Determining What to Study - Evaluation Methods in Biomedical Informatics - page 71

FIGURE 3.2. Components of a generic information resource.
evaluation studies can guide further development; indicate if the resource
is likely to be safe for use in real patient-care, research, or educational set-
tings; or elucidate if it has the potential to improve the professional per-
formance of the users and disease outcomes in their clients.
As shown in Figure 3.2, information resources are built from many
components, each with many functions that can be tested. A sample of the
more specific functions most relevant to particular resource components or
to intact biomedical information resources of different kinds is listed in
Appendix B.
Many other works elaborate on the points offered here. Spiegelhalter 16
and Gaschnig and colleagues 17 discussed these phases of evaluation in more
detail, drawing analogies from the evaluation of new drugs or the
conventional software life cycle, respectively. Wasson and colleagues 18
discussed the evaluation of clinical prediction rules together with some
useful methodological standards that apply equally to information re-
sources. Lundsgaarde, 19 Miller, 20 Nykanen, 21 and Wyatt and Spiegelhalter 22
described, with differing emphases, the evaluation of healthcare informa-