INFORM: integrated support for decisions and activities in intensive care

Reducing the paper load: computer-based patient records

Physicians burdened with increasing paper work may find relief in computer-based patient records (CPR). CPRs may aid clinicians in the areas of billing, documentation, reporting, and data retrieval. Value-added features like decision support and event monitoring facilitate patient outcome, decrease health care costs and allow improved administration. The authors discuss obstacles in the use of computers in patient care with a focus on security, confidentiality, and Y2K.

An evaluation of Patient Data Management Systems in Dutch intensive care

OBJECTIVE

To assess the agreement between the functions of seven configurations of Patient Data Management Systems (PDMS) and the Dutch specifications prepared by the users prior to use.

DESIGN

An observational descriptive study with hospital visits of seven configurations of five different PDMS systems including three commercial systems and two locally developed systems.

SETTING

Seven Dutch level I intensive care units in university and teaching hospitals.

MEASUREMENTS AND RESULTS

A substantial disagreement was found between the Dutch specifications and the actual functions of the PDMS configurations tested. Between the PDMS configurations, major differences in key features, including "automated charting", "information and care planning", and "management information", were observed. Automated charting is adequately supported by the three commercial systems. All configurations tested had limited functions supporting care planning. In none of the configurations tested was the required function present to support unit management with reports on resource utilisation and outcome performance. The automatic calculation of prognostic scores was either absent or incorrect. The implementation, the (continuous) configuration and the training required a substantial investment in costs and human resources.

CONCLUSION

Today, none of the PDMSs tested satisfy the Dutch specifications. This can be explained by technical impossibilities of the systems and shortcomings in the actual configuration or in the unit organisation. The PDMS might become a valuable tool in improving the quality of ICU practice, but full implementation of these systems according to the specifications still has a long way to go.

Introduction of knowledge bases in patient's data management system: role of the user interface

As the number of signals and data to be handled grows in intensive care unit, it is necessary to design more powerful computing systems that integrate and summarize all this information. The manual input of data as e.g. clinical signs and drug prescription and the synthetic representation of these data requires an ever more sophisticated user interface. The introduction of knowledge bases in the data management allows to conceive contextual interfaces. The objective of this paper is to show the importance of the design of the user interface, in the daily use of clinical information system. Then we describe a methodology that uses the man-machine interaction to capture the clinician knowledge during the clinical practice. The different steps are the audit of the user's actions, the elaboration of statistic models allowing the definition of new knowledge, and the validation that is performed before complete integration. A part of this knowledge can be used to improve the user interface. Finally, we describe the implementation of these concepts on a UNIX platform using OSF/MOTIF graphical interface.

Intelligent systems in patient monitoring and therapy management. A survey of research projects

Although today's advanced biomedical technology provides unsurpassed power in diagnosis, monitoring, and treatment, interpretation of vast streams of information generated by this technology often poses excessive demands on the cognitive skills of health-care personnel. In addition, storage, reduction, retrieval, processing, and presentation of information are significant challenges. These problems are most severe in critical care environments such as intensive care units (ICUs) and operating room (ORs) where many events are life-threatening and thus require immediate attention and the execution of definitive corrective actions. This article focuses on intelligent monitoring and control (IMC), or the use of artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to alleviate some of the common information management problems encountered in health-care environments. This article presents the findings of a survey of over 30 IMC projects. A major finding of the survey is that although significant advances have been made in introducing AI technology in critical care, successful examples of fielded systems are still few and far between. Widespread acceptance of these systems in critical care environments depends on a number of factors, including fruitful collaborations between clinicians and computer scientists, emphasis on evaluation studies, and easy access to clinical information.

INFORM: development of information management and decision support systems for High Dependency Environments

The long-term aim in the INFORM Project is to develop, evaluate and implement a new generation of Information Systems for hospital High Dependency Environments (HDE-Intensive Care Units, Neonatal Units, Burns Units. Operating and Recovery Rooms, and other specialised areas). The distinguishing feature of the HDE is the very large amount of data that is collected through monitors and paper records about the state of critically ill patients; this has made the role of the staff a technical one in addition to a caring one. The INFORM System will integrate Decision Support with on-line, off-line and observed patient data and, in addition, will incorporate and integrate unit management features. In the Exploratory Phase of the Project, functional requirements have been set out. These are based on four components: conceptual model of the HDE; evaluation of existing HDE Information Systems; development of a novel software architecture using a Knowledge-Based Systems (KBS) methodology, and based on a critical review of KBS applied to the HDE: monitoring of appropriate leading-edge technological developments. The conceptual model has two components: a patient-related information model, and a department-related cost model. The patient-related model is identifying key and difficult areas of decision making. A key aspect of INFORM is integration of clinical Decision Support for these areas into the Information System through a layered software architecture. The lower layers are concerned with monitoring and alarming and the higher levels with patient assessment and therapy planning. The functionality and interconnection of these layers are being determined.

A data model for intensive care

The paper describes a model of clinical management data in a typical general intensive care unit, intended as a generic database specification for advanced intensive care computer systems. The data model was developed as part of the INFORM project. The INFORM project is summarised and the relevance of the data model to the objectives of the project are discussed. An object oriented extension to the entity relationship diagram methodology is presented. The methodology is illustrated with reference to some specific aspects of the data model including: the principle clinical entities; classification of patient state related data and the homogeneous patient group system. It is suggested that such a model will contribute to the better understanding of the data in the system, to the better design of future intensive care computer systems and to the setting of standards for medical data.