eEvidence: supplying evidence to the patient interaction

Area of Science:

• Nursing Informatics
• Evidence-Based Practice
• Health Information Technology

Background:

• The demand for up-to-date, evidence-supported patient care is a global nursing imperative.
• Information and Communications Technology (ICT) offers a potential solution to deliver relevant evidence to nurses.
• This project addresses the need for accessible, research-backed information in nursing practice.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and implement an ICT system that provides nurses with individual, evidence-based support for their practice.
• To design a system that delivers quality-assured evidence at the point of patient care.
• To explore the added value of such a system for nurses, patients, research, and healthcare organizations.

Main Methods:

• Development of professional user profiles to tailor evidence delivery.
• Design and implementation of an automatic crawler search engine for quality-assured evidence sources.
• Inclusion of software and hardware design considerations for the ICT system.

Main Results:

• The project successfully developed an ICT solution to provide nurses with individual supportive evidence.
• The system aims to deliver evidence at the point of intervention, enhancing immediate care decisions.
• The initiative facilitates the dissemination of new practices and principles, improving nursing standards.

Conclusions:

• The project demonstrates the technical applicability and user acceptance of ICT for evidence-based nursing.
• Managing a multi-professional, multi-organizational project remotely was a key aspect of its execution.
• The system has the potential to be transferred across various healthcare professions, standardizing evidence dissemination.