Finding Knowledge
Connect Care integrates clinical information, making it easier to understand our patients' experience with health problems. It also eases access to information about how to manage health problems. There are a variety of ways to work with clinical references, guidelines, websites and tools embedded within Connect Care.
Resource Links
A top toolbar button called "Resource Links" (look at the top header/menu bar of Connect Care) opens a drop-down menu with links to a number of immediately useful clinical resources. These include:
AHS Clinical Guidance - with searchable lists of provincially adjudicated care maps, clinical guidelines, clinical knowledge articles, etc.
AHS COVID-19 - giving access to current resources for pandemic surveillance, best evidence and clinical guidance.
Point-of-Care Clinical Decision Supports (provincially licensed for all Connect Care users):
Dynamed - clinical handbook with evidence-based summaries about clinical condition and disease management.
Lippincott Advisor - nursing & allied health professional guidance and patient education.
Lippincott Procedures - instructions about a wide range of bedside procedures, including patient education handouts.
Bugs and Drugs - evidence-based antimicrobial guidance.
Lexicomp - drug prescribing guidance and patient handouts.
Micromedex - detailed information about pharmaceutical agents and therapies, including POISINDEX and other toxicology information.
AHS Emerging Pathogens - sensitivity and resistance surveillance.
APL and Dynalife Laboratory Test Directories - information about available tests and sample collection requirements.
General and Clinical calculator collections - wide range of conversion, formulae, and other clinical assists.
AHS Knowledge Resource Service - access to AHS online library resources, including a wide range of clinical eBooks and full text of many clinical journals.
AHS Insite - access to the full range of AHS online information services for clinicians, including general Web browser function for searching elsewhere.
Most of the individual knowledge resources can also be launched from global search from within Connect Care. For example, entering "Dynamed" or "Micromedex" as a search term will bring up a link to access the resource.
Embedded Links
Some point-of-care resources are additionally "deep-linked" within ordering and documentation workflows, facilitating just-in-time access to relevant drug information, clinical guidance or patient handouts.
Drug Information
Note that there is a link to "Lexicomp" at the top of most drug order composers (the screen that opens for entering information about dose, route, etc.). Selecting this will open a drug information resource and automatically perform a search for the drug currently being orderd.
When viewing active medications in the Orders activity, note the "infobutton" icon that becomes available at the far right of the row containing the ordered medication information. Clicking on this will open Lexicomp and perform a search for the indicated medication.
This just-in-time access to drug information can help with things like dosage or frequency adjustments for particular health conditions or complications.
Health Problem Information
Note that there is an "infobutton" (i) symbol in the line containing the health condition name. Clicking on this opens Dynamed to the topic of interest.
The same tool can be used to seek an approved patient handout.
Dashboards
Accessed via the "Dashboards" activity (tab) in Hyperspace, (Radar) Dashboards include system-wide, specialty-specific and personalized collections of information and analytics resources. Dashboards with knowledge links appear in three categories:
Learning Home Dashboards - often with links to clinically useful resources for clinicians learning to use Connect Care.
Specialty Dashboards - curated by Connect Care Area Councils to simplify access to online resources of particular interest to clinical programs.
Personal Dashboards - created from scratch or derived from existing Dashboards, with an ability to add "Common Links" components that can organized personal links to useful Internet and AHS online resources.