A truly meaningful use of electronic health records freely available to all: Automated anticipation and resolution of clinical information needs at the point of care through infobuttons

Health Informatics & Technology Conference

October 20-22, 2014 Double Tree by Hilton Baltimore - BWI Airport, USA

James J Cimino

Keynote: J Health Med Informat

Abstract :

The Federal Government is now encouraging the adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) for a wide range of reasons, not the least of which is the improvement of patient care. A well-documented method for improving patient care is to support clinical decision making by delivering relevant health knowledge to the point of care in a just-in-time fashion. While automated alerts and reminders have long been synonymous with clinical decision support systems, a less intrusive, userinitiated form of decision support, called an infobutton, is emerging as a viable alternative. Infobuttons are links within an EHR that use contextual information to select from a knowledge base of information needs those that are most likely to be relevant in a given situation. The knowledge base include information on resources that can address each need and links, tailored to the specific situation, are presented to the user to make answers to the user?s unspoken needs a single click away. Infobuttons have been shown to be highly useful and useful for improving patient care. Now there are free, open-access tools that can be used to add infobuttons to any EHR. The author will provide a brief history of the evolution of infobuttons and then show how they can be made available to clinicians, patients and care givers anywhere, at no cost.

Biography :

James Cimino is a board certified internist who completed the National Library of Medicine informatics fellowship at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard University and then went on to an academic position at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and the Presbyterian Hospital in New York. He spent 20 years at Columbia, carrying out clinical informatics research, building clinical information systems, teaching medical informatics and medicine, and caring for patients, rising to the rank of full professor in both Biomedical Informatics and Medicine. His principle research areas includes desiderata for controlled terminologies, mobile and Web-based clinical information systems for clinicians and patients, and a context-aware form of clinical decision support called ?infobuttons?. In 2008, he moved to the National Institutes of Health, where he is the Chief of the Laboratory for Informatics Development and a Tenured Investigator at the NIH Clinical Center and the National Library of Medicine. His principle project involves the development of the Biomedical Translational Research Information System (BTRIS), an NIH-wide clinical research data resource. In addition, he conducts clinical research informatics research, directs the NLM's postdoctoral training program in clinical informatics, participates in the Clinical Center's Internal Medicine Consult Service, and teaches at Columbia University as an Adjunct Professor of Biomedical Informatics.