Authors:
Rui Fonseca
1
and
Pedro Pereira Rodrigues
2
Affiliations:
1
Faculty of Medicine, University of Porto; Faculty of Sciences and University of Porto, Portugal
;
2
Faculty of Medicine, University of Porto; LIAAD - INESC Porto and L.A. & CINTESIS - Center for Research in Health;, Portugal
Keyword(s):
Intensive Care Units, System integration, Electronic Health Records, Patient outcome.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Biomedical Engineering
;
Health Information Systems
;
Software Systems in Medicine
Abstract:
Due to the severity of patients treated in the intensive care units, these units are commonly equipped with a variety of equipment that is handled by a multidisciplinary team. In order to identify problems, present and future, clinicians perform periodic assessments that produce huge amount of data, which availability is of vital importance. This study was performed in order to assess the impact of clinical data centralized in a clinical information system for inpatients in an intensive care unit, when compared with data disseminated in different systems. A literature search was conducted on PubMed in order to identify relevant articles published between 2000 and 2010. From a total of 48 articles, 7 articles were selected for assessment. 2 articles studied the impact of system integration, 4 articles studied the impact of computerized medical records and 1 article studied both the impact of computerized medical records and system integration. A centralized clinical information system
was proved to have a positive impact for inpatients in an intensive care unit. These systems allow time savings on vital signs transcription, reduced medication errors, a quicker access to clinical data and a reduction in prescription errors.
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