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Open Access Publications from the University of California

Scholarly Works (4 results)

  • Thesis
  • Peer Reviewed
UC Davis Electronic Theses and Dissertations (2023)

Whether treating an influenza-like illness or tending to a critical patient, laboratory testing is essential for making the correct medical diagnosis and corresponding decisions. According to the CDC providers rely on laboratory results in 70% of cases to aid in patient diagnoses and treatment. The provider having accurate, timely, and clearly communicated results is essential to patient treatment and patient safety. Information technology (IT) and other criteria for Point-of-Care (POC) testing include that there be fast turnaround times (TAT), ease of use, portability, robustness, and high sensitivity and specificity. The Covid-19 pandemic and other epidemics have brought to the forefront the urgent and growing need for POC testing. The development of new assays and emerging technologies, such as lateral flow immunoassays (LFIA), reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), quantitative PCR (qPCR), RT-qPCR, multiplexed point-of-care testing (xPOCT), and lab-on-a-chip (LoC) technology, has allowed companies to provide waived testing kits and other handheld or small footprint analyzers while keeping costs low and allows for testing to be done in the presence of the patient. However, the extent to which POC testing in healthcare is done in compliance with and/or adherence to laboratory regulatory and health informatics implementation standards is not well known and few studies have addressed this phenomenon in context. Therefore, the purpose of this study is focused on how point-of-care testing is currently implemented in healthcare in compliance with regulatory and implementation standards. The study is conducted with systematic narrative review methodology following PRISMA (preferred reporting items for systematic review and meta-analysis) criteria.

    • Article
    • Peer Reviewed
    UC San Diego Previously Published Works (2017)

    Background

    Radiology reporting is a clinically oriented form of documentation that reflects critical information for patients about their health care processes. Realizing its importance, many medical institutions have started providing radiology reports in patient portals. The gain, however, can be limited because of medical language barriers, which require a way for customizing these reports for patients. The open-access, collaborative consumer health vocabulary (CHV) is a terminology system created for such purposes and can be the basis of lexical simplification processes for clinical notes.

    Objective

    The aim of this study was to examine the comprehensibility and suitability of CHV in simplifying radiology reports for consumers. This was done by characterizing the content coverage and the lexical similarity between the terms in the reports and the CHV-preferred terms.

    Methods

    The overall procedure was divided into the following two main stages: (1) translation and (2) evaluation. The translation process involved using MetaMap to link terms in the reports to CHV concepts. This is followed by replacing the terms with CHV-preferred terms using the concept names and sources table (MRCONSO) in the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) Metathesaurus. In the second stage, medical terms in the reports and general terms that are used to describe medical phenomena were selected and evaluated by comparing the words in the original reports with the translated ones. The evaluation includes measuring the content coverage, investigating lexical similarity, and finding trends in missing concepts.

    Results

    Of the 792 terms selected from the radiology reports, 695 of them could be mapped directly to CHV concepts, indicating a content coverage of 88.5%. A total of 51 of the concepts (53%, 51/97) that could not be mapped are names of human anatomical structures and regions, followed by 28 anatomical descriptions and pathological variations (29%, 28/97). In addition, 12 radiology techniques and projections represented 12% of the unmapped concepts, whereas the remaining six concepts (6%, 12/97) were physiological descriptions. The rate of lexical similarity between the CHV-preferred terms and the terms in the radiology reports was approximately 72.6%.

    Conclusions

    The CHV covered a high percentage of concepts found in the radiology reports, but unmapped concepts are associated with areas that are commonly found in radiology reporting. CHV terms also showed a high percentage of lexical similarity with terms in the reports, which contain a myriad of medical jargon. This suggests that many CHV terms might not be suitable for lay consumers who would not be facile with radiology-specific vocabulary. Therefore, further patient-centered content changes are needed of the CHV to increase its usefulness and facilitate its integration into consumer-oriented applications.
      Cover page: Text Simplification Using Consumer Health Vocabulary to Generate Patient-Centered Radiology Reporting: Translation and Evaluation
      • Article
      • Peer Reviewed
      UC Irvine Previously Published Works (2018)
        Cover page: Longitudinal Effects of Supplemental Forage on the Honey Bee (Apis mellifera) Microbiota and Inter- and Intra-Colony Variability
        • Article
        • Peer Reviewed
        UC Irvine Previously Published Works (2018)
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