bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Grouping the Pharmacovigilance terms with a Hybrid Approach
Authors: Dupuch Marie  , Dupuch Laëtitia  , Perinet Amandine  , Hamon Thierry  , Grabar Natalia
Published: February 2025

Pharmacovigilance is the activity related to the collection, analysis and prevention of adverse drug reactions (ADRs) induced by drugs. It leads to the safety survey of pharmaceutical products. The pharmacovigilance process benefits from the traditional statistical approaches and also from the qualitative information on semantic relations between close ADR terms, such as SMQs or hierarchical levels of MedDRA. In this work, our objective is to detect the semantic relatedness between the ADR MedDRA terms. To achieve this, we combine two approaches: semantic similarity algorithms computed within structured resources and terminology structuring methods applied to a raw list of the MedDRA terms. We compare these methods between them and study their differences and complementarity. The results are evaluated against the gold standard manually compiled within the pharmacovigilance area and also with an expert. The combination of the methods leads to an improved recall.
Linguistic Analysis of Large-Scale Medical Incident Reports for Patient Safety
Authors: Fujita Katsuhide  , Akiyama Masanori  , Park Keunsik  , Yamaguchi Etsuko (Nakagami)  , Furukawa Hiroyuki
Published: February 2025

The analysis of medical incident reports is indispensable for patient safety. The cycles between analysis of incident reports and proposals to medical staffs are a key point for improving the patient safety in the hospital. Most incident reports are composed from freely written descriptions, but an analysis of such free descriptions is not sufficient in the medical field. In this study, we aim to accumulate and reinterpret findings using structured incident information, to clarify improvements that should be made to solve the root cause of the accident, and to ensure safe medical treatment through such improvements. We employ natural language processing (NLP) and network analysis to identify effective categories of medical incident reports. Network analysis can find various relationships that are not only direct but also indirect. In addition, we compare bottom-up results obtained by NLP with existing categories based on experts' judgment. By the bottom-up analysis, the class of patient managements regarding patients' fallings and medicines in top-down analysis is created clearly. Finally, we present new perspectives on ways of improving patient safety.
Coupling K-nearest Neighbors with Logistic Regression in Case-based Reasoning
Authors: Campillo-Gimenez Boris  , Bayat Sahar  , Cuggia Marc
Published: February 2025

Case-based reasoning (CBR) systems use similarity functions to solve new problems with past situations. K-nearest neighbors algorithm (K-NN) have been used in CBR systems to define new cases status according to characteristics of past nearest cases. We proposed a new hybrid approach combining logistic regression (LR) with K-NN to optimize CBR classification. First, we analyzed the knowledge database by LR procedures and the Pearson residuals of the LR model were used to define cases' utility of the knowledge database into K-NN. Secondly, we compared the classification performances of LR model and K-NNs coupled or not with LR. Our results showed that the information provided by the residuals could be used to optimize the settings of K-NN and to improve CBR classification.
Comparing Drools and ontology reasoning approaches for telecardiology decision support
Authors: Hille Pascal Van  , Jacques Julie  , Taillard Julien  , Rosier Arnaud  , Delerue David  , Burgun Anita  , Dameron Olivier
Published: February 2025

Implantable cardioverter defibrillators can generate numerous alerts. Automatically classifying these alerts according to their severity hinges on the CHA2DS2VASc score. It requires some reasoning capabilities for interpreting the patient's data. We compared two approaches for implementing the reasoning module. One is based on the Drools engine, and the other is based on semantic web formalisms. Both were valid approaches with correct performances. For a broader domain, their limitations are the number and complexity of Drools rules and the performances of ontology-based reasoning, which suggests using the ontology for automatically generating a part of the Drools rules.
Decision Support in Trauma Management: Predicting Potential Cases of Ventilator Associated Pneumonia
Authors: Pearl Adrian  , Bar-Or David
Published: February 2025

Ventilator Associated Pneumonia (VAP) is a complication of intubated trauma patients and a leading cause in Intensive Care Unit (ICU) mortality. Since early diagnosis, by specimen culture takes days to complete, an overuse of broad spectrum antibiotics is the usual treatment. As a result there is the risk of developing antibiotic resistant strains. Using an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) derived model to predict those at risk would result in reduced risk of resistant strains, a lowering of mortality rates and considerable savings in treatment costs. Artificial Neural Networks work well on classification problems, using feed-forward/back propagation methodology. Using the National Trauma Data Bank (V6.2) data files, Tiberius Software created the ANN models. Best models were identified by their Gini co-efficient, ability to predict the complication outcome selected, and their RMSE scores. The model ensemble for the complications recorded in the registry were determined, variables ranked and model accuracy recorded. Results show an effective model, able to predict to 85% of those likely to contract VAP and similar figures for those unlikely to contract VAP. This equates to 1 in 10 patients being missed, and 1 in 10 falsely being flagged for treatment. Important variables in model development are not related to physiological factors, but injury status and the treatment received (intubation and expected ICU stay more than 2 days). Application of a predictive model could reduce the number of false positives being treated in an ICU and identify those most at risk, thereby lowering treatment costs and potentially helping improve mortality rates.
Knowledge-Based Tacrolimus Therapy for Kidney Transplant Patients
Authors: Seeling Walter  , Plischke Max  , Schuh Christian
Published: February 2025

Immunosuppressive therapy is necessary when patients with chronic kidney disease receive a kidney transplant. Certain immunosuppressive agents need therapeutic drug monitoring. The goal of this paper was to identify adaptation rules for Tacrolimus therapy from a clinical data set. For knowledge acquisition, patient data from 1995 to 2008 from the Department of Nephrology and Dialysis of the Vienna General Hospital were used, including patient demographics, laboratory parameters, time since kidney transplantation and other immuno-suppressive drugs administered. Tacrolimus was chosen from the available immunosuppressive drugs. By applying a regression tree, we create homogeneous groups of data. Models were generated for these groups that can predict the level of the drug concentration for the next ward round. A knowledge base was developed on the basis of the determined models, which is used within a clinical decision support system for Tacrolimus therapy planning, which was integrated into clinical routine.
eHealth interoperability evaluation using a maturity model
Authors: Guédria Wded  , Bouzid Hanan  , Bosh Guido  , Naudet Yannick  , Chen David
Published: February 2025

To further improve individual health and well-being, access to high quality and safe services, eHealth interoperability is a fundamental prerequisite. A mature interoperability between health systems will support health services organization and delivery, and improve citizens' awareness of how to prevent disease and preserve good health. Within this context, health institutions have to solve interoperability problems or prevent them to appear, and if possible avoid them before they occur by adapting good practices toward interoperability. This paper proposes an evaluation of the potential health interoperability using the MMEI methodology (Maturity Model for Enterprise Interoperability). It discusses how the MMEI model can be used to help institutions to avoid interoperability problems. A use case for a particular hospital is more closely examined.
Population-Based Clinical Decision Support: A Clinical and Economic Evaluation
Authors: Eisenstein Eric L.  , Anstrom Kevin J.  , Edwards Rex  , Willis Janese M.  , Simo Jessica  , Lobach David F.
Published: February 2025

Governments are investing in health information technologies (HIT) to improve care quality and reduce medical costs. However, evidence of these benefits is limited. We conducted a randomized trial of three clinical decision support (CDS) interventions in 20,180 patients: email to care managers (n=3329), reports to primary care administrators (n=3368), letters to patients (n=3401), and controls (10,082). At 7-month follow-up, the letters to patients group had greater use of outpatient services and higher outpatient and total medical costs; whereas, the other groups had no change in clinical events or medical costs. As our CDS interventions were associated with no change or an increase in medical costs, it appears that investments in HIT without consideration for organizational context may not be sufficient to achieve improvements in clinical and economic outcomes.
Quality Assurance and Effectiveness of the Medication Process Through Tablet Computers?
Authors: Buus Amanda  , Nyvang Louise  , Heiden Sisse  , Pape-Haugaard Louise
Published: February 2025

Medication errors during admission to hospitals pose a significant problem. Most of the severe medication errors may be related to dispensation and administration. The medication errors may be induced by cost savings and staff reduction characterizing the current health care system. The objective of this study is to evaluate whether implementation of tablet computers has potential to enhance the quality assurance and efficiency of the medication dispensing and administration stages. The study is based on a combination of participant observation, structured workshop and qualitative interviews. Data has primary been collected on a Danish hospital ward. The study concludes that the technology still needs to mature before implementation and that there is a constant need for redesign of the technology. However, the results also show that technology has the potential to improve patient safety in the dispensing and administration stages because of an easier control and overview of the medicine paradigm; right patient, right drug, right dose and right time. Additionally, the technology appears to have the potential to streamline work flow in the administration stage due to an improved barcode registration mechanism. However, the potential of a successful implementation depends on prior working routines in the individual hospital ward.
Using video observation to gain insight into complex clinical work practices
Authors: Hostgaard Anna Marie Balling  , Bertelsen Pernille
Published: February 2025

Experience shows that the precondition for development of successful health-information-technologies (HIT) is a thorough insight into clinical work practices. In contemporary clinical work practices, clinical work and health information technology are closely integrated. Research within Virtual Centre for Health Informatics at Aalborg University, Denmark have during recent years focused on video observation to supplementing traditional ethnographical research methods in providing insight into complex clinical work practices. The objective of this paper is to argue for the potentials of the video observation method to inform and to improve HIT development compared to traditional ethnographic methods. Based on several studies conducted within the healthcare sector, we find, that the video observation method is superior to other ethnographical research methods when it comes to rapidly disclosing the complexity in clinical sociomaterial work practices. We also find that the video techniques used in the healthcare context allows us to revisit the field of observation through the data, to broaden our initial focus and to share data with both the clinical staff involved and other researchers. Hence, it provides us a more in depth insight in the complex clinical sociomaterial work practices than when observing by the use of pen and paper.
A Semantic Wiki for Editing and Sharing Decision Guidelines in Oncology
Authors: Meilender Thomas  , Lieber Jean  , Palomares Fabien  , Herengt Gilles  , Jay Nicolas
Published: February 2025

The Internet has totally changed the way information is published and shared in medicine. With web 2.0 and semantic web technologies, web applications allow now collaborative information editing in a way that can be reused by machines. These new tools could be used to in local health networks to promote the editing and sharing of medical knowledge between practitioners. Oncolor, a French oncology network, has edited 144 decision guidelines. These local guidelines rely upon national French guidelines and are built and updated collaboratively by medical experts. To improve working conditions, the need of an online collaborative tool has been expressed. This paper presents ONCOLOGIK, a semantic wiki approach for local oncology guideline editing. Semantic wikis allow online collaborative work and manage semantic annotations which can be reused automatically to bring new services. Applied to oncology guidelines, semantic technologies improve the guideline management and provide additional services such as targeted queries to external bibliographical resources.
A Loosely Coupled Framework for Terminology Controlled Distributed EHR Search for Patient Cohort Identification in Clinical Research
Authors: Zhao Lei  , Lim Choi Keung Sarah N.  , Taweel Adel  , Tyler Edward  , Ogunsina Ire  , Rossiter James  , Delaney Brendan C.  , Peterson Kevin A.  , Hobbs F.D. Richard  , Arvanitis Theodoros N.
Published: February 2025

Heterogeneous data models and coding schemes for electronic health records present challenges for automated search across distributed data sources. This paper describes a loosely coupled software framework based on the terminology controlled approach to enable the interoperation between the search interface and heterogeneous data sources. Software components interoperate via common terminology service and abstract criteria model so as to promote component reuse and incremental system evolution.
Interoperability in Clinical Research: From Metadata Registries to Semantically Annotated CDISC ODM
Authors: Bruland Philipp  , Breil Bernhard  , Fritz Fleur  , Dugas Martin
Published: February 2025

Planning case report forms for data capture in clinical trials is a labor-insensitive and not formalized process. These CRFs are often neither standardized nor using defined data elements. Metadata registries as the NCI caDSR provide the capability to create forms based on common data elements. However, an exchange of these forms into clinical trial management systems through a standardized format like CDISC ODM is currently not offered. Thus, our objectives were to develop a mapping model between NCI forms and ODM. We analyzed 3012 NCI forms and included common data elements regarding their frequency and uniqueness. In this paper, we have created a mapping model between both formats and identified limitations in the conversion process: Semantic codes requested from the caDSR registry did not allow a proper mapping to ODM items and information like the number of module repetitions got lost. Summarized, it can be stated that our mapping model is feasible. However, mapping of semantic concepts in ODM needs to be specified more precisely.
Concepts for a Personal Health Record
Authors: Santos Cândido  , Pedrosa Tiago  , Costa Carlos  , Oliveira José Luis
Published: February 2025

Healthcare is about information. It is usually assumed that personal health information exists primarily for professional's use but well informed patients motivate better informed professionals. A longitudinal health record containing a patient's medical history has been the holy grail of healthcare. Personal Electronic Health Records (P-EHR) hold the potential to transform healthcare by providing a complete set of patient managed information. We present a portable P-EHR's functionalities from the patient's perspective.
Enhancing the many-to-many Relations Across IHE Document Sharing Communities
Authors: Ribeiro Luís S.  , Costa Carlos  , Oliveira José Luís
Published: February 2025

The Integrating Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) initiative is an ongoing project aiming to enable true inter-site interoperability in the health IT field. IHE is a work in progress and many challenges need to be overcome before the healthcare Institutions may share patient clinical records transparently and effortless. Configuring, deploying and testing an IHE document sharing community requires a significant effort to plan and maintain the supporting IT infrastructure. With the new paradigm of cloud computing is now possible to launch software devices on demand and paying accordantly to the usage. This paper presents a framework designed with purpose of expediting the creation of IHE document sharing communities. It provides semi-ready templates of sharing communities that will be customized according the community needs. The framework is a meeting point of the healthcare institutions, creating a favourable environment that might converge in new inter-institutional professional relationships and eventually the creation of new Affinity Domains.
The Distributed Use of Electronic Emergency-Department Whiteboards
Authors: Hertzum Morten
Published: February 2025

At emergency departments (EDs), electronic whiteboards are introduced to provide a better overview and to support clinicians in spending more time with patients. Often, the main difference between electronic and dry-erase whiteboards is that electronic whiteboards provide distributed access to whiteboard information. We investigate the distributed use of whiteboards at one ED by analyzing seven months of log data. Distributed use is far most frequent among the secretaries, indicating that whiteboards serve multiple uses. The physicians and nurses make little distributed use of the whiteboard and when they do it is to prepare for seeing and to document having seen a patient, rather than in patient rooms with the patients. Important reasons for the limited distributed use among physicians and nurses appear to be a frequent need and practice of visiting the physical information hub of the ED. The information hub features a permanent wall-mounted display of the electronic whiteboard and this display, rather than distributed access, is preferred by physicians and nurses.
Using EHR data for Monitoring and Promoting Patient Safety: Reviewing the Evidence on Trigger Tools
Authors: Doupi Persephone
Published: February 2025

Trigger tools, both paper and automated, have been viewed as a promising technology for patient record content analysis and identification of patient safety adverse events. The requirements and potential barriers for implementation of each line of tools have been explored by means of a literature review focusing on two interconnected subject areas: the Institute of Healthcare Improvement's paper-based Global Trigger Tool, which is currently taken up by several national level patient safety programs, and automated trigger tools, because of their increased feasibility as electronic health record (EHR) adoption grows. This paper provides an overview of the existing evidence on the strengths and weaknesses of each approach, and discusses the implications of the findings from the perspectives of healthcare organizations' management and staff, and from the viewpoint of demands on EHR systems.
Impact of the Social Networking Applications for Health Information Management for Patients and Physicians
Authors: Sahama Tony  , Liang Jian  , Iannella Renato
Published: February 2025

Most social network users hold more than one social network account and utilize them in different ways depending on the digital context. For example, friendly chat on Facebook, professional discussion on LinkedIn, and health information exchange on PatientsLikeMe. Thus many web users need to manage many disparate profiles across many distributed online sources. Maintaining these profiles is cumbersome, time consuming, inefficient, and leads to lost opportunity. In this paper we propose a framework for multiple profile management of online social networks and showcase a demonstrator utilising an open source platform. The result of the research enables a user to create and manage an integrated profile and share/synchronise their profiles with their social networks. A number of use cases were created to capture the functional requirements and describe the interactions between users and the online services. An innovative application of this project is in public health informatics. We utilize the prototype to examine how the framework can benefit patients and physicians. The framework can greatly enhance health information management for patients and more importantly offer a more comprehensive personal health overview of patients to physicians.
A Culture and Power Perspective on the Management of Health Information Technology in Hospitals
Authors: Petersen Lone Stub  , Bertelsen Pernille
Published: February 2025

The three traditionally dominating professional hospital cultures – physicians, nurses and management – are challenged by the increasing use of health information technology (HIT) in health care. A fourth group of actors, the IT-professionals has become an exceedingly powerful player challenging the boundaries of the traditional hospital cultures. The hospital cultures are being redefined by and are redefining the technologies as well as the divisions of labour between the professional groups. The IT-professionals have become central actors in this and thereby they constitute a fourth powerful professional culture in the hospitals. This study draws out the phenomenon of IT-professionals as a fourth culture through a qualitative case study of both the IT-department and clinical and managerial hospital practices. The study finds evidence of how the IT-professionals and the IT-departments play a central part in the development of hospital practices constituting them as an influential culture and player in the hospitals. The tendency to see IT as merely infrastructure is hereby challenged and the conclusions demand further research into how to consider IT strategically in the hospitals, possibly pointing towards further user involvement in IT management.
An Ontology-based Expert System for Decision Support in Cardiac Intensive Care Environments
Authors: Martínez-Romero Marcos  , Vázquez-Naya José M.  , Pereira Javier  , Pazos Alejandro  , Pereira Miguel  , Baños Gerardo
Published: February 2025

When a patient enters a cardiac intensive care unit (CICU), either after heart surgery or due to a serious coronary disorder, he/she requires comprehensive care and constant monitoring to achieve a stable physiological state as soon as possible. Medical experts at CICUs usually have to make complex decisions in a short period of time, which frequently imply modifications on the dosage of drugs being supplied. Life of patients at CICUs depends largely on the wisdom of such decisions. However, mainly due to emotional stress and fatigue, experts sometimes make mistakes that lead to incorrect or inaccurate actions. This work presents an expert system based on a domain ontology that acquires the patient parameters from the patient monitor, analyzes them and provides the expert with a recommendation regarding the treatment that should be administered. If the expert agrees, the system modifies the drug infusion rates being supplied at the infusion pumps in order to improve the patient’s physiological status.
Knowledge Engineering Relating to Spatial Web Performance Forecasting with Sequential Gaussian Simulation Method
Authors: Borzemski Leszek  , Kamińska-Chuchmała Anna
Published: February 2025

This work describes a novel approach to Web performance research. Knowledge Engineering was relating to spatio-temporal Web performance prediction with Sequential Gaussian Simulation method, one of the geostatistical simulation methods. A great advantage of these methods is the possibility to make area-time forecasts. What is more, these methods require only the minimum amount of input data, however they still take into account the geographical location of Web servers and the download time of a given resource. The data for the research were used from an active experiment conducted by our multi-agent measurement system MWING. This system is composed of agents whose main task is to monitor a defined group of Web servers. In the research, the connections between an agent in Gdansk and European servers were considered. First, preliminary analysis of measurement data was carried out, and then structural analisis of data was performed. Both of these analyses are necessary to perform a forecast using Sequential Gaussian Simulation method. Subsequent step was a spatial forecast of a total time of downloading data from Web servers with one-week time in advance. Results of forecast were analysed in detail indicating future directions of research to improve Web performance forecasts.
On hyperspectral morphology by lattice auto-associative memories supervised orderings
Authors: Veganzones Miguel A.
Published: February 2025

Mathematical morphology is the non-linear Lattice Theory based construction of image filters. However, multivariate images, such as hyperspectral images, don’t have a total order and existing methods don’t fully exploit the spectral information. Recently supervised orderings were proposed for the definition of a total order in hyperspectral data. In a recent work we proposed the use of Lattice Associative Memories (LAAMs) to build up a supervised ordering. Here we follow that avenue and introduce an absolute LAAM supervised ordering. Supervised ordering rely on the definition of a foreground and background sets of training data points. We propose an automatic methodology to construct the training sets without a-priori information. For that, we make use of endmember induction algorithms. We demonstrate some results on the well known Pavia image.
Automatic differentiation between controls and Parkinson’s disease DaTSCAN images using a Partial Least Squares scheme and the Fisher Discriminant Ratio
Authors: Segovia F.  , Górriz J.M.  , Ramírez J.  , Chaves R.  , Álvarez I.
Published: February 2025

Imaging of dopamine transporters (DaT) has been introduced as a valuable tool to evaluate patients with several neuropsychiatrie disorders, such as Parkinson’s disease (PD). Over the last decade, several computer applications have been developed in order to facilitate the exploration of DaT images to clinicians, however they require a high interaction with the user to delimit regions of interest (ROIs) and to obtain a diagnosis. In this paper we show a full automatic computed aided diagnosis (CAD) system for Parkinson’s disease. We use a Partial Least Square scheme to decompose DaT images into scores and loading. Then, the scores with highest Fisher Discriminant Ratio are used as feature for a Support Vector Machine classifier that determines the state (normal of pathological) of a given DaT image. The evaluation of the system using a database with 178 images from controls and PD patients has produced accuracy rates of nearly 93%.
Prosaico: Characterisation of objectives within the scope of an intelligent system for sport advising
Authors: Mosqueira-Rey E.  , Prado-Gesto D.  , Fernández-Leal A.  , Moret-Bonillo V.
Published: February 2025

The assessment of the physical condition of the user in a sport facility is a vital part of what is called personalised sports advising. This process consists in advising the users of the sport facility in choosing the most appropriate type of exercise given their condition and their circumstances. The main problem that we face here is the instructor/users ratio. We try to cope with that problem by improving the information management rather than making the service more expensive (our sport facilities are supported with public funds, and that means public fees). An intelligent system, designed as a Constraint-Satisfaction Problem (CSP), has been developed to address this issue. This system takes into account the constraints of the problem (availability of the user, preferences, physical capabilities, etc.) and use them to construct a work plan. In order to simplify the CSP we introduced ‘objectives’ in the interview with the user, that is, the user guided by the instructor selects the objective that defines the physical state that he/she wants to achieve. The selected objective has valuable information that makes the functioning of the CSP less complex.
Towards a Supervised Rocchio-based Semantic Classification of Web Pages
Authors: Albitar Shereen  , Espinasse Bernard  , Fournier Sébastien
Published: February 2025

In this work, we present and compare several methods for web page classification focusing particularly on supervised classification methods. Rocchio, the method we choose for its efficiency, is tested on the reference corpus “20newsGroups”, adopting different similarity measures. Results illustrate some limitations related mainly to ignoring text semantics. In order to overcome these limitations, this work proposes to extend the original Rocchio through vector conceptualization replacing terms with related concepts and by adopting semantic similarity measures, all using semantic resources as ontologies, towards semantic Rocchio-based classification method.
An Analysis of white and blue background-color effects on the scores of Web-based English grammar tests using near-infrared spectroscopy
Authors: Yamazaki Atsuko K.  , Eto Kaoru
Published: February 2025

Yamazaki’s studies and our previous study indicated that a combination of black text and a white background color was considered less preferable for web-based English tests, comparing with a combination of black text and a blue background. In this study, the authors conducted an experiment to see how white and blue background colors can affect the linguistic functions of web-based test (WBT) takers’ brains by observing relative changes in hemoglobin (Hb) concentrations in Broca’s Area of their brains by using nearinfrared spectroscopy. In the experiment, thirteen male subjects in their twenties took web-based English grammar tests with white and blue background colors with black text. The average WBT score for the blue background was higher than that for the white background among the subjects. Two dimensional images of the Hb concentration changes obtained in the experiment showed that areas in the brain associated with grammar and vocabulary processing tended to have higher Hb concentrations while the subjects were taking the tests with the blue background. On the other hand, areas in the brain related to other functions, such as the frontal eye field, were observed to be more active than brain areas associated with linguistics tasks while they were taking the test with the white background. These results suggest that white color may not be the best choice for a background color of a WBT to assess test-takers’ linguistic performance, even though a white background is commonly used for WBTs.
Arguing with Preferences in EcoBioCap
Authors: Croitoru Madalina  , Fortin Jerome  , Oren Nir
Published: February 2025

In this paper we present the EcoBioCap project and the modelling needs of this project in terms of argumentation based preference aggregation. The aim of the paper is to well describe the problem encountered in this context and to propose a preference logic in line with the expressivity needed by the application. We then show how to embed this logic within the ASPIC+ system. Finally, we show how argument by expert opinion could be integrated within our framework where preference aggregation needs to take into consideration the different expertise of the project stakeholders.
AIFdb: Infrastructure for the Argument Web
Authors: Lawrence John  , Bex Floris  , Reed Chris  , Snaith Mark
Published: February 2025

This paper introduces AIFdb, a database solution for the Argument Web. AIFdb offers an array of web service interfaces allowing a wide range of software to interact with the same argument data.
Value Driven Design in Automotive Transport Systems
Authors: Heng Seng Seng  , Price Mark  , Douglas Roy  , Thornhill David
Published: February 2025

The main focus within value driven design in aerospace has been around the development of surplus value objective function for commercial aircraft application. However, it is still particularly new to the automobile industry. The surplus value function might also be applicable to wide range of commercial road transport industries, which have fundamental operations similar to commercial aircraft. Since the objective for every organization is to build a profitable environment to sustain their long term business. Therefore, it is important to identify the overall value of the fleet during acquisition phase, in order to eliminate future risk to the organization. In this paper, commercial buses have been used to represent the wide range of commercial road transports for this surplus value analysis. The influence of future fuel prices to overall value will be discussed. Moreover, how the use of advance materials influence overall value has also been included in the discussion.
Applying proven methods in a new environment: the case of LEAN in Business Aviation MRO
Authors: Stander A.  , Boersma M.  , Wennink B.  , de Vries M.  , de Boer R.J.  , Overeijnder Mark
Published: February 2025

Many authors claim that LEAN principles can be applied successfully in any industry. Although LEAN success stories are visible throughout the automotive sector and even in larger aerospace Maintenance, Repair & Overhaul (MRO) facilities, the implementation in smaller MRO organizations seem to be lagging behind. This research describes a study to translate LEAN principles and tools into a small MRO organization. A LEAN pilot project has been initiated within JetSupport B.V.'s work preparation department. Initial results show that large benefits in throughput can be generated. Additional recommendations are given that include mapping of the total value stream of the base maintenance process to prevent departmental sub optimization.
Use of Internet in an Italian Clinical Sample
Authors: La Cascia Caterina  , La Paglia Filippo  , Francomano Antonio  , La Barbera Daniele
Published: February 2025

This study is aimed at evaluating Internet use in a psychiatric population. We used the UADI questionnaire to investigate the degree of addictive Internet use in our sample of patients affected by various psychiatric disorders. Several psychological and psychopathological variables related to internet use, have been assessed through the five dimensions of the UADI: dissociation (DIS), Impact on real life (IMP), Experimentation (EXP), Dependence (DEP), Escape (ESC).
Online Social Networking and the Experience of Cyber-Bullying
Authors: O'Dea Bridianne  , Campbell Andrew
Published: February 2025

Online social networking sites (SNS) are popular social tools used amongst adolescents and account for much of their daily internet activity. Recently, these sites have presented opportunities for youth to experience cyber-bullying. Often resulting in psychological distress, cyber-bullying is a common experience for many young people. Continual use of SNS signifies the importance of examining its links to cyber-bullying. This study examined the relationship between online social networking and the experience of cyber-bullying. A total of 400 participants (Mage=14.31 years) completed an online survey which examined the perceived definitions and frequency of cyber-bullying. Users of SNS reported significantly higher frequencies of stranger contact compared to non-users. Spearman's rho correlations determined no significant relationship between daily time on SNS and the frequency of stranger contact. This suggests that ownership of a SNS profile may be a stronger predictor of some cyber-bullying experiences compared to time spent on these sites. Findings encourage continued research on the nature of internet activities used by young adolescents and the possible exposure to online victimization.
Designing Virtual Audiences for Fear of Public Speaking Training – An Observation Study on Realistic Nonverbal Behavior
Authors: Poeschl Sandra  , Doering Nicola
Published: February 2025

Virtual Reality technology offers great possibilities for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy of fear of public speaking: Clients can be exposed to virtual fear-triggering stimuli (exposure) and are able to role-play in virtual environments, training social skills to overcome their fear. Usually, prototypical audience behavior (neutral, social and anti-social) serves as stimulus in virtual training sessions, although there is significant lack of theoretical basis on typical audience behavior. The study presented deals with the design of a realistic virtual presentation scenario. An audience (consisting of n=18 men and women) in an undergraduate seminar was observed during three frontal lecture sessions. Behavior frequency of four nonverbal dimensions (eye contact, facial expression, gesture, and posture) was rated by means of a quantitative content analysis. Results show audience behavior patterns which seem to be typical in frontal lecture contexts, like friendly and neutral face expressions. Additionally, combined and even synchronized behavioral patterns between participants who sit next to each other (like turning to the neighbor and start talking) were registered. The gathered data serve as empirical design basis for a virtual audience to be used in virtual training applications that stimulate the experiences of the participants in a realistic manner, thereby improving the experienced presence in the training application.
Lessons Learned from the Development of Technological Support for PTSD Prevention: A Review
Authors: Vakili Vanessa  , Brinkman Willem-Paul  , Neerincx Mark A.
Published: February 2025

This review describes the state-of-the-arttechnologiesthat support mental resilience training for PTSD prevention. It characterizes four current systems across training approaches; seeks insights via interviews with the systemdevelopers; and extracts from thesea set of essential guidelines for future developers. The guidelines include four distinct project-limiting factors, which were found to constrain the reviewed developments. These were Culture, Effectiveness, Engineering, and Resource constraints.This research is novel in reviewing technologiesfor PTSD prevention as opposed to treatment, and in analyzing from the perspective ofsystem development and designissues.
An Online Emotional Regulation System to Deliver Homework Assignments for Treating Adjustment Disorders
Authors: Quero Soledad  , Molés Mar  , Pérez-Ara M. Angeles  , Botella Cristina  , Baños Rosa M.
Published: February 2025

Adjustment Disorders (AD) is a very common mental health problem in primary care. Only general treatment guidelines are available for its treatment. Our research team has developed a cognitive-behavioural treatment (CBT) supported by Virtual reality (EMMA system) that has shown its utility in the treatment of AD. EMMA is a VR adaptive display that adapts its presentation to the patient' therapeutic needs. So far, researchers have been centered on how to use the Information and Communication Technologies to deliver treatment within the therapeutic context. TEO is a completely open Online Emotional Therapy web-based system that allows creating personalized therapeutic material. The patient can access this material over the Internet. Preliminary data about the acceptability of TEO system in a case study has already been obtained. The aim of the present work is to describe the session protocol regarding the homework assignments component in the treatment of AD designed in TEO system. Also, data about preferences and efficacy of TEO system versus traditional homework assignments implementation in a single case study with AD are presented. A web-based system of this kind increases the possibilities for therapy.
Therapeutic Effectiveness of a Virtual Reality Game in Self-Awareness after Acquired Brain Injury
Authors: Lloréns Roberto  , Navarro María Dolores  , Alcañiz Mariano  , Noé Enrique
Published: February 2025

Self-awareness deficits can manifest as a consequence of acquired brain injurydecreasing the motivation and the adherence to the treatment. We present a multitouch system that promotes the role-playing and the self-assessment strategies and challenges the participants in a competitive context. This paper presents aninitial clinical trial to study the effectiveness of the virtual system in the rehabilitation of the self-awareness skills.According the evolution of the participants in the Self-Awareness Deficits Interview and in the Spanish Social Skills Scale, the participants improve the perception of their deficits and disabilities.
A Graphical Method for Conceptual Modelling of Business and Software Scenarios
Authors: Gustas Remigijus  , Gustiene Prima
Published: February 2025

Modelling method, which is defined by simple interaction loops between organizational and technical components, can be viewed as a basis for decomposition of complex business scenarios. This is important for separation of crosscutting concerns. The paper proposes a new graphical method that allows limited human mind to focus and to visualize one particular concern at a time. It also suggests design principles for the semantic integration of business and software scenarios. Separation of crosscutting concerns is performed on a basis of the standard transaction pattern. The presented modelling method can be used for introducing the evolutionary changes of requirements. This is important for managing complexity of information systems conceptualizations, especially when new changes are introduced. It targets both business process modelling experts and information system designers. The ultimate goal of the new method is to construct and visualize business scenarios with a more comprehensible structure.
Latvian Language Resources and Tools: Assessment, Description and Sharing
Authors: Vasiļjevs Andrejs  , Skadiņa Inguna
Published: February 2025

This paper describes our work on identification, assessment and cataloguing of Latvian language resources for sharing through an open language resource infrastructure. This work was carried out in the META-NORD project which is the Baltic and Nordic branch of the pan-European network META-NET. Criteria and results of the assessment are provided for the major groups of Latvian language resources and tools. Critical gaps are discussed and general strategy to address them outlined. The on-going work on language resource selection and preparation of metadata is described for their distribution on the pan-European sharing and distribution platform META-SHARE.
The Effect of Post Traumatic Stress Disorders on Rehabilitation Among Combat-Wounded Veterans
Authors: Siddharthan Kris
Published: February 2025

In June 2008 the Congressionally Directed Medical Research Program provided a grant to the Research Foundation at the James A Haley Veterans Hospital in Tampa, Florida to provide care for wounded veterans from Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan) and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OEF/OIF). The telerehabilitation for OEF/OIF returnees with mild or moderate combat related Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) has as its objectives 1) care coordination for wounded veterans using distance technology via the internet and 2) monitoring of physical and mental health outcomes using a variety of instruments. A total of 75 veterans were enrolled in the study. Our initial findings indicate that 1) Functional capabilities measured by locomotion and mobility appear to have stabilized among our cohort of veterans while deficiencies in cognition (memory, problem solving), psychosocial adjustment (anger, emotional status) and problems in integrating into society pose challenges 2) Those with comorbid PTSD appear to linger in employability and ultimate integration into society as compared to those without the diagnosis 3) Individualized treatment pathways are needed for rehabilitation and ultimate integration into society.
Towards an International Electronic Repository and Virtual Laboratory of Open Data and Open-Source Software for Telehealth Research: Comparison of International, Australian and Finnish Privacy Policies
Authors: Suominen Hanna
Published: February 2025

Health data includes all content related to health in all data formats, document types, information systems, publication media and languages from all specialties, organisations, regions, states and countries. Capabilities to share, integrate and compare these data contents, clinical trial results and other evaluation outcomes together with telehealth applications for data processing are critical to accelerate discovery and its diffusion to clinical practice. However, the same ethical and legal frameworks that protect privacy hinder this open data and open-source code approach and the issues accumulate if moving data across national, regional or organisational borders. This can be seen as one of the reasons why many telehealth applications and health-research findings tend to be limited to very narrow domains and global results are lacking. The aim of this paper is to take steps towards establishing an international electronic repository and virtual laboratory of open data and open-source code for research purposes by comparing international, Australian and Finnish frameworks. The frameworks seem to be fundamentally similar; they apply the principles of accountability and adequacy to using and disclosing personal data. Their requirements to inform data subjects about the purposes of data collection and use before the dataset is collected, assure that individuals are no longer identifiable and to destruct data when the research activities are finished make sharing data and even secondary data difficult. Using the Internet or cloud services for sharing without proper approvals by ethics committees is technically not allowed if the data are stored in another country. The research community needs to overcome these barriers and develop a virtual laboratory, which operates on distributed data repositories. This empowers the community by enabling systematic evaluations of new technologies and research hypotheses on a rich variety of data and against existing applications, and subsequent tracking of quality improvements in time.
Successes and Failures of Using the Cell Phone as a Main Mode of Communication Between Participants and Facilitators from a Distance: An Innovative Method of Training Rural Health Facility Managers in Papua New Guinea
Authors: Au Lucy
Published: February 2025

Rural Health Facility Management Training is a training program developed by the National Department of Health in collaboration with AUSAID through the office of the Capacity Building Service Centre. The purpose of the training is to train officers-in-charge who did not acquire knowledge and skills of managing a health facility. As part of this study, it is essential to assess whether the cell phone is a better mode of communication between the participants and the facilitators compared with other modes of communication from a distance. The study used the cross-sectional method to collect 160 samples from 12 provinces and the statistical software Stata (version 8) was used to analyse the data. The results showed that mobile coverage is not very effective in most rural areas, though, it is efficient and accessible. Furthermore, it is expensive to make a call compared with sending text massages. In spite of the high cost involved, most health managers prefer to use the cell phone compared to normal post, email, or fax. This clearly shows that the mobile phone is a better device for distant learning in rural Papua New Guinea compared to other modes of communication.