IAIMS Clinical Informatics

The Vision

The goal of the IAIMS clinical informatics program is to extend the philosophy of comprehensive, integrated information access and management into the clinical arena. Our clinical projects are driven by an attempt to bring "just in time, just what you need" decision support information to the point of care. The source of the information can be the University of Washington patient database, on-line reference material, locally developed patient care guidelines, rules/reminders, or other useful decision support materials from anywhere in the world (e.g. DxPlain). Ultimately the hope is that analysis of the the patient database itself will yield new knowledge which in turn will effect the guidelines, rules/reminders, etc. effectively closing the loop. These projects have been collaborative efforts involving not only IAIMS personnel but significant personnel and resources from Medical Center Information Systems (MCIS), campus Computing and Communications (C&C) and HSLIC (Health Sciences Libraries and Information Center). The Clinical Informatics Advisory Committee serves as a steering committee for our efforts.

The IAIMS clinical informatics vision is that a comprehensive information management environment should provide the following integrated tools on-line:

• A provider specific aggregate view of patients
  • E.g. The clinician logs into a system that presents them with an overview list summarizing activity on their patients:
  • VIP Project: View Integrated by Provider
• Access to patient specific information (electronic medical record)
  • E.g. The clinician finding in the aggregate patient view that one of their patients has a critical abnormal lab seamlessly links into that patient's on-line medical record:
  • MINDscape Project: Web access to the University of Washington patient database
• Access to medical knowledge (clinical reference material)
  • E.g. The clinician looking at their patient's abnormal lab wants to find out more information about that lab and how it relates to their patient's primary medical problem - they seamlessly link from the MINDscape tool into a number of on-line reference materials:
  • UCARE Core Information Resources
  • Clinical laboratory reference material
  • University of Washington Medical Center clinical guidelines
• Communication tools (clinical e-mail)
  • E.g. The clinician having decided that the abnormal lab is not explained by their patient's underlying condition decides to have a subspecialist consult on their patient and request the consult via e-mail:
  • Clinical E-mail Project
• Clinical decision support tools
  • COMAH project: An ongoing University of Washington study of the effects of automatically generated clinical reminders on outcomes
  • MAP project: Medical Center Information Systems project to provide access to the University of Washington patient database to clinical researchers to run ad hoc queries (MIND Access Project)