Healthcare Databases


Book Description

Databases are an increasingly important part of the everyday life of all healthcare professionals. This straightforward practical guide to creating and using databases is closely tailored to the needs of healthcare practitioners. It covers design and implementation including simple data modelling, normalisation, tables, forms, queries and reports and shows how a database can be integrated with a word processor to produce letters for mailing. The easy to use step-by-step format guides the reader through the text in a user-friendly style by showing what actually appears on the computer and by making extensive use of screen shots, toolbar icons, mouse and keyboard actions. This clear and concise approachable book is designed for all general practitioners, practice managers and nurses, clinical governance and audit staff, doctors, nurses and other hospital staff, and staff involved in research and development - who need have no prior knowledge of databases.




Registries for Evaluating Patient Outcomes


Book Description

This User’s Guide is intended to support the design, implementation, analysis, interpretation, and quality evaluation of registries created to increase understanding of patient outcomes. For the purposes of this guide, a patient registry is an organized system that uses observational study methods to collect uniform data (clinical and other) to evaluate specified outcomes for a population defined by a particular disease, condition, or exposure, and that serves one or more predetermined scientific, clinical, or policy purposes. A registry database is a file (or files) derived from the registry. Although registries can serve many purposes, this guide focuses on registries created for one or more of the following purposes: to describe the natural history of disease, to determine clinical effectiveness or cost-effectiveness of health care products and services, to measure or monitor safety and harm, and/or to measure quality of care. Registries are classified according to how their populations are defined. For example, product registries include patients who have been exposed to biopharmaceutical products or medical devices. Health services registries consist of patients who have had a common procedure, clinical encounter, or hospitalization. Disease or condition registries are defined by patients having the same diagnosis, such as cystic fibrosis or heart failure. The User’s Guide was created by researchers affiliated with AHRQ’s Effective Health Care Program, particularly those who participated in AHRQ’s DEcIDE (Developing Evidence to Inform Decisions About Effectiveness) program. Chapters were subject to multiple internal and external independent reviews.




Secondary Analysis of Electronic Health Records


Book Description

This book trains the next generation of scientists representing different disciplines to leverage the data generated during routine patient care. It formulates a more complete lexicon of evidence-based recommendations and support shared, ethical decision making by doctors with their patients. Diagnostic and therapeutic technologies continue to evolve rapidly, and both individual practitioners and clinical teams face increasingly complex ethical decisions. Unfortunately, the current state of medical knowledge does not provide the guidance to make the majority of clinical decisions on the basis of evidence. The present research infrastructure is inefficient and frequently produces unreliable results that cannot be replicated. Even randomized controlled trials (RCTs), the traditional gold standards of the research reliability hierarchy, are not without limitations. They can be costly, labor intensive, and slow, and can return results that are seldom generalizable to every patient population. Furthermore, many pertinent but unresolved clinical and medical systems issues do not seem to have attracted the interest of the research enterprise, which has come to focus instead on cellular and molecular investigations and single-agent (e.g., a drug or device) effects. For clinicians, the end result is a bit of a “data desert” when it comes to making decisions. The new research infrastructure proposed in this book will help the medical profession to make ethically sound and well informed decisions for their patients.




Databases for Pharmacoepidemiological Research


Book Description

This book allows readers to gain an in-depth understanding of the role of real-world data in pharmacoepidemiology, and highlights the strengths and limitations of the respective databases with regard to pharmacoepidemiological research. Over the past decade, the increasing use of real-world data in pharmacoepidemiological research has been accompanied by a growing recognition of the value of real-world evidence in clinical and regulatory decision-making. Electronic healthcare databases allow analyses of drug and vaccine utilization in routine care after approval, as well as investigations of their comparative effectiveness and safety. They are especially useful for the identification of rare risks and rare drug exposures over long periods of time, and as such sustainably extend the basis for drug safety research. This book provides an introduction to the role of real-world data in pharmacoepidemiological research and the main developments in the last 15 years. It also offers a comprehensive overview of the general classification characteristics of databases, together with their strengths and limitations, and a detailed description of 21 individual databases, written by professionals who work with or maintain them.




Finding What Works in Health Care


Book Description

Healthcare decision makers in search of reliable information that compares health interventions increasingly turn to systematic reviews for the best summary of the evidence. Systematic reviews identify, select, assess, and synthesize the findings of similar but separate studies, and can help clarify what is known and not known about the potential benefits and harms of drugs, devices, and other healthcare services. Systematic reviews can be helpful for clinicians who want to integrate research findings into their daily practices, for patients to make well-informed choices about their own care, for professional medical societies and other organizations that develop clinical practice guidelines. Too often systematic reviews are of uncertain or poor quality. There are no universally accepted standards for developing systematic reviews leading to variability in how conflicts of interest and biases are handled, how evidence is appraised, and the overall scientific rigor of the process. In Finding What Works in Health Care the Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommends 21 standards for developing high-quality systematic reviews of comparative effectiveness research. The standards address the entire systematic review process from the initial steps of formulating the topic and building the review team to producing a detailed final report that synthesizes what the evidence shows and where knowledge gaps remain. Finding What Works in Health Care also proposes a framework for improving the quality of the science underpinning systematic reviews. This book will serve as a vital resource for both sponsors and producers of systematic reviews of comparative effectiveness research.




An Introduction to Healthcare Informatics


Book Description

An Introduction to Healthcare Informatics: Building Data-Driven Tools bridges the gap between the current healthcare IT landscape and cutting edge technologies in data science, cloud infrastructure, application development and even artificial intelligence. Information technology encompasses several rapidly evolving areas, however healthcare as a field suffers from a relatively archaic technology landscape and a lack of curriculum to effectively train its millions of practitioners in the skills they need to utilize data and related tools. The book discusses topics such as data access, data analysis, big data current landscape and application architecture. Additionally, it encompasses a discussion on the future developments in the field. This book provides physicians, nurses and health scientists with the concepts and skills necessary to work with analysts and IT professionals and even perform analysis and application architecture themselves. - Presents case-based learning relevant to healthcare, bringing each concept accompanied by an example which becomes critical when explaining the function of SQL, databases, basic models etc. - Provides a roadmap for implementing modern technologies and design patters in a healthcare setting, helping the reader to understand both the archaic enterprise systems that often exist in hospitals as well as emerging tools and how they can be used together - Explains healthcare-specific stakeholders and the management of analytical projects within healthcare, allowing healthcare practitioners to successfully navigate the political and bureaucratic challenges to implementation - Brings diagrams for each example and technology describing how they operate individually as well as how they fit into a larger reference architecture built upon throughout the book




Leveraging Data Science for Global Health


Book Description

This open access book explores ways to leverage information technology and machine learning to combat disease and promote health, especially in resource-constrained settings. It focuses on digital disease surveillance through the application of machine learning to non-traditional data sources. Developing countries are uniquely prone to large-scale emerging infectious disease outbreaks due to disruption of ecosystems, civil unrest, and poor healthcare infrastructure – and without comprehensive surveillance, delays in outbreak identification, resource deployment, and case management can be catastrophic. In combination with context-informed analytics, students will learn how non-traditional digital disease data sources – including news media, social media, Google Trends, and Google Street View – can fill critical knowledge gaps and help inform on-the-ground decision-making when formal surveillance systems are insufficient.




The Computer-Based Patient Record


Book Description

Most industries have plunged into data automation, but health care organizations have lagged in moving patients' medical records from paper to computers. In its first edition, this book presented a blueprint for introducing the computer-based patient record (CPR). The revised edition adds new information to the original book. One section describes recent developments, including the creation of a computer-based patient record institute. An international chapter highlights what is new in this still-emerging technology. An expert committee explores the potential of machine-readable CPRs to improve diagnostic and care decisions, provide a database for policymaking, and much more, addressing these key questions: Who uses patient records? What technology is available and what further research is necessary to meet users' needs? What should government, medical organizations, and others do to make the transition to CPRs? The volume also explores such issues as privacy and confidentiality, costs, the need for training, legal barriers to CPRs, and other key topics.







Information Dashboard Design


Book Description

Dashboards have become a popular means to present critical information for rapid monitoring, but few do this effectively. When designed well, dashboards engage the power of visual perception to communicate a dense collection of information efficiently, with exceptional clarity. This can only be achieved, however, by applying visual design skills that address the unique challenges of dashboards. These skills are not intuitive; they must be learned. The author teaches a comprehensive set of effective design practices through examples that reveal what works, what doesn't, and why.