Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 5.5-7 Hospital Summary: This screen is primarily used by administrators who need to see a global view of the hospital status.
Table and Pareto charts profile the various units and the current status summaries of each unit. These patients also can be rolled up into
services, or grouped by physician. In addition, patients can be aggregated in many other ways, such as time of admission, LOS, and
admitting diagnosis.
days, discharges, percentage of occupancy, ALOS, reve-
nues, and expenses), and departmental indicators (e.g.,
salary, non-salary, total expenses, expense per equivalent
discharge, and DRGs). Other applications of PIVIT in-
clude 360-degree peer review, customer satisfaction
profiling, and medical equipment risk assessment.
PIVIT can access data from multiple data sources.
Virtually any parameter can be easily accessed and
displayed from standard spreadsheet and database ap-
plications (e.g., Microsoft Access, Excel, Sybase, and
Oracle), using Microsoft's Open Database Connectivity
(ODBC) technology. Furthermore, multiple parameters
can be profiled and compared in real time to any other
parameter via interactive polar plots and three-
dimensional displays. In addition to real-time profiling,
other analyses, such as SPC, can be employed to view
large data sets in a graphical format. SPC has been ap-
plied successfully for decades to help companies reduce
variability in manufacturing processes. These SPC tools
range from Pareto graphs to Run and Control charts.
Although it will not be possible to describe all of these
applications, several examples are provided below to
illustrate the power of PIVIT.
Trending, relationships, and interactive
alarms
Figure 5.5-11
illustrates a virtual instrument that in-
teractively accesses institutional and department-specific
indicators and profiles them for comparison. Data sets
can be acquired directly from standard spreadsheet and
database applications (e.g., Microsoft Access, Excel,
Sybase, and Oracle). This capability has proved to be
quite valuable with respect to quickly accessing and
viewing large sets of data. Typically, multiple data sets
contained within a spreadsheet or database had to be
selected, and then a new chart of these data had to be
created. Using PIVIT, the user simply selects the desired
parameter from any one of the pull-down menus, and
this data set is instantly graphed and compared to any
other data set.
