Monday, December 1, 1997
Community Briefs
Computers will help doctors in practice
UCLA researchers have found that computers can significantly assist doctors in the rendering of care.
In a study, doctors used an electronic charting program that recommends treatments for patients. The program incorporates medical guidelines developed on everything from lower-back pain to schizophrenia.
These guidelines, however, have rarely been integrated into day-to-day clinical practice.
To solve this problem, Dr. David L. Schriger and his colleagues developed a system that combined patient records with suggestions for treatment. That way, when a doctor enters the data, the computer program provides information on the recommended course of treatment.
"What we've done is create a tool that combines the best of having a knowledge base and a reminder system," Schriger said. "It gets the information to the physician in real time, while they are seeing the patient."
Schriger's study was conducted on health-care workers who suffer puncture wounds or are exposed to blood or other bodily fluids.
As a result, they found patients treated in tandem with the computer program were 20 percent more likely to receive the recommended laboratory tests, 13 percent more likely to receive the recommended treatment and 62 percent more likely to receive proper discharge instructions.
Thus far, UCLA researchers have developed five variations on the computer program for clinical practice. The scenarios covered include lower-back pain, fever in young children, male urological problems and uncomplicated seizures in adults with epilepsy.
Schriger hopes to make program available to the medical community via the Internet. "We need to show that this works for other medical conditions and in other practice settings," said Schriger, "but this is a good first step."
Public Health funds internships
The School of Public Health received a $300,000 donation from UCLA alumni Bob and Marion Wilson to provide internship stipends to students who work in community-based health-improvement programs.
The gift is part of the Wilsons' $5 million pledge to the Campaign UCLA fund-raising thrust, of which Wilson is chairman.
The pledge, which will last for three years, creates the School of Public Health Community Health Promotion Program. The program will sponsor activities with community-based agencies to address health concerns in Southern California. The main focus will be on poorer-health areas.
"Our purpose in supporting this program is to place UCLA students into the community in roles where they will be helping to improve the health and welfare of some of the region's neediest residents," Wilson said.
Vice chancellor to direct
UCSD's Scripps Institute
Charles Kennel, an executive vice chancellor since 1996, will move back into the sciences when he takes over the director's position at UC San Diego's Scripps Institute of Oceanography.
Kennel, 58, will take over as the Scripps Institute's ninth director in the spring.
"I am truly honored to serve as director of the world's greatest institution of its kind," Kennel said. "I look forward to working with them in the area of global environmental science, which I came to love while at NASA."
Kennel, a physicist, has been at UCLA since 1967, when he was hired an as associate professor. His career included serving as associate administrator for NASA's Mission to Planet Earth Program. He has also been a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow, a Fulbright Senior Lecturer in Brazil and an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow.
Compiled from Daily Bruin staff reports.