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Journal Description

JMIR Medical Informatics (JMI, ISSN 2291-9694; Impact Factor: 3.188) (Editor-in-chief: Christian Lovis MD MPH FACMI) is a Pubmed/SCIE-indexed, top-rated, tier A journal which focuses on clinical informatics, big data in health and health care, decision support for health professionals, electronic health records, ehealth infrastructures and implementation. It has a focus on applied, translational research, with a broad readership including clinicians, CIOs, engineers, industry and health informatics professionals.

Published by JMIR Publications, publisher of the Journal of Medical Internet Research (JMIR), JMIR Med Inform has a slightly different scope (putting more emphasis on applications for clinicians and health professionals rather than consumers/citizens), publishes even faster, and also allows papers which are more technical or more formative than what would be published in JMIR.

JMIR Med Inform is indexed in PubMed Central/PubMed and has also been accepted for SCIE. JMIR Med Inform received an inaugural Journal Impact Factor for 2018 (released June 2019) of 3.188.

JMIR Medical Informatics adheres to the same quality standards as JMIR and all articles published here are also cross-listed in the Table of Contents of JMIR (http://www.jmir.org/issue/current).

 

Recent Articles:

  • TOC Image. Source: freepik / Icons made by freepik from www.flaticon.com; Copyright: pressfoto; URL: https://www.freepik.com/free-photo/asian-doctor-using-medical-app-his-digital-device_5698718.htm#page=4&query=doctor+computer&position=45; License: Licensed by JMIR.
    Natural Language Processing

    Dec 9, 2019

    Impact of Automatic Query Generation and Quality Recognition Using Deep Learning to Curate Evidence From Biomedical Literature: Empirical Study

    Authors List:

    Abstract:

    Background: The quality of health care is continuously improving and is expected to improve further because of the advancement of machine learning and knowledge-based techniques along with innovation and availability of wearable sensors. With these advancements, health care professionals are now becoming more interested and involved in seeking scientific research evidence from external sources for decision making relevant to medical diagnosis, treatments, and prognosis. Not much work has been done to develop methods for unobtrusive and seamless curation of data from the biomedical literature. Objective: This study aimed to design a framework that can enable bringing quality publications intelligently to the users’ desk to assist medical practitioners in answering clinical questions and fulfilling their informational needs. Methods: The proposed framework consists of methods for efficient biomedical literature curation, including the automatic construction of a well-built question, the recognition of evidence quality by proposing extended quality recognition model (E-QRM), and the ranking and summarization of the extracted evidence. Results: Unlike previous works, the proposed framework systematically integrates the echelons of biomedical literature curation by including methods for searching queries, content quality assessments, and ranking and summarization. Using an ensemble approach, our high-impact classifier E-QRM obtained significantly improved accuracy than the existing quality recognition model (1723/1894, 90.97% vs 1462/1894, 77.21%). Conclusions: Our proposed methods and evaluation demonstrate the validity and rigorousness of the results, which can be used in different applications, including evidence-based medicine, precision medicine, and medical education.

  • Bone age assessment via an MRI of the knee (montage). Source: The Authors / Placeit; Copyright: JMIR Publications; URL: https://medinform.jmir.org/2019/4/e16291; License: Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY).
    Machine Learning

    Dec 5, 2019

    Age Assessment of Youth and Young Adults Using Magnetic Resonance Imaging of the Knee: A Deep Learning Approach

    Authors List:

    Abstract:

    Background: Bone age assessment (BAA) is an important tool for diagnosis and in determining the time of treatment in a number of pediatric clinical scenarios, as well as in legal settings where it is used to estimate the chronological age of an individual where valid documents are lacking. Traditional methods for BAA suffer from drawbacks, such as exposing juveniles to radiation, intra- and interrater variability, and the time spent on the assessment. The employment of automated methods such as deep learning and the use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) can address these drawbacks and improve the assessment of age. Objective: The aim of this paper is to propose an automated approach for age assessment of youth and young adults in the age range when the length growth ceases and growth zones are closed (14-21 years of age) by employing deep learning using MRI of the knee. Methods: This study carried out MRI examinations of the knee of 402 volunteer subjects—221 males (55.0%) and 181 (45.0%) females—aged 14-21 years. The method comprised two convolutional neural network (CNN) models: the first one selected the most informative images of an MRI sequence, concerning age-assessment purposes; these were then used in the second module, which was responsible for the age estimation. Different CNN architectures were tested, both training from scratch and employing transfer learning. Results: The CNN architecture that provided the best results was GoogLeNet pretrained on the ImageNet database. The proposed method was able to assess the age of male subjects in the range of 14-20.5 years, with a mean absolute error (MAE) of 0.793 years, and of female subjects in the range of 14-19.5 years, with an MAE of 0.988 years. Regarding the classification of minors—with the threshold of 18 years of age—an accuracy of 98.1% for male subjects and 95.0% for female subjects was achieved. Conclusions: The proposed method was able to assess the age of youth and young adults from 14 to 20.5 years of age for male subjects and 14 to 19.5 years of age for female subjects in a fully automated manner, without the use of ionizing radiation, addressing the drawbacks of traditional methods.

  • Source: Freepik; Copyright: pressfoto; URL: https://www.freepik.com/free-photo/asian-doctor-with-stethoscope-around-neck-sitting-office-working-computer_5839246.htm#page=3&query=doctor+computer&position=2; License: Licensed by JMIR.
    Reviews

    Dec 3, 2019

    Electronic Consultation in Primary Care Between Providers and Patients: Systematic Review

    Authors List:

    Abstract:

    Background: Governments and health care providers are keen to find innovative ways to deliver care more efficiently. Interest in electronic consultation (e-consultation) has grown, but the evidence of benefit is uncertain. Objective: This study aimed to assess the evidence of delivering e-consultation using secure email and messaging or video links in primary care. Methods: A systematic review was conducted on the use and application of e-consultations in primary care. We searched 7 international databases (MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, Cochrane Library, PsycINFO, EconLit, and Web of Science; 1999-2017), identifying 52 relevant studies. Papers were screened against a detailed inclusion and exclusion criteria. Independent dual data extraction was conducted and assessed for quality. The resulting evidence was synthesized using thematic analysis. Results: This review included 57 studies from a range of countries, mainly the United States (n=30) and the United Kingdom (n=13). There were disparities in uptake and utilization toward more use by younger, employed adults. Patient responses to e-consultation were mixed. Patients reported satisfaction with services and improved self-care, communication, and engagement with clinicians. Evidence for the acceptability and ease of use was strong, especially for those with long-term conditions and patients located in remote regions. However, patients were concerned about the privacy and security of their data. For primary health care staff, e-consultation delivers challenges around time management, having the correct technological infrastructure, whether it offers a comparable standard of clinical quality, and whether it improves health outcomes. Conclusions: E-consultations may improve aspects of care delivery, but the small scale of many of the studies and low adoption rates leave unanswered questions about usage, quality, cost, and sustainability. We need to improve e-consultation implementation, demonstrate how e-consultations will not increase disparities in access, provide better reassurance to patients about privacy, and incorporate e-consultation as part of a manageable clinical workflow.

  • Source: freepik.com; Copyright: Nensuria; URL: https://www.freepik.com/free-photo/employees-closeup-young-nurse-service_1108592.htm#page=1&query=doctor&position=19; License: Licensed by JMIR.
    Quality Improvement

    Dec 2, 2019

    How Online Reviews and Services Affect Physician Outpatient Visits: Content Analysis of Evidence From Two Online Health Care Communities

    Authors List:

    Abstract:

    Background: Online healthcare communities are changing the ways of physician-patient communication and how patients choose outpatient care physicians. Although a majority of empirical work has examined the role of online reviews in consumer decisions, less research has been done in health care, and endogeneity of online reviews has not been fully considered. Moreover, the important factor of physician online services has been neglected in patient decisions. Objective: In this paper, we addressed the endogeneity of online reviews and examined the impact of online reviews and services on outpatient visits based on theories of reviews and channel effects. Methods: We used a difference-in-difference approach to account for physician- and website-specific effects by collecting information from 474 physician homepages on two online health care communities. Results: We found that the number of reviews was more effective in influencing patient decisions compared with the overall review rating. An improvement in reviews leads to a relative increase in physician outpatient visits on that website. There are channel effects in health care: online services complement offline services (outpatient care appointments). Results further indicate that online services moderate the relationship between online reviews and physician outpatient visits. Conclusions: This study investigated the effect of reviews and channel effects in health care by conducting a difference-in-difference analysis on two online health care communities. Our findings provide basic research on online health care communities.

  • Source: Image created by the Authors; Copyright: The Authors; URL: http://medinform.jmir.org/2019/4/e14325/; License: Licensed by JMIR.
    Ontologies, Classifications, and Coding

    Nov 29, 2019

    Mapping ICD-10 and ICD-10-CM Codes to Phecodes: Workflow Development and Initial Evaluation

    Authors List:

    Abstract:

    Background: The phecode system was built upon the International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-9-CM) for phenome-wide association studies (PheWAS) using the electronic health record (EHR). Objective: The goal of this paper was to develop and perform an initial evaluation of maps from the International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision (ICD-10) and the International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision, Clinical Modification (ICD-10-CM) codes to phecodes. Methods: We mapped ICD-10 and ICD-10-CM codes to phecodes using a number of methods and resources, such as concept relationships and explicit mappings from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Unified Medical Language System, Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics, Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine-Clinical Terms, and the National Library of Medicine. We assessed the coverage of the maps in two databases: Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) using ICD-10-CM and the UK Biobank (UKBB) using ICD-10. We assessed the fidelity of the ICD-10-CM map in comparison to the gold-standard ICD-9-CM phecode map by investigating phenotype reproducibility and conducting a PheWAS. Results: We mapped >75% of ICD-10 and ICD-10-CM codes to phecodes. Of the unique codes observed in the UKBB (ICD-10) and VUMC (ICD-10-CM) cohorts, >90% were mapped to phecodes. We observed 70-75% reproducibility for chronic diseases and <10% for an acute disease for phenotypes sourced from the ICD-10-CM phecode map. Using the ICD-9-CM and ICD-10-CM maps, we conducted a PheWAS with a Lipoprotein(a) genetic variant, rs10455872, which replicated two known genotype-phenotype associations with similar effect sizes: coronary atherosclerosis (ICD-9-CM: P<.001; odds ratio (OR) 1.60 [95% CI 1.43-1.80] vs ICD-10-CM: P<.001; OR 1.60 [95% CI 1.43-1.80]) and chronic ischemic heart disease (ICD-9-CM: P<.001; OR 1.56 [95% CI 1.35-1.79] vs ICD-10-CM: P<.001; OR 1.47 [95% CI 1.22-1.77]). Conclusions: This study introduces the beta versions of ICD-10 and ICD-10-CM to phecode maps that enable researchers to leverage accumulated ICD-10 and ICD-10-CM data for PheWAS in the EHR.

  • Toward the advance use of electronic medical records. Source: Flickr; Copyright: ILO / Thierry Falise; URL: https://www.flickr.com/photos/iloasiapacific/8055934815/; License: Creative Commons Attribution + Noncommercial + NoDerivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND).
    Electronic Health Records

    Nov 29, 2019

    Primary Care Physicians’ Experience Using Advanced Electronic Medical Record Features to Support Chronic Disease Prevention and Management: Qualitative Study

    Authors List:

    Abstract:

    Background: Chronic diseases are the leading cause of death worldwide. In Canada, more than half of all health care spending is used for managing chronic diseases. Although studies have shown that the use of advanced features of electronic medical record (EMR) systems improves the quality of chronic disease prevention and management (CDPM), a 2012 international survey found that Canadian physicians were the least likely to use 2 or more EMR system functions. Some studies show that maturity vis-à-vis clinicians’ EMR use is an important factor when evaluating the use of advanced features of health information systems. The Clinical Adoption Framework (CAF), a common evaluation framework used to assess the success of EMR adoption, does not incorporate the process of maturing. Nevertheless, the CAF and studies that discuss the barriers to and facilitators of the adoption of EMR systems can be the basis for exploring the use of advanced EMR features. Objective: This study aimed to explore the factors that primary care physicians in Ontario identified as influencing their use of advanced EMR features to support CDPM and to extend the CAF to include primary care physicians’ perceptions of how their use of EMRs for performing clinical tasks has matured. Methods: Guided by the CAF, directed content analysis was used to explore the barriers and facilitating factors encountered by primary care physicians when using EMR features. Participants were primary care physicians in Ontario, Canada, who use EMRs. Data were coded using categories from the CAF. Results: A total of 9 face-to-face interviews were conducted from January 2017 to July 2017. Dimensions from the CAF emerged from the data, and one new dimension was derived: physicians’ perception of their maturity of EMR use. Primary care physicians identified the following key factors that impacted their use of advanced EMR features: performance of EMR features, information quality of EMR features, training and technical support, user satisfaction, provider’s productivity, personal characteristics and roles, cost benefits of EMR features, EMR systems infrastructure, funding, and government leadership. Conclusions: The CAF was extended to include physicians’ perceptions of how their use of EMR systems had matured. Most participants agreed that their use of EMR systems for performing clinical tasks had evolved since their adoption of the system and that certain system features facilitated their care for patients with chronic diseases. However, several barriers were identified and should be addressed to further enhance primary care physicians’ use of advanced EMR features to support CDPM.

  • Source: https://www.istockphoto.com; Copyright: Po-Ting Lai; URL: https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/presentation-about-machine-learning-technology-scientist-touching-screen-artificial-gm844535726-138201361; License: Licensed by the authors.
    Natural Language Processing

    Nov 26, 2019

    Using a Large Margin Context-Aware Convolutional Neural Network to Automatically Extract Disease-Disease Association from Literature: Comparative Analytic Study

    Authors List:

    Abstract:

    Background: Research on disease-disease association (DDA), like comorbidity and complication, provides important insights into disease treatment and drug discovery, and a large body of the literature has been published in the field. However, using current search tools, it is not easy for researchers to retrieve information on the latest DDA findings. First, comorbidity and complication keywords pull up large numbers of PubMed studies. Second, disease is not highlighted in search results. Finally, DDA is not identified, as currently no disease-disease association extraction (DDAE) dataset or tools are available. Objective: As there are no available DDAE datasets or tools, this study aimed to develop (1) a DDAE dataset and (2) a neural network model for extracting DDA from the literature. Methods: In this study, we formulated DDAE as a supervised machine learning classification problem. To develop the system, we first built a DDAE dataset. We then employed two machine learning models, support vector machine and convolutional neural network, to extract DDA. Furthermore, we evaluated the effect of using the output layer as features of the support vector machine-based model. Finally, we implemented large margin context-aware convolutional neural network architecture to integrate context features and convolutional neural networks through the large margin function. Results: Our DDAE dataset consisted of 521 PubMed abstracts. Experiment results showed that the support vector machine-based approach achieved an F1 measure of 80.32%, which is higher than the convolutional neural network-based approach (73.32%). Using the output layer of convolutional neural network as a feature for the support vector machine does not further improve the performance of support vector machine. However, our large margin context-aware-convolutional neural network achieved the highest F1 measure of 84.18% and demonstrated that combining the hinge loss function of support vector machine with a convolutional neural network into a single neural network architecture outperforms other approaches. Conclusions: To facilitate the development of text-mining research for DDAE, we developed the first publicly available DDAE dataset consisting of disease mentions, Medical Subject Heading IDs, and relation annotations. We developed different conventional machine learning models and neural network architectures and evaluated their effects on our DDAE dataset. To further improve DDAE performance, we propose an large margin context-aware-convolutional neural network model for DDAE that outperforms other approaches.

  • Trust in health care providers. Source: iStock by Getty Images; Copyright: Barabasa; URL: https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/giving-support-gm502997913-43978668; License: Licensed by the authors.
    Health Information Exchange

    Nov 26, 2019

    The Impacts of the Perceived Transparency of Privacy Policies and Trust in Providers for Building Trust in Health Information Exchange: Empirical Study

    Authors List:

    Abstract:

    Background: In the context of exchange technologies, such as health information exchange (HIE), existing technology acceptance theories should be expanded to consider not only the cognitive beliefs resulting in adoption behavior but also the affect provoked by the sharing nature of the technology. Objective: We aimed to study HIE adoption using a trust-centered model. Based on the Theory of Reasoned Action, the technology adoption literature, and the trust transfer mechanism, we theoretically explained and empirically tested the impacts of the perceived transparency of privacy policy and trust in health care providers on cognitive and emotional trust in an HIE. Moreover, we analyzed the effects of cognitive and emotional trust on the intention to opt in to the HIE and willingness to disclose health information. Methods: A Web-based survey was conducted using data from a sample of 493 individuals who were aware of the HIE through experiences with a (or multiple) provider(s) participating in an HIE network. Results: Structural Equation Modeling analysis results provided empirical support for the proposed model. Our findings indicated that when patients trust in health care providers, and they are aware of HIE security measures, HIE sharing procedures, and privacy terms, they feel more in control, more assured, and less at risk. Moreover, trust in providers has a significant moderating effect on building trust in HIE efforts (P<.05). Results also showed that patient trust in HIE may take the forms of opt-in intentions to HIE and patients’ willingness to disclose health information that are exchanged through the HIE (P<.001). Conclusions: The results of this research should be of interest to both academics and practitioners. The findings provide an in-depth dimension of the HIE privacy policy that should be addressed by the health care organizations to exchange personal health information in a secure and private manner. This study can contribute to trust transfer theory and enrich the literature on HIE efforts. Primary and secondary care providers can also identify how to leverage the benefit of patients’ trust and trust transfer process to promote HIE initiatives nationwide.

  • Manage My Pain: A digital health solution for patients and doctor to measure, monitor, and manage chronic pain. Source: Image created by the Authors; Copyright: ManagingLife, Inc; URL: https://medinform.jmir.org/2019/4/e15601; License: Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY).
    Machine Learning

    Nov 20, 2019

    Interpretability and Class Imbalance in Prediction Models for Pain Volatility in Manage My Pain App Users: Analysis Using Feature Selection and Majority...

    Authors List:

    Abstract:

    Background: Pain volatility is an important factor in chronic pain experience and adaptation. Previously, we employed machine-learning methods to define and predict pain volatility levels from users of the Manage My Pain app. Reducing the number of features is important to help increase interpretability of such prediction models. Prediction results also need to be consolidated from multiple random subsamples to address the class imbalance issue. Objective: This study aimed to: (1) increase the interpretability of previously developed pain volatility models by identifying the most important features that distinguish high from low volatility users; and (2) consolidate prediction results from models derived from multiple random subsamples while addressing the class imbalance issue. Methods: A total of 132 features were extracted from the first month of app use to develop machine learning–based models for predicting pain volatility at the sixth month of app use. Three feature selection methods were applied to identify features that were significantly better predictors than other members of the large features set used for developing the prediction models: (1) Gini impurity criterion; (2) information gain criterion; and (3) Boruta. We then combined the three groups of important features determined by these algorithms to produce the final list of important features. Three machine learning methods were then employed to conduct prediction experiments using the selected important features: (1) logistic regression with ridge estimators; (2) logistic regression with least absolute shrinkage and selection operator; and (3) random forests. Multiple random under-sampling of the majority class was conducted to address class imbalance in the dataset. Subsequently, a majority voting approach was employed to consolidate prediction results from these multiple subsamples. The total number of users included in this study was 879, with a total number of 391,255 pain records. Results: A threshold of 1.6 was established using clustering methods to differentiate between 2 classes: low volatility (n=694) and high volatility (n=185). The overall prediction accuracy is approximately 70% for both random forests and logistic regression models when using 132 features. Overall, 9 important features were identified using 3 feature selection methods. Of these 9 features, 2 are from the app use category and the other 7 are related to pain statistics. After consolidating models that were developed using random subsamples by majority voting, logistic regression models performed equally well using 132 or 9 features. Random forests performed better than logistic regression methods in predicting the high volatility class. The consolidated accuracy of random forests does not drop significantly (601/879; 68.4% vs 618/879; 70.3%) when only 9 important features are included in the prediction model. Conclusions: We employed feature selection methods to identify important features in predicting future pain volatility. To address class imbalance, we consolidated models that were developed using multiple random subsamples by majority voting. Reducing the number of features did not result in a significant decrease in the consolidated prediction accuracy.

  • Connected Health Conference 2018

    Nov 15, 2019

    Impact on Readmission Reduction Among Heart Failure Patients Using Digital Health Monitoring: Feasibility and Adoptability Study

    Authors List:

    Abstract:

    Background: Heart failure (HF) is a condition that affects approximately 6.2 million people in the United States and has a 5-year mortality rate of approximately 42%. With the prevalence expected to exceed 8 million cases by 2030, projections estimate that total annual HF costs will increase to nearly US $70 billion. Recently, the advent of remote monitoring technology has significantly broadened the scope of the physician’s reach in chronic disease management. Objective: The goal of our program, named the Heart Health Program, was to examine the feasibility of using digital health monitoring in real-world home settings, ascertain patient adoption, and evaluate impact on 30-day readmission rate. Methods: A digital medicine software platform developed at Mount Sinai Health System, called RxUniverse, was used to prescribe a digital care pathway including the HealthPROMISE digital therapeutic and iHealth mobile apps to patients’ personal smartphones. Vital sign data, including blood pressure (BP) and weight, were collected through an ambulatory remote monitoring system that comprised a mobile app and complementary consumer-grade Bluetooth-connected smart devices (BP cuff and digital scale) that send data to the provider care teams. Care teams were alerted via a Web-based dashboard of abnormal patient BP and weight change readings, and further action was taken at the clinicians’ discretion. We used statistical analyses to determine risk factors associated with 30-day all-cause readmission. Results: Overall, the Heart Health Program included 58 patients admitted to the Mount Sinai Hospital for HF. The 30-day hospital readmission rate was 10% (6/58), compared with the national readmission rates of approximately 25% and the Mount Sinai Hospital’s average of approximately 23%. Single marital status (P=.06) and history of percutaneous coronary intervention (P=.08) were associated with readmission. Readmitted patients were also less likely to have been previously prescribed angiotensin-converting enzyme inhibitors or angiotensin II receptor blockers (P=.02). Notably, readmitted patients utilized the BP and weight monitors less than nonreadmitted patients, and patients aged younger than 70 years used the monitors more frequently on average than those aged over 70 years, though these trends did not reach statistical significance. The percentage of the 58 patients using the monitors at least once dropped from 83% (42/58) in the first week after discharge to 46% (23/58) in the fourth week. Conclusions: Given the increasing burden of HF, there is a need for an effective and sustainable remote monitoring system for HF patients following hospital discharge. We identified clinical and social factors as well as remote monitoring usage trends that identify targetable patient populations that could benefit most from integration of daily remote monitoring. In addition, we demonstrated that interventions driven by real-time vital sign data may greatly aid in reducing hospital readmissions and costs while improving patient outcomes.

  • Source: istockphoto; Copyright: Deagreez; URL: https://www.istockphoto.com/photo/top-view-cropped-photo-of-doctor-in-formal-wear-writing-down-a-prescription-for-a-gm926638678-254249544; License: Licensed by the authors.
    Natural Language Processing

    Nov 13, 2019

    Combining Contextualized Embeddings and Prior Knowledge for Clinical Named Entity Recognition: Evaluation Study

    Authors List:

    Abstract:

    Background: Named entity recognition (NER) is a key step in clinical natural language processing (NLP). Traditionally, rule-based systems leverage prior knowledge to define rules to identify named entities. Recently, deep learning–based NER systems have become more and more popular. Contextualized word embedding, as a new type of representation of the word, has been proposed to dynamically capture word sense using context information and has proven successful in many deep learning–based systems in either general domain or medical domain. However, there are very few studies that investigate the effects of combining multiple contextualized embeddings and prior knowledge on the clinical NER task. Objective: This study aims to improve the performance of NER in clinical text by combining multiple contextual embeddings and prior knowledge. Methods: In this study, we investigate the effects of combining multiple contextualized word embeddings with classic word embedding in deep neural networks to predict named entities in clinical text. We also investigate whether using a semantic lexicon could further improve the performance of the clinical NER system. Results: By combining contextualized embeddings such as ELMo and Flair, our system achieves the F-1 score of 87.30% when only training based on a portion of the 2010 Informatics for Integrating Biology and the Bedside NER task dataset. After incorporating the medical lexicon into the word embedding, the F-1 score was further increased to 87.44%. Another finding was that our system still could achieve an F-1 score of 85.36% when the size of the training data was reduced to 40%. Conclusions: Combined contextualized embedding could be beneficial for the clinical NER task. Moreover, the semantic lexicon could be used to further improve the performance of the clinical NER system.

  • Student using an EHR system. Source: Image created by the Authors; Copyright: The Authors; URL: https://medinform.jmir.org/4/12648; License: Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY).
    Electronic Health Records

    Nov 12, 2019

    Navigating Through Electronic Health Records: Survey Study on Medical Students’ Perspectives in General and With Regard to a Specific Training

    Authors List:

    Abstract:

    Background: An electronic health record (EHR) is the state-of-the-art method for ensuring all data concerning a given patient are up to date for use by multidisciplinary hospital teams. Therefore, medical students need to be trained to use health information technologies within this environment from the early stages of their education. Objective: As little is known about the effects of specific training within the medical curriculum, this study aimed to develop a course module and evaluate it to offer best practice teaching for today’s students. Moreover, we looked at the acceptance of new technologies such as EHRs. Methods: Fifth-year medical students (N=104) at the University of Tübingen took part in a standardized two-day training procedure about the advantages and risks of EHR use. After the training, students performed their own EHR entries on hypothetical patient cases in a safe practice environment. In addition, questionnaires—standardized and with open-ended questions—were administered to assess students’ experiences with a new teaching module, a newly developed EHR simulator, the acceptance of the health technology, and their attitudes toward it before and after training. Results: After the teaching, students rated the benefit of EHR training for medical knowledge significantly higher than before the session (mean 3.74, SD 1.05). However, they also had doubts about the long-term benefit of EHRs for multidisciplinary coworking after training (mean 1.96, SD 0.65). The special training with simulation software was rated as helpful for preparing students (88/102, 86.2%), but they still did not feel safe in all aspects of EHR. Conclusions: A specific simulated training on using EHRs helped students improve their knowledge and become more aware of the risks and challenges of such a system. Overall, students welcomed the new training module and supported the integration of EHR teaching into the medical curriculum. Further studies are needed to optimize training modules and make use of long-term feedback opportunities a simulated system offers.

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  • Factors influencing the adoption of health information standards: a “Best-fit” framework synthesis

    Date Submitted: Dec 7, 2019

    Open Peer Review Period: Dec 7, 2019 - Feb 1, 2020

    Background: The deployment of Health Information Technologies (HIT) has often been conducted in silos, at different organizational levels, in different regions and in various healthcare settings; this...

    Background: The deployment of Health Information Technologies (HIT) has often been conducted in silos, at different organizational levels, in different regions and in various healthcare settings; this has resulted in HIT infrastructures often being difficult to integrate or manage. Health information standards are expected to address these issues, yet their adoption remains frustratingly low. Objective: To synthesize a comprehensive framework of factors that affect the adoption and deployment of health information standards by healthcare organizations. Methods: We conducted a systematic review combined with a “Best-fit” framework synthesis approach to develop a comprehensive framework. Results: In total, 35 records were incorporated in our analysis, with the final synthesized framework including four dimensions, namely: Technology, Organization, Environment and Inter-organizational relationships. The technology dimension included: Relative advantage, Complexity, Compatibility, Trialability, Observability, Switching cost, Standards uncertainty and Shared business process attributes. The organization dimension included: Organizational scale, Organizational culture, Staff resistance to change, Staff training, Top management support and Organizational readiness. The environment dimension comprised: External pressure, External support, Network externality, Installed base/drag, and Information communication. The inter-organizational relationships dimension included: Partner trust, Partner dependence, Relationship commitment, and Partner power. Conclusions: The synthesized framework has addressed the gap in knowledge of the adoption of health information standards in healthcare organizations. It provides decision makers with more understanding of the factors that hinder or facilitate the adoption of health information standards to better judge and develop suitable strategies for adoption interventions, and supplies research direction and a basis for future follow-up research.

  • An algorithm for monitoring childbirth in settings where tracking all parameters in the WHO partograph is not feasible: design and expert validation

    Date Submitted: Nov 18, 2019

    Open Peer Review Period: Nov 14, 2019 - Jan 9, 2020

    Background: After determining the key childbirth monitoring items from experts in childbirth, we designed an algorithm to represent the experts’ suggestions and we validated it. Objective: In this p...

    Background: After determining the key childbirth monitoring items from experts in childbirth, we designed an algorithm to represent the experts’ suggestions and we validated it. Objective: In this paper we describe the abridged algorithm for labour and delivery (LaD) management and use theoretical case to compare its performance to human childbirth experts. Methods: The LaD algorithm encompasses the tracking of six of the 12 childbirth parameters monitored using the World Health Organisation partograph. It has recommendations on how to manage a patient when parameters are outside the normal ranges. We validated the algorithm with purposively selected experts selecting actions for a stratified sample of patient case scenarios. The experts’ selections were compared to get pairwise sensitivity and false positive rates (FPR) between them and the algorithm. Results: The mean weighted pairwise sensitivity among experts was 68.2% (StD. 6.95; CI. 59.6, 76.8) while that between the experts and LaD algorithm was 69.4% (StD. 17.95; CI. 47.1, 91.7). The pairwise FPR amongst the experts ranged from 12% to 33% with a mean of 23.9% (CI. 12.6, 35.2) and that between the experts and the algorithm ranged from 18% to 43% (mean 26.3%; CI. 13.3, 39.3). The was a correlation (mean of 0.67) in the actions selected by the expert pairs for the different patient cases with a reliability coefficient 0.91. Conclusions: The LaD algorithm was more sensitive but with a higher FPR than the childbirth experts, although the differences were not statistically significant. An electronic tool for childbirth monitoring with fewer than WHO-recommended parameters may not be inferior to human experts in labour and delivery clinical decision support.

  • Intelligent alarms using principal component analysis on hemodynamic monitoring

    Date Submitted: Nov 12, 2019

    Open Peer Review Period: Nov 10, 2019 - Jan 5, 2020

    Background: Patient monitors in modern hospitals give heartbeat waveform data that is reduced to aggregated variables and simple thresholds for alarms. Often, the monitors give a steady stream of non...

    Background: Patient monitors in modern hospitals give heartbeat waveform data that is reduced to aggregated variables and simple thresholds for alarms. Often, the monitors give a steady stream of non-specific alarms, leading to alarm fatigue in clinicians. An alarm can be seen as a classification problem, and by applying Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to the heart rate waveform of readily available monitoring devices, the accuracy of the classification of abnormality could be highly increased. Objective: To investigate whether physiological changes could be detected by looking at the heart rate waveform. Methods: A dataset of a healthy volunteer monitored with electrocardiography (ECG) and invasive blood pressure (BP) experiencing several tilts on a tilting table was investigated. A novel way of splitting continuous data based on the heartbeat was introduced. PCA was applied to classify the heartbeats. Results: A classification using only the aggregated variables heart rate (HR) and BP was able to correctly identify 20.7% of the heartbeats in the vertical tilt as abnormal. A classification using the full waveforms and combining the ECG and BP signals was able to correctly identify 83.5% of the heartbeats in the vertical tilt as abnormal. A humanistic machine learning (ML) method is then proposed based on the PCA classification. Conclusions: A ML method for classification of physiological variability was described. The main novelty lies in the splitting of an ECG and BP signal by the heart rate and performing a PCA on the data-table.

  • A review and comparison of third-party software applications for electronic health records

    Date Submitted: Nov 8, 2019

    Open Peer Review Period: Nov 8, 2019 - Jan 3, 2020

    Background: Third-party electronic health record (EHR) apps are available to allow healthcare organizations to extend the capabilities and features of their EHR. Given the widespread utilization of E...

    Background: Third-party electronic health record (EHR) apps are available to allow healthcare organizations to extend the capabilities and features of their EHR. Given the widespread utilization of EHRs, and the emergence of third-party apps in EHR marketplaces, it has become necessary to conduct a systematic review and analysis of apps in EHR app marketplaces. Objective: The goal of this review is to organize, categorize, and characterize availability of third-party apps in EHR marketplaces. Methods: Two informaticists (JR & BW) used grounded theory principles to review and categorize EHR apps listed in top EHR vendors’ public-facing marketplaces. Results: We categorized a total of 471 EHR apps into a taxonomy consisting of 3 primary categories, 15 secondary categories, and 55 tertiary categories. The three primary categories were administrative (203 apps; 43.1%), provider support (159 apps; 33.8%), and patient care (109 apps; 23.1%). Within administrative apps, we split the apps into four secondary categories: front office (77 apps), financial (53 apps), office administration (49 apps), and office device integration (17 apps). Within the provider support primary classification, we split the apps into eight secondary categories: documentation (34 apps), records management (27 apps), care coordination (23 apps), population health (18 apps), EHR efficiency (16 apps), ordering & prescribing (15 apps), medical device integration (13 apps) and specialty EHR (12 apps). Within the patient care primary classification, we split the apps into three secondary categories: patient engagement (50 apps), clinical decision support (40 apps), and remote care (18 apps). Total app counts varied substantially across EHR vendors. Overall distribution of apps across primary categories were relatively similar with a few exceptions. Conclusions: We characterized and organized a diverse and rich set of third-party EHR apps. This work provides an important reference for developers, researchers, and EHR customers to more easily search, review, and compare apps in EHR app stores.

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