Refine
Year of publication
Document Type
- Conference Proceeding (82) (remove)
Is part of the Bibliography
- yes (82)
Keywords
Institute
- Fakultät WiSo (82)
Bei der Umsetzung der digitalen Transformation bewegt sich das ITManagement in Krankenhäusern in einem Spannungsfeld aus historischkulturellen Vorbedingungen und den besonderen Herausforderungen wissensintensiver Expertenorganisation. Um zu untersuchen, wie professionell das ITManagement vor diesem Hintergrund ist, wurde in der vorliegenden Studie der Professionalisierungsgrad des IT-Managements als Beschreibungsgröße vorgeschlagen. Darüber hinaus wurden Ausprägungen der IT-Governance und des IT-Entrepreneurships als mögliche Determinanten des Professionalisierungsgrades konzeptionalisiert. Ein entsprechend aufgestelltes, hypothesengeleitetes Untersuchungsmodell wurde anhand der Daten von 164 CIOs deutscher Krankenhäuser überprüft. Die Ergebnisse der Studie deuten auf Professionalisierungspotenziale des IT-Managements im strategischen und evaluierenden Bereich hin. Etablierte Kommunikationskanäle zwischen CIO und Krankenhausleitung sowie eine ausgewiesene IT-Budgetverantwortungen wirkten sich positiv auf den Professionalisierungsgrad aus. Zudem Das agierte das ITManagement umso professioneller, je stärker der IT-Entrepreneurship auf organisatorischer und individueller Ebene ausgeprägt war. Die Ergebnisse können den theoretischen Erkenntnisstand über die Wirkungsweise von IT-Governance und IT-Entrepreneurship erweitern und auf ähnliche, wissensintensive Expertenorganisationen übertragen werden.
As health IT supports processes along the entire patient trajectory and involves different types of professional groups, eHealth is inter-professional by nature. The aim of this study, therefore, is to investigate which competencies are at the intersection of the individual groups of health professionals. 718 international experts provided relevance ratings of eHealth competencies for different professional roles in an online survey. Communication and leadership proved to be important competencies across all professions, not only for executives. None or very little differences between professions were found between physicians and nurses, between IT experts at different levels and between IT experts and executives. However, there were a number of competencies rated differently when contrasting direct patient care specialists with executives. These findings should encourage organisations issuing educational recommendations to specify areas of shared competencies more extensively.
Versorgungskontinuität durch Information : Evaluation des HL7-Standards für den ePflegebericht
(2013)
Use of Emergency Departments by Frail Elderly Patients : Temporal Patterns and Case Complexity
(2019)
Emergency department (ED) care for frail elderly patients is associated with an increased use of resources due to their complex medical needs and frequently difficult psycho-social situation. To better target their needs with specially trained staff, it is vital to determine the times during which these particular patients present to the ED. Recent research was inconclusive regarding this question and the applied methods were limited to coarse time windows. Moreover, there is little research on time variation of frail ED patients’ case complexity. This study examines differences in arrival rates for frail vs. non-frail patients in detail and compares case complexity in frail patients within vs. outside of regular GP working hours. Arrival times and case variables (admission rate, ED length of stay [LOS], triage level and comorbidities) were extracted from the EHR of an ED in an urban German teaching hospital. We employed Poisson time series regression to determine patterns in hourly arrival rates over the week. Frail elderly patients presented more likely to the ED during already high frequented hours, especially at midday and in the afternoon. Case complexity for frail patients was significantly higher compared to non-frail patients, but varied marginally in time only with respect to triage level and ED LOS. The results suggest that frailty-attuned emergency care should be available in EDs during the busiest hours. Based on EHR data, hospitals thus can tailor their staff needs.
Frequent users of emergency departments (ED) pose a significant challenge to hospital emergency services. Despite a wealth of studies in this field, it is hardly understood, what medical conditions lead to frequent attendance. We examine (1) what ambulatory care sensitive conditions (ACSC) are linked to frequent use, (2) how frequent users can be clustered into subgroups with respect to their diagnoses, acuity and admittance, and (3) whether frequent use is related to higher acuity or admission rate. We identified several ACSC that highly increase the risk for heavy ED use, extracted four major diagnose subgroups and found no significant effect neither for acuity nor admission rate. Our study indicates that especially patients in need of (nursing) care form subgroups of frequent users, which implies that quality of care services might be crucial for tackling frequent use. Hospitals are advised to regularly analyze their ED data in the EHR to better align resources.
The article describes an analysis of the use of e-learning to improve the learning transfer to practice in continuing education. Therefore an e-learning offer has been developed as a part between two attendance periods of a training course in the field of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL). All participants of the course were free to use the e-learning offer. After the end of the e-learning part we compared the e-learning users to the other participants. Using an online questionnaire we explored if there are differences in the activities in the field AAL after the training course. The results show that e-learning is beneficial especially for communication processes. Due to the fact that the possibility to talk about the learning content is an essential factor for the learning transfer, e-learning can improve the learning success.
This paper describes the methodology and developments towards the TIGER International Recommendation Framework of Core Competencies in Health Informatics 2.0. This Framework is meant to augment the scope from nursing towards a series of six other professional roles, i.e. direct patient care, health information management, executives, chief information officers, engineers and health IT specialists and researchers and educators. Health informatics core competency areas were compiled from various sources that had integrated the literature and were grouped into consistent clusters. The relevance of these core competency areas was rated in a survey by 718 professional experts from 51 countries. Furthermore, 22 local case studies illustrated the competencies and gave insight into examples of local educational practice. The Framework contributes to the overall discourse on how to shape health informatics education to improve quality and safety of care by enabling useful and successful health information systems.
This workshop will review the history of the TIGER initiative in order to set the framework for an understanding of international informatics competencies. We will include a description of clinical nursing informatics programs in 37 countries as well as the results of a recent survey of nursing competencies in order to further discussions of internationally agreed-upon competency definitions. These two surveys will provide the basis for developing a consensus regarding the integration of core competencies into informatics curriculum developments. Expected outcomes include building consensus on core competencies and developing plans toward implementing intra- and inter-professional informatics competencies across disciplines globally.
Informatics competencies of the health care workforce must meet the requirements of inter-professional process and outcome oriented provision of care. In order to help nursing education transform accordingly, the TIGER Initiative deployed an international survey, with participation from 21 countries, to evaluate and prioritise a broad list of core competencies for nurses in five domains: 1) nursing management, 2) information technology (IT) management in nursing, 3) interprofessional coordination of care, 4) quality management, and 5) clinical nursing. Informatics core competencies were found highly important for all domains. In addition, this project compiled eight national cases studies from Austria, Finland, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, the Philippines, Portugal, and Switzerland that reflected the country specific perspective. These findings will lead us to an international framework of informatics recommendations.
Teachers in health informatics have a broad variety of international and national educational recommendations to rely on when designing programmes, curricula, courses and educational material. However, in addition they often need very specific information for their setting, blue-prints, hands-on experience and encouragement to try something new. This workshop presents three case studies from European universities who have implemented inter-professional, technology enabled health informatics courses in undergraduate, postgraduate and open university settings. These approaches will be put into the context of the TIGER recommendation framework that includes priority ratings of health informatics competencies and case studies to illustrate them. The workshop attendees will have ample opportunity to exchange ideas with the presenters and start a mutual learning process for health informatics teachers.
Continuity of care is a concept that is defined as the uninterrupted and coordinated care provided to a patient and that includes an informational dimension which describes the information exchange between the parties involved. In nursing, the nursing summary is the main instrument to ensure informational continuity of care. The aim of this paper is to present an HL7 Clinical Document Architecture based document standard for the eNursing Summary and to discuss the need for harmonizing these results at international level. The eNursing Summary proposed in this paper was developed on the basis of several internationally accepted concepts, primarily the nursing process, the ISO 18104 Reference Terminology Model for Nursing and various data sets. The standardisation process embraced several phases of involving nursing experts for validating its structure and content. It was finally evaluated by a network of 100 healthcare organizations. We argue that the eNursing Summary is a good starting point for standardising nursing discharge and transfer documents on a global level. However, further work is needed to bring together the different national and international strands in standardisation.
This study describes the eHealth4all@eu course development pipeline that builds upon the TIGER educational recommendations and allows a systematic development grounded on scientific and field requirements of competencies, a case/problem-based pedagogical approach and finally results in the syllabus and the course content. The pipeline is exemplified by the course Learning Healthcare in Action: Clinical Data Analytics.
Innovations are typically characterised by their relative newness for the user. In order for new eHealth applications to be accepted as innovations more criteria were proposed including “use” and “usability”. The handoverEHR is a new approach that allows the user to translate the essentials of a clinical case into a graphical representation, the so-called cognitive map of the patient. This study aimed at testing the software usability. A convenience sample of 23 experienced nurses from different healthcare organisations across the country rated the usability of the handoverEHR after performing typical handover tasks. All usability scales of the IsoMetricsL questionnaire showed positive values (4 “I agree”) with the exception of “error tolerance” (3 “neutral statement”). A significant improvement was found in self-descriptiveness as compared to an initial usability testing prior to this study. Different subgroups of users tended to rate the usability of the system differently. This study demonstrated the benefits of formative evaluations in terms of improving the usability of an entirely new approach. It thus helps to transform a novel piece of software towards becoming a real innovation. Our findings also hint at the importance of user characteristics that could affect the usability ratings.
Apps have been attested to empower patients regarding disease self-management through numerous studies. However, it is still unclear what factors determine the perception of patients whether an app is a useful tool for this purpose. A multiple regression model that was informed by the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM 2) was tested based on the answers of 235 app users with Diabetes type 1 or 2. The model accounted for 59.2% of the variance of the perceived degree of self-management. Factors belonging to the relevance-usefulness-quality complex as well as factors reflecting the patient’s self-control were found to be significant in the model. Patient demographics, i.e. age, gender, app experience and type of Diabetes did not play any significant role. In conclusion, this study raises the question whether apps should be designed to strengthen self-management in the sense of self-control (e.g. own measurements, diary) as opposed to guiding and advice giving.
Despite similar policy goals, the adoption of eHealth practices took different paths in Austria (AT), Switzerland (CH), and Germany (GER). We seek to provide a rigorous analysis of the current state of hospitals by focusing on three key eHealth areas: electronic patient records (EPR), health information exchange (HIE), electronic patient communication. For validation and in order to gain better contextual insight we applied a mixed method approach by combining survey results from clinical directors with qualitative interview data from eHealth experts of all three countries. Across countries, EPR adoption rates were reported highest (AT: 52%, CH: 78%, GER: 50%), HIE-rates were partly lower (AT: 52%, CH: 14%, GER: 17%), and electronic patient communication was reported lowest overall (AT: 17%, CH: 8%, GER: 19%). Amongst others, results indicate patient awareness about eHealth to be equally weak across countries, which thus may be an important focal point of future policy initiatives.
Restricted Versus Unrestricted Search Space : Experience from Mining a Large Japanese Database
(2015)
The aim of this study was to investigate whether standard Big Data mining methods lead to clinically useful results. An association analysis was performed using the apriori algorithm to discover associations among co-morbidities of diabetes patients. Selected data were further analyzed by using k-means clustering with age, long-term blood sugar and cholesterol values. The association analysis led to a multitude of trivial rules. Cluster analysis detected clusters of well and badly managed diabetes patients both belonging to different age groups. The study suggests the usage of cluster analysis on a restricted space to come to meaningful results.
Health IT systems are employed to support continuity of care via information continuity, while management continuity is often neglected. This study aims at investigating issues of management continuity when developing a collaborative decision support system for chronic wounds. Thirty-three experts from a variety of professions and disciplines discussed problems and possible solutions in four workshops. The following topics emerged from the discussion: existing networks involving payers, responsibilities as well as good discharge management. These topics clearly address management continuity and are also relevant for the scenario of inter-professional wound care across different settings.
Requirements Engineering für Referenzmodelle mittels eines multimethodischen Vorgehensmodells
(2012)
Obwohl es zahlreiche Arbeiten zum Requirements Engineering im Allgemeinen gibt, ist über die Ermittlung generischer und innovativer Anforderungen, wie sie in intersektoralen Informations-ketten eine Rolle spielen, wenig bekannt. Das Projekt IKM health zielt auf die Entwicklung von Referenzmodellen für Informationsketten zur Patientenversorgung ab. Forschungsfrage dieser Studie war, wie Informations- und Prozessanforderungen generiert werden können. Vor diesem Hintergrund wurde mit der Analyse von Leitlinien begonnen, deren Empfehlungen anschließend im Rahmen von Delphi-Befragungen und Experteninterviews zur Diskussion gestellt wurden. Trotz der sich zeigenden Heterogenität war es mit Hilfe des hier vorgestellten multimethodischen Vorgehensmodells möglich, passende Anforderungen zu erzielen und in UML zu modellieren.
Despite the wealth of literature on requirements engineering, little is known about engineering very generic, innovative and emerging requirements, such as those for cross-sectional information chains. The IKM health project aims at building information chain reference models for the care of patients with chronic wounds, cancer-related pain and back pain. Our question therefore was how to appropriately capture information and process requirements that are both generally applicable and practically useful. To this end, we started with recommendations from clinical guidelines and put them up for discussion in Delphi surveys and expert interviews. Despite the heterogeneity we encountered in all three methods, it was possible to obtain requirements suitable for building reference models. We evaluated three modelling languages and then chose to write the models in UML (class and activity diagrams). On the basis of the current project results, the pros and cons of our approach are discussed.
Current frameworks postulate the success of health IT innovations to be determined by the professionalism of the information management (PIM). Still, empirical knowledge about PIM is scarce up until today. This study seeks to answer three research questions: (1.) How can PIM be measured in a reliable and valid way, (2.) how pronounced is PIM in German hospitals and (3.) do hospital characteristics have an impact on the degree of PIM? Based on the results of an expert workshop and frameworks for information management (IM) items for a PIM inventory were developed and the inventory sent to 1349 chief information officers of German hospitals. A principle component analysis based on the responses of 196 hospitals confirmed the three components that had been proposed by the frameworks: the strategic, the tactical and the operational level. The full inventory implied satisfying reliability and allowed a PIM composite-score to be calculated. The PIM scores for strategic and tactical IM were found to be far lower than for operational IM which hints at strong deficits in these areas. A stepwise regression model indicated that the degree of PIM significantly increased with the size of the hospital, which had been expected and hints the validity of the PIM inventory. This tool offers potentials for hospitals to classify and improve their IM.
Access to digital technologies depends on the availability of technical infrastructure, but this access is unequally distributed among social groups and newly summarized under the term digital divide. The aim is to analyze the perception of a tracing app to contain Covid-19 in Germany. The results showed that participants with the highest level of formal education rate the app as beneficial and were the most likely to use the app.
With the start of the 21st century, patient safety as a topic of special interest has attracted increasing attention in both academia and clinical practice. As technology has continued to develop since then, questions and focal points surrounding the topic have also shifted. In particular, questions regarding the impact of digitalization on patient safety and its measurement are now of high interest. This work aims to develop a maturity assessment instrument in the form of a criteria set for measuring structural requirements for digital patient safety in hospitals. Based on the results of a literature review and a derivation of maturity objects (MO) from known maturity models, 64 criteria across 11 categories were developed. Written comments of two digital patient safety experts as well as subsequent interviews were used to evaluate and refine the criteria catalog. The resulting catalog offers hospitals guidance for detecting possible areas of structural improvements in their information systems with regard to patient safety and represents a unique instrument for assessing digital maturity in this particular area.
The workflow-oriented dissemination of electronic patient data is a central goal of IT deployment in hospitals. Against this background, the present study examines two research questions: (1.) Are there differences in the availability of electronic patient data (AEPD) between different clinical workflows and data types and (2.) which structural and organizational factors determine AEPD? Based on a Germany wide hospital survey, AEPD was assessed along six clinical workflows. While AEPD was lowest for ward rounds, discharge showed the highest AEPD with pre- and post-surgery processes ranging in between. With regard to the data types analyzed, patient demographics and observation findings obtained the highest AEPD scores. Electrophysiological results, checklists and warnings were less common electronically and received lower AEPD scores. Multiple linear regression analysis resulted in a significant model that explained 34.4% of the variance of AEPD. Large hospitals and those with a professional information management, a high health IT related innovation culture and a nursing informatics officer possess higher AEPD scores and thus have better clinical information logistics mechanisms at their command.
The aim of this European interprofessional Health Informatics (HI) Summer School was (i) to make advanced healthcare students familiar with what HI can offer in terms of knowledge development for patient care and (ii) to give them an idea about the underlying technical and legal mechanisms. According to the students’ evaluation, interprofessional education was very well received, problem-based learning focussing on cases was rated positively and the learning goals were met. However, it was criticised that the online material provided was rather detailed and comprehensive and could have been a bit overcharging for beginners. These drawbacks were obviously compensated by the positive experience of working in international and interprofessional groups and a generally welcoming environment.
Due to the emerging evidence of health IT as opportunity and risk for clinical workflows, health IT must undergo a continuous measurement of its efficacy and efficiency. IT-benchmarks are a proven means for providing this information. The aim of this study was to enhance the methodology of an existing benchmarking procedure by including, in particular, new indicators of clinical workflows and by proposing new types of visualisation. Drawing on the concept of information logistics, we propose four workflow descriptors that were applied to four clinical processes. General and specific indicators were derived from these descriptors and processes. 199 chief information officers (CIOs) took part in the benchmarking. These hospitals were assigned to reference groups of a similar size and ownership from a total of 259 hospitals. Stepwise and comprehensive feedback was given to the CIOs. Most participants who evaluated the benchmark rated the procedure as very good, good, or rather good (98.4%). Benchmark information was used by CIOs for getting a general overview, advancing IT, preparing negotiations with board members, and arguing for a new IT project.
Die Verbreitung von Informationstechnologien (IT) im Gesundheitswesen sowie deren Einflussgrößen sind Betrachtungsobjekt der Adoptions- und Diffusionsforschung. Neues Wissen aus diesen Studien wird dabei häufig als summative Umfrageergebnisse disseminiert. Mit dem in diesem Beitrag vorgestellten Web-Portal werden die individuellen Umfrageergebnisse im Vergleich zu einer Referenzgruppe präsentiert. Das erfolgt in flexibler Form unter Verwendung von reliablen und validen Kennzahlen der IT-Prozessunterstützung, die in einer hierarchischen Struktur angeordnet sind. Es werden die Entwicklung des Web-Portals als Benchmarking Instrument, seine Anwendung und eine initiale Evaluation vorgestellt. Es zeigte sich, dass das Web-Portal anhand aktueller Benchmarking-Ergebnisse von 197 Krankenhäusern einsetzbar ist, seine Anwendung als nützlich und die Indikatoren als verständlich eingeschätzt werden.
Although user participation may facilitate the realisation of IT innovations, various literature analyses show only minimal to moderate evidence for such effects possibly due to disregard of mediating factors. Against this background, this study examines the extent to which joint intrapreneurship of clinical leaders and IT leaders as well as a distinct innovation culture mediate the effect of user participation on hospitals’ IT innovativeness. IT innovativeness was measured by the availability and usability of IT functions and by the perceived ‘innovative power’ of a hospital. An empirical model was developed and tested with data from 168 clinical leaders and IT leaders who participated pairwise in a survey representing 84 German hospitals. Three parallel mediation analyses indicated that the participation of users could only lead to IT innovativeness if they were accompanied by intrapreneurial leadership on the part of clinical directors and IT leaders and if a pronounced innovation culture prevailed.
Health IT and communication systems are indispensable in German hospitals for clinical as well as administrative process support. However, IT is often regarded as a “black box” for hospital CEOs. Thus, the question arises how can CEOs decide if they do not know what is in the box? In order to answer this question, half-structured interviews with 14 German hospital CEOs were conducted. They revealed three principle decision processes: the supported decision, the joint decision and the corporate level decision. In all cases, the hospital CEO and the CIO interacted to reach the final decision, most strongly in the joint decision mode and least strongly in the corporate decision mode. Only the joint decision mode definitely forced the CEO to open the “black box” of IT. In the era of digitalisation, however, CEOs must develop better competencies to decide over complex matters.
Background: Crowding in emergency departments (ED) has a negative impact on quality of care and can be averted by allocating additional resources based on predictive crowding models. However, there is a lack in effective external overall predictors, particularly those representing public activity.
Objectives: This study, therefore, examines public activity measured by regional road traffic flow as an external predictor of ED crowding in an urban hospital.
Methods: Seasonal autoregressive cross-validated models (SARIMA) were compared with respect to their forecasting error on ED crowding data.
Results: It could be shown that inclusion of inflowing road traffic into a SARIMA model effectively improved prediction errors.
Conclusion: The results provide evidence that circadian patterns of medical emergencies are connected to human activity levels in the region and could be captured by public monitoring of traffic flow. In order to corroborate this model, data from further years and additional regions need to be considered. It would also be interesting to study public activity by additional variables.
Health IT adoption research is rooted in Rogers' Diffusion of Innovation theory, which is based on longitudinal analyses. However, many studies in this field use cross-sectional designs. The aim of this study therefore was to design and implement a system to (i) consolidate survey data sets originating from different years (ii) integrate additional secondary data and (iii) query and statistically analyse these longitudinal data. Our system design comprises a 5-tier-architecture that embraces tiers for data capture, data representation, logics, presentation and integration. In order to historicize data properly and to separate data storage from data analytics a data vault schema was implemented. This approach allows the flexible integration of heterogeneous data sets and the selection of comparable items. Data analysis is prepared by compiling data in data marts and performed by R and related tools. IT Report Healthcare data from 2011, 2013 and 2017 could be loaded, analysed and combined with secondary longitudinal data.
Personal health records (PHR) are instruments to compile, store and present health and wellness related data digitally with proven effects on self-management of diseases. The aim of this study was to investigate whether there were differences in the intention to use (ITU) and perceived usefulness (PU) of two technologies allowing users to access the PHR, i.e. a kiosk system and a smart phone based app (access as usual). The study also aimed at modelling ITU and PU with multiple linear regressions. A total of 46 subject participated in the study who were randomly assigned to one of the two experimental groups (nkiosk = 22; napp = 24). The task for both groups was to digitise their “Medikationsplan” (medical record) and upload it to the PHR. There was no significant difference in ITU and PU between the two technologies. ITU could only be significantly explained by PU (R2 = .55, p < 0.001), while PU was determined by perceived ease of use and psychological factors (R2 = .64, p < 0.001). Severity of disease did not play any significant role. The German “Terminservice- und Versorgungsgesetz” underpins the importance and timeliness of this study. The assumption that both – the publicly accessible kiosk and the app – are equally acceptable for people of different gender, age and technology background demonstrates the opportunity to master a potential digital divide among the population and allows users to get access to their PHR in multiple ways.
Background: IT is getting an increasing importance in hospitals. In this
context, major IT decisions are often made by CEOs who are not necessarily IT
experts. Objectives: Therefore, this study aimed at a) exploring different types of IT
decision makers at CEO level, b) identifying hypotheses if trust exists between these
different types of CEOs and their CIOs and c) building hypotheses on potential
consequences regarding risk taking and innovation. Methods: To this end, 14
qualitative interviews with German hospital CEOs were conducted to explore the
research questions. Results: The study revealed three major types: IT savvy CEOs,
IT enthusiastic CEOs and IT indifferent CEOs. Depending on these types, their
relationship with the CIO varied in terms of trust and common language. In case of
IT indifferent CEOs, a potential vicious circle of lack of IT knowledge, missing trust,
low willingness to take risks and low innovation power could be identified.
Conclusion: In order to break of this circle, CEOs seem to need more IT knowledge
and / or greater trust in their CIO.
Going Mobile : An Empirical Model for Explaining Successful Information Logistics in Ward Rounds
(2018)
Background: Medical ward rounds are critical focal points of inpatient care that call for uniquely flexible solutions to provide clinical information at the bedside. While this fact is undoubted, adoption rates of mobile IT solutions remain rather low.
Objectives: Our goal was to investigate if and how mobile IT solutions influence successful information provision at the bedside, i.e. clinical information logistics, as well as to shed light at socio-organizational factors that facilitate adoption rates from a user-centered perspective.
Methods: Survey data were collected from 373 medical and nursing directors of German, Austrian and Swiss hospitals and analyzed using variance-based Structural Equation Modelling (SEM).
Results: The adoption of mobile IT solutions explains large portions of clinical information logistics and is in itself associated with an organizational culture of innovation and end user participation.
Conclusion: Results should encourage decision makers to understand mobility as a core constituent of information logistics and thus to promote close end-user participation as well as to work towards building a culture of innovation.
Hospital CIOs play a central role in the adoption of innovative health IT. Until now, it remained unclear which particular conditions constitute their capability to innovate in terms of intrapersonal as well as organisational factors. An inventory of 20 items was developed to capture these conditions and examined by analysing data obtained from 164 German hospital CIOs. Principal component analysis resulted in three internally consistent components that constitute large portions of the CIOs innovation capability: organisational innovation culture, entrepreneurship personality and openness towards users. Results were used to build composite indicators that allow further evaluations.
This prospective longitudinal study aims at better understanding eHealth success factors in different European nations, esp. the role of eHealth-legislation in Switzerland and Germany. Qualitative interviews with 39 matched experts from a large variety of institutions in both nations were conducted. The individual statements in the interviews and the overall satisfaction rating indicate a clear trend for a more optimistic attitude towards the law in Switzerland than in Germany. This result is not surprising given the history of a telematics infrastructure in Germany. Cross-country learning topics for German politicians are the inclusion of the inpatient sector and the focus on one major application. In a next step, interview results from Austria will be included and with that the scope of study findings enriched.
The PosiThera project focuses on the management of chronic wounds, which is multi-professional and multi-disciplinary. For this context, a software prototype was developed in the project, which is intended to support medical and nursing staff with the assistance of artificial intelligence. In accordance with the user-centred design, national workshops were held at the beginning of the project with the involvement of domain experts in wound care in order to identify requirements and use cases of IT systems in wound care, with a focus on AI. In this study, the focus was on involving nursing and nursing science staff in testing the software prototype to gain insights into its functionality and usability. The overarching goal of the iterative testing and adaptation process is to further develop the prototype in a way that is close to care.
Although national eHealth strategies have existed now for more than a decade in many countries, they have been implemented with varying success. In Germany, the eHealth strategy so far has resulted in a roll out of electronic health cards for all citizens in the statutory health insurance, but in no clinically meaningful IT-applications. The aim of this study was to test the technical and organisation feasibility, usability, and utility of an eDischarge application embedded into a laboratory Health Telematics Infrastructure (TI). The tests embraced the exchange of eDischarge summaries based on the multiprofessional HL7 eNursing Summary standard between a municipal hospital and a nursing home. All in all, 36 transmissions of electronic discharge documents took place. They demonstrated the technical-organisation feasibility and resulted in moderate usability ratings. A comparison between eDischarge and paper-based summaries hinted at higher ratings of utility and information completeness for eDischarges. Despite problems with handling the electronic health card, the proof-of-concept for the first clinically meaningful IT-application in the German Health TI could be regarded as successful.
Radiology has a reputation for having a high affinity to innovation – particularly with regard to information technologies. Designed for supporting the peculiarities of radiological diagnostic workflows, Radiology Information Systems (RIS) and Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS) developed into widely used information systems in hospitals and form the basis for advancing the field towards automated image diagnostics. RIS and PACS can thus serve as meaningful indicators of how quickly IT innovations diffuse in secondary care settings – an issue that requires increased attention in research and health policy in the light of increasingly fast innovation cycles. We therefore conducted a retrospective longitudinal observational study to research the diffusion dynamics of RIS and PACS in German hospitals between 2005 and 2017. Based upon data points collected within the “IT Report Healthcare” and building on Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovation (DOI) theory, we applied a novel methodological technique by fitting Bayesian Bass Diffusion Models on past adoption rates. The Bass models showed acceptable goodness of fit to the data and the results indicated similar growth rates of RIS and PACS implementations and suggest that market saturation is almost reached. Adoption rates of PACS showed a slightly higher coefficient of imitation (q = 0.25) compared to RIS (q = 0.11). However, the diffusion process expands over approximately two decades for both systems which points at the need for further research into how innovation diffusion can be accelerated effectively. Furthermore, the Bayesian approach to Bass modelling showed to have several advantages over the classical frequentists approaches and should encourage adoption and diffusion research to adapt similar techniques.
The diabetic foot ulcer, which 2% – 6% of diabetes patients experience, is a severe health threat. It is closely linked to the risk of lower extremity amputation (LEA). When a DFU is present, the chief imperative is to initiate tertiary preventive actions to avoid amputation. In this light, clinical decision support systems (CDSS) can guide clinicians to identify DFU patients early. In this study, the PEDIS classification and a Bayesian logistic regression model are utilised to develop and evaluate a decision method for patient stratification. Therefore, we conducted a Bayesian cutpoint analysis. The CDSS revealed an optimal cutpoint for the amputation risk of 0.28. Sensitivity and specificity were 0.83 and 0.66. These results show that although the specificity is low, the decision method includes most actual patients at risk, which is a desirable feature in monitoring patients at risk for major amputation. This study shows that the PEDIS classification promises to provide a valid basis for a DFU risk stratification in CDSS.
The establishment of successful clinical information logistics (CIL) within the care processes is one of the main objectives of strategic health IT management in hospitals. While technical realisations in terms of useful, usable and interoperable IT solutions are essential precursors of CIL, there is limited empirical research on what socio-organisational factors underlie an innovation-friendly culture and how they can affect successful information provision. We applied factor analysis on survey data from 403 clinical directors from Germany, Austria and Switzerland and used the dimensions identified to explain the level of CIL with ordered logistic regression analysis. The intensity of collaboration and exchange with the IT department as well as the degree of executive IT leadership showed to be strongly associated with better CIL while personal views and attitudes of clinical directors were not. Analysing country differences revealed the degree of the exchange with the IT department to be significantly lower in German hospitals. This points at a potential strategic lever for German hospital executives to focus on.
Communication deficits belong to the most frequent errors in patient handovers calling upon specialized training approaches to be implemented. This study aims to harness problem-based learning (PBL) methods in handover education and evaluated the learning process. A digitally enabled PBL course was developed and implemented at Klinikum Osnabrück from which eight nurses participated in the course. They agreed on the stimulating effect of the setting regarding self-directed learning and on the potential to translate the new knowledge and skills into the daily clinical practice. In conclusion, the findings are promising that a digitally enabled PBL course is a suitable learning format for handover education.
Patient handovers are cognitively demanding, crucial for information continuity and patient safety, but error prone. This study investigated the effect of an electronic handover tool, i.e. the handoverEHR, on the memory and care planning performance of nurse students (n=32) in a randomised, controlled cross-over design with the factors handover task and handover role. On a descriptive level, handover recipients could improve their memory performance with electronic support, handover givers their performance of writing care plans. Statistically meaningful differences occurred, however, only when the participants were givers. Without handover experience and with low fluency to word problems, givers performed badly in the most demanding of the handover tasks. Final recommendations, however, can only be made after replicating this study in a clinical setting with mixed groups.
Charakteristika innovativer Krankenhäuser in Deutschland : Ergebnisse einer empirischen Untersuchung
(2011)
Characteristics of German Hospitals Adopting Health IT Systems : Results from an Empirical Study
(2011)
Hospital characteristics that facilitate IT adoption have been described by the literature extensively, however with controversial results. The aim of this study therefore is to draw a set of the most important variables from previous studies and include them in a combined analysis for testing their contribution as single factors and their interactions. Total number of IT systems installed and number of clinical IT systems in the hospital were used as criterion variables. Data from a national survey of German hospitals served as basis. Based on a stepwise multiple regression analysis four variables were identified to significantly explain the degree of IT adoption (60% explained variance): 1) hospital size, 2) IT department, 3) reference customer and 4) ownership (private vs. public). Our results replicate previous findings with regard to hospital size and ownership. In addition our study emphasizes the importance of a reliable internal structure for IT projects (existence of an IT department) and the culture of testing and installing most recent IT products (being a reference customer). None of the interactions between factors was significant.
This paper provides a discourse based upon the key development of nursing in response to the emerging 4Ds of health technology re-design. Building informatics capability among health professionals is a workforce issue necessitated through the increasing prevalence of information technology and digitization of healthcare affecting the entire health workforce, specifically front-line nurses. The key concepts will be explored of Digitization, Distribution, Disruption and Diversity, a framework recognising the tsunami of technology such as Big Data analytics, comprehensive decision support systems for nursing, nanobots, robotics, and pharmacogenomics and the impact these have upon the nursing workforce.
Handovers need a common ground on the clinical cases between the members of the successive shifts to establish continuity of care. Conventional electronic patient record systems (EHR) proved to be only insufficiently suitable for supporting the grounding process. Against this background we proposed a basic concept for a handover EHR that extends general EHRs in particular openEHR based systems. The resulting handover information model was implemented in a database and evaluated based on 120 clinical cases. The information items of these cases could be mapped successfully to the model, however, the new class “anticipatory guidance” needed to be introduced. The evaluation also demonstrated the importance of highly aggregated information on the clinical case, opinions and meta-information such as the relevance of an item during handovers. Based on these findings, in particular the handover database, handover EHR applications are currently developed to support the grounding process.
Building on Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovation Theory, Bass models describe the diffusion processes distinguishing between innovation (p) and imitation (q). This study aimed at modelling the uptake of RIS, PACS and EHR systems in Germany and Finland. The Bass models revealed a quick and almost identical uptake process across all three systems for Finland. In contrast, the Bass models mirrored a slower uptake in Germany. Consequently, the Finnish “imitation” coefficients were larger than the German ones. While in Germany almost free market forces were driving the adoption through imitation but without tail wind from policy, the adoption process in Finland was centrally governed. This suggests that the diffusion process in Finland reflected a well-managed roll-out of the systems rather than imitation behaviour. Thus, in order for Bass model coefficients to be understood properly, additional contextual information is required.
Diabetic foot ulcer (DFU) is a chronic wound and a common diabetic complication as 2% – 6% of diabetic patients witness the onset thereof. The DFU can lead to severe health threats such as infection and lower leg amputations, Coordination of interdisciplinary wound care requires well-written but time-consuming wound documentation. Artificial intelligence (AI) systems lend themselves to be tested to extract information from wound images, e.g. maceration, to fill the wound documentation. A convolutional neural network was therefore trained on 326 augmented DFU images to distinguish macerated from unmacerated wounds. The system was validated on 108 unaugmented images. The classification system achieved a recall of 0.69 and a precision of 0.67. The overall accuracy was 0.69. The results show that AI systems can classify DFU images for macerations and that those systems could support clinicians with data entry. However, the validation statistics should be further improved for use in real clinical settings. In summary, this paper can contribute to the development of methods to automatic wound documentation.
Das Informationsmanagement steht im Zentrum erfolgreicher eHealth-Innovationsprozesse von Krankenhäusern. Im Kontext komplexer, zum Teil tradierter Krankenhausstrukturen kann die Gestaltungsfähigkeit des Informationsmanagements durch eine ausgeprägte Intrapreneurship-Kultur erhöht werden, wovon vermutlich auch der Digitalisierungsgrad der Einrichtungen profitiert. Vor diesem Hintergrund verfolgte die vorliegende Studie zwei Forschungsfragen: (1.) Welche Effekte hat Intrapreneurship auf den Digitalisierungsgrad der Krankenhäuser und (2.) inwiefern werden diese Effekte durch das Informationsmanagement beeinflusst? Zur Beantwortung der Forschungsfragen wurde ein konzeptionelles Untersuchungsmodell entwickelt, welches mit Daten von 224 IT-Leitern evaluiert wurde. Die Ergebnisse bestätigen, dass Intrapreneurship die Umsetzung von eHealth-Anwendungen positiv beeinflussen kann. Die identifizierten Effekte waren jedoch vorwiegend indirekter Art, vermittelt durch den Professionalisierungsgrad des Informationsmanagements. So kann Intrapreneurship auf IT-Leiter-Ebene und auf Ebene der Gesamtorganisation zu einer Professionalisierung des strategischen Informationsmanagements führen. Auf Ebene der IT-Abteilung profitiert vor allem das operative Informationsmanagement von einer ausgeprägten Intrapreneurship-Kultur.
CIOs' innovation capability is regarded as a precondition of successful HIT adoption in hospitals. Based on the data of 142 CIOs, this study aimed at identifying antecedents of perceived innovation capability. Eight features describing the status quo of the hospital IT management (e.g. use of IT governance frameworks), four features of the hospital structure (e.g. functional diversification) and four CIO characteristics (e.g. duration of employment) were tested as potential antecedents in an exploratory stepwise regression approach. Perceived innovation capability in its entirety and its three sub-dimensions served as criterion. The results show that CIOs' perceived innovation capability could be explained significantly (R2=0.34) and exclusively by facts that described the degree of formalism and structure of IT management in a hospital, e.g. intensive and formalised strategic communication, the existence of an IT strategy and the use of IT governance frameworks. Breaking down innovation capability into its constituents revealed that “innovative organisational culture” contributed to a large extent (R2=0.26) to the overall result sharing several predictors. In contrast, “intrapreneurial personality” (R2=0.11) and “openness towards users” (R2=0.18) could be predicted less well. These results hint at the relationship between working in a well-structured, formalised and strategy oriented environment and the overall feeling of being capable to promote IT innovation.
An Iterative Methodology for Developing National Recommendations for Nursing Informatics Curricula
(2016)
The increasing importance of IT in nursing requires educational measures to support its meaningful application. However, many countries do not yet have national recommendations for nursing informatics competencies. We thus developed an iterative triple methodology to yield validated and country specific recommendations for informatics core competencies in nursing. We identified relevant competencies from national sources (step 1), matched and enriched these with input from the international literature (step 2) and fed the resulting 24 core competencies into a survey (120 invited experts from which 87 responded) and two focus group sessions with a total of 48 experts (steps 3a/3b). The subsequent focus group sessions confirmed and expanded the findings. As a result, we were able to define role specific informatics core competencies for three countries.
Venous leg ulcers and diabetic foot ulcers are the most common chronic wounds. Their prevalence has been increasing significantly over the last years, consuming scarce care resources. This study aimed to explore the performance of detection and classification algorithms for these types of wounds in images. To this end, algorithms of the YoloV5 family of pre-trained models were applied to 885 images containing at least one of the two wound types. The YoloV5m6 model provided the highest precision (0.942) and a high recall value (0.837). Its mAP_0.5:0.95 was 0.642. While the latter value is comparable to the ones reported in the literature, precision and recall were considerably higher. In conclusion, our results on good wound detection and classification may reveal a path towards (semi-) automated entry of wound information in patient records. To strengthen the trust of clinicians, we are currently incorporating a dashboard where clinicians can check the validity of the predictions against their expertise.