Health Telematics for Clinical Guidelines and Protocols

Book excerpt: Guidelines for clinical practice (sometimes also termed practice policies) receive increasing attention from clinicians and health services as means for applying best current knowledge to maximise the quality and efficiency of delivered care. Earlier studies confirm the growing and widespread importance of this trend within medicine, and the widely recognised potential for healthcare telematics as a means to enable the use of clinical guidelines to deliver fullest benefits to patients. This book explores the scope and needs for further work in this area. Listed by Biological Abstracts/RRM, BIOSIS, volume 47, issue 4, April 1994 "...the papers presented are wide ranging, such that anyone with an interest in any aspect of guideline development or application is likely to find something worthwhile. It is, therefore, a book to dip into according to the reader's interest. Even clinicians with little knowledge of telematics will find several chapters on the principles of clinical guidelines and protocols of interest, while those from the field of telematics will find plenty of material regarding the complexities of representation of clinical knowledge." - L. Boydell, S&E Belfast Health and Social Services Trust, Belfast, UK Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare, volume 2, no. 1, 1996, p. 61-62