A hospital that implements an IT-system to reduce the occurrence of medical errors might see the opposite effect. More in JAMA.
March 3, 2009
March 2, 2009
The wild west of medical imaging
An interesting read in the New York Times:”More than 95 million high-tech scans are done each year, and medical imaging, including CT, M.R.I. and PET scans, has ballooned into a $100-billion-a-year industry”.
January 26, 2009
Scope, Completeness, and Accuracy of Drug Information in Wikipedia
According to this report, information on pharmaceutical drugs on wikipedia is incomplete and much more likely to contain errors of omission compared with the Medscape Drug Reference (MDR). Using http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rifampicin as an example of a Google search result, the authors have compared Wikipedia entries with those of MDR, a “freely accessible general drug information database that had been previously evaluated and found to be broad in both scope and depth of drug information that was gathered from authoritative references”. Paradoxically, information on Rifampicin at MDR appear to be unaccessible. Only after having found out that Rifampicin’s trade name is IsonaRif I am able to retrieve some of the the data. Wikipedia may be inferior to MDR with regard to to completeless and acuracy but fares much better when it comes to availability, transparency of the editing process, the use of citations, openess and the extent of linking to other relevant information resources. The collaborative editing of wikipedia entries is an example of distributed human computation. Medicine should start exploring it’s potential rather than warning of its possible side effects.
January 14, 2009
A case of misuse of Wikipedia information on RxWiki?
Hmm. The information about Systemic lupus erythematosus on Rxwiki (last updated on 14 August 2007) has strong resemblance to the wikipedia entry on the same topic from 12 August 2007. Is this practice in accordance with the rules for copying wikipedia content? (Wikipedia content can be copied, modified, and redistributed so long as the new version grants the same freedoms to others and acknowledges the authors of the Wikipedia article used (a direct link back to the article is generally thought to satisfy the attribution requirement))
June 24, 2008
.June 23, 2008
Epidemiology of primary care physicians use of EHR systems in the US.
As of 2007, only one in six US physicians working in ambulatory care have a fully functional EHR system (NEJM). The fact that > 99% of Norwegian ambulatory /primary care physicians (and the numbers in Sweden, Denmark and Holland are almost the same) are using a EHR system might be an illustration of the principle that smaller and less complex organisations are better suited for adapting to new technologies. In Norway, we only have one HMO – the Norwegian goverment. Building and maintaining the component for reimbursement claims is relatively easy. When the EHR system is very good at assisting the physiciains with the numbers, the decision to purchase a system becomes an easy one.
Characteristics of workflow in an innovative vascular surgeon community
My PhD student Berit Brattheim har recently presented “Clinical Processes in an Innovative Vascular Surgeon Community. Implications for Workflow Modeling” (PDF).
March 11, 2008
The cost of patients’ uncertainty
The New York Times: United States ranks 45th in life expectancy, behind Bosnia and Jordan; near last, compared with other developed countries, in infant mortality; and in last place … among major industrialized countries in health-care quality, access and efficiency.
The mixture of anxious patients with physicians authorized to order a battery of medical tests is a very expensive one. Read more.
February 28, 2008
The Open eHealth foundation is not so open after all?
I do not understand why an organization that purports to contribute to open source sofware for healthcare need to establish a member-only closed community.
January 20, 2008
Geovisualization of emerging infectious diseases
This mashup is an impressive example of the use of Google maps in epidemiology.
