An Evaluation of Understandability of Patient Journey Models in Mental Health.

Background: There is a significant trend toward implementing health information technology to reduce administrative costs and improve patient care. Unfortunately, little awareness exists of the challenges of integrating information systems with existing clinical practice. The systematic integration of clinical processes with information system and health information technology can benefit the patients, staff, and the delivery of care.

Promoting health: making every contact count.

This article describes a new training programme devised and run by the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) to assist staff to make every patient contact count. The aim of the training programme is to help nurses become more effective when offering opportunistic health promotion advice as part of their routine work, and avoid generating resistance to change.

Telephone counselling helps smokers to quit.

As a stop smoking trainer and author of You Can Stop Smoking, I was interested to read that Australians who were offered proactive telephone counselling to help them stop smoking had improved abstinence rates and were significantly more likely to have attempted to quit (clinical digest January 5).

Service oriented architecture for the integration of clinical and physiological data for real-time event stream processing.

This paper proposes a framework for the integration of physiological and clinical health data within a Service-Oriented architecture framework. This integration will subsequently be used in real-time event stream processing in intelligent patient monitoring devices. Service-oriented architecture offers a unique method of integrating health data as information is collected from multiple medical devices that lack any substantial means of standardization.

Integrating health information technology into clinical guidelines.

The current use of Health Information Technology (HIT) within healthcare practice is limited. Clinical guidelines have been developed to bring research based evidence into practice. However, there is no defining step during the development process that explores the use of HIT and how it can benefit the patient, staff and delivery of care process.

Smoking cessation 2: targeting, engaging and supporting hard to reach groups.

This second in a two part unit on smoking cessation discusses ways to engage and support hard to reach groups. Part 1 outlined the various options available to help smokers who want to quit, such as behavioural support and pharmacotherapy.

Smoking cessation 1: best practice and treatment and support options for patients.

This first in a two-part unit on smoking cessation examines why smoking is so addictive and how healthcare professionals can support patients to quit. It outlines treatment options such as pharmacotherapy and behavioural support.

Message for mums-to-be. Interview by Lynne Pearce.

A major campaign to help pregnant women stop smoking begins this week.

Women in biomedical engineering and health informatics and its impact on gender representation for accepted publications at IEEE EMBC 2007.

The study of women within the professions of Engineering and Computer Science has consistently been found to demonstrate women as a minority within these professions. However none of that previous work has assessed publication behaviours based on gender. This paper presents research findings on gender distribution of authors of accepted papers for the IEEE Engineering and Medicine Society annual conference for 2007 (EMBC '07) held in Lyon, France.

A structured approach to requirements gathering creation using PaJMa models.

The process of preparation for request for proposals for health information systems typically results in missed opportunities for improvements due to the technical focus of traditional requirements gathering processes. The increased integration of health care systems between wards and external supporting agencies, reliance on professional practice guidelines, and needs for cultural sensitivities requires a specialized method for requirements gathering. We explore the use of a patient journey modeling approach (PaJMa) to requirements gathering using a case study of Whitby Mental Health Center.

Multi-dimensional knowledge translation: enabling health informatics capacity audits using patient journey models.

This paper presents a multi-dimensional approach to knowledge translation, enabling results obtained from a survey evaluating the uptake of Information Technology within Neonatal Intensive Care Units to be translated into knowledge, in the form of health informatics capacity audits. Survey data, having multiple roles, patient care scenarios, levels, and hospitals, is translated using a structured data modeling approach, into patient journey models. The data model is defined such that users can develop queries to generate patient journey models based on a pre-defined Patient Journey Model architecture (PaJMa).

Smoking: tackling the silent epidemic.

Currently, approximately 25% of the UK population smokes and the percentage of those quitting has slowed to about 0.4% per year. Legislation against smoking in workplaces and public places came into force in England on 1 July 2007, bringing England into line with the rest of the UK.

Back on track.

Some NHS trusts offer access to a life coach through their occupational health programmes.

Helping people to stop smoking: the role of treatment products.

Advising patients to stop smoking is an important intervention that will have an effect on their immediate and future health. Nurses need to be familiar with the numerous products that are available to assist smokers to give up cigarettes. Jennifer Percival describes how nicotine replacement therapy and bupropion can help smokers achieve success.

Second-hand smoke: how damaging is it to health?

In the 20th century, over half the English population smoked, but this figure has now dropped to a quarter (Office for National Statistics, 2003). A combination of scientific evidence, health education campaigns and larger warnings on cigarette packets has contributed to achieving this change. Public opinion has also shifted dramatically, and most people now accept that being a smoker is damaging to health.