title: Designing a clinical dashboard to fill information gaps in the emergency department.
abstract: Data fragmentation within electronic health records causes gaps in the information readily available to clinicians. We investigated the information needs of emergency medicine clinicians in order to design an electronic dashboard to fill information gaps in the emergency department. An online survey was distributed to all emergency medicine physicians at a large, urban academic medical center. The survey response rate was 48% (52/109). The clinical information items reported to be most helpful while caring for patients in the emergency department were vital signs, electrocardiogram (ECG) reports, previous discharge summaries, and previous lab results. Brief structured interviews were also conducted with 18 clinicians during their shifts in the emergency department. From the interviews, three themes emerged: 1) difficulty accessing vital signs, 2) difficulty accessing point-of-care tests, and 3) difficulty comparing the current ECG with the previous ECG. An emergency medicine clinical dashboard was developed to address these difficulties.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Informatics, Columbia University.
authors.forename: Jordan L
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Swartz
authors.affiliation: Laboratory for Informatics Development, National Institutes of Health.
authors.forename: James J
authors.initials: JJ
authors.lastname: Cimino
authors.affiliation: Information Systems, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.
authors.forename: Matthew R
authors.initials: MR
authors.lastname: Fred
authors.affiliation: Department of Medicine, Columbia University New York, NY.
authors.forename: Robert A
authors.initials: RA
authors.lastname: Green
authors.affiliation: Department of Biomedical Informatics, Columbia University ; Information Systems, NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital.
authors.forename: David K
authors.initials: DK
authors.lastname: Vawdrey
mesh_terms: D000046:Academic Medical Centers; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D003625:Data Collection; D057286:Electronic Health Records / Q000458:organization & administration*; D004635:Emergency Medicine; D004636:Emergency Service, Hospital / Q000458:organization & administration*; D006786:Hospitals, Urban; D006801:Humans; D007407:Interviews as Topic; D008505:Medical Staff, Hospital; D014584:User-Computer Interface