R W O'Dell | PubMed Health

PubMed1984

A user-oriented information system for emergency medicine.

A user-oriented Emergency Medical Services Information System ( EMSIS ) has been developed in our medical center that can readily be established by any interested medical center. This minicomputer based system provides online registration of poison center calls, access to the Poisindex (C) data base, concise patient information sheets, access to EMS treatment protocols, assistance in the differential diagnosis of acute poisoning, dosage recommendations for drugs with a narrow therapeutic margin, and kinetic analysis of drug overdoses. Video terminals access EMSIS in the Emergency Department, pharmacy, outpatient medicine clinic, pediatric clinic, medicine wards, poison control center, and biomedical engineering. A PDP 11/70 with 256 Kb core and 48 ports running under RSTS /E V7 .0 supports an average of 20 simultaneous users.

Computers↗

PubMed1983

Comparison of alphabetic and phonetic retrieval of online drug information.

Alphabetic, phonetic, and combined alphabetic and phonetic methods of retrieving online drug information were compared. Twenty-four volunteers participated in the study representing four user groups: physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and nonhealth-care hospital staff. Each subject performed 150 searches, 50 by each retrieval method. Using the alphabetic method, drug information was retrievable only if the drug name was spelled correctly. Using the phonetic method, searches were conducted based on the phonetic spelling of requests (e.g., "symetadine" for cimetidine). The combined method used a phonetic search only after an initial alphabetic search was unsuccessful. The elapsed time between the first entry and an indication that the information had been found or could not be found was determined, and the number of drug names not found and the number of excess tries were counted. There were no significant differences in elapsed time among the three methods. Pharmacists had the shortest mean elapsed time and physicians the longest. The average number of excess tries using the phonetic system was a third of the number required using the alphabetic method. The number of drugs not found showed only slight differences among the three methods. The subjects found the desired information on the first try 67% of the time with the alphabetic method, 66% with the combined method, and 90% with the phonetic method. The phonetic method had an average of 75 matches versus 20 for the alphabetic and combined methods. These results support use of a combined alphabetic and phonetic system for retrieving drug information.

Drug Information Services↗