Dispatches from the hi-blogs.info krew

Papers on ‘human computer interaction’ June 29, 2009

Kathy Dallest, from Scotland spoke on ‘The online managed knowledge network that shares knowledge for ehealth in NHS Scotland’ – http://www.nmahp.scot.nhs.uk

Nurses, midwives and allied health professions are 72% of clinical workforce in Scotland – largest group who will use electronic systems to support delivery of healthcare and information management. She described the portal that has been developed to provide a managed knowledge network; the model builds on the idea of communities of practice, with communities operating across disciplinary boundaries. The project found a large diversity of roles among the staff working in ehealth; they often felt isolated, with a need/desire to share information.

The nmahp site uses topic rooms and expert searches on subject areas. Kathy also mentioned the ‘using information’ website, and international collaboration – http://www.usinginfo.org and the clinical ehealth toolkit. The MKN site is open to anyone to join.

Elina Kontio from University of Turku in Finland spoke on ‘Key elements of successful care process of patients with heart symptoms in an emergency care – would an ERP system help?’ She says healthcare has been slow to use process-oriented systems for decision making. The research she described has looked at identifying the key elements of care processes of patients with acute heart problems; used a critical incident technique to collect data on the nurses’ roles and interactions with patients, with a sample of 50 nurses across 3 hospitals in southern Finland. The study developed recommendations on development and use of enterprise planning systems to provide alerts, decision support etc. in care continuum.

Debra Wolf presented on ‘Nurses using futuristic technology in today’s healthcare setting’. She talked about voice-assisted technology to do point of care documentation in a community hospital in USA. The system is wireless and used for charting, reminders and prioritising tasks. The system comprises a wearable computer and headset, speech recognition engine and software to send and receive patient orders and to do real-time documentation using speech-to-text. The system has reduced documentation time (by up to75% – but also found little diffrence in completeness of the documentation) and to provide proactive reminders about issues (such as fall risk) pertinent to individual patients. It has improved adherenece to policies and so enhanced quality of care. The pilot study found there was reduction in potential for infection, as nurses only touch one device once a day, as opposed to mutliple touches with other computer systems (eg mouse, keyboard, etc).

http://healthcare.vocollect.com/index.php/acute