Implementation of a health information technology safety classification system in the Veterans Health Administration's Informatics Patient Safety Office.

OBJECTIVE: Implement the 5-type health information technology (HIT) patient safety concern classification system for HIT patient safety issues reported to the Veterans Health Administration's Informatics Patient Safety Office. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A team of informatics safety analysts retrospectively classified 1 year of HIT patient safety issues by type of HIT patient safety concern using consensus discussions. The processes established during retrospective classification were then applied to incoming HIT safety issues moving forward. RESULTS: Of 140 issues retrospectively reviewed, 124 met the classification criteria. The majority were HIT failures (eg, software defects) (33.1%) or configuration and implementation problems (29.8%). Unmet user needs and external system interactions accounted for 20.2% and 10.5%, respectively. Absence of HIT safety features accounted for 2.4% of issues, and 4% did not have enough information to classify. CONCLUSION: The 5-type HIT safety concern classification framework generated actionable categories helping organizations effectively respond to HIT patient safety risks.

Graphical Representation of Lipid Panel: A Simplified Time-Series Data Display.

High cholesterol is a risk factor for developing Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease. Poorly designed health data displays cause an undue cognitive burden on clinicians. Simplified line graphs (i.e., sparklines) could support efficient cognitive processing and interpretation of lipid panel results. Clinical concepts for cognitive tasks assessing low-density lipoprotein laboratory results were analyzed according to their internal representations and data scale types. A sparkline external representation aligns more closely with the internal representations for mental tasks associated with identifying abnormalities and assessing trends compared to traditional tabular displays. By simplifying the health data display with sparklines, faster cognitive processing is theoretically supported.

Mesotherapy: cosmetic applications.

Mesotherapy, which has been compared to the anti-wrinkle injection Botox, has only recently become popular in the United States for providing body contouring and spot weight loss. Most adverse reactions associated with mesotherapy are mild and transient, and supporters of the procedure consider it a safer alternative to liposuction. Mainly owing to the absence of safety and efficacy data pertaining to mesotherapy, liposuction is currently the only method for fat removal that is endorsed by the American Society of Plastic Surgeons . Although mesotherapy has been used as a treatment for pain syndromes, arthritis, and many other disorders, this article focuses on its cosmetic applications.