'general consent' programs. Other options, such as opt-out consent procedures, should be further assessed.


Subject(s)
Electronic Health Records , Informed Consent , Adult , Humans , Middle Aged , Retrospective Studies , Bias , Switzerland
13.
Int J Clin Pharm ; 45(2): 406-413, 2023 Apr.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-36515779

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Clinical decision support systems (CDSS) can help identify drug-related problems (DRPs). However, the alert specificity remains variable. Defining more relevant alerts for detecting DRPs would improve CDSS. AIM: Develop electronic queries that assist pharmacists in conducting medication reviews and an assessment of the performance of this model to detect DRPs. METHOD: Electronic queries were set up in CDSS using "triggers" from electronic health records: drug prescriptions, laboratory values, medical problems, vital signs, demographics. They were based on a previous study where 315 patients admitted in internal medicine benefited from a multidisciplinary medication review (gold-standard) to highlight potential DRPs. Electronic queries were retrospectively tested to assess performance in detecting DRPs revealed with gold-standard. For each electronic query, sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive value were computed. RESULTS: Of 909 DRPs, 700 (77.8%) were used to create 366 electronic queries. Electronic queries correctly detected 77.1% of DRPs, median sensitivity and specificity reached 100.0% (IQRs, 100.0%-100.0%) and 99.7% (IQRs, 97.0%-100.0%); median positive predictive value and negative predictive value reached 50.0% (IQRs, 12.5%-100.0%) and 100.0% (IQRs, 100.0%-100.0%). Performances varied according to "triggers" (p < 0.001, best performance in terms of predictive positive value when exclusively involving drug prescriptions). CONCLUSION: Electronic queries based on electronic heath records had high sensitivity and negative predictive value and acceptable specificity and positive predictive value and may contribute to facilitate medication review. Implementing some of these electronic queries (the most effective and clinically relevant) in current practice will allow a better assessment of their impact on the efficiency of the clinical pharmacist.


Subject(s)
Decision Support Systems, Clinical , Drug-Related Side Effects and Adverse Reactions , Humans , Pharmacists , Drug-Related Side Effects and Adverse Reactions/diagnosis , Drug-Related Side Effects and Adverse Reactions/epidemiology , Retrospective Studies , Drug Prescriptions
14.
JMIR Res Protoc ; 11(11): e40456, 2022 Nov 15.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-36378522

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: One-third of older inpatients experience adverse drug events (ADEs), which increase their mortality, morbidity, and health care use and costs. In particular, antithrombotic drugs are among the most at-risk medications for this population. Reporting systems have been implemented at the national, regional, and provider levels to monitor ADEs and design prevention strategies. Owing to their well-known limitations, automated detection technologies based on electronic medical records (EMRs) are being developed to routinely detect or predict ADEs. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to develop and validate an automated detection tool for monitoring antithrombotic-related ADEs using EMRs from 4 large Swiss hospitals. We aim to assess cumulative incidences of hemorrhages and thromboses in older inpatients associated with the prescription of antithrombotic drugs, identify triggering factors, and propose improvements for clinical practice. METHODS: This project is a multicenter, cross-sectional study based on 2015 to 2016 EMR data from 4 large hospitals in Switzerland: Lausanne, Geneva, and Zürich university hospitals, and Baden Cantonal Hospital. We have included inpatients aged ≥65 years who stayed at 1 of the 4 hospitals during 2015 or 2016, received at least one antithrombotic drug during their stay, and signed or were not opposed to a general consent for participation in research. First, clinical experts selected a list of relevant antithrombotic drugs along with their side effects, risks, and confounding factors. Second, administrative, clinical, prescription, and laboratory data available in the form of free text and structured data were extracted from study participants' EMRs. Third, several automated rule-based and machine learning-based algorithms are being developed, allowing for the identification of hemorrhage and thromboembolic events and their triggering factors from the extracted information. Finally, we plan to validate the developed detection tools (one per ADE type) through manual medical record review. Performance metrics for assessing internal validity will comprise the area under the receiver operating characteristic curve, F1-score, sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative predictive values. RESULTS: After accounting for the inclusion and exclusion criteria, we will include 34,522 residents aged ≥65 years. The data will be analyzed in 2022, and the research project will run until the end of 2022 to mid-2023. CONCLUSIONS: This project will allow for the introduction of measures to improve safety in prescribing antithrombotic drugs, which today remain among the drugs most involved in ADEs. The findings will be implemented in clinical practice using indicators of adverse events for risk management and training for health care professionals; the tools and methodologies developed will be disseminated for new research in this field. The increased performance of natural language processing as an important complement to structured data will bring existing tools to another level of efficiency in the detection of ADEs. Currently, such systems are unavailable in Switzerland. INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID): DERR1-10.2196/40456.

15.
Stud Health Technol Inform ; 300: 180-189, 2022 Oct 26.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-36300411

ABSTRACT

The history of medicine is punctuated by conquests, discoveries and revolutions. It is also marked by questioning. It is made of doubts and certainties. In this thousand years old history, certain recent battles bear witness to these questionings, such as quality, refocusing on the patient, medical errors, antibiotic resistance and the importance of gender, which has been neglected for so long in medicine. Digitalization is one of these many revolutions, and it is not immune to questioning. Building evidence and trust, equity of access for neglected populations, and training are among these issues. More specifically, in the field of decision support, the first enthusiastic hours of computing were followed by unexpected observations, such as the identification of human factors, such as alert fatigue. Today, immense hopes rest on the development of deep learning, and it is up to us to accelerate its development by investing energy, time and resources to build on evidence, trust, and a strong integration of health professionals and patients.


Subject(s)
Artificial Intelligence , Decision Support Systems, Clinical , Health Personnel , Humans
16.
JMIR Med Inform ; 10(9): e34488, 2022 Sep 06.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-36066921

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Many factors influence patient satisfaction during an emergency department (ED) visit, but the perception of wait time plays a central role. A long wait time in the waiting room increases the risk of hospital-acquired infection, as well as the risk of a patient leaving before being seen by a physician, particularly those with a lower level of urgency who may have to wait for a longer time. OBJECTIVE: We aimed to improve the perception of wait time through the implementation of a semiautomatic SMS text message system that allows patients to wait outside the hospital and facilitates the recall of patients closer to the scheduled time of meeting with the physician. METHODS: We performed a cross-sectional survey to evaluate the system using a tailored questionnaire to assess the patient perspective and the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology questionnaire for the caregiver perspective. We also monitored the frequency of system use with logs. RESULTS: A total of 110 usable responses were collected (100 patients and 10 caregivers). Findings revealed that 97 of 100 (97%) patients were satisfied, with most patients waiting outside the ED but inside the hospital. The caregiver evaluation showed that it was very easy to use, but the adoption of the system was more problematic because of the perceived additional workload associated with its use. CONCLUSIONS: Although not suitable for all patients, our system allows those who have a low-severity condition to wait outside the waiting room and to be recalled according to the dedicated time defined in the Swiss Emergency Triage Scale. It not only has the potential to reduce the risk of hospital-acquired infection but also can enhance the patient experience; additionally, it was perceived as a real improvement. Further automation of the system needs to be explored to reduce caregiver workload and increase its use.

17.
Sci Rep ; 12(1): 14677, 2022 08 29.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-36038578

ABSTRACT

Abdominal pain and liver injury have been frequently reported during coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19). Our aim was to investigate characteristics of abdominal pain in COVID-19 patients and their association with disease severity and liver injury.Data of all COVID-19 patients hospitalized during the first wave in one hospital were retrieved. Patients admitted exclusively for other pathologies and/or recovered from COVID-19, as well as pregnant women were excluded. Patients whose abdominal pain was related to alternative diagnosis were also excluded.Among the 1026 included patients, 200 (19.5%) exhibited spontaneous abdominal pain and 165 (16.2%) after abdomen palpation. Spontaneous pain was most frequently localized in the epigastric (42.7%) and right upper quadrant (25.5%) regions. Tenderness in the right upper region was associated with severe COVID-19 (hospital mortality and/or admission to intensive/intermediate care unit) with an adjusted odds ratio of 2.81 (95% CI 1.27-6.21, p = 0.010). Patients with history of lower abdomen pain experimented less frequently dyspnea compared to patients with history of upper abdominal pain (25.8 versus 63.0%, p < 0.001). Baseline transaminases elevation was associated with history of pain in epigastric and right upper region and AST elevation was strongly associated with severe COVID-19 with an odds ratio of 16.03 (95% CI 1.95-131.63 p = 0.010).More than one fifth of patients admitted for COVID-19 presented abdominal pain. Those with pain located in the upper abdomen were more at risk of dyspnea, demonstrated more altered transaminases, and presented a higher risk of adverse outcomes.


Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Abdomen , Abdominal Pain/etiology , COVID-19/complications , Dyspnea , Female , Humans , Pregnancy , Retrospective Studies , SARS-CoV-2 , Transaminases
18.
BMJ Open Respir Res ; 9(1)2022 08.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-36002181

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic led to a steep increase in hospital and intensive care unit (ICU) admissions for acute respiratory failure worldwide. Early identification of patients at risk of clinical deterioration is crucial in terms of appropriate care delivery and resource allocation. We aimed to evaluate and compare the prognostic performance of Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA), Quick Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (qSOFA), Confusion, Uraemia, Respiratory Rate, Blood Pressure and Age ≥65 (CURB-65), Respiratory Rate and Oxygenation (ROX) index and Coronavirus Clinical Characterisation Consortium (4C) score to predict death and ICU admission among patients admitted to the hospital for acute COVID-19 infection. METHODS AND ANALYSIS: Consecutive adult patients admitted to the Geneva University Hospitals during two successive COVID-19 flares in spring and autumn 2020 were included. Discriminative performance of these prediction rules, obtained during the first 24 hours of hospital admission, were computed to predict death or ICU admission. We further exluded patients with therapeutic limitations and reported areas under the curve (AUCs) for 30-day mortality and ICU admission in sensitivity analyses. RESULTS: A total of 2122 patients were included. 216 patients (10.2%) required ICU admission and 303 (14.3%) died within 30 days post admission. 4C score had the best discriminatory performance to predict 30-day mortality (AUC 0.82, 95% CI 0.80 to 0.85), compared with SOFA (AUC 0.75, 95% CI 0.72 to 0.78), qSOFA (AUC 0.59, 95% CI 0.56 to 0.62), CURB-65 (AUC 0.75, 95% CI 0.72 to 0.78) and ROX index (AUC 0.68, 95% CI 0.65 to 0.72). ROX index had the greatest discriminatory performance (AUC 0.79, 95% CI 0.76 to 0.83) to predict ICU admission compared with 4C score (AUC 0.62, 95% CI 0.59 to 0.66), CURB-65 (AUC 0.60, 95% CI 0.56 to 0.64), SOFA (AUC 0.74, 95% CI 0.71 to 0.77) and qSOFA (AUC 0.59, 95% CI 0.55 to 0.62). CONCLUSION: Scores including age and/or comorbidities (4C and CURB-65) have the best discriminatory performance to predict mortality among inpatients with COVID-19, while scores including quantitative assessment of hypoxaemia (SOFA and ROX index) perform best to predict ICU admission. Exclusion of patients with therapeutic limitations improved the discriminatory performance of prognostic scores relying on age and/or comorbidities to predict ICU admission.


Subject(s)
COVID-19 , Organ Dysfunction Scores , Adult , COVID-19/diagnosis , COVID-19/therapy , Cohort Studies , Humans , Inpatients , Prognosis , ROC Curve , Retrospective Studies , SARS-CoV-2
19.
JMIR Med Inform ; 10(8): e41257, 2022 Aug 09.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-35944251

ABSTRACT

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.2196/29174.].

20.
Stud Health Technol Inform ; 295: 132-135, 2022 Jun 29.
Article in English | MEDLINE | ID: mdl-35773825

ABSTRACT

Hospital caregivers report patient data while being under constant pressure. These records include structured information, with some of them being derived from a restricted list of terms. Finding the right term from a large terminology can be time-consuming, harming the clinician's productivity. To deal with this hurdle, an autocomplete system is employed, providing the closest terms after a prefix is typed. While this software application clearly smoothens the term searching, this paper studies the influences of the tool on caregivers' reporting, inspecting the evolution of their typing conduct over time.


Subject(s)
Caregivers , Software , Hospitals , Humans , Retrospective Studies
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