Designing a User-Friendly Data Request Management System for a Growing Health Data Network - A Case Study in the AKTIN Registry.

The AKTIN Emergency Department Registry, a German health data network, faces operational challenges due to rapid growth. Manual data request processes have become inefficient, hindering timely research and straining personnel. To address these challenges, we undertook a user-centered analysis utilizing Design Thinking principles to identify pain points and functional requirements in current data request creation and management processes.

A Pipeline for the Usage of the Core Data Set of the Medical Informatics Initiative for Process Mining - A Technical Case Report.

Introduction: Process Mining (PM) has emerged as a transformative tool in healthcare, facilitating the enhancement of process models and predicting potential anomalies. However, the widespread application of PM in healthcare is hindered by the lack of structured event logs and specific data privacy regulations.

Concept: This paper introduces a pipeline that converts routine healthcare data into PM-compatible event logs, leveraging the newly available permissions under the Health Data Utilization Act to use healthcare data.

Beating the Clock: A Prediction Model for Timely Care in Emergency Departments.

We developed and validated a statistical prediction model using 2.5 electronic health records from 24 German emergency departments (EDs) to estimate treatment timeliness at triage. The model's moderate fit and reliance on interoperable, routine data suggest its potential for implementation in ED crowding management.

The Effects of Displaying the Time Targets of the Manchester Triage System to Emergency Department Personnel: Prospective Crossover Study.

Background: The use of triage systems such as the Manchester Triage System (MTS) is a standard procedure to determine the sequence of treatment in emergency departments (EDs). When using the MTS, time targets for treatment are determined. These are commonly displayed in the ED information system (EDIS) to ED staff.

[Reasons for non-participation in a patient survey in the context of prehospital emergency medical care by community emergency paramedics - A retrospective observational study].

Background: In order to evaluate whether the new rescue means "community emergency paramedics" (Gemeindenotfallsanitäter [G-NFS]) relieves the emergency medical service (EMS) in the care of low-priority emergencies, the perspective of general practitioners and patients was also surveyed in a written questionnaire as part of an innovation fund project. Recruitment for participation in the study proved to be difficult. The aim of this study is to evaluate why the G-NFS decided against providing information on study participation and what measures would be necessary to include more emergency patients in surveys in the future.

Local Approval Processes in a Federated and Distributed Research Infrastructure - Lessons Learned from the AKTIN-Project.

The AKTIN-Emergency Department Registry is a federated and distributed health data network which uses a two-step process for local approval of received data queries and result transmission. For currently establishing distributed research infrastructures, we present our lessons learned from 5 years of established operations.

Changes in emergency department utilisation in Germany before and during different phases of the COVID-19 pandemic, using data from a national surveillance system up to June 2021.

Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic and associated public health and social measures, decreasing patient numbers have been described in various healthcare settings in Germany, including emergency care. This could be explained by changes in disease burden, e.g.

Optimal@NRW: optimized acute care of nursing home residents using an intersectoral telemedical cooperation network - study protocol for a stepped-wedge trial.

Background: Increasing life expectancy is associated with a growing number of people living in nursing homes, while the availability of outpatient medical care, especially from family doctors, is stagnating in this sector. Consequently, numerous and often avoidable, low-threshold hospitalizations of nursing home residents are observed. This results in unnecessary use of resources such as emergency services and emergency rooms as well as in potential health risks to the nursing home residents related to hospitalization.

Medical and cardio-vascular emergency department visits during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020: is there a collateral damage? A retrospective routine data analysis.

Background: In this retrospective routine data analysis, we investigate the number of emergency department (ED) consultations during the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 in Germany compared to the previous year with a special focus on numbers of myocardial infarction and acute heart failure.

Methods: Aggregated case numbers for the two consecutive years 2019 and 2020 were obtained from 24 university hospitals and 9 non-university hospitals in Germany and assessed by age, gender, triage scores, disposition, care level and by ICD-10 codes including the tracer diagnoses myocardial infarction (I21) and heart failure (I50).

Results: A total of 2,216,627 ED consultations were analyzed, of which 1,178,470 occurred in 2019 and 1,038,157 in 2020.

ILEG - A Case of Recording Patient Journeys.

In 2019 the Gemeindenotfallsanitäter was introduced in the area of Oldenburg, and scientific monitoring starting 2021 with Inanspruchnahme, Leistungen und Effekte des Gemeindenotfallsanitäters. Since then, it is possible to track patient journeys, starting from the emergency call to the subsequent treatment. This short communication provides an overview of the necessary data-acquisition and dataflow from all participating institutions and its possibilities.

A Federated and Distributed Data Management Infrastructure to Enable Public Health Surveillance from Intensive Care Unit Data.

The Robert Koch Institute (RKI) monitors the actual number of COVID-19 patients requiring intensive care from aggregated data reported by hospitals in Germany. So far, there is no infrastructure to make use of individual patient-level data from intensive care units for public health surveillance. Adopting concepts and components of the already established AKTIN Emergency Department Data registry, we implemented the prototype of a federated and distributed research infrastructure giving the RKI access to patient-level intensive care data.

Establishing a Data Quality Baseline in the AKTIN Emergency Department Data Registry - A Secondary Use Perspective.

Secondary use of clinical data is an increasing application that is affected by the data quality (DQ) of its source systems. Techniques such as audits and risk-based monitoring for controlling DQ often rely on source data verification (SDV). SDV requires access to data generating systems.

ToolPool Gesundheitsforschung - A Repository for Software and Services Focused on Supporting Clinical and Epidemiological Research.

The academic research environment is characterized by self-developed, innovative, customized solutions, which are often free to use for third parties with open-source code and open licenses. On the other hand, they are maintained only to a very limited extent after the end of project funding. The ToolPool Gesundheitsforschung addresses the problem of finding ready to use solutions by building a registry of proven and supported tools, services, concepts and consulting offers.

Evaluation of outcome relevance of quality indicators in the emergency department (ENQuIRE): study protocol for a prospective multicentre cohort study.

Introduction: Quality of emergency department (ED) care affects patient outcomes substantially. Quality indicators (QIs) for ED care are a major challenge due to the heterogeneity of patient populations, health care structures and processes in Germany. Although a number of quality measures are already in use, there is a paucity of data on the importance of these QIs on medium-term and long-term outcomes.

Human-Induced Errors in Networked Healthcare Research: Risk Management Under the GDPR.

Modern research projects in healthcare research and medical research are oftentimes multi-centered, multi-disciplinary, and conducted by a consortium of multiple collaborators. Increasingly, the resulting data emanating emerging from different primary and secondary sources is linked on a personal level. The General Data Protection Regulation regulates many fundamental processes in such research projects.