Biomedical subjects

Etienne De Clercq

Publications and source records attributed to Etienne De Clercq.

5 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Purposes of health identification cards and role of a secure access platform (Be-Health) in Belgium.

Although other alternatives may exist, identification cards have been chosen as an acceptable and adequate tool to be used to identify patients and health professionals. It is planned to use these for digital signature and for access to electronic health records: for searching various databases as well as for health information exchange. Local applications might exist independently, but the Belgian federal state has now developed Be-Health, a platform for health professionals, social security personnel and the general public, designed to facilitate a secure common uniform access to certain health data.

Access to Information↗

PubMed2006

Research networks: can we use data from GPs' electronic health records?

As widely discussed in the literature, there are many potential scientific usages of data extracted from the primary care Electronic Health Records (EHR), such as quality of care, epidemiological or socio-economical studies. Yet, can we use the current available data in the EHR for such purposes? In this paper, our objective is to report on the preliminary findings of the Belgian ResoPrim project (2003-2005) to answer the question. We set up a semi-anonymous network involving 26 current practices (28 volunteer GPs), 3 different EHR software systems and two Trusted Third Parties. Based on a literature overview we identified 27 research questions to be answered using 50 indicators. The study design includes retrospective (2002-2004) and prospective (6 weeks) data collection processes around the theme of "Hypertension and cardiovascular risk factors". For some data sets, the data extraction was a full automatic procedure, for some others, the data extraction was related to an input from the GPs allowing some comparisons between both procedures. At this stage, we performed an extended descriptive analysis of our data. Retrospectively we collected data related to 42,217 patients and 203,128 contacts. Prospectively we collected data for 9,236 patients and 15,234 contacts. Our main findings are briefly presented and discussed in this paper. The most promising fields seem to be the Health Research Information Systems assessment and the quality of care studies. It is quite too soon to reach the expected theoretical benefits for epidemiologic and socio-economic studies, yet some progresses could be made in relation with the denominator issue. Based on our preliminary findings and hypotheses, further analyses are foreseen during the second phase of the project (2006-2007).

Belgium↗

PubMed2005

Purposes of health identification cards in belgium.

Although other alternatives might exist, identification cards have been chosen as an acceptable and adequate tool to be used to identify patients and health professionals.They are planned for a digital signature and for access to electronic health records as well as for health information exchange and for databases querying. Local applications might exist independently, but the Federal State has now developed BeHealth, a platform for health professionals, social security personnel as well as the great public to facilitate a common access to some health data. Security conditions have been defined and are described.

Belgium↗

PubMed2004

Integration of electronic patient record context with message context.

A methodology to construct specific messages with clear objectives inside clinical processes, while simultaneously including contextual information, remains a problem today. This paper addresses the issue of combining specific message context (process driven) with the context of a patient record (patient centered). In Belgium, simplified conceptual models for Electronic Patient Record (EPR) architecture and for message architecture, based on previous comprehensive and international work, have been produced, validated and mapped into an integrated message format. The resulting model described in this paper highlights the main conceptual links between both basic models: at the action level and at the Transaction level. Using XML, some parts of the model have already been implemented in various national projects. Key lessons learned may be imported at the international level.

Belgium↗

PubMed2004

Quality of care assessment using GPs' electronic patient records: do we need data from home visits?

The paper tackles the topic of collecting data from home visits using the electronic patient record (EPR) of general practitioners (GPs), in a context with a high proportion of home visits in primary care. Since data from home visits, representing about 40% of GPs' consultations in Belgium, are rather scarcely recorded in the EPR, we wanted to study the impact of not taking into account home visits for quality assessment in primary care. Five quality indicators, which measured the accordance of the delivered care with guidelines on the management of osteoarthritis, were compared between a pooled database (consultations and home visits) and a restricted database (after removal of home visits). Our findings suggest that removing home visits from a database collected from primary care may provide a slight modification of the estimate of the quality of care, whereas conclusions on quality improvement remain relatively stable. Quality of care assessment with the EPR of GPs seems not to be dramatically hampered by the poor recording rate of home visits in the EPR.

Belgium↗