Main Page/Featured article of the week/2018

Featured article of the week archive - 2018

Welcome to the LIMSwiki 2018 archive for the Featured Article of the Week.

Featured article of the week: January 15–21: "Preferred names, preferred pronouns, and gender identity in the electronic medical record and laboratory information system: Is pathology ready?" Electronic medical records (EMRs) and laboratory information systems (LISs) commonly utilize patient identifiers such as legal name, sex, medical record number, and date of birth. There have been recommendations from some EMR working groups (e.g., the World Professional Association for Transgender Health) to include preferred name, pronoun preference, assigned sex at birth, and gender identity in the EMR. These practices are currently uncommon in the United States. There has been little published on the potential impact of these changes on pathology and LISs. We review the available literature and guidelines on the use of preferred name and gender identity on pathology, including data on changes in laboratory testing following gender transition treatments. We also describe pathology and clinical laboratory challenges in the implementation of preferred name at our institution. (Full article...) Featured article of the week: January 8–14: "Experimental application of business process management technology to manage clinical pathways: A pediatric kidney transplantation follow-up case" Using a business process management platform, we implemented a specific application to manage the clinical pathway of pediatric patients, and we monitored the activities of the coordinator in charge of case management during a six-month period (from June 2015 to November 2015) using two methodologies: the traditional procedure and the one under study. The application helped physicians and nurses to optimize the amount of time and resources devoted to management purposes. In particular, time reduction was close to 60%. In addition, the reduction of data duplication, the integration of event management, and the efficient collection of data improved the quality of the service. The use of business process management technology, usually related to well-defined processes with high management costs, is an established procedure in multiple environments; its use in healthcare, however, is innovative. (Full article...) Featured article of the week: January 1–7: "Expert search strategies: The information retrieval practices of healthcare information professionals" Healthcare information professionals play a key role in closing the knowledge gap between medical research and clinical practice. Their work involves meticulous searching of literature databases using complex search strategies that can consist of hundreds of keywords, operators, and ontology terms. This process is prone to error and can lead to inefficiency and bias if performed incorrectly. The aim of this study was to investigate the search behavior of healthcare information professionals, uncovering their needs, goals, and requirements for information retrieval systems. A survey was distributed to healthcare information professionals via professional association email discussion lists. It investigated the search tasks they undertake, their techniques for search strategy formulation, their approaches to evaluating search results, and their preferred functionality for searching library-style databases. The popular literature search system PubMed was then evaluated to determine the extent to which their needs were met. (Full article...)

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