Observations of daily living (ODLs) are cues that people attend to in the course of their everyday life, that inform them about their health. [1] [2] [3]
ODLs are different from signs, symptoms, and clinical indicators in that they are defined by the patient, and are not necessarily directly mapped to biomedical models of disease and illness. Examples of ODLs include observations about sleep patterns, exercise behavior and activity trackers, nutritional intake, [4] attitudes and moods, alertness at work or in class, and environmental features such as clutter in the living or working space. Not all patient-generated data constitute ODLs. For example, a patient with diabetes may record their blood glucose levels every day at home, generating data to share with their clinician. That kind of patient-generated data is crucial to inform clinical decision making, but does not constitute ODLs. ODLs are typically defined by patients [5] and their families [6] because they are meaningful to them, [7] and help them self-manage their health [8] and make decisions about it. [9] ODLs may very well complement biomedical indicators and inform medical decision making by providing a more complete and holistic view of the patient as a whole person, [10] provided they are properly integrated in clinical workflows and supported by health information technologies. [11]
Occupational therapists (OTs) are health care professionals specializing in occupational therapy and occupational science. OTs and occupational therapy assistants (OTAs) use scientific bases and a holistic perspective to promote a person's ability to fulfill their daily routines and roles. OTs have immense training in the physical, psychological, and social aspects of human functioning deriving from an education grounded in anatomical and physiological concepts, and psychological perspectives. They enable individuals across the lifespan by optimizing their abilities to perform activities that are meaningful to them ("occupations"). Human occupations include activities of daily living, work/vocation, play, education, leisure, rest and sleep, and social participation.
In developmental psychology and moral, political, and bioethical philosophy, autonomy is the capacity to make an informed, uncoerced decision. Autonomous organizations or institutions are independent or self-governing. Autonomy can also be defined from a human resources perspective, where it denotes a level of discretion granted to an employee in his or her work. In such cases, autonomy is known to generally increase job satisfaction. Self-actualized individuals are thought to operate autonomously of external expectations. In a medical context, respect for a patient's personal autonomy is considered one of many fundamental ethical principles in medicine.
Activities of daily living is a term used in healthcare to refer to people's daily self-care activities. Health professionals often use a person's ability or inability to perform ADLs as a measurement of their functional status. The concept of ADLs was originally proposed in the 1950s by Sidney Katz and his team at the Benjamin Rose Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio. The concept of ADLs has been added to and refined by a variety of researchers since that time. For example, many indexes that assess ADLs now include some measure of mobility. Additionally, to be more inclusive of the range of activities that support independent living, in 1969, Lawton and Brody developed the instrumental activities of daily living (IADLs). ADLs are often used in the care of people with disabilities, people with injuries, and the elderly. Younger children often require help from adults to perform ADLs, as they have not yet developed the skills necessary to perform them independently.
Health care is the maintenance or improvement of health via the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, amelioration, or cure of disease, illness, injury, and other physical and mental impairments in people. Health care is delivered by health professionals and allied health fields. Medicine, dentistry, pharmacy, midwifery, nursing, optometry, audiology, psychology, occupational therapy, physical therapy, athletic training, and other health professions are all part of health care. It includes work done in providing primary care, secondary care, and tertiary care, as well as in public health.
Health informatics is the field of science and engineering that aims at developing methods and technologies for the acquisition, processing, and study of patient data, which can come from different sources and modalities, such as electronic health records, diagnostic test results, medical scans. The health domain provides an extremely wide variety of problems that can be tackled using computational techniques.
A clinical decision support system (CDSS) is a health information technology, provides clinicians, staff, patients, or other individuals with knowledge and person-specific information, intelligently filtered or presented at appropriate times, to enhance health and health care. CDS encompasses a variety of tools to enhance decision-making in the clinical workflow. These tools include computerized alerts and reminders to care providers and patients; clinical guidelines; condition-specific order sets; focused patient data reports and summaries; documentation templates; diagnostic support, and contextually relevant reference information, among other tools. A working definition has been proposed by Robert Hayward of the Centre for Health Evidence: "Clinical decision support systems link health observations with health knowledge to influence health choices by clinicians for improved health care". CDSSs constitute a major topic in artificial intelligence in medicine.
Health technology is defined by the World Health Organization as the "application of organized knowledge and skills in the form of devices, medicines, vaccines, procedures, and systems developed to solve a health problem and improve quality of lives". This includes pharmaceuticals, devices, procedures, and organizational systems used in the healthcare industry, as well as computer-supported information systems. Predictive analytics also has been instrumental in helping healthcare organisations analyse resource shortage and other aspects ahead of time. In the United States, these technologies involve standardized physical objects, as well as traditional and designed social means and methods to treat or care for patients.
ODL may refer to:
Self-care has been defined as the process of taking care of oneself with behaviors that promote health and active management of illness when it occurs. Individuals engage in some form of self-care daily with food choices, exercise, sleep, and dental care. While the concept of self care has received increased attention in recent years, it has ancient origins. Socrates has been credited with founding the self-care movement in ancient Greece, and care are of oneself and loved ones has been shown to exist since human beings appeared on earth. Self-care remains a primary form of healthcare worldwide.
Health information management (HIM) is information management applied to health and health care. It is the practice of analyzing and protecting digital and traditional medical information vital to providing quality patient care. With the widespread computerization of health records, traditional (paper-based) records are being replaced with electronic health records (EHRs). The tools of health informatics and health information technology are continually improving to bring greater efficiency to information management in the health care sector. Both hospital information systems and Human Resource for Health Information Systems (HRHISs) are common implementations of HIM.
A caregiver is a paid or unpaid member of a person's social network who helps them with activities of daily living. Since they have no specific professional training, they are often described as informal caregivers. Caregivers most commonly assist with impairments related to old age, disability, a disease, or a mental disorder.
Chronic care management, encompasses the oversight and education activities conducted by health care professionals to help patients with chronic diseases and health conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure, systemic lupus erythematosus, multiple sclerosis, and sleep apnea learn to understand their condition and live successfully with it. This term is equivalent to disease management for chronic conditions. The work involves motivating patients to persist in necessary therapies and interventions and helping them to achieve an ongoing, reasonable quality of life.
Medical equipment management is a term for the professionals who manage operations, analyze and improve utilization and safety, and support servicing healthcare technology. These healthcare technology managers are, much like other healthcare professionals referred to by various specialty or organizational hierarchy names.
Patient participation is a trend that arose in answer to medical paternalism. However, only rarely can unchecked physician paternalism be justified, and unlimited patient autonomy would presumably be equally abhorrent. Informed consent is a process where patients make decisions informed by the advice of medical professionals.
Shared decision-making in medicine (SDM) is a process in which both the patient and physician contribute to the medical decision-making process and agree on treatment decisions. Health care providers explain treatments and alternatives to patients and help them choose the treatment option that best aligns with their preferences as well as their unique cultural and personal beliefs.
The quantified self refers both to the cultural phenomenon of self-tracking with technology and to a community of users and makers of self-tracking tools who share an interest in "self-knowledge through numbers". Quantified self practices overlap with the practice of lifelogging and other trends that incorporate technology and data acquisition into daily life, often with the goal of improving physical, mental, and emotional performance. The widespread adoption in recent years of wearable fitness and sleep trackers such as the Fitbit or the Apple Watch, combined with the increased presence of Internet of things in healthcare and in exercise equipment, have made self-tracking accessible to a large segment of the population.
Digital health is a discipline that includes digital care programs, technologies with health, healthcare, living, and society to enhance the efficiency of healthcare delivery and to make medicine more personalized and precise. It uses information and communication technologies to facilitate understanding of health problems and challenges faced by people receiving medical treatment and social prescribing in more personalised and precise ways.
Medical image sharing is the electronic exchange of medical images between hospitals, physicians and patients. Rather than using traditional media, such as a CD or DVD, and either shipping it out or having patients carry it with them, technology now allows for the sharing of these images using the cloud. The primary format for images is DICOM. Typically, non-image data such as reports may be attached in standard formats like PDF during the sending process. Additionally, there are standards in the industry, such as IHE Cross Enterprise Document Sharing for Imaging (XDS-I), for managing the sharing of documents between healthcare enterprises. A typical architecture involved in setup is a locally installed server, which sits behind the firewall, allowing secure transmissions with outside facilities. In 2009, the Radiological Society of North America launched the "Image Share" project, with the goal of giving patients control of their imaging histories by allowing them to manage these records as they would online banking or shopping.
Health care analytics is the health care analysis activities that can be undertaken as a result of data collected from four areas within healthcare; claims and cost data, pharmaceutical and research and development (R&D) data, clinical data, and patient behavior and sentiment data (patient behaviors and preferences,. Health care analytics is a growing industry in the United States, expected to grow to more than $31 billion by 2022. The industry focuses on the areas of clinical analysis, financial analysis, supply chain analysis, as well as marketing, fraud and HR analysis.
Dean Forrest Sittig is an American biomedical informatician specializing in clinical informatics. He is a professor in Biomedical Informatics at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston and Executive Director of the Clinical Informatics Research Collaborative (CIRCLE). Sittig was elected as a fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics in 1992, the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society in 2011, and was a founding member of the International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics in 2017. Since 2004, he has worked with Joan S. Ash, a professor at Oregon Health & Science University to interview several Pioneers in Medical Informatics, including G. Octo Barnett, MD, Morris F. Collen, MD, Donald E. Detmer, MD, Donald A. B. Lindberg, MD, Nina W. Matheson, ML, DSc, Clement J. McDonald, MD, and Homer R. Warner, MD, PhD.