Toward an Integrated Situational Awareness Measuring Function for Electronic Health Records

Although Situational Awareness (SA) has been an active area of research for decades, the integration of SA system frameworks specifically within the healthcare industry is a fairly new topic of interest. Recent, rapid advances in technology, especially in the field of biomedical informatics, have introduced many SA challenges; proven links between SA and patient safety warrants further studies as to identify and address the issues associated with these newly available tools. Electronic Health Records (EHRs) are one of the most adopted tools in the U.S. healthcare system that perform various functions, capturing many kinds of medical data. One subset of patients that makes use of EHRs are insomnia patients. Insomnia is the most common sleep disorder among the general population; approximately 10% to 15% of adults in America suffer from chronic insomnia [1]. Although many researchers have tackled issues associated with EHRs including the information chaos that negatively impacts SA, none of them have measured or analyzed actual SA Measures of Effectiveness (MOEs). Developing SA MOEs for impact of EHRs on SA effectiveness for the clinician decision-making process may yield improved quality of treatment for insomnia patients.