ed-informatics.org

“Unless it produces action, information is overhead.” –Thomas Petzinger First, a caveat: vendors of HISs (hospital information systems) and EDISs (emergency department information systems) insist that a tracking system is just one component of an integrated system. They point out that there are interactions between a tracking system and CPOE (computer-based practitioner order entry) systems, […]

The following historical account is based on personal experience as a child being taken to ERs in the 1950s, as an observer in ERs in the 1960s, an EMT and then street medic training in ERs in the 1970s, and then as an emergency physician since the 1980s. Some names may have been changed or […]

We all know what cryptography is: cryp·tog·ra·phy, n. 1.    the science or study of the techniques of secret writing, esp. code and cipher systems, methods, and the like. Cf. cryptanalysis (def. 2). 2.    the procedures, processes, methods, etc., of making and using secret writing, as codes or ciphers. 3.    anything written in a secret code, […]

One feature of most tracking systems is data display for an individual patient in the Emergency Department. In most tracking systems, we can double-click on the patient’s name, and then we see a pop-up window, populated with things that the nurses have entered and that are found in the patient’s electronic medical record (EMR) entry: […]

To find something using the Google search engine, or a location using Google Maps, we simply type in a few words and then browse the results. This is so much better than what was available before that it has made Google one of the richest corporations in the history of the world. However, many programs’ […]