A health system, health care system or healthcare system is an organization of people, institutions, and resources that delivers health care services to meet the health needs of target populations.
Cochrane is a British international charitable organisation formed to synthesize medical research findings to facilitate evidence-based choices about health interventions involving health professionals, patients and policy makers. It includes 53 review groups that are based at research institutions worldwide. Cochrane has over 37,000 volunteer experts from around the world.
Community health refers to non-treatment based health services that are delivered outside hospitals and clinics. Community health is a subset of public health that is taught to and practiced by clinicians as part of their normal duties. Community health volunteers and community health workers work with primary care providers to facilitate entry into, exit from and utilization of the formal health system by community members as well as providing supplementary services such as support groups or wellness events that are not offered by medical institutions.
A medical guideline is a document with the aim of guiding decisions and criteria regarding diagnosis, management, and treatment in specific areas of healthcare. Such documents have been in use for thousands of years during the entire history of medicine. However, in contrast to previous approaches, which were often based on tradition or authority, modern medical guidelines are based on an examination of current evidence within the paradigm of evidence-based medicine. They usually include summarized consensus statements on best practice in healthcare. A healthcare provider is obliged to know the medical guidelines of their profession, and has to decide whether to follow the recommendations of a guideline for an individual treatment.
Evidence-based design (EBD) is the process of constructing a building or physical environment based on scientific research to achieve the best possible outcomes. Evidence-based design is especially important in evidence-based medicine, where research has shown that environment design can affect patient outcomes. It is also used in architecture, interior design, landscape architecture, facilities management, education, and urban planning. Evidence-based design is part of the larger movement towards evidence-based practices.
Health human resources (HHR) – also known as human resources for health (HRH) or health workforce – is defined as "all people engaged in actions whose primary intent is to enhance positive health outcomes", according to World Health Organization's World Health Report 2006. Human resources for health are identified as one of the six core building blocks of a health system. They include physicians, nursing professionals, pharmacists, midwives, dentists, allied health professions, community health workers, and other social service and health care providers.
Population health has been defined as "the health outcomes of a group of individuals, including the distribution of such outcomes within the group". It is an approach to health that aims to improve the health of an entire human population. It has been described as consisting of three components. These are "health outcomes, patterns of health determinants, and policies and interventions".
A systematic review is a scholarly synthesis of the evidence on a clearly presented topic using critical methods to identify, define and assess research on the topic. A systematic review extracts and interprets data from published studies on the topic, then analyzes, describes, critically appraises and summarizes interpretations into a refined evidence-based conclusion. For example, a systematic review of randomized controlled trials is a way of summarizing and implementing evidence-based medicine.
Patient safety is a discipline that emphasizes safety in health care through the prevention, reduction, reporting and analysis of error and other types of unnecessary harm that often lead to adverse patient events. The magnitude of avoidable adverse events, often known as patient safety incidents, experienced by patients was not well known until the 1990s, when multiple countries reported significant numbers of patients harmed and killed by medical errors. After recognizing that healthcare errors impact 1 in every 10 patients around the world, the World Health Organization (WHO) calls patient safety an endemic concern. Indeed, patient safety has emerged as a distinct healthcare discipline supported by an immature yet developing scientific framework. There is a significant transdisciplinary body of theoretical and research literature that informs the science of patient safety with mobile health apps being a growing area of research.
A patient safety organization (PSO) is a group, institution, or association that improves medical care by reducing medical errors. Common functions of patient safety organizations are data collection, analysis, reporting, education, funding, and advocacy. A PSO differs from a Federally designed Patient Safety Organization (PSO), which provides health care providers in the U.S. privilege and confidentiality protections for efforts to improve patient safety and the quality of patient care delivery
Health administration, healthcare administration, healthcare management or hospitalmanagement is the field relating to leadership, management, and administration of public health systems, health care systems, hospitals, and hospital networks in all the primary, secondary, and tertiary sectors.
A clinical pathway, also known as care pathway, integrated care pathway, critical pathway, or care map, is one of the main tools used to manage the quality in healthcare concerning the standardisation of care processes. It has been shown that their implementation reduces the variability in clinical practice and improves outcomes. Clinical pathways aim to promote organised and efficient patient care based on evidence-based medicine, and aim to optimise outcomes in settings such as acute care and home care. A single clinical pathway may refer to multiple clinical guidelines on several topics in a well specified context.
In economics, supplier induced demand (SID) may occur when asymmetry of information exists between supplier and consumer. The supplier can use superior information to encourage an individual to demand a greater quantity of the good or service they supply than the Pareto efficient level, should asymmetric information not exist. The result of this is a welfare loss.
Patient participation is a trend that arose in answer to medical paternalism. Informed consent is a process where patients make decisions informed by the advice of medical professionals.
Critical appraisal in evidence based medicine, is the use of explicit, transparent methods to assess the data in published research, applying the rules of evidence to factors such as internal validity, adherence to reporting standards, conclusions, generalizability and risk-of-bias. Critical appraisal methods form a central part of the systematic review process. They are used in evidence synthesis to assist clinical decision-making, and are increasingly used in evidence-based social care and education provision.
The Patient Activation Measure (PAM) is a commercial product which assesses an individual's knowledge, skill, and confidence for managing one's health and healthcare. Individuals who measure high on this assessment typically understand the importance of taking a pro-active role in managing their health and have the skills and confidence to do so.
Health care quality is a level of value provided by any health care resource, as determined by some measurement. As with quality in other fields, it is an assessment of whether something is good enough and whether it is suitable for its purpose. The goal of health care is to provide medical resources of high quality to all who need them; that is, to ensure good quality of life, cure illnesses when possible, to extend life expectancy, and so on. Researchers use a variety of quality measures to attempt to determine health care quality, including counts of a therapy's reduction or lessening of diseases identified by medical diagnosis, a decrease in the number of risk factors which people have following preventive care, or a survey of health indicators in a population who are accessing certain kinds of care.
The National & Gulf Center for Evidence Based Health Practice has been established with the initiative of Bandar Al Knawy, Chief Executive Officer of National Guard Health Affairs, and with the support of former chief executive, Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Rabiah in March 2004. The center is recognized by the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf Ministers of Health as a reference to evidence-based medicine (EBM) in Saudi Arabia and the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf (GCC). The center is an affiliated center to Evidence Based Clinical Practice Group in McMaster University, Canada. This group is led by Gordon Guyatt. It is also a collaborating centre to The Joanna Briggs Institute for Evidence Based Health care, in the University of Adelaide, Australia. The center works in contact, coordination and collaboration with the National EBM committee, GCC Ministers of Health Executive Office, Arabian Gulf University EBM Center, Bahrain, University of Sharjah EBM center, United Arab Emirates, and Sultan Qaboos University EBM Center, Oman.
Learning health systems (LHS) are health and healthcare systems in which knowledge generation processes are embedded in daily practice to improve individual and population health. At its most fundamental level, a learning health system applies a conceptual approach wherein science, informatics, incentives, and culture are aligned to support continuous improvement, innovation, and equity, and seamlessly embed knowledge and best practices into care delivery
Alternative medicine is a term often used to describe medical practices where are untested or untestable. Complementary medicine (CM), complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), integrated medicine or integrative medicine (IM), functional medicine, and holistic medicine are among many rebrandings of the same phenomenon.
