A tablet computer application for patients to participate in their hospital care.

Building on our institution's commercial electronic health record and custom personal health record Web portal, we developed a tablet computer application to provide interactive information to hospital patients. Using Apple iPad devices, the prototype application was provided to five patients in a cardiology step-down unit. We conducted detailed interviews to assess patients' knowledge of their inpatient care, as well as their perceptions of the usefulness of the application.

Physician Attitudes about Patient-Facing Information Displays at an Urban Emergency Department.

Hospital information systems have primarily been designed to support physicians and administrators, though recent research has explored the value of patient-facing information displays. Electronic systems can be designed to provide tailored information to patients on their health, their care teams, the status of their hospital stays, and their expected care plans. However, this direct delivery of information from database to patient represents a fundamental change to the traditional flow of clinical information.

Awareness of the Care Team in Electronic Health Records.

OBJECTIVE: To support collaboration and clinician-targeted decision support, electronic health records (EHRs) must contain accurate information about patients' care providers. The objective of this study was to evaluate two approaches for care provider identification employed within a commercial EHR at a large academic medical center. METHODS: We performed a retrospective review of EHR data for 121 patients in two cardiology wards during a four-week period.