The amount of information produced in hospitals today and the number of systems manipulating this information is increasing rapidly. At the same time the compatibility between the different systems is usually far from optimal and getting the right data at the right place is not easy.

The Medical Informatics division's objective is to put the information at the service of the user by bringing the relevant data (make necessary data available and combine with existing information) to where it's needed (point of care) at the right time and in an optimal format (presentation and reporting) and with intelligence (decision support) optimizing both the medical outcome as well as the costs. Working with medical informatics is a classic example where 1 + 1 can become so much more than 2.

Telemedicine

Telemedicine is about moving medical information over wide distances but maybe more importantly it is about moving knowledge to where it is mostly needed. Typically the data is moved using radio technology, mobile phones, wireless network, Internet or similar. The big challenge is to do this in a reliable and efficient manner, optimizing response time, guaranteeing functionality, and utilizing the typically limited bandwidth in the best possible way.

Medical Decision Support

Even if the data is compiled into a homogenous environment, filtered and presented in a simple and accessible way it can still be an overwhelming task for the user to deduce the proper decisions from it. This is where decision support systems can make a big difference. Decision support systems can make existing knowledge easy accessible, reveal hidden dependencies, support existing practices, present dynamically validated options, guide user through a predefined workflow etc.

Electronic Healthcare Records (EHR)

Electronic Healthcare Records (EHR) and Hospital Information Systems (HIS) are terms that cover several different clinical and administrative solutions, spanning from smaller department specific systems, to larger solutions integrating several departments and/or hospital information systems. Judex is a vendor independent developer and as such all development is done with open standards like HL7 or DICOM.

Clinical Databases

Clinical databases within many clinical specialties are widely used today and new databases are rapidly emerging. Clinical databases are a wide concept stretching over many different clinical tasks. It could be a single clinic database used for optimizing workflow or healthcare quality to a national multi center database used for treatment evaluation and research.

Telemedicine is about moving medical information over wide distances, but maybe more importantly it is about moving knowledge to where it is mostly needed. Typically the data is moved using radio technology, mobile phones, wireless network, Internet or similar. The big challenge is to do this in a reliable and efficient manner, optimizing response time, guaranteeing functionality, and utilizing the typically limited bandwidth in the best possible way.

An excellent example of such a scenario is our amPHI project where an ambulance is kept in continuous connection with the emergency ward at the hospital by means of radio and mobile phone. Giving the ambulance staff access to the most recent patient information already at the accident site, they can also get instructions from a physician at the hospital through this system and the physician and ward staff can continuously see the current state of the patient and the treatment and medication given so far. So when the ambulance arrives at the hospital the right resources has been reserved and all important medical information is already available in the Hospital Information System.

Similar technologies are applied to projects in other clinical areas like the HomeCare project Stay@Home.

Even if the data is compiled into a homogenous environment, filtered and presented in a simple and accessible way it can still be an overwhelming task for the user to deduce the proper decisions from it. This is where decision support systems can make a big difference. Decision support systems can make existing knowledge easy accessible, reveal hidden dependencies, support existing practices, present dynamically validated options, guide user through a predefined workflow etc.

Judex has successfully been developing decision support systems right from the start, using many different types of mathematical algorithms, rule-based systems, neural networks, and causal networks. Validating a decision support system clinically is one of the most demanding but necessary steps. Frequently this can only be done through clinical international multi center studies. Judex has successfully been a partner in a number of such validation processes.

Some of Judex decision support systems projects:

• TREAT - aiding the implementation of antimicrobial stewardship (antibiotic treatment) in clinical practice
• AMICA - an extension of the Treat project, enabling other types of medical information to be analyzed with different algorithms

ADICOL - optimization of insulin dosing for diabetes patients using insulin pumps

Electronic Healthcare Records (EHR) and Hospital Information Systems (HIS) are terms that cover several different clinical and administrative solutions, spanning from smaller department specific systems, to larger solutions integrating several departments and/or hospital information systems.

We have a lot of experience both in HIS and EHR, integrating existing proprietary databases as well as data generated by medical instruments together into standardized storage streams and making them available in a central HIS or EHR. Judex is a vendor independent developer and as such all development is done with open standards like HL7 or DICOM.

Here are some examples of EHR systems developed by Judex:

• MI-ro is a modular system used by anesthesia and surgical departments for a multitude of tasks such as a quality assurance tool for anesthesia, registration of time and resource expenditure, surgical scheduling and processing and semi-automatic electronic anesthetic charting.
• DagKir is a ward system aimed at ambulatory surgery optimizing the whole patient process, from the beginning to the end, and assuring the quality of communication and information between the patient and the hospital staff.