Sri Lanka Journal of Bio-medical Informatics最新文献

{"title":"T-Cube Web Tool for rapid detection of disease outbreaks in India and Sri Lanka","authors":"C. Weerasinghe, N. Waidyanatha, A. Adubrawski, M. Baysek, M. Ganesan","doi":"10.4038/SLJBMI.V1I0.3693","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4038/SLJBMI.V1I0.3693","url":null,"abstract":"Motivated by existing gaps and inefficiencies in the paper-based manually processed disease surveillance and notification systems in India and Sri Lanka, the RealTime Biosurveillance Programme (RTBP) introduces technology to health departments in Tamil Nadu, India and Sri Lanka, to test the question: “Can software programmmes that detect events in public health data, and mobile phones that collect health data and receive health alerts, enable effective identification and mitigation of disease outbreaks in near-real-time?” The processes involve digitising all clinical health records and analysing them in near real-time to detect emerging unusual patterns in data to forewarn health workers before the diseases reach epidemic states. Health records from health facilities, namely the patient disease cases, syndromic, and demographic information, are transmitted through the mHealthSurvey mobile phone application1 and fed in to the T-Cube data structure. T-Cube Web Interface (TCWI)2 is a browser-based software tool that uses the T-Cube data structure for fast retrieval and display of large volume multivariate time series and spatial information. Interface allows the user to execute complex queries quickly and to run various types of statistical tests on the loaded data. Detected emerging patterns of potentially epidemic events are then disseminated to health workers in the vulnerable and surrounding areas in the form of SMS, Email, and Web published alerts. This paper considers utility and importance of TCWI in support of rapid detection and mitigation of biomedical threats in developing countries. 1. Kannan T, Seebha R. Real-Time Biosurveillance Program: m-HealthSurvey Software Requirement Specifications [Internet]. 2009 Jan.Available from: http://lirneasia.net/wpcontent/uploads/2009/06/srs_mobile_application_rtbp_v20 .pdf 2. Ray S, Michalska A, Sabhnani M, Dubrawski A, Baysek M, Chen L, et al. T-Cube Web Interface: A Tool for Immediate Visualization, Interactive Manipulation and Analysis of Large Sets of Multivariate Time Series. AMIA Annual Symposium; 2008; Washington DC. 3. Gow G, Waidyanatha N. Common Alerting Protocol for Sahana Messaging Module: Real-Time Biosurveillance Program Software Requirement Specifications [Internet]. 2009. Available from: http://lirneasia.net/wpcontent/uploads/2009/05/Sahana-CAP-Msg-Mod-v0.2.pdf .","PeriodicalId":129773,"journal":{"name":"Sri Lanka Journal of Bio-medical Informatics","volume":"109 3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128709589","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"'Sathkaara': an e-facility for optimising ICU bed usage","authors":"W.A.S. Sirichandra, S. Liyanage, W. Jayasinghe, Shiromi Arunatileka, K. Chapman, N. Wijesooriya","doi":"10.4038/SLJBMI.V1I0.3690","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4038/SLJBMI.V1I0.3690","url":null,"abstract":"Intensive Care Unit (ICU) is the most demanded ward for critical patients. Patients who need continuous monitoring and special life support are admitted to ICU. Most of the ICUs in the world have a problem of inadequate resources. Due to heavy cost of ICUs, in Sri Lanka, ICUs are insufficient and resources are unequally distributed. ICUs are often fully occupied because of the low bed strength which leads to patient transfers. Typically, existing procedure takes hours to find a vacant bed with adequate resources to treat the patient. It puts the patient in danger until he reaches the ICU of the receiving hospital. Poor clinical documentations and poor communication among inter hospital medical staff also badly affect the medication. This is where “Sathkaara” comes into action. This provides a real time web based system for the ICUs in hospital network to update the ICU bed and resource availability. Hence it has the ability to search for beds and resources which are at a distance. Special equipment like CT and MRI scanners will require diagnosis, where the availability of this information is also critical. This will allow consultants to search for a hospital with necessary facilities quickly. The hospital can be informed on the requirement for using these equipment before transfering the patient. Details of doctors’ qualifications and specialised areas in the ICU ward will be captured where this information could be referred to before transferring a patient. Ability to send information regarding a patient’s clinical condition through electronic records to the receiving hospital allows the receiving hospital staff to prepare early before the patient arrives. “Sathkaara” ensures saving lives of critical patients through reducing the barriers in patient transfers and the maximum utilisation of the available ICU facilities, so that the patient will receive treatment without delays.","PeriodicalId":129773,"journal":{"name":"Sri Lanka Journal of Bio-medical Informatics","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127423697","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"An Electronic Medical Record system for Sri Lankan general practitioners","authors":"M. Ariyaratne, G. Dissanayake, C. Widisinghe, J. Samarasekara, V. Banduwardhana","doi":"10.4038/SLJBMI.V1I0.3691","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4038/SLJBMI.V1I0.3691","url":null,"abstract":"Usage of computer software in general medical practice is becoming a routine not only in developed countries like UK, but also in developing countries like India. Yet the popularity of software in Sri Lankan general practice is very low due to several reasons of which some are identified and addressed in developing a “Sri Lankan” Electronic Medical Record system. The system was developed by five Sri Lankan doctors to address the issues they face in their own practice. During the system analysis, several other general practitioners have been consulted and they discussed the requirements, limitations, and other issues in detail. One issue is the lack of time available to spend on the computer system. To make matters worse, most do not have that competency to handle the computers quick enough. What we finally achieved is a system which needs minimal doctor-computer interaction which can generate prescriptions faster than writing it by hand. This was achieved by features we call Diagnosis fills, Medicines fills, Patient refills, Visit refills, Right click alternatives for medicines and doses, Patient Queue, Auto-conversion of prescription to pharmacy bill. We have also included standard features like warning of allergies, warning of drug interactions, automatic clinical report generation, automatic referral generation, automatic certificate generation and obstetric calculator. This can store unlimited number of patients, their demographic data, photos, medical records, and visit details. There is a database of clinical diseases including photos and links to resources in Internet which can be expanded by the doctor. A full featured pharmacy and a laboratory are also included. All the financial details like practice income, expenses are also recorded and analysed.","PeriodicalId":129773,"journal":{"name":"Sri Lanka Journal of Bio-medical Informatics","volume":"148 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121911207","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Electronic Patient Record System for psychiatry units","authors":"Shamali Dahanayake","doi":"10.4038/SLJBMI.V1I0.3591","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4038/SLJBMI.V1I0.3591","url":null,"abstract":"Electronic Patient Records can improve the quality of patient care in psychiatry units. Many patients have long term illnesses and have multiple patient encounters with psychiatric services. Although manual data gathering is available at the moment, data retrieval is time consuming and as files have to be manually searched. Storage of past data is hampered by lack of space. We describe the first electronic patient record system developed for use in a psychiatry unit in Sri Lanka. The system facilitates an electronic storage of data and easy retrieval of information. The system identifies a patient by a unique number and allows different episodes of in- patient and out- patient care to be linked together. The systems’ value is enhanced by the generation of reports to assist and improve health administration. Clinical care is enhanced by linking different episodes of care of a patient over time. Discharge reports follow up reports of out- patient attendance and reports of analysis of data are generated by the system. The follow up report identifies outpatients who default treatment enabling community follow up. This would help improve compliance and reduce relapses. This is not currently done as it is not feasible to identify all those who default using a manual record keeping system. Analysis of patients based on different criteria such as diagnosis and treatment will assist in identifying trends of illnesses and also provide a database for research. The system is developed using mysql database and is hosted on apache server. As this uses only open source software this can be deployed in both Linux and windows environment allowing easy, and low cost deployment in other such wards. The system is web based and can be connected to a network expanding the access capabilities.","PeriodicalId":129773,"journal":{"name":"Sri Lanka Journal of Bio-medical Informatics","volume":"37 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115156400","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Predicting potential graft rejection in renal transplant patients: data mining approach","authors":"M. Hapudeniya, R. Sheriff, R. Sheriff","doi":"10.4038/SLJBMI.V1I0.3598","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4038/SLJBMI.V1I0.3598","url":null,"abstract":"Renal transplantation (RT) is the organ transplant of a kidney into a patient with end-stage renal disease. In Sri Lanka, kidney is accepted from a living donor typically from a genetically related person. RT is a major surgical procedure and several investigations are done in order to assess the fitness and the compatibility of the graft with the patient. Transplant rejection is one of the major complications where the transplanted kidney is not accepted by the body of the recipient. Chronic transplant rejection is irreversible and cannot be treated effectively. It is very important to predict the possibility of the graft rejection as the decision for undergoing a RT is one of the major decisions the patient will make. This further helps to improve post operative management and long term care of the patient. We explored the possibility of developing a simpler, equally accurate and more user friendly model to predicting the potential graft failure using data from renal transplantations done at a leading private hospital in Sri Lanka. The results predicted by the model were evaluated against the prediction of experienced clinicians to assess its accuracy and effectiveness.","PeriodicalId":129773,"journal":{"name":"Sri Lanka Journal of Bio-medical Informatics","volume":"26 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"120946452","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Mobile software prototype - Patient guidance for laboratory investigation preparations","authors":"E.P.D.S. Ediriweera, P. Ranatunga, B. Jayamanne","doi":"10.4038/SLJBMI.V1I0.3692","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4038/SLJBMI.V1I0.3692","url":null,"abstract":"Awareness of health among general public is on the increase with the advancement of information and communication technology. The speed at which the required information is delivered to the client, plays a major role in such a system. Recent advancement of mobile technology and wide spread usage make life easier regarding this aspect, especially with the Short Message Service (SMS). Obtaining preparation instructions for investigations is useful to the client, so they can go to the laboratories prepared. eg. Lipid Profile 14 hours of fasting. Medical Practitioners also can revise the awareness for preparation of uncommon investigations, reference range and their availability at his closest reach. This will automatically produces an island-wide database of registered laborites. In addition we can expect standardisation of prices for common investigations will also happen with the time. Proposed system provides instructions to the client on preparation for laboratory investigations which can be helpful both to the patients and the medical practitioners. Further expansion of the system will provide the list of locally available laboratories in which the particular investigation can be done and the relevant reference range. Client is expected to send an SMS giving the list of investigations. The system will match the investigations with a database containing investigations and relevant preparation instructions. Then reply via SMS to the client with this information. The database will be constructed and maintained using national guidelines.","PeriodicalId":129773,"journal":{"name":"Sri Lanka Journal of Bio-medical Informatics","volume":"32 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-10-28","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"124527437","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The students’ perspectives of the new Information Technology programme for the new entrants of the Faculty of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Rajarata University of Sri Lanka","authors":"H. K. Wijayarathne, V. R. Walpola, A. Mahamithawa, Deelaka Bandara, B. Wijerathne","doi":"10.4038/SLJBMI.V1I0.3557","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4038/SLJBMI.V1I0.3557","url":null,"abstract":"Background Information Technology (IT) is about to make a massive move into medical practice, not only in selected areas of 'high-tech' medicine, but throughout the field. Taken together with the experience from classroom teaching, optional teaching of basic information technology still needs to be integrated into medical studies. Therefore, the medical students must have a certain level of IT awareness to build a successful medical carrier. Methods An IT course was designed for the new entrants to the Faculty of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Rajarata University of Sri Lanka to be followed during their orientation programme from November 2009 to February 2010. After following the course, feedback was taken from new entrants individually using a validated questionnaire. Results Ninty four point nine percent of students agreed that the contents of lectures and discussions were useful and 67.54% out of it were strongly agreed. Ninety three point six percent of the total have found the language used in teaching easy to understand but 55% of them were not strongly agreed. Forty seven point seven percent of the students have felt that the time allocation for modules was sufficient but 30.9% needs more time. Seventy eight point fine percent of total concluded as a well organized programme but 59.4% out of them needs it to be improved. Eighty seven point seven percent have felt the teaching sessions interesting. Conclusions The majority of students have felt that the course was well organized and have used a simple language and ultimately the teaching sessions have become interesting. The contents of the course were highly useful and they wanted the time allocated for the overall course to be increased.","PeriodicalId":129773,"journal":{"name":"Sri Lanka Journal of Bio-medical Informatics","volume":"20 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-10-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130037684","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Assessment of Electronic Patient Record of a super-specialty hospital","authors":"Sinha Rajesh Kumar, R. Smriti","doi":"10.4038/SLJBMI.V1I0.3569","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4038/SLJBMI.V1I0.3569","url":null,"abstract":"Background: Electronic Patient Record (EPR) plays a vital role in management of patient's health information. Objective: To compare the EPR in practice with Health Information Management System Society (HIMSS) standard versions 1.0 and assess the level of satisfaction among healthcare staff about existing EPR system. Methodology: The study was conducted in a super-specialty hospital in India. A checklist consisting of 30 features based on HIMSS standard was used to check the compliance of present EPR in practice. A validated and pre-tested questionnaire, based on five point Likert scale from strongly agree to strongly disagree, was used to measure the pre and post implementation EPR satisfaction among 62 healthcare professionals including doctors, nurses and administrative staff. A forum was also established to identify the problems and give necessary recommendation to resolve the issues involved in the acceptability of present EPR in practice. Result: It has been observed that the present EPR is only compliant with 11 features out of 30 mentioned under HIMSS version 1.0. The employee satisfaction result showed that 73 per cent of doctors and nurses and 59 per cent of administrative staff were dissatisfied with the pre-implementation assessment whereas 57 per cent of doctors, 53 per cent of nurses and 59 per cent of administrative staff were found to be dissatisfied with the customisation of EPR in practice. A total of 40 per cent of doctor, 53 per cent of nurses, and 59 per cent of administrative staff felt that the core incompetency with present EPR was the present physical infrastructure. The post implementation survey result showed that 90 per cent doctors, 94 per cent nurses and 88 per cent front office staff were satisfied with the suggestions and changes in existing EPR. Conclusion: Understanding the end user satisfaction and reinforcing them with trainings and awareness adds value and assists in continuous quality improvement, acceptability and sustainability of EPRs.","PeriodicalId":129773,"journal":{"name":"Sri Lanka Journal of Bio-medical Informatics","volume":"67 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-10-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116230347","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"DysTS - An initiative to eradicate the inadequate treatment of Dyslexia in Sri Lanka","authors":"Z. Shabbir","doi":"10.4038/SLJBMI.V1I0.3586","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4038/SLJBMI.V1I0.3586","url":null,"abstract":"Dyslexia is a learning disability that causes difficulty in reading, writing and spelling. It prevents those affected from learning at the same level of ease and confidence as their non-dyslexic peers. There have been a few initiatives towards helping dyslexics in Sri Lanka, but a majority of them do not cater to individual needs. There is inadequate focus on the background and interests of each dyslexic, which should be key factors in designing their learning programmes. Additionally, the inability to objectively track the progress of dyslexics deters advancements in their educational and professional endeavours. Overall, it has been noted that due to their language difficulties, some dyslexics are still deprived of their basic social and educational rights. In order to obtain the requirements for a solution to address the above problem, interviews were conducted with officials and tutors of special schools which accentuated the need for a more resource-friendly teaching system. Video-conferences with international medical professionals highlighted the impact of parental support in the progress of a dyslexic child. A total of 107 questionnaire responses stressed on the need for a computer-based teaching and tracking mechanism. Observation sessions and documents sampled emphasised on the need for an individualistic teaching approach. As such, the construction of a website as an automated teaching tool for dyslexics stood out as the ideal solution. A prototype of the solution was developed using Joomla, which is an open-source content management system integrated with My SQL, Apache and PHP. The solution incorporates concepts like multi-sensory teaching, verbal conceptualisation, phonetic awareness and confidence building into a website to positively aid the educational activities of dyslexic children. It also provides parental guidance, allows them to monitor the progress of their child and enables tutors to objectively evaluate the performance of each dyslexic. It was found that graphics and multimedia were effective in capturing and retaining the attention of dyslexic children. Parental involvement added to the learning enthusiasm of dyslexic children and increased the monitoring ability of tutors. Automated report-generation resulted in accurate performance tracking and allowed tutors to focus on other higher-priority activities.","PeriodicalId":129773,"journal":{"name":"Sri Lanka Journal of Bio-medical Informatics","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-10-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131345656","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"SMS based channeling guide to select physicians based on native language processing","authors":"P. Ranatunga, Y. Warnakulasooriya, C. E. D. Silva, R. Hewapathirana","doi":"10.4038/SLJBMI.V1I0.3564","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.4038/SLJBMI.V1I0.3564","url":null,"abstract":"Channelled consultation service plays a major role in private medical care in Sri Lanka. But it lacks a proper referral system where patients are directed to the correct specialist. Therefore, there is a lot of confusion when choosing the specialist. Patients do not have easily accessible medical content which can be utilised to make such a decision, as most of the content is in English. With the wide spread use of the mobile technology, short messaging service (SMS) can be utilised to implement such a system which is easily accessible and sufficiently reliable. The objective is to develop a SMS based solution to suggest to the general public a list of possible consultants, based on client’s gender, age, other medical conditions and presenting symptoms submitted in native language through SMS. Then the client will receive an SMS with a suggested list of clinicians. The clients submit gender, age, other medical information, presenting symptoms and location using SMS. The submitted SMSs are subjected to text/ natural language analysis to extract keywords. The extracted keywords in Sinhala (Singlish) are mapped to English keywords. Then the expert system will analyse the keywords and suggest relevant clinicians. The list of clinicians will be filtered according to the location of the client.","PeriodicalId":129773,"journal":{"name":"Sri Lanka Journal of Bio-medical Informatics","volume":"478 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2011-10-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"133603931","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}