The Informatics Review Vol. 5 No. 4 - Feb 15 2002 -- Current Reviews in Clinical Informatics

The Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association is now available on PubMed Central for FREE
Archives of the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) dating back to January 1997 are now available through Pub Med Central. There is a six-month lag for availability. This is a great step forward for the field of Medical Informatics.

Leap Frog Group's Survey Results on :
* Computer Physician Order Entry (CPOE) -- Prescriptions in hospitals should be computerized.
* Evidence-based Hospital Referral (EHR) -- It is important to select hospitals with proven outcomes or extensive experience with specific high-risk conditions or procedures that have a high risk of death or complications.
* ICU Physician Staffing (IPS) -- "Intensivists," physicians specially trained to care for critically ill patients in Intensive Care Units (ICUs), should staff ICUs.

A randomized, controlled trial of clinical information shared from another institution
This pilot study is the first to demonstrate the feasibility of sharing clinical information between different health care systems. We observed a trend toward cost savings at 1 of 2 hospitals and no differences in the quality measures we studied. Our experience underscores the difficulties inherent in studying the effects of community-wide health care interventions on cost and quality of ED care.

Advances in Clinical Knowledge Management
Monday, 22 April 2002, 10.00 - 17.00 -- Cancer Research UK, London
Workshop scope
· Current and emerging technologies to help bring high quality knowledge to clinicians or
patients
· Projects bridging the interface between medical informatics, health libraries, information and computer sciences, health services research, clinical epidemiology and evidence-based medicine
· Knowledge systems likely to be of clinical value, e.g. guidelines or systematic reviews on the Internet; integration of library resources with clinical workstations; indexing or database publishing techniques; computer-generated leaflets; decision support systems; clinical hypertext, etc.

Methods for the Representation of Clinical Guidelines
The OpenClinical workshop, held in London in September 2001 allowed a large number of OpenClinical members to learn about the guideline representation methods under discussion. It also enabled the development groups to present updates on their work and discuss an interim report on the results of the comparative study. OpenClinical proposes to publish material not included in the final paper.

You Can Surf, but You Can't Hide
That is the idea behind a programming concept called presence awareness, which is based on the realization that appliances on a network can automatically be detected by other devices.

ECRI Announces Diabetes Patient Education Web Site
This is a technology-related patient information Web site for people with diabetes and their families. As a public service, the site provides high-quality technology-related information about diabetes.

Linux Medicine-HOWTO
A beautiful list of free or open source medical informatics-related projects.

Sometimes high-tech isn't better
We're all aware that many companies have buried their heads in the sand on the security issues involved with moving to high-tech solutions in the name of convenience. When we're talking about on-line sales, educational applications, news media, and the like, the repercussions of such are usually not critical to human life, and therefore the trade-off is made. However, this author recently encountered something that is, well, disconcerting at best.

Medical informatics education: an alternative pathway for training informationists

Recognition of the growing complexity of health information needs has led to a call for the creation of a new health care professional, the informationist. Controversy exists as to the role of such individuals and what their training should be. With the right coursework, individuals trained in medical informatics should be equally well qualified to assume the role of informationists.

Budapest Open Access Initiative
An old tradition and a new technology have converged to make possible an unprecedented public good. The old tradition is the willingness of scientists and scholars to publish the fruits of their research in scholarly journals without payment, for the sake of inquiry and knowledge. The new technology is the internet. The public good they make possible is the world-wide electronic distribution of the peer-reviewed journal literature and completely free and unrestricted access to it by all scientists, scholars, teachers, students, and other curious minds.

Other issues from Volume 5 -- 2001

1 -- Jan 1

5 -- Mar 1

9 --- May 1

13 -- Jul 1

17 -- Sep 1

21 -- Nov 1

2 -- Jan 15

6 -- Mar 15

10 -- May 15

14 -- Jul 15

18 -- Sep 15

22 -- Nov 15

3 -- Feb 1

7 -- Apr 1

11 -- Jun 1

15 -- Aug 1

19 -- Oct 1

23 -- Dec 1

4 -- Feb 15

8 -- Apr 15

12 -- Jun 15

16 -- Aug 15

20 -- Oct 15

24 -- Dec 15

2/15/02 dfs

1 -- Jan 1	5 -- Mar 1	9 --- May 1	13 -- Jul 1	17 -- Sep 1	21 -- Nov 1
2 -- Jan 15	6 -- Mar 15	10 -- May 15	14 -- Jul 15	18 -- Sep 15	22 -- Nov 15
3 -- Feb 1	7 -- Apr 1	11 -- Jun 1	15 -- Aug 1	19 -- Oct 1	23 -- Dec 1
4 -- Feb 15	8 -- Apr 15	12 -- Jun 15	16 -- Aug 15	20 -- Oct 15	24 -- Dec 15