HL7 engine module for healthcare information systems

The integration of applications is always the most important issue for a development team especially in the healthcare industry. In this paper, a Health Level 7 (HL7) engine system is proposed to solve HL7 challenges, which are associated with applying HL7 in healthcare organizations. This new HL7 engine has been implemented in a hospital as a solution for challenges we have faced. The engine shows great success overcoming known HL7 limitations.

A novel system architecture for the national integration of electronic health records: a semi-centralized approach

The goal of a national electronic health records integration system is to aggregate electronic health records concerning a particular patient at different healthcare providers' systems to provide a complete medical history of the patient. It holds the promise to address the two most crucial challenges to the healthcare systems: improving healthcare quality and controlling costs. Typical approaches for the national integration of electronic health records are a centralized architecture and a distributed architecture. This paper proposes a new approach for the national integration of electronic health records, the semi-centralized approach, an intermediate solution between the centralized architecture and the distributed architecture that has the benefits of both approaches. The semi-centralized approach is provided with a clearly defined architecture. The main data elements needed by the system are defined and the main system modules that are necessary to achieve an effective and efficient functionality of the system are designed. Best practices and essential requirements are central to the evolution of the proposed architecture. The proposed architecture will provide the basis for designing the simplest and the most effective systems to integrate electronic health records on a nation-wide basis that maintain integrity and consistency across locations, time and systems, and that meet the challenges of interoperability, security, privacy, maintainability, mobility, availability, scalability, and load balancing.

Investigating the impact of an emergency information system on patient's length of stay in the emergency department of a tertiary hospital in Saudi Arabia

The emergency department has a crucial role in saving patient's lives. Efficient and reliable information through reliable information systems contribute to effective communication in these situations and ultimately shorter lengths of stay (LOS). This exploratory, cross-sectional study evaluates a current legacy emergency system in a tertiary hospital and investigates its impact on patient's length of stay (LOS) in the emergency department. A significantly shorter LOS was found between patients whose information was available and was communicated effectively in comparison to patients whose data were not available. Furthermore, longer LOS was associated with patients who required clinical services (pathology, radiology) due to the manual retrieval of results. This study has found that future implementation of a comprehensive electronic information system will facilitate effective communication workflow and timely access to patient data in the emergency department.

National electronic medical records integration on cloud computing system

Few Healthcare providers have an advanced level of Electronic Medical Record (EMR) adoption. Others have a low level and most have no EMR at all. Cloud computing technology is a new emerging technology that has been used in other industry and showed a great success. Despite the great features of Cloud computing, they haven't been utilized fairly yet in healthcare industry. This study presents an innovative Healthcare Cloud Computing system for Integrating Electronic Health Record (EHR). The proposed Cloud system applies the Cloud Computing technology on EHR system, to present a comprehensive EHR integrated environment.

An emergency system to improve ambulance dispatching, ambulance diversion and clinical handover communication-a proposed model

Effective communication in healthcare is important and especially critical in emergency situations. In this paper we propose a new comprehensive emergency system which facilitates the communication process in emergency cases from ambulance dispatch to the patient's arrival and handover in the hospital. The proposed system has been designed to facilitate and computerize all the processes involved in an accident from finding the nearest ambulance through to accessing a patient's online health record which can assist in pre-hospital treatments. The proposed system also locates the nearest hospital specializing in the patient's condition and will communicate patient identification to the emergency department. The components of the proposed system and the technologies used in building this system are outlined in this paper as well as the challenges expected and proposed solutions to these challenges.

Proposal of an architecture for the national integration of Electronic Health Records: a semi-centralized approach

This paper proposes a novel architecture for the national integration of Electronic Health Records (EHRs), the semi-centralized approach, in which summarized EHRs are maintained centrally at a nation-wide system with references to their comprehensive versions at their original locations on the various healthcare providers' databases. The idea is to allow the clinicians to have an idea of what is included inside the patient's EHRs at each healthcare provider's database and to have a general view of the patient's medical history, and when needed to retrieve the complete EHR of the patient from a remote healthcare providers' systems. A high level system architecture needed to integrate EHRs from various sources on a nation-wide basis using the proposed semi-centralized approach is described. Best practices and essential requirements are the central to the evolution of the approach taken.

An integration of Emergency Department Information and Ambulance Systems

In this paper we propose an Emergency Department Information System that will be integrated with the ambulance system to improve the communication, enhance the quality of provided emergency services and facilitate information sharing. The proposed system utilizes new advanced technologies such as mobile web services that overcome the problems of interoperability between different systems, HL7 and GPS. The system is unique in that it allows ambulance officers to locate the nearest specialized hospital and allows access to the patient's electronic health record as well as providing the hospital with required information to prepare for the incoming patient.

Proposal of an end-to-end emergency medical system

A new comprehensive emergency system has been proposed to facilitate and computerize all the processes involved in an emergency from the initial contact to the ambulance emergency system, to finding the right and nearest available ambulance, and through to accessing a Smart Online Electronic Health Record (SOEHR). The proposed system will critically assist in pre-hospital treatments, indentify availability of the nearest available specialized hospital and communicate with the Hospital Emergency Department System (HEDS) to provide early information about the incoming patient for preparation to receive and assist.

Building an advanced wireless end-to-end emergency medical system

Effective communication in healthcare is important and especially critical in emergency situations. In this paper we propose a new comprehensive emergency system which will facilitate the communication process in emergency cases from ambulance dispatch to the patient's arrival and handover in the hospital. The proposed system has been designed to facilitate and computerise all the processes involved in an accident from finding the nearest ambulance through to accessing a patient's online health record which can assist in pre-hospital treatments. The proposed system will also locate the nearest hospital specialising in the patient's condition and will communicate patient identification to the emergency department. The components of the proposed system and the technologies used in building this system are outlined in this paper as well as the challenges expected and proposed solutions to these challenges.

Displacements and reconstruction: the case of west beirut - Lebanon

This paper focusses on the housing conditions of the displaced people who were forced to move to West Beirut due to the conflict in Lebanon which started in 1975. With the lack of any emergency housing provision, people have adopted two ways to shelter their families; either by occupying vacant buildings or by squatting on unused land (land squatting). The study is based on fieldwork undertaken in order to gain a deeper insight into the displaced people's housing conditions. The results of the survey analysis are believed to be common to other displaced people, as has been verified by comparison with the available information in newspaper reports, unpublished documents, and other accounts. The paper concludes with a reconstruction strategy, composed of two policies. First, a short-term policy which deals with the urgent needs of the people in the place of refuge. Thus mitigation and risk reduction are the aims of this policy. Second, a long-term policy which concentrates on future housing reconstruction; in which economic development, social integration and cultural identity are the basic features.