Home  About us  Contact
 

Systems Developers (system + developers)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Information Science and Computing60%

Selected Abstracts

An Internet-Based Survey of Icelandic Nurses on Their Use of and Attitudes Toward NANDA, NIC, and NOC

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF NURSING TERMINOLOGIES AND CLASSIFICATION, Issue 2003
Gyda Bjornsdottir
PURPOSE To gain understanding of how Icelandic nurses can be supported during a mandated change to the use of NANDA and NIC in clinical documentation practices. METHODS All members of the Icelandic Nurses Association of working age were invited to participate in an Internet-based survey. Each nurse was assigned a unique password mailed to his/her home along with information on how to access the survey Web site. Each nurse could submit answers only once. On submission, data were automatically coded and saved in a database under encrypted numerical identifiers. FINDINGS A total of 463 nurses (18% response rate) participated by submitting answers. The sample was representative of the population in terms of demographic characteristics. Information resources most valued when planning nursing care included text-based progress notes (77%), nursing care plans (52%), doctor's orders (49%), verbal information (48%), and documented nursing diagnoses (37%). Of the participants, 58% said NANDA was used in their workplace; 28% said no standardized nursing documentation was used; 19% reported using NIC always or sometimes when documenting nursing interventions; and 20% never used NIC. NOC use was reported only by researchers. Of the sample, 86% reported that it is important or necessary for nurses to standardize documentation practices; 30% found NANDA useful in education; 56% found it useful for clinical work; 17% for research; and 7% found it not useful at all. Nine percent believed that NANDA diagnoses were not descriptive enough of patients' problems, and 23% found their wording problematic. No statistically significant differences were found between reported use of or attitudes toward NANDA and NIC when comparing nurses who use electronic patient record systems that support NANDA and NIC documentation and those who use paper documentation only. DISCUSSION The sample may have been somewhat biased toward computer use and classification system use for standardized and computerized documentation. However, results indicate that although Icelandic nurses give free-text progress notes and verbal information a higher priority than nursing diagnoses as an information resource for care planning, they have a positive attitude toward NANDA. NANDA and NIC are still used inconsistently in clinical practice, and 28% of participants claimed not to use any form of standardized documentation. CONCLUSIONS In an effort to standardize clinical documentation among nurses, Icelandic health authorities must follow their documentation mandates with educational and technologic support to facilitate the use of NANDA, NIC, and (after its translation) NOC in nursing documentation practices. Electronic patient record system developers must find ways to further facilitate standardized nursing documentation because currently there seems to be no difference between users and nonusers in terms of how they use NANDA and NIC in their documentation practices. [source]

A Complexity Model and a Polynomial Algorithm for Decision-Tree-Based Feature Construction

COMPUTATIONAL INTELLIGENCE, Issue 1 2000
Raymond L. Major
Using decision trees as a concept description language, we examine the time complexity for learning Boolean functions with polynomial-sized disjunctive normal form expressions when feature construction is performed on an initial decision tree containing only primitive attributes. A shortcoming of several feature-construction algorithms found in the literature is that it is difficult to develop time complexity results for them. We illustrate a way to determine a limit on the number of features to use for building more concise trees within a standard amount of time. We introduce a practical algorithm that forms a finite number of features using a decision tree in a polynomial amount of time. We show empirically that our procedure forms many features that subsequently appear in a tree and the new features aid in producing simpler trees when concepts are being learned from certain problem domains. Expert systems developers can use a method such as this to create a knowledge base of information that contains specific knowledge in the form of If-Then rules. [source]

Educating reflective systems developers

INFORMATION SYSTEMS JOURNAL, Issue 2 2002
Lars Mathiassen
Abstract. Systems development research shows that practitioners seldom follow methods and that the competencies required for successful development of computer-based systems go well beyond those represented in contemporary methods. These insights make us question the role that methods should play in educating would-be developers. Pedagogical theories, such as situated learning and double-loop learning, complement these insights. Integrating the two, we argue that students need to complement the simplified accounts that methods express, with reflections on methods-in-use and on development practice in general. We present operationalizations of this idea in two quite different academic settings. Based on a retrospective analysis of our experiences in these settings, and a comparison and evaluation of the two approaches, we propose a number of lessons that can be used to improve the education of would-be developers. [source]

21 CFR Part 11: electronic records.

QUALITY ASSURANCE JOURNAL, Issue 2 2002
An interactive voice response system.
Abstract A large full-service clinical research organization in the US needed to replace their legacy interactive voice response system which did not provide 21 CFR Part 11 compliant audit trails. They chose to custom-build the new software using C++ component architecture, eXtensible Markup Language (XML), Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), and Microsoft web telephony engine. The case study described in this article illustrates that when systems developers read, study, understand, and embrace 21 CFR Part 11 before designing and validating their product, the regulations are easily met. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Implementing a management system architecture framework

BELL LABS TECHNICAL JOURNAL, Issue 4 2000
William C. Goers
Any practical vision for the evolution of communications services must include a strategy for how networking vendors make it possible for service providers to manage their networks. While the Telecommunications Management Network (TMN) framework has proponents, the IP services community has shown little interest. Furthermore, operations systems developers have long attempted to produce the best framework, but the technology is outdated before it exists. This paper addresses both issues by presenting an application-driven model for integrated management. This model can be applied to either a "classic" framework orientation or a management application view. What is common between these two views are a management portal, common data models, multiple interface technologies, open and simple network element interfaces, and common operations, administration, and administration (OA&M) tools. These are the elements for which there needs to be a consistent set of interface definitions. They form the basis for the construction of next-generation management applications. [source]