Lyon Jhewl N.

Bacuil

DDM-III

Module 2: Biomedical Data

A. What are clinical data?

 Health care activities that involves gathering, analyzing, or using data.

 Provide the basis for categorizing the problems a patient may be having or for
identifying subgroups within a population of patients.
 They also help physician to decide what additional information is needed and what
actions should be taken to gain a greater understanding of patient’s problem or most
effectively to treat the problem that has been diagnosed.
 View data as columns of numbers or the monitored waveforms that are product of our
increasingly technological health care environment.

B. How are clinical data used?

 Create the basis of historical record

 Support communication among providers
 Anticipate future health problems
 Record standard preventive measures
 Identify deviation from expected trends
 Provide legal record
 Support clinical research

C. What are the drawbacks of the traditional paper medical record?

 Storage Isn’t
 Lack of Backups & Limited Security
 Time Consuming & Error Prone
 Inconsistent Layouts
 No Clear Audit Trails & Version History

D. What is the potential role of computer in data storage, retrieval and interpretation?

Earliest times, the ideas of ill health and its treatment have been wedded to those of the
observation and interpretation of data. Whether we consider the disease descriptions and
 guidelines for management in early Greek literature or the modern physician’s use of complex
laboratory and X-ray studies, it is clear that gathering data and interpreting their meaning are
central to the healthcare process. A textbook on computers in medicine will accordingly refer
time and again to issues in data collection, storage, and use. This chapter lays the foundation for
this recurring set of issues that is pertinent to all aspects of the use of computers in medicine.

E. How are data collection and hypothesis generation intimately linked in clinical diagnosis?

Physicians are key players in the process of data collection and interpretation. They converse
with a patient to gather narrative descriptive data on the chief complaint, past illnesses, family
and social information, and the system review. They examine thepatient, collecting pertinent
data and recording them during or at the end of the visit.In addition, they generally decide what
additional data to collect by ordering laboratoryor radiologic studies and by observing the
patient’s response to therapeutic interven-tions.