Article Text
Abstract
Objectives Our objectives for the current research endeavor is 1) to develop an integrated point of care precise and concise voice activated web based clinical knowledge search engine for fast and time saving clinical information needs. 2) to provide a web based platform for capturing unanswered point of care clinical questions for knowledge and evidence gap identification for reflective practice. 3) to develop a personalized decision support system based on clinician’s own unique patients‘ demographics, such as ethnicity, socioeconomic status and geography. 4) to develop a clinical information resource based on point of care clinical questions’ answers for robust personalized clinical decision support system for personalized patient care and for life long self-directed learning and professional development for health care professionals. We expect our platform will enhance point of care reflective practice to develop local patient population specific evidence based resources development and eventually improved patient care with personalized evidence medicine.
Method We designed and implemented a cross platform (web,ios,android) for point of care voice enabled clinical search and clinical query capturing platform hosted at www.clinicalpearl.com. Salient product features included voice based precise and concise clinical information search engine for time saving, point of care clinical question capturing module for reflective learning and evidence based medicine, and a peer review editorial flow to ensure an authentic clinical knowledge base development for personalized clinical decision support. In addition, clinical discussion feature through user generated questions was also implemented to develop a crowd based continuous geographic topic specific knowledge base for clinician’s own patient demographics.
Results Beta testing of the platform was conducted in a large medical school setting to assess the feasibility and feature testing along with bug fixing. Preliminary usability study ( N= 25) over a course of 8 weeks showed that point of care voice based search engine not only helped clinicians for a focused, instant point of care background questions’ search to save time, but also provided a reflective learning opportunity by capturing point of care patient specific foreground questions. Most users found it very helpful to search point of care knowledge needs with a voice based search engine to save time for evidence based patient care. Point of care clinical query capturing tool was considered an excellent innovative strategy to track personal knowledge gaps and to build user’s own personalized decision support system for continuous professional development and competence for life long reflective learning.
Conclusions We have implemented a point of care voice based clinical search engine and clinical question capturing platform hosted at www.clinicalpearl.com. Preliminary evidence supports that this platform provides an opportunity for enhancing reflective learning, knowledge gaps identification and personalized evidence based practice for clinicians’ unique patient population. A personal knowledge repository for life long self-directed learning would benefit all healthcare professionals in coming years. Health care professionals at all levels of a career will be benefited from this planform. Lastly, this platform also provides an opportunity to develop a local evidence based medicine repository of questions specific to local patient population. We plan to design and randomized clinical trial to assess the role of clinical pearl in providing granular insights about clinicians’ daily clinical knowledge needs and impact of clinical pearl in enhancing self-directed learning activities and professional competence.