CASE WESTERN RESERVE UNIVERSITY'S SCHOOL OF NURSING RECEIVES NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH GRANT FOR CENTER OF EXCELLENCE
The Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing at Case Western Reserve University has been awarded a $2.2 million grant from the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR), an arm of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to advance a major part of the national nursing research agenda-chronic disease selfmanagement. The grant supports work from September 2007 through June 2012.
The funding will help to create the Self-Management Advancement through Research and Translation, or SMART, center. The center will have the mission of improving the health, health outcomes, and quality of life of individuals with acute and chronic disease through research, translation of findings into practice, and research data to support policies for disease self-management.
The center will study self-management strategy as a component of disease management. In addition, the SMART center will take a cross-functional approach, with one focus on how healthcare professionals, along with chronically ill individuals and their families, can improve patients' well-being while reducing healthcare utilization rates and costs. This focus will encompass a wide range of individual, systems, and community approaches to care.
Although most chronic illness research has focused on older populations, chronic disease affects approximately 90 million Americans, 15% to 20% of whom are children. Researchers in the SMART center will also explore the use of self-management strategies to prevent acute and chronic illnesses.
Currently, self-management is a major part of the national nursing research agenda. New discoveries are improving treatment regimens and enhancing the evidence base for care.
Specific goals of the SMART center include:
* expand knowledge related to self-management through coordinated, interdisciplinary investigations of self-management in the context of the individual, family, organization, and community
* serve as a national leader in research and dissemination of research findings to the scientific community to expand knowledge related to self-management and provide new directions for research
* disseminate information so that clinical practice and policy embrace the use of self-management strategies to improve the health, function, and quality of life of individuals
* prepare researchers to extend this knowledge, contribute to the development of emerging biobehavioral research methods, focus on critical issues related to health disparities among different populations, and incorporate economic considerations as part of the research
The SMART center is founded on an initial research base of 16 faculty from seven disciplines, including eight nursing faculty, who have well-established programs of research that address self-management, encompassing all system levels. Other faculty researchers are from disciplines of medicine, sociology, social work, and epidemiology at Case Western Reserve.
AMERICAN HEALTH INFORMATION MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATION ANNOUNCES LONG-TERM CARE ASSESSMENT INSTRUMENTS PROJECT
The American Health Information Management Association's Foundation of Research and Education (FORE) is pleased to announce a new project that will use the Consolidated Health Informatics (CHI) standards accepted by the Department of Health and Human Services for federally required assessment instruments used in long-term care.
The project will apply approved CHI standards to the nursing home Minimum Data Set (MDS) and home health Outcome Assessment Information Set (OASIS), validate the accuracy and impact of the application of these CHI standards, and develop guidance for using accepted standards for the exchange of standardized assessment and patient summary data.
The work from this project will enable post-acute and long-term care vendors and providers to develop and implement electronic health records and health information technology (HIT) products that will be functional in the emerging interoperable nationwide health information network. Also, the project will provide policy makers with additional information to support implementation of HIT standards for federally required patient assessments.
FORE/AHIMA has assembled a strong team skilled in data and exchange standards to meet the six principal deliverables that will be developed to accomplish the goals of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) Request for Proposal, as follows:
* Create a sample Health Level Seven (HL7) clinical document architecture (CDA) for the exchange of MDS data and assess the potential and requirements for a general CDA MDS solution.
* Create a sample HL7 continuity of care document that incorporates data from the federally required assessment and other patient summary information for use in transfer of care between acute and long-term care facilities.
* Apply Logical Observation Identifiers Names and Codes representations and semantic matching codes (including the use of SNOMED-CT) to MDS and OASIS, and validate the accuracy of the encoding using subject matter experts.
* Investigate the intellectual property implications for disseminating standardized MDS, OASIS, and IRF-PAI assessments, and develop recommendations for disseminating the HIT-encoded instruments.
* Validate the accuracy of the HIT standards applied to the nursing facility assessment instrument through the use of hypothetical MDS data and analyze the payment impact.
This project also will work with representatives at the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make the HIT standards enhanced assessment instruments available through the Unified Medical Language System.
Additionally, this project will create a repeatable framework for making future assessment requirements interoperable. The implementation guidance developed for the exchange of standardized assessments and patient summaries will guide vendors, providers, and policy makers on how to apply standards to assessments and patient summary information, and use standards to support the exchange of this information.
DYNAMED ADDS AMERICAN HOSPITAL FORMULARY SERVICE DRUG REFERENCE INFORMATION TO DECISION SUPPORT RESOURCES
DynaMed, the evidence-based point-of-care resource, has teamed with the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists to incorporate more than 800 American Hospital Formulary Service (AHFS) drug records within DynaMed.
AHFS' frequently updated and comprehensive drug reference information, combined with DynaMed's systematic literature surveillance of disease reference information, is intended to provide users with unparalleled decision-support information.
DynaMed is updated daily and monitors the content of more than 500 medical journals and systematic evidence review databases. Users are able to link to the full text of articles available in a hospital's library via other EBSCOhost databases from within DynaMed clinical summaries. CME/CE credits are also available to DynaMed users and subscribing institutions. DynaMed content can be integrated with electronic health records (EHR) to make information from clinical summaries available from within a patient's EHR.
For more information go to: http://www.ebscohost.com/dynamed.
AHFS Drug Information (DI), published by ASHP for more than 40 years, is the only official drug compendium published by a noncommercial entity. AHFS DI has a longstanding policy of editorial independence from the influence of pharmaceutical manufacturers, health insurers, pharmacy benefit managers, and other third parties. For more information about AHFS DI, visit the AHFS Web site at http://www.ahfsdruginformation.com/.
EBSCO Publishing offers a suite of more than 200 full-text and secondary research databases. The company's product lines include proprietary databases such as Academic Search, CINAHL, DynaMed, MEDLINE, MLA International Bibliography, and PsycINFO.
For more information, visit the EBSCO Publishing Web site at http://www.ebscohost.com.
TALKING FIRST AID KIT UNVEILED
The Talking First Aid Kit, unveiled by intelligentFirstAid in September 2007, combines intelligentFirstAid's other injury-specific packs and enhances them with an audio module.
The Talking First Aid Kit includes individually labeled color-coded injury packs so the user has all the supplies and easily followed instructions for managing a specific injury. The audio module within each injury pack delivers step-by-step instructions, pausing and repeating when necessary to provide guidance to the user. This combination makes The Talking First Aid Kit from intelligentFirstAid the most dependable tool for providing rapid and accurate first aid in the event of an injury.
Each kit includes nine injury specific packs: breathing, bleeding, shock, head and spine, bone, eye, burns, bite and stings, and basics. Each pack comes complete with easy-to-follow, color-coded picture instruction cards along with all the necessary supplies to deal with an emergency.
The Intelligent First Aid kits are also designed to allow companies to meet Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards for providing on-site care at the workplace. All instructional materials have been reviewed by national first aid training organizations and meet National First Aid Science Advisory Board guidelines.
To see photos and a sample of the audio module, visit http://www.intelligentfirstaid.com/catalog/index.php/cPath/2.
UNBOUND MEDICINE RELEASES MEDLINE FOR IPHONE, IPOD
Unbound Medicine has announced the release of Unbound MEDLINE for Apple's iPhone and iPod devices. Unbound MEDLINE provides instant access to more than 17 million journal articles so healthcare providers can practice evidence- based medicine right at the point of care.
Unbound MEDLINE's touch-based interface can quickly search the National Library of Medicine's PubMed database, or Unbound's Best Evidence search instantly defines search parameters to retrieve evidence-based journal articles in areas of relevance to practice. In addition, Unbound MEDLINE users can track leading journals and receive tables of contents and abstracts from selected journals sent directly to an iPhone.
Unbound Medicine's customized iPhone interface helps clinicians take full advantage of the built-in Safari Web browser for quick answers over cellular or Wi-Fi networks. Evidence-based medical information is formatted specifically for iPhones and iPod touch devices, which many nursing and medical students may already own.
Unbound Medicine is offering free access to Unbound MEDLINE at http://www.unboundmedicine.com/medline.
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