Clinical Informatics in Intensive Care - Vitaly Herasevich

Clinical Decision Support Tools

Through field observation activities, including task analysis, staff interaction mapping and feedback sessions with intensive care unit staff, the laboratory of Vitaly Herasevich, M.D., Ph.D., and Brian W. Pickering, M.B., B.Ch., is studying process optimization — an aspect of the science of health care delivery — in the intensive care unit.

Information entity-centric modeling is used to define the dynamic information needs of the distributed cognitive network for each of these intensive care unit tasks:

• Admission
• Acute resuscitation
• Organ support
• Rounding
• Completion of daily goals and checklists
• Safe discharge planning
• Intra- and extra-network communication

Time on tasks, mistakes, errors, omissions and clinicians' cognitive loads are measured in an effort to improve patient care by identifying where new or improved steps are needed in intensive care unit processes. The laboratory's findings are used to inform the design of workflow models.