Category: Health information

The Victoria SAS User Group had a meeting at the Ministry of Health today.  Steve, my colleague, invited me to check it out.  I was surprised how many of my co-workers went.  It was my first time checking out SAS events and I think I’ll be going to the next one.

Marje Fecht’s presentations were super informative.  Her first presentation reminds us the little things of programming and really brings out the meaning of “THINK Before You Type”.  Her second presentation on SAS macro facility was a little over my head, but it showed how much you can do with SAS and how little I knew about SAS.

It was also eye-opening to see how many different ways there were to solve one problem.

I think I should post more SAS examples here from now on 🙂

The article For EHR Implementation, the Time to Act is Now by Frank Irving is a nice and short one on the benefits and difficulties of implementing an EHR system in a hospital environment in the US.  The time and financial commitments for the implementation were well demonstrated.  What grabbed my attention was the six steps to implement an EHR system.  These six steps are:

1. Assessing Infrastructure – An initial assessment of a hospital’s existing infrastructure and data is needed to determine its quantity, quality and age.  Patient records must be up-to-date and consistent throughout the hospital prior to the transition to ensure a flawless switch.
2. Defining future state – The future state of the hospital must be defined to answer the question: Which best practices need to be implemented for this particular hospital system? 
3. Conducting gap analysis – A gap analysis will define what will need to be upgraded to interface each system into the future state.
4. Developing strategic plan – After the gap analysis to define the necessary system updates, the development of an overarching strategy is needed to close the gap.
5. Building a business case – This business case must include the cost of the implementation, time needed for completion, long-term payback and any other advantages or disadvantages to be realized through the implementation.
6. Implementation! – The longest and most challenging step is the implementation, which will involve implementing both the technical specifications of the envisioned system as well as the business process to enable the desired shift.  This stage includes vendor analysis, hardware and software implementation, and building custom software for the institution.  All the appropriate business processes need to be in place in order to convert to a new EHR system.

Article: For EHR Implementation, the Time to Act is Now

Whenever I tell people about the Masters of Health Informatics program at the University of Victoria, they always ask what Health Informatics is.  I guess to a certain extent, the term Health Informatics is still fairly new.  Here is a brief introduction of what Health Informatics really is.

Health Informtics is the intersection of information science, computer science, and health care.  It deals with the resources, devices, and methods required to optimize the acquisition, storage, retrieval, and use of information in health and biomedicine.  Health informatics tools include not only computers but also clinical guidelines, formal medical terminologies, and information and communication systems.  Sometimes,  Health Informatics is referred to as Medical Informatics.

Health Informaticians are expected to have knowledge in:

• architectures of Electronic Health Records and other health information systems used for billing, scheduling, and research;
• decision support systems in healthcare;
• standards and integration profiles to facilitate the exchange of information between healthcare information systems;
• controlled medical vocabularies;

If you want to know more about Health Informatics, Wikipedia has an in-depth explanation on its development, location, legal aspects, and management. 

Reference:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medical_informatics