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Chapter 3 Data Acquisition

The document discusses biomedical data, including its acquisition, storage, and use. It describes how data is central to healthcare decision making. Clinical data can include narrative information, numeric values, images, and other types of data collected by various healthcare professionals. Data is used for both individual patient care and population-level research. Traditional paper-based medical records have weaknesses that electronic records can help address. The concepts of data, information, and knowledge are also discussed.

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Fatimah Faqihi
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50 views

Chapter 3 Data Acquisition

The document discusses biomedical data, including its acquisition, storage, and use. It describes how data is central to healthcare decision making. Clinical data can include narrative information, numeric values, images, and other types of data collected by various healthcare professionals. Data is used for both individual patient care and population-level research. Traditional paper-based medical records have weaknesses that electronic records can help address. The concepts of data, information, and knowledge are also discussed.

Uploaded by

Fatimah Faqihi
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Biomedical Data: Their Acquisition,

Storage, and Use


Introduction
• Data are central to all health care because
they are crucial to the process of decision
making.

• All health care activities involve gathering,


analyzing, or using data.
Intro…
• Data provide the basis for categorizing the
problems a patient and also help physician to
decide what additional information.
Intro..
• Although laboratory test results and other
numeric data are often invaluable, a variety of
more subtle types of data may be just as
important to the delivery of optimal care:
Intro…
• The awkward glance by a patient who seems
to be avoiding a question during the medical
interview, information about the details of a
patient’s symptoms or
• about his family or economic setting that an
experienced clinician will often have within a
few moments of entering a patient’s room.
Intro…
• The precise role of these data and the
corresponding decision criteria are so poorly
understood that it is difficult to record them in
ways that convey their full meaning, even
from one clinician to another.
• A clinical datum is single observation of a
patient—e.g., a temperature reading, a red
blood cell count-
Intro…
• It is a matter of perspective whether a single
observation is in fact more than one datum.
• A blood pressure of 120/80 might well be recorded
as a single element in a setting where knowledge
that a patient’s blood pressure is normal is all that
matters.
• If the difference between diastolic (while the heart
cavities are beginning to fill) and systolic (while they
are contracting) blood pressures is important for
decision making or for analysis.
Intro…
• If a clinical datum is a single observation about
a patient, clinical data are multiple
observations.
• Such data may involve several different
observations made concurrently,
• The observation of the same patient parameter
made at several points in time, or both. Thus, a
single datum generally can be viewed as
defined by five elements:
Intro…
• The patient in question

• The parameter being observed (e.g., liver size, urine sugar value, history of
rheumatic fever, heart size on chest X-ray fi lm)

• The value of the parameter in question (e.g., weight is 70 kg, temperature is 98.6
°F, profession is steel worker)

• The time of the observation

• (e.g., 2:30 A.M. on 14 FEB 2013 1 )

• The method by which the observation was made (e.g., patient report,
thermometer, urine dipstick, laboratory instrument).
What Are the Types of Clinical
Data?
• Narrative data account for a large component of the information
that is gathered in the care of patients.

• Discrete numeric values.

• Analog data in the form of continuous signals.

• Visual images.

Note: The idea of data is inextricably bound to the idea of data


recording .
Who Collects the Data?
Health data on patients and populations are gathered
by a variety of health professionals.

• Physicians
• Nurses
• Physicians
• Office staff and admissions personnel
• Physical or respiratory therapists
• Technological devices that generate data
Uses of Health Data
• Health data are recorded for a variety of purposes.

• Clinical data may be needed to support the proper


care of the patient from whom they were obtained

• But they also may contribute to the good of


society through the aggregation and analysis of
data regarding populations of individuals.
Conti..
• The paper record no longer adequately supports
optimal care of individual patients.

• Another problem occurs because traditional paper-


based data- recording techniques have made clinical
research across populations of patients extremely
cumbersome.

• Electronic record keeping offers major advantages in


this regard:
Conti..
• Create the Basis for the Historical Record.

• Support Communication Among Providers.

• Anticipate Future Health Problems.

• Record Standard Preventive Measures.

• Identify Deviations from Expected Trends.


Weaknesses of the Traditional Medical
Record System
1. Pragmatic and Logistical Issues

• Can I find the data when I need them?

• Can I find the medical record in which they are recorded?

• Can I find the data within the record?

• Can I find what I need quickly?

• Can I read and interpret the data once I find


them?

• Can I update the data reliably with new observations in a form consistent with the
requirements for future access by me or other people?
Conti..
2. Redundancy and Inefficiency

3. Influence on Clinical Research

4. The Passive Nature of Paper Records


Conti..
The Data-to-Knowledge Spectrum
A central focus in bio medical informatics is the
information base that constitutes the “substance
of medicine.” Workers in the field have tried to
clarify the distinctions among three terms
frequently used to describe the content of
computer based systems: data, information, and
knowledge
Common Terms
• A datum is a single observational point that characterizes a
relationship.

• It generally can be regarded as the value of a specific


parameter for a particular object (e.g., a patient) at a given
point in time.

• Information refers to analyzed data that have been suitably


curated and organized so that they have meaning. Data do
not constitute information until they have been organized in
some way, e.g., for analysis or display
Conti..
• Knowledge , then, is derived through the formal or
informal analysis (or interpretation) of information that
was in turn derived from data. Thus, knowledge
includes the results of formal studies and also common
sense facts, assumptions, heuristics (strategic rules of
thumb), and models.

• A database is a collection of individual observations


without any summarizing analysis.
The Computer and
Collection of Medical Data
The need for data entry by physicians has posed
a problem for medical-computing systems since
the earliest days of the field.
Doctors, and many other health care staff,
sometimes simply refuse to use computers
because of the awkward interfaces that are
imposed.
Conti…
• A variety of approaches have been used to try to
finesse this problem. One is to design systems such
that clerical staff can do essentially all the data entry
and much of the data retrieval as well.

• In some applications, it is possible for data to be


entered automatically into the computer by the device
that measures or collects them.

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