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Biomedical subjects

H F Orthner

Publications and source records attributed to H F Orthner.

9 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1997

Capturing clinical reports in a large academic medical center: feeding a central patient data repository.

Clinical reports, notes, and other narratives are highly used components in the patient record. Unfortunately, the methods by which these reports are generated are as diverse as the fiscal autonomy of academic clinical departments in a university-based health science center. In this paper, we report on electronically capturing clinical reports, notes, and other text fragments from several hospital sources and many outpatient clinics. The purpose of the capture is to feed the ACIS (Advanced Clinical Information System) central patient data repository that is in use at the University of Utah Health Sciences Center (UUHSC). A survey conducted in early 1994 indicated that about 917,150 reports were generated per year at UUHSC representing about 1.2 million pieces of paper, occupying about 2.3 gigabytes of storage. The most crucial problem encountered in capturing the reports was linking them to the proper patient. Systems that had functioning and well-maintained admit-discharge-transfer (ADT) information performed well, but systems that relied on the human dictator to identify patients, produced patient linkage errors. In our open loop telephone dictation systems this error rate averaged between 6 and 10%. Subsequent to the wide-spread availability of clinical reports on ACIS, this error rate dropped to 3-5%, presumably due to increased demand for on-line availability of this information. From clinical secretaries who use their word processor to create the clinical reports, the linkage error rate was < 1% due to the use of our Advanced Text Upload (ATU) utility. The clinical text component in ACIS contributed significantly to the success of a JCAHO site visit in December 1995.

Academic Medical Centers↗
PubMed1997

SAM: speech-aware applications in medicine to support structured data entry.

In the last two years, improvement in speech recognition technology has directed the medical community's interest to porting and using such innovations in clinical systems. The acceptance of speech recognition systems in clinical domains increases with recognition speed, large medical vocabulary, high accuracy, continuous speech recognition, and speaker independence. Although some commercial speech engines approach these requirements, the greatest benefit can be achieved in adapting a speech recognizer to a specific medical application. The goals of our work are first, to develop a speech-aware core component which is able to establish connections to speech recognition engines of different vendors. This is realized in SAM. Second, with applications based on SAM we want to support the physician in his/her routine clinical care activities. Within the STAMP project (STAndardized Multimedia report generator in Pathology), we extend SAM by combining a structured data entry approach with speech recognition technology. Another speech-aware application in the field of Diabetes care is connected to a terminology server. The server delivers a controlled vocabulary which can be used for speech recognition.

Cell Biology↗
PubMed1994

Sharing and communicating health care information: summary and recommendations.

Sharing and communicating information is a fundamental task in modern medicine. The health care system of the western world is based on teamwork of professionals who participate in the care of patients. Exchange of information (not just data) requires the communicating parties to agree on a communication channel, an exchange protocol, and a common language. The language includes an alphabet, words, phrases, and symbols that express and assign meaning, understood by all. The most common forms of communication are the spoken word and the paper-based patient record. Computers and communication systems improve the sharing of health care information by overcoming the limitations imposed by the dimensions of time and location. However, natural language is still too complex and too ambiguous for current computing devices to handle the complex interactions between health care professional and patients. A simpler 'language' is needed that uses domain specific vocabularies (and/or codes), well-defined exchange protocols for data, information, knowledge, and, in the future, perhaps even wisdom. This simpler 'language' is expected to handle most of the routine information exchange but not eliminate natural language. It is essential that health care information systems preserve and incorporate natural language expressions and integrate them with structured vocabularies. Today, agreeing on standard data exchange protocols and domain specific vocabularies and codes is our greatest challenge. However, standards alone are not sufficient. Acceptance of the standards by the health care professionals, verifications in clinical environments, and implementation agreements by the medical informatics industry are essential. The group on 'Sharing and Communication of Health Care Information' addressed the issues raised above and unanimously recommends a number of steps that will improve the sharing of information. In addition, specific recommendations are offered to governments, health care institutions, and to developers of health care information systems.

Communication↗
PubMed1982

The third manpower study of thoracic surgery: 1980 report of the Ad Hoc Committee on Manpower of The American Association for Thoracic Surgery and The Society of Thoracic Surgeons.

An ad hoc committee was appointed by The Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS) in 1977 in order to determine the available manpower and workload of thoracic surgeons in 1976. This committee conducted a survey of the professional activities and geographic location of all known surgeons certified by the American Board of Thoracic Surgery (ABTS) at that time. A summary of this study indicated the available and projected thoracic surgery manpower. The report also determined the present and projected health care needs of the population of the United States through 1993. Because thoracic surgery needs to continue to meet the health care needs of the United States in an appropriate yet economical fashion, the STS and The American Association for Thoracic Surgery (AATS) undertook a joint review to determine again the available manpower and its workload in calendar year 1980. In addition, this study compared its findings with the 1976 report in order to detect changes in the workload and need for thoracic surgical services. A questionnaire was mailed to 3,584 certified thoracic surgeons. There were 2,675 responses. The material was sent to the Academic Computer Services at George Washington University Medical Center for tabulation and data processing. This report summarizes the results of this survey. It also compares these data with those obtained in the 1976 study and, based on this information, attempts to project the thoracic surgery manpower needs in the next decade by using several hypothetical models.

Forecasting↗
PubMed1979

The Society of Thoracic Surgeons manpower survey for 1976: a summary.

The results of a 1977 survey regarding places and types of thoracic surgical procedures performed in the United States are analyzed. Responses gathered from 2,240 thoracic surgeons showed that active thoracic surgeons between 34 and 54 years old performed 195,850 major thoracic or cardiac operations per year. Fifty-four percent of active surgeons responding were in solo practice, 40% practiced in groups of 2 to 5 surgeons, and the reamining 6% were in groups of 6 or more. Community size, regional distribution of services, proportion of professional activities allocated to various procedures, and estimates of additional capacity are also summarized.

Age Factors↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Ten years of medical informatics. Introduction.

The discussions of the Tenth Anniversary of the Symposium on Computer Applications in Medical Care (SCAMC) are summarized. Eight different subject areas are addressed: Medical informatics and medical education; Decision making, medical artificial intelligence, modelling and simulations; Image processing, 3-D graphics, and computer networks; Reimbursement policy, legal and regulatory issues; Encoding and representation of medical meaning; Ambulatory medical records systems; Hospital information systems; and Software environments for developing medical information systems. The activities of the 10th SCAMC consisted of Tutorials, Panel Discussions, a Plenary Session, Scientific Demonstrations, and an International Student Paper Competition in Medical Informatics.

Computer Communication Networks↗