Authors:
Enrico Serracca
;
Marco Brambilla
;
Tito Poli
and
Elena Martinelli
Affiliation:
University Hospital of PARMA, Italy
Keyword(s):
Medical Appropriateness, Information Technology, E-Health, Data Mining.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Artificial Intelligence
;
Biomedical Engineering
;
Business Analytics
;
Cardiovascular Technologies
;
Collaboration and e-Services
;
Complex Systems Modeling and Simulation
;
Computing and Telecommunications in Cardiology
;
Data Engineering
;
Data Mining
;
Databases and Information Systems Integration
;
Datamining
;
Decision Support Systems
;
Decision Support Systems, Remote Data Analysis
;
e-Business
;
Enterprise Information Systems
;
Evaluation and Use of Healthcare IT
;
Health Engineering and Technology Applications
;
Health Information Systems
;
Integration/Interoperability
;
Interoperability
;
Knowledge Management and Information Sharing
;
Knowledge-Based Systems
;
Ontologies and the Semantic Web
;
Semantic Interoperability
;
Sensor Networks
;
Signal Processing
;
Simulation and Modeling
;
Soft Computing
;
Software Agents and Internet Computing
;
Software and Architectures
;
Symbolic Systems
Abstract:
In the health sector, the current intention of the Ministry of Health and of the Italian Government is to decrease healthcare squandering, to invest in research and to support the NHS. In this context the theme of appropriateness of treatment is essential; in fact the Health Ministry is committed to establish guidelines for the appropriateness of prescription, indicating the "conditions of provision" and "indications of appropriateness". A number of key actors however complain that this approach, along with others (e.g. multifaceted educational programs, electronic systems of frequency filtering, such as limiting the number of available tests to the requesting physicians) lead to uncertain and often ineffective results. This work highlights how the adoption and use of Information Technology (IT) in clinical settings is contributing to the optimization of NHS resources and to the governance of the healthcare delivery activities, in particular for the management and control of appropr
iateness of care. As an example, the adoption of a computerized alerting system by the University Hospital of Parma has brought out significant results. System integration through standard protocols such as HL7, fully normalized data repositories that univocally identify patients, diagnosis and health service provided are crucial in the healthcare context.
(More)