Category Archives: healthcare

On Flexibility in Evaluation Design

Posted on February 28, 2017 by Beth

Been doing some reading as I work on developing an evaluation plan for a complex program that will be implemented at many sites. Here are some notes from a few papers that I’ve read – I think if anything links … Continue reading →

Posted in evaluation, healthcare, notes | Tagged complexity, developmental evaluation, evaluation, evidence-informed decision making, learning healthcare system, notes, quality improvement, research, systems thinking | Leave a comment

Report on “Delivering the Benefits of Digital Health Care”

Posted on April 14, 2016 by Beth

A report on “Delivering the benefits of digital health care” from Nuffield Trust in the UK recently came across my desk. It covers a bigger scope of technology than the project I’m working on (which is a project about transforming … Continue reading →

Posted in healthcare, information technology, notes | Tagged clinical informatics, digital healthcare, eHealth, electronic health records, evidence-informed decision making, health informatics, health information management, healthcare, healthcare IT, informatics, information technology, IT, learning healthcare system, notes, quality improvement | Leave a comment

Complex Adaptive Systems

Posted on March 15, 2016 by Beth

We often hear that “The health care field is complex, perhaps the most complex of any area of the economy (Morrison, 200, cited in Begun et al, 2003). And yet despite the number of times I’ve heard this, I often … Continue reading →

Posted in evaluation, healthcare, notes | Tagged complex adaptive systems, complexity, complexity science, evaluation, notes, systems | Leave a comment

More on evaluating healthcare IT

Posted on November 26, 2015 by Beth

Evaluating informatics applications – some alterative approaches: theory, social interactionism, and call for methodological pluralism evaluating informatics tools, such as clinical decision support tools, under controlled conditions doesn’t provide information about how context (including human and cultural factors) affect whether … Continue reading →

Posted in evaluation, healthcare, information technology, notes | Tagged evaluation, health information technology, informatics, information technology, IT, sociotechnical theory | Leave a comment

More About Measuring Errors and Adverse Events

Posted on November 16, 2015 by Beth

The Measurement of Active Errors in quality improvement, we often need to measure things for comparative purposes: to compare organizations/clinicians with each other to draw cause and effect conclusions about how something (e.g., a policy, a process) affected safety/quality to … Continue reading →

Posted in healthcare, notes | Tagged adverse events, errors, healthcare, measuring | Leave a comment

To Err is Human

Posted on October 26, 2015 by Beth

To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System is a classic report in the field of patient safety that was published in 2000 by the Committee on Quality of Health Care in America (Institute of Medicine). My notes from the … Continue reading →

Posted in healthcare, notes | Tagged adverse events, errors, health, healthcare, patient safety | Leave a comment

Complexity of EHR implementation and evaluation design

Posted on September 4, 2015 by Beth

As I’ve mentioned, I’m currently developing an evaluation for the implementation of an electronic health record (EHR) system. Specifically, this project crosses multiple healthcare organizations, will be implemented in dozens of healthcare facilities run by those organizations, and will be used … Continue reading →

Posted in evaluation, healthcare, information technology, methods, notes | Tagged complexity, eHealth, evaluation, evaluation philosophy, evaluator roles, healthcare, healthcare IT, methodoligical pluralism, mixed methods, philosophy | Leave a comment

Informatics, Big Data, and Data Visualization

Posted on September 1, 2015 by Beth

Notes from module 10 of the Interprofessional Health Informatics course I’m working on (plus side reading that I did to fill in some blanks/learn more about some things mentioned in the course). Big Data = size of a database that is … Continue reading →

Posted in data analysis, evaluation tools, healthcare, information technology, notes, online module notes, research | Tagged Big Data, coursera, data visualization, eHealth, electronic health records, health informatics, health information management, healthcare, healthcare IT, informatics, information technology, IT, learning healthcare system, notes, online module notes | Leave a comment

Health Information Exchange

Posted on August 31, 2015 by Beth

Notes from module 9 of the Interprofessional Health Informatics course I’m working on (plus side reading that I did to fill in some blanks/learn more about some things mentioned in the course). Interoperability Interoperability: “the ability of two or more … Continue reading →

Posted in healthcare, information technology, notes, online module notes | Tagged coursera, eHealth, electronic health records, health informatics, health information management, healthcare, healthcare IT, informatics, information technology, iNMDS, interoperability, IT, learning healthcare system, NMDS, NMMDS, notes, online module notes, standardization | Leave a comment

Informatics and Ethics

Posted on August 28, 2015 by Beth

Notes from module 8 of the Interprofessional Health Informatics course I’m working on (plus side reading that I did to fill in some blanks/learn more about some things mentioned in the course). “knowledge is power” – Sir Francis Bacon, 1597 … Continue reading →

Posted in healthcare, information technology, notes, online module notes | Tagged coursera, eHealth, electronic health records, ethics, evidence-informed decision making, health informatics, health information management, healthcare, healthcare IT, informatics, information technology, IT, learning healthcare system, notes, online module notes | Leave a comment