Abstract
Objectives
The management of patient-specific information is a challenging task for surgeons and physicians because existing clinical information systems are insufficiently integrated into daily clinical routine and contained information entities are distributed across different proprietary databases. Thus, existing information is hardly usable for further electronic processing, workflow support or clinical studies.
Methods
A Web-based clinical information system has been developed that automatically imports patient-specific information from different information systems. The system is tailored to the existing workflow for the treatment of patients with head and neck cancer. In this paper, the clinical assistance functions and a quantitative as well as a qualitative system evaluation are presented.
Results
The information system has been deployed at a clinical site and is in use in daily clinical routine. Two evaluation studies show that the information integration, the structured information presentation in the Web browser and the assistance functions improve the physician’s workflow. The studies also show that the usage of the new information system does not impair the time physicians need for a process step compared with the usage of the existing information system.
Conclusions
Information integration is crucial for efficient workflow support in the clinic. The central access to information within a modern and structured user interface saves valuable time for the physician. The comprehensive database allows an instant usage of the existing information clinical workflow support or the conduction of trial studies.
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Acknowledgments
ICCAS is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the Saxon Ministry of Science and Fine Arts (SMWK) in the scope of the Unternehmen Region with Grant Number 03Z1LN12 and by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the state of Saxony within the frame of measures to support the technology sector.
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Meier, J., Boehm, A., Kielhorn, A. et al. Design and evaluation of a multimedia electronic patient record “oncoflow” with clinical workflow assistance for head and neck tumor therapy. Int J CARS 9, 949–965 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11548-014-0988-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11548-014-0988-x