Kagoshima University Hospital increases UpToDate use through single sign-on

How is UpToDate used in Kagoshima University Hospital?

Mainly, UpToDate is used by doctors, residents, and students in the medical department. Residents and students seem more likely to use it.

Many of them use it to search for literature on symptoms and diseases. Since Kagoshima University Hospital is the only university hospital in the prefecture and receives many patients with complex and rare diseases, it is often necessary to collect evidence-based information in a short period of time between consultations.

Not only are doctors are using UpToDate but pharmacists also. They use UpToDate to collect evidence-based drug and dosing information when the hospital’s Pharmaceutical Affairs Committee deliberates on advanced medical technologies that involve the off-label use of drugs.

Integration of electronic medical records and UpToDate with single sign-on to improve utilization

In general, hospital information systems are built in a closed network for security reasons. At our Hospital, we use the DenyAllow system (a system that allows only secure sites to be connected), and through this system, we allow Think to access UpToDate. In this way, we can keep the UpToDate screen open and search for clinical information at any time while entering data into the electronic medical record during a consultation on the same terminal.

In April 2018, Kagoshima University Hospital also introduced a system called single sign-on. To put it simply, when users log in to the electronic medical record, they can log in to UpToDate as well.

If you first log into the electronic medical record and then log into UpToDate with the same account from the portal screen, which is personalized for each user, you can open the personal page of UpToDate directly from Think the next time.

Once you have accessed UpToDate from the hospital or university campus, you can also log into UpToDate even from outside the hospital or university premises for a certain period of time, which is very convenient. In fact, after the introduction of the single sign-on system, UpToDate usage from off-campus and via the application increased significantly.

In university hospitals and medical offices, there are seniors and superiors who can ask questions immediately, but this is not possible outside. In such cases, clinicians can log into UpToDate from their smart phones and efficiently collect necessary and useful information. In the past, hospital information systems were generally not connected to the outside world, which was very inconvenient.

Although there are some restrictions, we can use UpToDate safely and conveniently by using devices such as the DenyAllow method and single sign-on. Also, the information system administrator can centrally manage the usage status of the various applications we use in the hospital, making it possible to optimize the IT budget for the entire medical information system.

Increasing UpToDate usage to better deliver evidence-based nursing

Do you think the content in UpToDate is valuable for nurses?

I am deeply involved with medical information in a large organization where IT is becoming increasingly popular. I also have experience as a nurse. As part of the activities of the Japan Society for Medical Informatics, I sometimes hold paper reading sessions with medical professionals from other universities and believe the content in UpToDate has a lot of useful information for nurses.

A big challenge for nurses is to balance between effectiveness and efficiency. With UpToDate, they can instantly search secondary information to find answers to their questions. Reliable content developed and reviewed by authors and editors around the world helps not only to enhance medical safety but also to make nursing care smarter and more efficient.

UpToDate can be searched in Japanese, but the text of clinical topics is displayed in English. Academic nurses have no problem reading in English if necessary, but we would like to create a system that makes it easy for our clinical nurses to use evidence-based medical information.