An interactive real-time visualization environment for patients with heart failure.

We present an interactive real-time visualization environment of time-ordered medical data aimed to support multidisciplinary disease management of patients with heart failure. Our prototype has been integrated into a working Electronic Patient Record implemented for the integrated management of heart failure patients. Since January 2005, the system has been evaluating in a clinical setting to assess its practical utility involving 30 General Practitioners, 7 Hospital Physicians and 50 Hospital and Community Nurses.

Ontologies supporting continuity of care: the case of heart failure.

Heart failure can be the final stage of almost any type of cardiovascular diseases. Such diseases are the leading cause of recurrent hospital stay and mortality in developed countries, and an increasingly important cause of morbidity and mortality in developing countries. In consideration of the growing incidence of this syndrome, the Province of Trento (Northern Italy) supports a research project called e-Heart Failure.

A real application of a concept-based Electronic Medical Record.

We present a real implementation of a concept-based Electronic Medical Record for the management of heart failure disease. Our approach is based on GEHR archetypes represented in XML format for modelling clinical information. By using this technique it could be possible to build a interoperable future-proof clinical information system.