Clinical Use of Emergency Medical Information by Using a Computerized Network and the Internet

Ahn,  Ryoek; Lim,  Kyoung Soo; Kim,  Won

J Korean Soc Emerg Med > Volume 13(3); 2002 > Article

Original Article

Journal of The Korean Society of Emergency Medicine 2002;13(3): 262-268.

Clinical Use of Emergency Medical Information by Using a Computerized Network and the Internet

Ryoek Ahn, Kyoung Soo Lim, Won Kim

Department of Emergency Medicine, Asan Medical Center, Seoul, Korea. kslim@amc.seoul.kr

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE:
To provide effective emergency care, the emergency physician should get medical information as rapidly as possible. They could get medical data within a few minutes if all the data were saved as digitalized data. We compared the time spent to get medical information and the time to make a transportation report between a computerized system and a non-computerized system. METHOD: The cases of 2,131 emergency patients who had been treated previously at Asan Medical Center (AMC) and who revisited the center were analyzed to compare the time spent getting previous medical information, and 241 cases of patients who were transported to another hospital after emergency care were analyzed to estimate the time spent making transportation reports and copying X-ray images. The data for the patients were estimated in two ways, using a computerized system and using a non-computerized one. The computerized group used the OCS (order communication system), the PACS (picture archiving communication system), the EMR (electronic medical record), and the webbased medical information system (http://cyber-AMC.net).
RESULTS:
The time spent to get previous medical information was 33.7+/-5.1 seconds in the computerized group compared with 1313.2+/-271.5 seconds in the noncomputerized group. To get the X-ray images, 17.3+/-9.8 seconds was spent in the computerized group, where as longer time of 1432.8+/-317.6 seconds was need in the non-computerized group (p value < 0.01). The time spent to make a transportation report was 172.8+/-32.1 seconds in the computerized group compared with 473.8 +/- 117.1 seconds in the non-computerized group. The time spent to copy the X-ray image was 67.2 +/-7.5 seconds in the computerized group, and 613.4+/-300.7 seconds in the other group (p value < 0.01).
CONCLUSION:
By use of a computerized medical information system, the emergency physician can get medical information and previous X-ray images rapidly and effectively, and can make the transportation reports and slides of X-ray images quickly.

Key words: OCS, PACS, EMR, Medical information