نشریه مدیریت اطلاعات سلامت
سال دهم شماره 6 (پیاپی 34، بهمن و اسفند 1392)

Nowadays, with the advent of electronic medical records (EMR), the need for information sharing has increased. As a result, more attention should be paid to the security and confidentiality of information systems. In this research, information security in hospital information systems was investigated considering three dimensions (administrative, technical and physical) in the hospitals affiliated to Tehran and Shahid Beheshti Universities of Medical Sciences. This was an applied research study completed in 2012. The study population composed of information technology managers working in the hospitals affiliated to Tehran and Shahid Beheshti Universities of Medical Sciences, and the representatives of software companies. Data were collected using a questionnaire. To check the face and content validity of the questionnaire, experts’ views were investigated and the reliability of the questionnaire was confirmed using Cronbach’s Coefficient Alpha (=α 0/75). Descriptive and inferential statistics, such as t-test were used to analyze data. The study results showed that most of the hospitals had addressed issues related to information security in hospital information systems, and all three dimensions had been taken into account. There was no significant difference between the level of information security in the teaching and the non-teaching hospitals. However, there was a significant difference between the views of the information technology managers and the perspectives of the software companies’ representatives about the technical dimension of information security. Although the information security in hospital information systems was evaluated at the acceptable level, planning and implementing more effective security policies are necessary to overcome weaknesses in different dimensions of information security.

In the past decades, machine learning algorithms have become a useful tool for data mining within huge amounts of health data to create prediction models. Burn is one of the diseases that predicting of its outcome has high importance. The aim of this study was to survey two widely used machine learning algorithms; neural network and decision tree, and compare them with logistic regression method to predict the outcome of burn patients. In this retrospective observational study, following preprocessing of the data and determining the outcome of patient (live or death), two well-known machine learning algorithms (neural network and decision tree) and logistic regression method were used to create prediction models using data from 4804 burn patients hospitalized in Taleghani Burn Center in Ahvaz during the years 2001-2007. The preprocessing of the data was performed using SPSS (Version16.0), and in the modeling phase, Clementine (Version 12.0) software was used. Moreover, 10-fold cross validation technique was used to validate the model and criteria for evaluating the performance of models were measured and compared. The results showed that the neural network algorithm with accuracy of 97% resulted the most accurate model on the studied data. The decision tree model with 95% accuracy was in the second place and the logistic regression model with an accuracy of 90% was the least accurate. Moreover other evaluating criteria such as sensitivity, specificity, PPV, NPV and AUC showed that performance of the neural network model was better than the others. The current study shows that machine learning algorithms compared with statistical methods create more accurate models. In analyzing the current data, the model created by artificial neural network is more accurate than the other machine learning algorithm, decision tree.Keywords: Data Mining; Machine Learning; Forecasting; Decision Tree; Artificial Neural Network; Burns

Technology Acceptance Model is used to describe human behavior in relation to the information systems. Concentrating on the model, the present research tries to recognize and examine the factors affecting the hospital information system in the teaching hospitals of Tehran University of Medical Sciences. This paper was a cross- sectional and correlation study conducted in 1390 AH (March 19, 2011 to March 20, 2012). The research population covered 185 respondents including the medical records personnel of the teaching hospitals of Tehran University of Medical Sciences. The data were gathered using a questionnaire (developed by the author comparing the similar studies), which validity was confirmed by a committee of experts and the reliability was calculated (before the study began) using a Cronbach α (α=0.93) in a 50 people sample. The descriptive statistics and non-parametrical analysis of the Spearman rank correlation was applied to the data analysis using an SPSS18. The findings suggested a positive correlation individually between Behavioral Intention and the factors of perceived usefulness (Pvalue<0.01, r=0.521), perceived ease of use (Pvalue<0.01, r=0.469), self efficacy (Pvalue<0.01, r=0.548), end user support (Pvalue<0.01, r=0.399), social norms (Pvalue<0.01, r=0.383), Trust (Pvalue<0.01, r=0.501), job relations (Pvalue<0.01, r=0.587), and training (Pvalue<0.05, r=0.263), but no correlation was seen between Behavioral Intention and the factors of anxiety (Pvalue<0.01, r=0.150), voluntariness (Pvalue<0.01, r=0.147), and facilitating conditions (Pvalue<0.01, r=0.046). Based on the results obtained from this study, it could be concluded that pay more attention to the factors affected on users’ acceptance may caused to more usage of new technologies in medical records departments. In addition, the results of such studies could be useful in terms of designing new systems to make better coverage on users needs.

Scientific documents indexed in citation indices could show the scientific production of an academic institution if the author introduces him/her as a member of that institution. Researchers and faculty members should know about their standard and correct affiliation to declare it in their articles. Nonstandard affiliation could make problems in counting scientific production which can lead to unrealistic wrong place in universities ranking. Identifying scientific documents with wrong affiliation could help the university to correct them in order to reflect more realistic view of scientific production. This study has been done in a cross-sectional descriptive survey. Research community was 761 documents produces by researchers of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences which is indexed with nonstandard affiliation in Scopus and Web of Science till 2011. As a keyword, "Shiraz" was searched in "affiliation" field in both citation indices. All the documents with nonstandard affiliation were assessed according to their number of citation, subject and type of documents. The results were analyzed with descriptive statistic methods and Excel software. Publication trend of documents were ascending till 2008 and 2009 and then descending. Most of these documents have been cited between zero to 10 times, the least one has a number of 51 to 60 citations. The highest numbers of these documents are original articles. Presence of significant number of documents with nonstandard affiliation shows importance of establishing of accurate policies for the integration of the organization's name and detailed information to investigators to prevent the continuation of this trend. Fortunately however, this trend has been declining in recent years, which may reflect establishment of such a policy and pay attention to this matter.

Because of the importance of the marketing activities and libraries need to such activities, it is necessary to do a research on libraries of Zabol Medical Science University usage of marketing principles in order to have a better plan for the future on the basis of present situation evaluation. The study is an applied one and survey method has been used as the method of data collection. The population of the study is the entire libraries of Zabol city. These libraries were classified in four categories, libraries of Medical Science University (5 libraries), public libraries (7 Libraries), central library of Zabol University and Zabol Islamic Azad University. Using SPSS11 statistical software and descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data. Investigation of marketing mixes on the basis of Product mix showed that central library of Zabol University with the average (2.89), central library of Medical Science University (2.71), Islamic Azad University (2.37) and the public libraries (1.86) are in first rank to fourth respectively. The results also showed that on the basis of Place mix ranking of first to fourth are respectively related to Islamic Azad University (3), central library of Medical Science University (2.42), central library of Zabol University (2.15) and the public libraries (1.79). In Promotion mix, Islamic Azad University (2.09), library of Medical Science University (1.84), central library of Zabol University (1.64) and public libraries (14.1) are in first to fourth rank respectively. The results of this study showed that libraries of medical science university are in better situation on the basis of marketing mixes. According to the chart results, the highest average in the mean of marketing mixes is less than 3 that indicates the libraries which are in better situation than the other libraries, are in the intermediate level and their services are not desirable.

The huge volume of information and images on the Internet and its increasing growth has made the optimized search performance difficult for users. Among search tools, search engines are mostly used by users. This research was aimed to determine and compare the precision of general and specialized search engines in medical images retrieval.

This applied, comparative approach survey was conducted in 2011. The research sample included 2 general search engines, i.e. Yahoo and Google, and 2 specialized medical search engines, i.e. OmniMedicalSearch and Trip Database. In order to determine and compare the precision of image retrieval in the four search engines, 10 medical keywords were chosen after consulting medical specialists and were searched in the mentioned search engines. Then the first 10 results retrieved by each search engine were extracted and the opinions of medical specialists about relevance of results were received. Descriptive statistics, Independent t-test were used to analyze the data with SPSS.

It was found that Google search engine has the most precision (90) in retrieving of relevant medical images and then OmniMedicalSearch search engine has precision to be equal 86/8. Among general search engines and specialized medical search engines there aren’t meaningful differences in retrieval of medical images.

Despite of some overlap between search engines results, each search engine also was retrieved unique results. This matter indicate that the indexing algorithm of resources on the web different in the various search engines; and it is suggested to use several general and specialized search engines simultaneously to search medical images.

Biomarkers are indicators than can be evaluated and found in biological environments. They are also used as indicator to determine the natural biological and pathological process, even as reactions to pharmacologic treatments. The major aim of current study is to analyze the scientific outputs in the field of Biomarkers and to determine the prolific countries in the field. All data was extracted from biological database of MEDLINE. Extracting data was restricted to the MeSH term of Biological Markers in the time span of 2000-2010. Excel and SPSS18 software packages were used for the statistical analysis of gathered data. The result of study showed that a total number of 116,368 scientific documents have been indexed as a main heading of Biological Markers in MEDLINE through 2000-2010. Middle East countries all together have shared 2.1 % of total publication in MEDLINE. Shiraz university of Medical Science sharing 20% of total publication from Iran was the most productive university among Iranian educational institutes. Although the number of scientific output in the field of Biomarkers has increased during the period of study and Iran appeared active in this process, but the gap between Iranian production and influences countries still is great and considerable. Policy makers’ Attention is needed to remove the barriers and pave the way for future scientific activities in the country.

An organization attains the missions and targets when it could satisfy its client. Considering this fact, the current research carried out to investigate the relationship among emotional intelligence, personality characteristics and demographic variables of the personnel of Isfahan Medical University with client satisfaction with moderating role of Perceived organizational justice. The method of the study is basically descriptive-correlation. The tool used to collect the data was included the NEO personality questionnaire, Servqual questionnaire, organizational justice questionnaire, emotional intelligence questionnaire, and demographic characteristics questionnaire. The validity of the questionnaires were confirmed by the professionals and the reliability of them were examined using Cronbach’s Alpha in which for the NEO personality questionnaire was found between 68 percent to 83 percent, for Servqual questionnaire, 88 percent, for organizational justice questionnaire, 91 percent and for the emotional intelligence questionnaire, 86 percent was obtained. The research was done in Isfahan Medical University in the year of 2012. The descriptive and inferential statistical analysis was done using SPSS. The analysis of the data revealed that there was a significant relationship between client's satisfaction with emotional intelligence, personality characteristics and perceived organizational justice (R=0/870, R2=0.757). Also, no significant correlation was found between demographic characteristics of the personnel with client's satisfaction with moderating role of perceived organizational justice (Pvalue<0/05). According to the impact of perceived organizational justice on the relationship between emotional intelligence and personality of the personnel, with client satisfaction, focusing on ndividual issues is important to improving client satisfaction. In this regard emotional intelligence is a special place.

Health literacy is the degree to which people understand the health information and can operate in the health care system. Consequences of low health literacy occur both directly and indirectly. Therefore, the aim of this study was to determine health literacy, health status and health services utilization and their relationships in adults in Isfahan. This study was a descriptive analytical survey on 300 (18-64 years old) people in Isfahan, multi stage sampling was performed. For collecting the data, questionnaire adapted from CHAP (Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) health literacy questionnaire was used. Health status was measured by self-assessment of physical and mental health over the last 6 months. Health services utilization was asked by six areas that include the number of GP visits, number of special physician visits, number of outpatient or clinic visits, number of the emergency department visits, number of diagnostic services use of the last 3 months and the hospitalization in the past year. For data analysis SPSS18 software, descriptive statistics and Chi-square test was used. Average health literacy score was 2.4, which was moderate. The average health status score was 3.1, which was good and the average health services utilization score was 2.1, which was weak. Health literacy, health status and health care utilization were not statistically significant. Levels of education and place of residence were effective on health services utilization. According to the average prevalence of health literacy in adults in Isfahan and low health services utilization, more attention to the improvement of health literacy and doctor-patient relationship and awareness of community through health programs and media was recommended.

Health Technology Assessment (HTA) is increasingly being utilized on a global scale to improve the clinical and cost-effectiveness of healthcare resource utilization. The aim of this study was to address the need of a HTA system for Iranian health system. This study was a needs assessment study which performed in four steps. Firstly, a comprehensive review and semi-structured interviews were undertaken to identify challenges, nature and the context of health system in Iran in which the system of HTA would be applied. Secondly, a detailed analysis of individual aspects of the Iranian healthcare system was done to realize the roots and the sources of the problems. Thirdly, a wide-range review was undertaken to understand the concept, philosophy and the aim of a HTA system as one of the potential solutions to improve Effectiveness, Efficiency, and Equity (EEE) of healthcare delivery system in Iran. Finally, the priority and extent to which the introduction of HTA to Iran would assist in achieving the objectives of the Iranian healthcare system was assessed. The review and the 38 interviews with key informants identified that healthcare delivery, health insurance, and pharmaceutical systems have faced serious EEE problems. These problems are originated from both structural deficiency and healthcare policies; the policies which were based mainly on pressure rather than evidence. The review of the literature illustrated that the main aim of HTA development was to improve the EEE of the healthcare system. Nevertheless to ensure such improvement, it is necessary to consider to the context of a health system. Development of a HTA system in Iran would enhance the development of clinical guidelines as well as economic evaluation studies. It could also improve managing new health technologies in some ways. Nonetheless focusing on the sources of inefficiency and inequity of the health system (policy and planning) could improve the efficiency of the system more effectively and thus is more cost-effective. This could also provide an appropriate context for an effective HTA system within the health system in Iran.