On the Way to Close the Loop in Information Logistics: Data from the Patient - Value for the Patient.

OBJECTIVE:  To summarize recent research and to propose a selection of best papers published in 2017 in the field of Clinical Information Systems (CIS).

METHOD:  Each year a systematic process is carried out to retrieve articles and to select a set of best papers for the CIS section of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) Yearbook of Medical Informatics. The query aiming at identifying relevant publications in the field of CIS was refined by the section editors during the last years. For three years now, the query is stable. It comprises search terms from the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) thesaurus as well as additional free text search terms from PubMed and Web of Science® . The retrieved articles were categorized in a multi-pass review carried out by the two section editors. The final selection of candidate papers was then peer-reviewed by Yearbook editors and external reviewers. Based on the review results, the best papers were then selected by the IMIA Yearbook editorial board. Text mining, and term co-occurrence mapping techniques were used to get an overview on the content of the retrieved articles.

RESULTS:  The query was carried out in mid-January 2018, yielding a consolidated result set of 2,255 articles which had been published in 939 different journals. Out of them, 15 papers were nominated as candidate best papers and four of them were finally selected as best papers in the CIS section. Again, the content analysis of the articles revealed the broad spectrum of topics which is covered by CIS research.

CONCLUSIONS:  Modern clinical information systems serve as backbone for a very complex, trans-institutional information logistics process. Data that is produced by, documented in, shared via, organized in, presented by, and stored within clinical information systems is more and more reused for multiple purposes. We found a lot of examples showing the benefits of such data reuse with various novel approaches implemented to tackle the challenges of this process. We also found that the patient moves in the focus of interest of CIS research. So the loop of information logistics begins to close: data from the patients is used to produce value for the patients.