May 16, 2012
Following a Clinical Adoption workshop held in November 2009, Canadian change management (CM) practitioners came together to develop a common approach for addressing gaps in e-Health CM practices. Through collaborative dialogue, the group, collectively known as the Pan-Canadian CM Network, conducted a current-state analysis and environmental scan of e-Health CM activities and methodologies. As a result, a National CM Framework was developed to promote a best practice model that supports users in their adoption of e-Health solutions. This article will review the six core framework elements required in a CM process to ensure adoption and achieved return on investment, highlighted by examples of practical Canadian applications.
Posted in Journal Articles, READ Portal | Tagged with Canada, e-health, Information technology | No Comments
May 14, 2012
“The FSMB has developed this policy to encourage physicians who use social media and social networking to protect themselves from unintended consequences of such practices and to maintain the public trust by:
Posted in READ Portal, Reports & Papers | Tagged with Information technology, Policy, Social media | No Comments
April 30, 2012
According to PwC’s consumer survey of 1,060 U.S. adults, about one-third of consumers are using the social space as a natural habitat for health discussions. Social media typically consists of four characteristics that have changed the nature of interactions among people and organizations: user generated content, community, rapid distribution, and open, two-way dialogue. This report dives into the social world of the health industry and provides insights into new and emerging relationships between consumers and the biggest health companies that serve them. It examines how individuals think about and use the social channel; how some providers, insurers, medical device, and pharmaceutical companies are responding; and discusses specific implications for organizations to take advantage of with this new view into the 21st century patient.”
This paper requires that you register to access it; however, it is completely free to do so.
Posted in READ Portal, Reports & Papers | Tagged with Information technology, Social media | No Comments
March 7, 2012
This TED talk looks at how crowdsourcing can be used to help improve service to patients. Crowdsourcing is “the practice of obtaining needed services, ideas, or content by soliciting contributions from a large group of people and especially from the online community rather than from traditional employees or suppliers (crowdsourcing, 2011. In Merriam-Webster.com. Retrieved May 8, 2011, from http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/crowdsourcing.).”
According to Lucien Engelen (“a technologist and innovator who is working to put patients into the healthcare team”), “you can use your smartphone to find a local ATM, but what if you need a defibrillator? At TEDxMaastricht, Lucien Engelen shows us online innovations that are changing the way we save lives, including a crowdsourced map of local defibrillators.”
To watch the video visit: http://www.ted.com/talks/lucien_engelen_crowdsource_your_health.html.
Posted in Multimedia, READ Portal | Tagged with Health technology, Information technology, Technology | No Comments
February 24, 2012
KEY MESSAGES:
- Health technology assessment (HTA) is a multidisciplinary area of applied research that produces high quality information about health technologies—drugs, medical technologies and health interventions. The HTA produces recommendations on whether a health technology should be considered, funded and adopted into practice. The goal is to use the research and recommendations from the HTA to inform decisions that will improve quality and cost-effectiveness of healthcare.
- In Canada, there are several well-established agencies at the national and provincial levels that successfully perform HTA. More and more, however, HTA units are being implemented in a local/ hospital-based setting, based on a growing awareness that the local context needs to be taken into account when assessing health technologies.
- Four different models for performing local/hospital-based HTA have been identified and are currently in use world-wide: the ambassador model; mini-HTA; internal committee; and HTA unit. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses. There is insufficient evidence available to adequately assess which of these models would be the best for Canadian hospitals.
- Research shows that local/hospital-based HTA may influence decision-making. There are reports from isolated experiences related to local/hospital-based HTA on hospital decisions and budgets, as well as positive perceptions from managers and clinicians.
- It is difficult to evaluate the overall impacts of HTA on the various levels of healthcare delivery, largely because most hospital-based HTA experiences are recent and there is a paucity of data. Further research is necessary to explore the conditions under which local/hospital-based HTA results and recommendations can have an impact on hospital policies, clinical decisions and quality of patient care.
- The potential exists to share expertise and methodologies between local/hospital-based HTA units. However, there are challenges in directly transferring research knowledge from one organization to another, given the specificity of the context from hospital to hospital.
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February 13, 2012
“If implemented appropriately, health IT can help improve health care providers’ performance, better communication between patients and providers, and enhance patient safety, which ultimately may lead to better care for Americans. Health IT is designed to help improve the performance of health professionals, reduce costs, and enhance patient safety. For example, the number of patients who receive the correct medication in hospitals increases when these hospitals implement well-planned, robust computerized prescribing mechanisms and use barcoding systems. However, poorly designed health IT can create new hazards in the already complex delivery of care.
In the wake of more widespread use of health IT, the Department of Health and Human Services asked the IOM to evaluate health IT safety concerns and to recommend ways that both government and the private sector can make patient care safer using health IT. The IOM finds that safe use of health IT relies on several factors, clinicians and patients among them. Safety analyses should not look for a single cause of problems but should consider the system as a whole when looking for ways to make a safer system. Vendors, users, government, and the private sector all have roles to play. The IOM’s recommendations include improving transparency in the reporting of health IT safety incidents and enhancing monitoring of health IT products.”
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January 17, 2012
To determine whether the services they provide are meeting population needs, local health departments (LHDs) use a variety of formal and informal assessments, including community health assessments and communitywide health-improvement plans. Despite these efforts, the services do not always meet the needs, for a variety of reasons, including competing funding priorities, political mandates, and natural shifts in population makeup and health concerns. Geographic information system (GIS) mapping software provides a promising tool to enhance priority-setting and resource allocation for LHDs by displaying complex geospatial information in an integrated and visual way, enabling staff to compare the geographic distribution of population health in a community (i.e., where services are needed) with the geographic distribution of LHD programs and expenditures (i.e., where services are provided). Using such an approach, LHDs can identify gaps between program services and community health needs. This report presents findings from interviews with 65 staff at four LHDs and three case studies to test potential solutions for how maps can be used to address the gaps between public health needs and LHD services. It describes options for accessing easy-to-use, no-cost GIS data and tools and suggests ways in which LHDs can integrate new GIS approaches into their activities.
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Posted in READ Portal, Reports & Papers | Tagged with Health technology, Information technology, Policy | No Comments
November 29, 2011
“Background and Objectives: In the last few years there has been a steady uptake of mobile phone short message service (SMS) reminders to increase medical attendance rates. We undertook a review of studies that assessed the effectiveness of SMS reminders at increasing the uptake of appointments in health care settings.
Methods: We reviewed studies which involved a comparison of appointment attendance rates between patients who did and did not receive SMS reminders published prior to June 2010. We used meta-analysis methods to calculate the overall effect on attendance rates, stratified by study design and clinic type.
Results: The review criteria were met by 18 reports, made up of eight randomized controlled trials (RCTs) and 10 controlled observational studies. Across all studies, there was significant heterogeneity in the estimated effect measure of the relationship between use of SMS reminders and clinic attendance (I2 = 90 percent; p < .01), so a summary effect estimate was not calculated. Stratification by study design showed that the heterogeneity was due to the observational studies. The summary effect from the RCTs was 1.48 (95% CI: 1.23–1.72) with no significant subgroup differences by clinic type (primary care clinics, hospital outpatient clinics), message timing (24, 48, and 72+ hours before the scheduled appointment), and target age group (pediatric, older).
Conclusions: Short message service reminders in health care settings substantially increase the likelihood of attending clinic appointments. SMS reminders appear to be a simple and efficient option for health services to use to improve service delivery, as well as resulting in health benefits for the patients who receive the reminders.”
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Posted in Journal Articles, READ Portal | Tagged with Evidence-based, Information technology, Policy, Technology | No Comments
September 21, 2011
The Guide to Reducing Unintended Consequences of Electronic Health Records from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality aims to teach healthcare providers how to avoid the risks and pitfalls of electronic health care records.
“EHRs can offer many benefits to health care providers and their patients, including better quality of medical care, greater efficiencies, and improved patient safety. However, even if these benefits are achieved, you will almost certainly face some unanticipated and undesirable consequences from implementing an EHR. Such consequences are often referred to as unintended consequences.
Unintended consequences can undermine provider acceptance, increase costs, sometimes lead to failed implementation, and even result in harm to patients. However, if you learn to anticipate and identify unintended consequences, you will be in a better position to make effective decisions, clarify tradeoffs, and address problems as they arise.”
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September 20, 2011
“There are many benefits associated with the use of electronic health records (EHRs). One of the expected benefits of EHRs is data interoperability, which would allow health data to be transferred electronically from one EHR system to another…”
“This paper compares the interoperability approaches of three countries: Taiwan, Denmark and Canada. The work maps out how various countries have addressed the interoperability problems as well as what factors affect decisions and the result, and in what manner. The key findings are as follows: (1) the federal government’s ability to mandate standards affects choice of interoperability strategy, (2) e-Health status influences choice of interoperability strategy, and (3) differences in geography, population and demographics affect the selection of national strategies toward interoperability.”
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Posted in READ Portal, Reports & Papers | Tagged with e-health, Health technology, Information technology | No Comments
