Development and Usage Patterns of a Home-Grown Drug Information Tool.

Drug information tools help avoid medication errors, a common cause of avoidable harm in health care systems. We sought to describe the design, development process and architecture of an electronic drug information tool, as well as its overall use by health professionals. We developed a tool that can be accessed by all health professionals in a tertiary level university hospital. The functionalities of eDrugs are organized into two main parts: Drug Summary sheet, and Prescription Simulator. Most users accessed eDrugs to use the Drug summary sheet. Clinical information and antimicrobial drugs were the most accessed drug information and drug group. The analysis of log data provides insights into the information priorities of health professionals.

Integrating Dermoscopic Images into PACS Using DICOM and Modality Worklist.

Dermatology is one of the medical fields outside the radiology service that uses image acquisition and analysis in its daily medical practice, mostly through digital dermoscopy imaging modality. The acquisition, transfer, and storage of dermatology images has become an important issue to resolve. We aimed to describe our experience in integrating dermoscopic images into PACS using DICOM as a guide for the health informatics and dermatology community. During 2022 we integrated the video dermoscopy equipment through a strategic plan with an 8-step procedure. We used the DICOM standard with Modality Worklist and Storage commitment. Three systems were involved (video dermoscopy software, the EHR, and PACS). We identified critical steps and faced many challenges, such as the lack of a final model of DICOM standard for dermatology images.

Unscheduled Emergency Department Revisits Within 48 Hours of Discharge.

This study aimed to analyze early revisits (within 48 hours of discharge) in an Emergency Department. Among the 178,295 visits, 11,686 were revisits, resulting in a rate of 6.55% (95%CI 6.43-6.67). A total of 1,410 revisits required hospitalization, and 252 were due to preventable errors (17.87%). These errors were mainly related to an inadequate therapeutic plan at discharge (47.22%), an incomplete diagnostic process (29.37%), and misdiagnoses (13.10%). These findings represent a technology-enabled clinical audit tool. Electronic Healthcare Records have the potential to: provide quality metrics of hospital performance, help to keep revisit rates updated (assessment through a real-time dashboard), and improve clinical management (by transparency initiatives about errors, and a supportive learning environment regarding lessons learned).

Development, Implementation and Initial Results of CDSS Recommendations for Patients at Risk of Hereditary Breast Cancer.

Breast cancer represents 23% of all cancers diagnosed among women each year. BRCA1 and BRCA2 are tumor suppressor genes related to the most frequent form of hereditary breast and ovarian cancer, as well as other types of cancer. The aim of this work is to describe the development of Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSS) for referral to genetic counseling in patients at increased risk of pathogenic variants in BRCA1 and BRCA2, and to describe results during the pilot study implementation (from January 5, 2021 to March 5, 2021). To achieve integration and system interoperability, we used FHIR and CDS-Hooks within the CDSS development. A total of 142 alerts were triggered by the system for 72 physicians in 98 patients. Results showed an acceptance rate for the recommendation of 2.1%, which could improve using intrusive alerts in all of the hooks.

Health Information Systems Adaptation and Flexibility in Extreme Situations: The COVID Effect.

In 2020, a pandemic forced the entire world to adapt to a new scenario. The objective of this study was to know how Health Information Systems were adapted driven by the pandemic of COVID. 12 CIOS of healthcare organizations were interviewed and the interviews were classified according to the dimensions of a sociotechnical model: Infrastructure, Clinical Content, Human Computer Interface, People, Workflow and Communication, Organizational Characteristics and Internal Policies, Regulations, and Measurement and Monitoring. Adaptation to the Pandemic involved social, organizational and cultural rather than merely technical aspects in private organizations with mature and stable Health Information Systems.

Clinical Decision Support System for PIM in Elderly Patients: Implementation and Initial Evaluation in Ambulatory Care.

The high prevalence of PIMs in elderly is a major healthcare concern and indicates the need for medication monitoring systems. Most PIM CDSS have shown positive effects respecting PIM prescription but these results were more consistently in hospital settings compared with ambulatory care. We describe the post-implementation evaluation of a PIM CDSS for general practitioners (GP) in the ambulatory setting and explore GP interactions with the PIM alerts. The CDSS generated 3218 unique alerts and involved 2863 elderly patients. Benzodiazepines was the drug with the most alerts triggered. Only 129 (4 %) were opened by GP during patient appointments. We need to develop an understanding of how alerts should be designed and display information to support the workflow of general practitioners. Pos-implementation evaluations are the key of CDSS improvements.

Development, Implementation and Preliminary Results of an Electronic Reminder for HIV Screening Using a Service Oriented Architecture.

30% of the Argentinian population and 58% of Plan de Salud HIBA patients are unaware of their HIV status. The Ministry of Health and US Preventive Service Task recommends physicians to assess HIV infection in persons aged 15 to 65. An HIV screening reminder integrated in an electronic health record (EHR) was created using FHIR to represent clinical information and CDS-Hooks to represent the exchange of information with a CDS service. The tool had a 1% intervention rate, and 67.4% acceptance rate. The number of HIV screening tests requested during the weeks after the CDSS implementation and in the same period in 2017 were obtained. 575 orders were requested in the 2017 period and 893 in the 2018. 89 (almost 10%) of these came from the electronic tool. The preliminary results indicate that this non disruptive, action oriented reminder can contribute to increased HIV screening orders.

Decision Support Tools for Drugs Prescription Process in a Hospital in Argentina.

While medications can improve the health of patients, the prescription process is complex and prone to errors. The structured medical order entry systems (CPOE) with clinical decision support (CDS) are increasingly implemented to improve patient safety, however the organizations that decide to implement them will have several challenges: understanding which classes of CDS can admit their systems, ensure that clinical knowledge is adequate and design tools for proper monitoring. We share our experience of over ten years of development and implementation of clinical decision support tools during drugs prescription process and tools that have allowed us to monitor them correctly.

User-Centered Design Improves the Usability of Drug-Drug Interaction Alerts: A Validation Study in the Real Scenario.

Decision support systems can alert physicians to the existence of drug interactions. The Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires, Argentina, has an in-house electronic health record with computerized physician order entry and clinical decision support. It includes a drug-drug interaction alert system, initially developed under traditional engineering techniques. As we detected a high alert override rate, we rebuilt the knowledge database and redesigned the alert interface with User-Centered Design techniques. A laboratory crossover study using clinical vignettes showed that new alerts were more usable than traditional ones.This paper aimed to validate these results through a controlled and randomized experimental study with two branches (old vs. new design) in a real setting. We analyzed, quantitatively, every fired alert between April 2015 and September 2016. Finally, we performed user surveys and qualitative interviews to inquire about their satisfaction and perceptions.In real scenarios, user-centered design alerts were more usable, being more effective and satisfactory, but less efficient than traditional alerts. "Safe omission", as a new concept, emerged from our stratified analyses and interviews.

Bringing Knowledge to Users in One Click: Infobuttons in the Problem List of an EHR.

The infobuttons allows the solving of information needs. In our study, the use of Infobuttons is described, analyzing the number of queries to UpToDate® from the problem list of an Electronic Health Record. There were 26419 requests in 8 months. The highest average use occurred in June. The links to knowledge bases can help to solve information needs, even before they occur.

Implementation of an Outsourced Transnational Service of Clinical Decision Support System.

The aim of this study is to describe the implementation and evaluation of an outsourced Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSS) service of drug-drug interaction (DDI) alerts in an Uruguayan outpatient healthcare network. A cross-sectional study was developed. 1.5 alerts were triggered of every 1000 prescriptions. Clinicians accepted 44% of the total alerts. In conclusion, the implementation of CDSS was achievable.

Alertas a alergias y su omisión: una revisión narrativa / Alertas contra alergias e sua omissão: uma revisão narrativa / Allergy alerts and it's override: an overview

OBJETIVO, realizar uma revisão narrativa sobre alertas contra alergias. MÉTODOS, busca em MEDLINE utilizando as palavras-chave "clinical decision support system", "allergy" e "alert". A faixa de tempo definida foi de 16anos (a presente data, 2016). Foram incluídos 17 artigos. RESULTADOS. Os estudos recentes arrojaram valores altos de omissão multifactoriais. CONCLUSÕES. As problemáticas: uma fonte de informação que é incompleta ou inexata, a falta de distinção e esquematização na história clínica entre uma reação imunomediada vs. não imunomediada, ausência de atualização da lista de problemas do paciente. Falta de contexto. Alertas de baixo risco. A fadiga de alertas. Então,é importante obter claridade, exatidão e confiabilidade em cada passo do ciclo de alertas contra alergias. Mais ainda,uma retroalimentação das ações dos usuários, uma avaliação dos alertas omitidos; e una monitoração estrita das reações adversas a fármacos ocorridas em pacientes nos que um alerta tenha sido deflagrada.

OBJETIVO, llevar a cabo una revisión narrativa sobre alertas de alergias. MÉTODOS, búsqueda en MEDLINE usando las palabras clave "clinical decision support system", "allergy" y "alert". El rango establecido de 16 años(hasta la fecha actual, 2016). Se incluyeron 17 artículos. RESULTADOS. Estudios recientes arrojaron altos valores de omisión multifactoriales. CONCLUSIONES. La problemática: una fuente de información incompleta o inexacta, la falta dedistinción y esquematización en la historia clínica de una reacción inmunomediada vs. no inmunomediada, la faltade actualización de la lista de problemas del paciente. La falta de contexto. Alertas de bajo riesgo. Fatiga de alertas. Espor eso importante obtener claridad, precisión y fiabilidad en cada paso del ciclo de alertas de alergias. Aun más, unaretroalimentación de las acciones del usuario, una evaluación de alertas omitidas; y una monitorización estricta de las reacciones adversas producidas en pacientes en los que una alerta se ha activado.