In last week’s question, we chatted about clinical guidelines and algorithms. In this week’s question, we’ll be heading in a completely different direction – telecommunication and Metcalfe’s Law. Telecommunication is communication across a distance using technology – usually via electrical signals or electromagnetic waves. Telecommunications allows us to participate in our favorite lazy leisure activities such […]
Practice Question of the Week: Clinical Guidelines & Algorithms
In last week’s practice question, we covered the Process of Knowledge Transformation and how we take Evidence Based Medicine (EBM) and transform it into something clinical decision support systems can use. In this week’s post we’ll be applying last week’s focus on EBM to the point of care – in the form of clinical guidelines and algorithms. In the larger […]
Practice Question of the Week: Knowledge Transformation
Within the core content of clinical informatics, there’s a whole section under “clinical decision making and care process improvement” dedicated to “knowledge transformation”. We have to admit, when we first read through this section, we were thinking – what the heck is knowledge transformation? Do we need to read “lying with statistics” again? After some […]
Practice Question of the Week: Cost Effectiveness
This week’s practice question covers the topic of cost effectiveness in healthcare. Why cover cost effectiveness? Well first, cost effectiveness fits into clinical informatics as a form of clinical decision support. More specifically, it falls under the category of “decision science” in the clinical informatics core content and is therefore on the exam—-so you should know […]
Practice Question of the Week: Medical Decision Making
In this week’s practice question, we cover decision making – or more specifically the nature and cognitive aspects of human decision making. Yes – this is a real section in the core content under “Clinical Decision Making and Care Process Improvement” and you will be tested on it. So what exactly is the nature of […]
Practice Question of the Week: IOM Quality Aims
This week’s question deals with the Institute of Medicine’s Quality Aims from “Crossing the Quality Chasm.” The IOM’s quality aims serve as a base for many topics in clinical informatics. You’ll find they influence topics including metrics for quality reporting and improvement, regulations like ACA, patient satisfaction rates, and others. And of course, since they’re […]
Practice Question of the Week: The Regulatory Framework
In health IT, the legal and regulatory framework often affects our ability to implement clinical information systems in an optimal way. Sometimes we feel a step behind with compliance to ICD-10, meaningful use stages, ACA, PQRS, HIPAA, HITECH, and others. Understandably. Rushed schedules, constant meetings, and other activities that use up all of our thinking power […]
Practice Question of the Week: Clinical Research
A couple of weeks ago in our practice question of the week, we discussed Evidence Based Medicine (EBM). In this week’s post we’ll be discussing a question along the same lines as EBM– clinical research. In particular we’ll be reviewing the phases of clinical research. To review, Clinical Research determines the safety and effectiveness of pharmaceuticals, medical […]
Practice Question of the Week: Economics of Health Care Delivery
The health system is a significant part of the exam. It covers everything from public health and clinical research, policy and HIPAA, healthcare quality and data flows, and health economics and financing. In this week’s question of the week, we’ll discuss the economics of health care delivery and how it effects the cost of health […]
Clinical Informatics Exam Question of the Week: EBM
In this week’s practice question, we cover the levels in evidence based medicine. This topic is important because ideally, every physician should make decisions based on the most-current and best research available. But combing through thousands of studies, trials, and analyses is problematic. Rather, to integrate the newest guidelines and recommendations, we can use Clinical Decision Support Systems. Clinical […]