background local health departments (lhds) operate in a complex and dynamic public health landscape, with changing demands on their emergency response capacities. informatics capacities might play an instrumental role in aiding lhds emergency preparedness. this study aimed to explore the extent to which lhds’ informatics capacities are associated with their activity level in emergency preparedn...

INTRODUCTION The Electronic Health Record (EHR) is being advocated as a tool to improve patient care. Nationwide initiatives are under way to determine how to implement EHR. To date, community nursing homes have not been involved in that effort. Many reasons, including multiple providers in a home, physical structure of a facility, multiple facilities, high costs of implementation, and maintena...

Accurate readability assessment of health related materials is a critical first step in producing easily understandable consumer health information resources and personal health records. Existing general readability formulas may not always be appropriate for the medical/consumer health domain. We developed a new health-specific readability pilot measure, based on the differences in semantic and...

BACKGROUND Using electronic health records data to predict events and onset of diseases is increasingly common. Relatively little is known, although, about the tradeoffs between data requirements and model utility. METHODS AND RESULTS We examined the performance of machine learning models trained to detect prediagnostic heart failure in primary care patients using longitudinal electronic heal...

Carl van Walraven and colleagues recently presented a timely article about the information gaps that impede continuity of care for Canadian patients. Both the article and the accompanying commentary discussed the potential of electronic health records for facilitating provider-to-provider information sharing. This possibility is becoming a reality as the Canada Health Infoway works to establish...

BACKGROUND Self-management technologies, such as patient-controlled electronic health records (PCEHRs), have the potential to help people manage and cope with disease. OBJECTIVE This study set out to investigate patient families' lived experiences of working with a PCEHR. METHODS We conducted a semistructured qualitative field study with patient families and clinicians at a children's hospi...

OBJECTIVE The study characterized three groups with different levels of familiarity with personal health information management (PHIM) in terms of their demographics, health knowledge, technological competency, and information sources and barriers. In addition, the authors examined differences among PHIM groups in subjective self-ratings and objective test scores for health literacy. METHODS ...

This paper proposes various data flow models efficiently guard Electronic Health Records (EHRs). Personal Health Records (PHRs) should remain the long-term property of patients data. MyPHRMachines a patient centric system that takes a radically new architectural solution to health record interoperability. Patients Can View their Medical data and they can access and share through remote Virtual ...

Collecting and monitoring performance measure data are resource-intensive, requiring time and effort by a team that includes health care providers treating the patients and documenting their care, quality personnel monitoring and working to optimize performance rates, and quality abstractors, who extract information from the medical record. Recently, an additional group of people have become in...

One of the key elements of the NHS information strategy of 1998 was the development of electronic patient records. These were expected to be developed within organisations and to be capable of being linked into a patient focused electronic health record, which would form a lifetime record of health and health care for each patient within the NHS. This vision has been modified slightly by update...