Mapping Korean National Health Insurance Claim Codes for Laboratory Test to SNOMED CT.

The aim of this study was to map Korean national health insurance claims codes for laboratory tests to SNOMED CT. The mapping source codes were 4,111 claims codes for laboratory test and mapping target codes were the International Edition of SNOMED CT released on July 31, 2020. We used rule-based automated and manual mapping methods. The mapping results were validated by two experts. Out of 4,111 codes, 90.5% were mapped to the concepts of procedure hierarchy in SNOMED CT. Of them, 51.4% of the codes were exactly mapped to SNOMED CT concepts, and 34.8% of the codes were mapped to SNOMED CT concepts as one-to-one mapping.

International Comparison of Six Basic eHealth Indicators Across 14 Countries: An eHealth Benchmarking Study.

BACKGROUND: Many countries adopt eHealth applications to support patient-centered care. Through information exchange, these eHealth applications may overcome institutional data silos and support holistic and ubiquitous (regional or national) information logistics. Available eHealth indicators mostly describe usage and acceptance of eHealth in a country. The eHealth indicators focusing on the cross-institutional availability of patient-related information for health care professionals, patients, and care givers are rare. OBJECTIVES: This study aims to present eHealth indicators on cross-institutional availability of relevant patient data for health care professionals, as well as for patients and their caregivers across 14 countries (Argentina, Australia, Austria, Finland, Germany, Hong Kong as a special administrative region of China, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Kenya, South Korea, Sweden, Turkey, and the United States) to compare our indicators and the resulting data for the examined countries with other eHealth benchmarks and to extend and explore changes to a comparable survey in 2017. We defined "availability of patient data" as the ability to access data in and to add data to the patient record in the respective country. METHODS: The invited experts from each of the 14 countries provided the indicator data for their country to reflect the situation on August 1, 2019, as date of reference. Overall, 60 items were aggregated to six eHealth indicators. RESULTS: Availability of patient-related information varies strongly by country. Health care professionals can access patients' most relevant cross-institutional health record data fully in only four countries. Patients and their caregivers can access their health record data fully in only two countries. Patients are able to fully add relevant data only in one country. Finland showed the best outcome of all eHealth indicators, followed by South Korea, Japan, and Sweden. CONCLUSION: Advancement in eHealth depends on contextual factors such as health care organization, national health politics, privacy laws, and health care financing. Improvements in eHealth indicators are thus often slow. However, our survey shows that some countries were able to improve on at least some indicators between 2017 and 2019. We anticipate further improvements in the future.

A Brief Survey on Six Basic and Reduced eHealth Indicators in Seven Countries in 2017.

BACKGROUND: Holistic, ubiquitous support of patient-centered health care (eHealth) at all health care institutions and in patients' homes through information processing is increasingly supplementing institution-centered care. While eHealth indicators may measure the transition from institution-centered (e.g., hospital-centered) information processing to patient-centered information processing, collecting relevant and timely data for such indicators has been difficult. OBJECTIVES: This article aims to design some basic eHealth indicators, which are easily collected and measure how well information processing supports holistic patient-centered health care, and to evaluate penetrance of patient-centered health as measured by the indicators internationally via an expert survey. METHODS: We identified six basic indicators that measure access of health care professionals, patients, and caregivers to the patient's health record data and the ability of providers, patients, and caregivers to add information in the patient's record. In a survey of international informatics experts, these indicators' penetrance were evaluated for Austria, Finland, Germany, Hong Kong, South Korea, Sweden, and the United States in the summer of 2017. RESULTS: The eHealth status measured by the indicators varied significantly between these seven countries. In Finland, most practices measured by the indicators were fully implemented whereas in Germany only one practice was partially realized. CONCLUSION: Progress in the implementation of practices that support patient-centered care could mainly be observed in those countries where the "political will" focused on achieving patient-centered care as opposed to an emphasis on institution-centered care. The six eHealth indicators seem to be useful for measuring national progress in patient-centered care. Future work will extend the number of countries analyzed.

Exploring the usability of the ISO reference terminology model for nursing actions in representing oriental nursing actions.

PURPOSE: This study examined the extent to which the ISO reference terminology model for nursing actions represents oriental nursing actions in a computerized nursing documentation system to share data and foster communication between oriental nursing care and conventional nursing care. METHODS: The narrative nursing notes of 545 patients retrieved from a nursing documentation system in an oriental medicine teaching hospital were analyzed. Among 49,118 entries, 933 were recorded as nursing actions. Each entry was decomposed in a set of single statements. A total of 1209 nursing action statements were derived and mapped to the components of the model. These processes were reviewed and validated by two domain experts and a nursing terminology expert. RESULTS: All of the oriental nursing actions documented contained a word or phrase that described the Action and Target in the model. The Recipient of Care was expressed explicitly in 1.2% of statements. The most frequently used Action terms were 'administering' (19.7%), 'teaching' (16.5%), and 'explaining' (13.6%). The Target terms that indicated unique oriental nursing concepts included 'Sasang constitution differentiation', 'removal of acupuncture needles', 'herb moxibustion', 'oriental massage', and 'oriental medication'. CONCLUSION: The findings demonstrate that oriental nursing actions can be represented using the ISO reference terminology model for nursing actions. Further specification of the components of the model will be useful to achieve consistent mapping across different settings. The addition of component qualifiers should also be taken into consideration to describe nursing actions at a more granular level.

Decision tree model of the treatment-seeking behaviors among Korean cancer patients.

The purpose of this study was to develop and test a decision tree model of the treatment-seeking behaviors among Korean cancer patients. The study used methodological triangulation, applying the cognitive ethnographic decision tree modeling approach. The model was developed based on qualitative data collected from in-depth interviews with 29 cancer patients. The model was tested using qualitative and quantitative data collected from interviews and a structured questionnaire involving 165 cancer patients. The predictability of the decision tree model was quantified as the proportion of participants who followed the pathway predicted by the model. Two models were developed, the first for decision making about when to visit a doctor after detecting symptoms, and the second for decision making about treatment type following the diagnosis. Decision outcomes for the first model were categorized into immediate visit and delayed visit. The first model was influenced by the perceived seriousness of symptoms, the experiences of visiting a doctor previously with similar symptoms, social-group influences on visiting a doctor, and barriers to visiting a doctor. Decision outcomes for the second model were hospital treatment only, and a mixture of hospital treatment and alternative therapies. The second model was influenced by curability, social-group influences on alternative therapies, and confidence in alternative therapies. The predictabilities of the 2 models were 90.3% and 94.5%, respectively. This study result can help nurses understand the treatment-seeking behaviors of cancer patients, and hence develop nursing intervention strategies.