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This important new volume presents recent research in healthcare information technology and analytics.℗ℓ Individual chapters look at such issues as the impact of technology failure on electronic prescribing behavior in primary care; attitudes toward electronic health records; a latent growth modeling approach to understanding lifestyle decisions based on patient historical data; designing an integrated surgical care delivery system using axiomatic design and petri net modeling; and failure in a dynamic decision environment, particularly in treating patients with a chronic disease. Other chapters look at such topics as the impact of information technology integration in integrated delivery systems; operations and supply chain control for inventory management in a health system pharmacy; decision-theoretic assistants based on contextual gesture recognition; evaluating emergency response medical information systems; clinical decision support in critical care; virtual worlds in healthcare; and natural language processing for understanding contraceptive use at the VA

Reading product labels is a common and important use of literacy and numeracy skills in daily life. Instructions for commercial oral-rehydration-therapy salt solutions were examined. The products are widely available in rural Kenya, where they are purchased for alleviating the symptoms of life-threatening diarrheal dehydration. Many features of these texts do not facilitate comprehension. Information about preparation, dosage, administration, storage, and precautions is difficult to locate, few discourse conventions are used to enable readers to efficiently process information, and much tacit knowledge is presumed—including knowledge of English even when a Kiswahili translation is provided. Numeracy tasks associated with compliance with the treatment regime cannot be easily performed with school-learned mathematical algorithms. Measuring and teaching functional literacy and numeracy skills necessitates a better understanding of the kinds of texts that readers will encounter and analyzing the comprehension and problem-solving skills they require.

Federal legislation (Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act) has provided funds to support an unprecedented increase in health information technology (HIT) adoption for healthcare provider organizations and professionals throughout the U.S. While recognizing the promise that widespread HIT adoption and meaningful use can bring to efforts to improve the quality, safety, and efficiency of healthcare, the American Medical Informatics Association devoted its 2009 Annual Health Policy Meeting to consideration of unanticipated consequences that could result with the increased implementation of HIT. Conference participants focused on possible unintended and unanticipated, as well as undesirable, consequences of HIT implementation. They employed an input–output model to guide discussion on occurrence of these consequences in four domains: technical, human/cognitive, organizational, and fiscal/policy and regulation. The authors outline the conference's recommendations: (1) an enhanced research agenda to guide study into the causes, manifestations, and mitigation of unintended consequences resulting from HIT implementations; (2) creation of a framework to promote sharing of HIT implementation experiences and the development of best practices that minimize unintended consequences; and (3) recognition of the key role of the Federal Government in providing leadership and oversight in analyzing the effects of HIT-related implementations and policies.