bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Case History On The Design Of Foundation For Oil Storage Tank on Coastal Plain Sands
Authors: George E.A.J.  , Atuboyedia T.J.  , Oju M.
Published: February 2025

A tank farm to contain four oil storage tanks was proposed for an area lying close to the Abonnema Wharf in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. The intended tanks would be 25.0m diameter and 13.5m high. For a tank diameter of 25.0m, two boreholes to depth of 30.0m and three cone penetration tests with pore pressure measurements were considered adequate for the subsurface investigation. The subsurface investigation in the tank site disclosed that the upper portion of the soil deposits in the area is composed essentially of Coastal Plain Sands sediments with few intrusions of Mangrove Swamp soils. Beneath the upper clayey deposits is a prevalent deposit of sands. The Coastal Plain Sands formation is composed of sandy, clayey sediments which have been laterized through the leaching of silica and the concentration of alumina and iron. The laterization is generally enhanced by tropical weathering and where the sediments are sufficiently dry, the weathering process produces iron oxide as cementing agent in the soil profile causing the soil to be brown or reddish brown. The project area is characterized by a thick layer of this soil. From the analyses of the results of the laboratory tests, high total and differential settlement of the tanks would be expected if the existing ground was not treated. Ground improvement techniques such as replacement of the weak soils with competent soils, preloading of the tank area with a surcharge and controlled loading of the tank foundation during water testing were considered. Evaluation of the feasibility of adopting pad or concrete ring or concrete raft foundation for the tanks was also carried out. In this paper, is presented the ground improvement technique adopted, the foundation type selected, the bearing capacity and settlement analyses and the results of the water testing of the tanks.
The Challenge of Designing & Constructing Steep Landfill Capping Sealing Systems using Geogrid Veneer Reinforcement
Authors: Klompmaker Jörg  , Lenze Burkard
Published: February 2025

Engineered capping systems for landfills are an important tool in the containment strategy for waste disposal. The principal goal of an engineered landfill capping system is to prevent or control infiltration of precipitation, thereby controlling or preventing leachate production and to control the development and emission of landfill gas, thus preventing its emission into the atmosphere. The landfill cap is a composite system of soil layers and geosynthetic components. Steeply sloped sections of capping sealing systems are permanently subjected to shear stresses which require a detailed design of the stability of the sealing system against sliding keeping in mind individual construction stages, operating conditions as well as the long aftercare period or reuse. According to experience a so called “veneer reinforcement” is required in cases where the slope of a landfill cap exceeds an inclination of approx. 20°. The geogrid absorbs the “deficit resistance”, which cannot be provided by the sealing system itself due to insufficient interface friction. In this paper the characteristics of the veneer reinforcement design as well as construction details will be addressed based on two landfill case studies from South Africa and Germany. In addition to this results of a monitored landfill veneer reinforcement project will be presented, which allows the comparison of measured deformations in the reinforcement to those predicted by current design standards.
Healthy Connections: Online Social Networks and their Potential for Peer Support
Authors: O'Dea Bridianne  , Campbell Andrew
Published: February 2025

Social and professional support for mental health is lacking in many rural areas – highlighting the need for innovative ways to improve access to services. This study explores the potential of online social networking as an avenue for peer support. Using a cross sectional survey, 74 secondary students answered questions relating to internet use, online social network use and perceptions of mental health support. Over half of the sample had experienced a need for mental health support with 53% of participants turning to the internet. Results indicate that online social networking sites were used regularly by 82% of the sample and 47% believed these sites could help with mental health problems. The study concluded that online social networking sites may be able to link young people together with others in similar situations. The popularity and frequency of use may allow these sites to provide information, advice and direction for those seeking help.
Piloting a Logic-based Framework for Understanding Organisational Change Process for a Health IT Implementation
Authors: Diment Kieren  , Garrety Karin  , Yu Ping
Published: February 2025

This paper describes how a method for evaluating organisational change based on the theory of logical types can be used for classifying organisational change processes to understand change after the implementation of an electronic documentation system in a residential aged care facility. In this instance we assess the organisational change reflected by care staff's perceptions of the benefits of the new documentation system at one site, at pre-implementation, and at 12 months post-implementation. The results show how a coherent view from the staff as a whole of the personal benefits, the benefits for others and the benefits for the organization create a situation of positive feedback leading to embeddedness of the documentation system into the site, and a broader appreciation of the potential capabilities of the electronic documentation system.
Caractérisation d'un limon traité utilisé comme matelas de transfert de charges dans une fondation composite
Authors: Okyay U.S.  , Manirakiza R.  , Rault G.  , Thorel L.  , David J.P.  , Auriol J.C.  , Dias D.
Published: February 2025

Traité au ciment ou à la chaux, le limon peut être utilisé comme matelas de transfert de charge dans une fondation composite sur un sol compressible renforcé par inclusions rigides. La caractérisation du limon de Goderville et son comportement mécanique une fois traité à la chaux et/ou au ciment sont présentés. Une campagne d'essais de résistance (cisaillement, compression, traction et flexion) a été menée à 7, 28, 90 et 350 jours après le traitement sur 260 éprouvettes de différentes dimensions. Les résultats ont permis de déterminer les caractéristiques mécaniques des sols traités et leur évolution au cours de temps.
Cutter Soil Mixing Solutions in Portugal on Hard Soils and Weak Rocks
Authors: Pinto A.  , Tomásio R.  , Pita X.  , Pereira A.  , Peixoto A.
Published: February 2025

The Cutter Soil Mixing (CSM) technology has been applied in Portugal since the last two years. The aim of this paper is to present some case histories where the CSM technology was successfully used in soft soils and weak rocks, emphasizing the main design and execution criteria for foundation and earth retaining applications. It is also pointed out the importance of the binder as well as of the quality control and quality assurance, before and during the construction of the final soil – binder panels. Finally, the technical, economic and environmental advantages of the CSM technique, comparing with some more conventional solutions, are presented.
Grid space optimization of jet grouting columns
Authors: Saurer E.  , Marcher Th.  , Lesnik M.
Published: February 2025

Jet grouting is broadly used to improve soil with respect to strength, stiffness or permeability. Here, a tool for optimization of the grid spacing based on the Monte Carlo method is presented. The tool requires high quality probabilistic input parameters of both, column geometry and material parameters and returns a distribution of parameters to describe the global behaviour of the improved soil. Finally an example and some sensitivity studies are presented.
End of Construction failures of cuttings in stiff clayey marls – A case from Central Greece
Authors: Alexandris A.  , Paschalidou A.  , Griva E.  , Kavvadas M.
Published: February 2025

The construction of a new motorway section, recently completed in central Greece, involved at least 3 km of deep cuttings in stiff to hard clayey marls, with slope heights up to 30 m. Three major slides and more than 10 minor ones were observed during and shortly after the construction triggered by rainfall events. Back analyses of the major slides indicate that rain infiltration developed high pore water pressures at shallow depths under the slope and lead to slope destabilization under drained conditions. The fairly high permeability of the formation at low confining pressures, attributed to the presence of fissures, joints as well as sandy and gravelly lenses, along with the initially high water table (in comparison with cutting depth) resulted to the quick increase of pore pressures at shallow depths behind the slope face. Moreover, the local presence of horizons of more plastic scaly clays evidently lead to the reduction of the average (operational) shear strength and contributed to the occurrence of the slides.
Landslide in a shale slope in Kabylie
Authors: Bendadouche H.  , Lazizi S.
Published: February 2025

Following the placement of a large embankment for the construction of a shopping centre, an important landslide took place at the slope of a highly fractured hill in the town of Barbacha, in the region of Kabylie. The failure occurred during the construction of the embankment and as a result, the embankment and the weathered shale were swept away downstream. A large platform was necessary for the construction of a school playground, so large quantities of fill were deposited on a very inclined ground. The construction company did not consider necessary to drain the surface water which was flowing directly on the slope.
Effects of structure changes in the stress-strainstrength behaviour of a sienitic residual soil
Authors: Carvalho T.M.O.  , de Campos T.M.P.  , Antunes F.S.
Published: February 2025

Young residual soils are complex materials dominated by the structure induced by weathering. The combined influence of parent rock and weather conditions give rise to different mineralogy and grain size distribution. These soils exhibit a virtual preconsolidation pressure when loaded in the oedometer, in a similar way as an over-consolidated soil. They present a stiff behaviour at pressures less than this one and a plastic behaviour at higher stresses, showing the strong influence of the structure on the soil behaviour. Another relevant aspect is the pore water chemistry that can chemically react with the soil affecting the structure.
Soil nailing in Dublin Boulder Clay
Authors: Menkiti C.O.  , Milligan G.W.E.  , Long M.  , Higgins P.
Published: February 2025

Extensive areas of Dublin City are underlain by a very stiff to hard lodgement till, known locally as Dublin Boulder Clay. Over the past number of years there has been increasing use of soil nails mostly to support temporary slopes for excavations, road widening and cut and cover tunnels. Although guidance for nailing in stiff clays exists, the very high strength and stiffness of the Dublin soils mean that it is conservative to use these established techniques and further optimisation may be possible. This paper presents data from the Dublin Port Tunnel project for a large set of short term pullout tests, distinguishing between the responses of the clayey till and cohesionless zones. The significant influence of drilling technique is discussed. Evidence from exhumed test nails elucidates the observed behaviour of the soil-grout interface and the tendon-grout junction. Optimisation of temporary soil nails in Dublin Boulder Clay is appraised. The relationship between bond strength and actual nail performance is discussed drawing on data from a heavily monitored slope. A brief comparison with the performance of bored piles in the same soil is made.
Progressive failure in soil-cable interaction
Authors: Puzrin A.M.  , Iten M.  , Hauswirth D.
Published: February 2025

When a cable is pulled out of soil, and the cable is sufficiently flexible, the contact failure does not occur simultaneously along the entire cable length, but rather propagates progressively with increased load. Studying this progressive failure phenomenon properly at the laboratory scale has been difficult because of the large amount of strain gages required, which would interfere with the mechanical properties of both the cable and the soil. The novel distributed fiber optic strain sensing technology (BEDS) provides an elegant solution to this problem. The cable is itself both the structure and the strain gage, allowing for at least 20 measuring points per meter, without affecting the stiffness of the cable or the soil. In this study, sand-embedded cable pullout tests were performed in the laboratory allowing for the failure propagation to be detected at the lab scale with high precision. It appears that, within the tested loading range, the residual shear stress between the cable and the sand increases with increasing pullout load. An attempt to explain this phenomenon has been made using a conceptual analytical model.
Analysis of displacements of deep excavation walls built in hard soils
Authors: Siemińska-Lewandowska A.  , Mitew-Czajewska M.  , Tomczak U.
Published: February 2025

Over the last 10 years in Poland a great number of up to 30 m deep excavations using different methods of construction are being built. Hard and week rock occur only in south part of Poland, though most of the deep excavations are made in stiff Quartenary soils. In the paper 15 cases from our database are presented (14 cases executed in Quarternary soils and for comparision - 1 case in soft rock), in which following data is introduced in detail: geotechnical conditions, support systems (anchors, struts, slabs) as well as methods of construction (cut&cover - open excavation or top&down method). The results of measurements are presented and discussed in relation with methods of construction and support system. Final conclusions concerning the displacements of diaphragm walls executed in stiff Quaternary soils and in soft rock are given.
Determination of the small-strain stiffness of hard soils by means of bender elements and accelerometers
Authors: Ferreira C.  , Martins J.P.  , Gomes Correia A.
Published: February 2025

Direct determination of seismic wave velocities in the laboratory is becoming common practice worldwide, given its great potential in the definition of the stiffness at very small strains. One of the techniques for seismic wave measurement makes use of piezoelectric transducers, such as bender elements (BEs). However, some limitations remain to the applicability of this technique, namely for stiff geomaterials, such as compacted soils, naturally or artificially cemented soils and soft or weak rocks. For this purpose, two accelerometers have been used in conjunction with BEs. In the present paper, this combined test setup implemented on a stress-path triaxial chamber will be detailed. An application study will be presented for a hard soil, prepared by laboratory compaction and tested in triaxial compression at different isotropic stress levels. The equipments, procedures and interpretation analyses will also be described. The advantages of this setup are twofold: i) the interpretation of the acceleration measurements is straightforward, since the signals are of the same nature; ii) these measurements can be used to verify the bender element signals, and thus minimize the subjectivity of the interpretation of BE results. Additionally, the accelerometers can be used autonomously wherever the interpretation of BEs becomes too complex. The results of this research enabled to validate the interpretation methods used for bender element testing. Moreover, this combined setup of transducers provided a simple yet powerful tool for eliminating the subjectivity inherent to BE testing, enabling reliable measurements of small-strain stiffness for a wide range of materials.
Tunneling as a contribution to sustainable energy
Authors: Schneider M.  , Vermeer P.A.  , Moormann Chr.
Published: February 2025

Because of their large amount of surrounding subsoil, tunnels are in the focus of geothermal energy output – tunneling as a source for sustainable energy. By use of a relatively small modification of the internal lining, a tunnel can serve as a geothermal line source or sink in addition to its basic constructive and static function. This idea indicated the planning and construction of a “tunnel geothermal” testing section in an actual tunnel project in Stuttgart, Germany. The representative project was realized in a short shotcrete-made tunnel section of a city railway project of SSB AG, the local contractor for public transport.
Foundation of the arch bridge in the landslide area of Tsakona, Greece
Authors: Fikiris I.F.  , Sotiropoulos L.  , Dounias G.T.
Published: February 2025

The Tsakona bridge is a two-span (90m and 300m) steel arch structure, which will be part of the National highway connecting Tripolis and Kalamata, in southern Greece. It is planned to pass over and therefore avoid a large landslide, which in 2003 disrupted completely the traffic in the highway. The paper briefly describes the geological and hydro-geological conditions of the area, as well as the triggering instability mechanism of the landslide. Design criteria for the adoption of such a unique bridging solution are reviewed and the approach followed for the foundation design of the bridge, covering both the selection of appropriate locations and suitable types, is presented. Design and construction processes are described with particular reference on the foundation of the middle pier, which consists of a system of four caissons connected with a large and very thick raft. The detailed geological-mapping that was carried out during construction is also presented which verified fundamental design assumptions regarding ground conditions and geotechnical parameters.
Fill of the “Terreiro do Trigo” Dockyard in Lisbon over Alluvial and Hard Soils
Authors: Pinto A.  , Tomá sio R.  , Ravasco J.  , Marques G.
Published: February 2025

The “Terreiro do Trigo” dockyard, at the “Jardim do Tabaco”, was filled in order to allow the construction of the new “Santa Apolónia” Cruise Ship Terminal in Lisbon, at the Tagus River right bank. A load transfer platform (LTP), founded over jet grouting columns, allowed the construction of a 4,2m height embankment placed over a soft muddy alluvium layer (Cu lesser than 15 to 20 kPa) with about 20m of average thickness. The existent dockyard peripheral and old walls were refurbished and underpinned using micropiles, capped by reinforced concrete beams, in order to accommodate the new embankment earth pressures. The main design and execution criteria, including the quality control and quality assurance of the jet grouting columns are presented, as well as the main results of the adopted monitoring and survey plan. Finally, the technical and economic advantages of the adopted techniques, comparing with some more conventional ones, are presented.
Interoperability Driven Integration of Biomedical Data Sources
Authors: Teodoro Douglas  , Choquet Rémy  , Schober Daniel  , Mels Giovanni  , Pasche Emilie  , Ruch Patrick  , Lovis Christian
Published: February 2025

In this paper, we introduce a data integration methodology that promotes technical, syntactic and semantic interoperability for operational healthcare data sources. ETL processes provide access to different operational databases at the technical level. Furthermore, data instances have they syntax aligned according to biomedical terminologies using natural language processing. Finally, semantic web technologies are used to ensure common meaning and to provide ubiquitous access to the data. The system's performance and solvability assessments were carried out using clinical questions against seven healthcare institutions distributed across Europe. The architecture managed to provide interoperability within the limited heterogeneous grid of hospitals. Preliminary scalability result tests are provided.
Implementation of a Web-Based Interactive Virtual Patient Case Simulation as a Training and Assessment Tool for Medical Students
Authors: Oliven A.  , Nave R.  , Gilad D.  , Barch A.
Published: February 2025

Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCE) are resource intensive, not practical as teaching tools, and their reliability depends on evaluators. Computer-based case simulations (“virtual patients”, VP) have been advocated as useful and reliable tools for teaching clinical skills and evaluating competence. We have developed an internet-based VP system designed both for practice and assessment of medical students. The system uses interactive dialogue with natural language processing, and is designed for history taking, evaluation of physical examination, including recognition of visual findings and heart and lung sounds, and ordering lab-and imaging tests. The system includes a practice modality that provides feedback, and a computerized OSCE. The reliability of our system was assessed over the last three years by comparing the clinical competence of medical students in similar VP and human OSCE. A total of 262 students were evaluated with both exam modalities. The correlation between the two exams scores was highly significant (p<0.001). Alpha Cronbach for the computerized exam was 0.82-0.89 in the 3 years, and was substantially higher than that of the conventional OSCE each year. We conclude that a computerized VP OSCE is a reliable examination tool, with the advantage of providing also a training modality.
Developing an Electronic Health Record for Intractable Diseases in Japan
Authors: Kimura Eizen  , Kobayashi Shinji  , Kanatani Yasuhiro  , Ishihara Ken  , Mimori Tsuneyo  , Takahashi Ryousuke  , Chiba Tsutomu  , Yoshihara Hiroyuki
Published: February 2025

Because intractable diseases result from unidentifiable causes and are very difficult to treat, they require a lifelong epidemiology database. Japan does not use global unique identifiers, such as social security numbers, so we conducted a feasibility study regarding an electronic health record (EHR). An EHR can be used as a lifelong database and reduce conventional administrative work. However, it will be necessary to develop additional tools to overcome issues specific to Japan before an EHR can be implemented.
Implementation of an Open Source Provider Organization Registry Service
Authors: Birkle Markus  , Schneider Benjamin  , Beck Tobias  , Deuster Thomas  , Fischer Markus  , Flatow Florian  , Heinrich Robert  , Kapp Christian  , Riemer Jasmin  , Simon Michael  , Bergh Björn
Published: February 2025

Healthcare Information Exchange Networks (HIEN) enables the exchange of medical information between different institutions. One of the biggest problems running a HIEN is the unique identification of the care providers. The provider and organisation registry service (PORS) has to provide a unique identifier for care providers. The concept and the implementation of PORS will be described in this article. Finally the PORS implementation will be compared with the Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE) profile for a Healthcare Provider Directory (HPD).
Organs Transplantation – How to Improve the Process?
Authors: Ferraz Viriato  , Oliveira Gerardo  , Viera-Marques Pedro  , Cruz-Correia Ricardo
Published: February 2025

The transplant of cadaveric organs must be performed in a short period of time in order to achieve satisfactory results. In Hospital S. João (HSJ), a large Portuguese hospital, during 2008 and 2009, 65 and 61 respectively potential donors were identified, but 12 and 19 of them were not validated as such in time. The number of validated donors could increase if the information workflow between donor hospitals and coordinator offices became more efficient. The goal of this work is to design and implement a multi-agent software platform to assist the information workflow between donor hospitals and coordinator offices. Through several meetings with HSJ coordinator office it was characterized a set of basic data that would allow coordinator offices to early identify possible organs donors. This preliminary characterization provided the necessary grounds for the development of an agent based software application allowing the storage and management of potential donors' information and optimizing the information workflow. The information workflow and the current communication processes characterization allowed the development of a multi-agent web platform, providing a way to assist the information workflow, between coordinator hospitals and their attached hospitals network. The platform also improves direct communication between coordinator offices about most relevant facts. By using this tool or a similar one the information workflow between donor hospitals and coordinator offices can become more efficient, optimizing the pre-transplantation tasks and consequently the number of successful transplants in our country.
Proposal of an End-to-End Emergency Medical System
Authors: El-Masri Samir  , Saddik Basema
Published: February 2025

A new comprehensive emergency system has been proposed to facilitate and computerize all the processes involved in an emergency from the initial contact to the ambulance emergency system, to finding the right and nearest available ambulance, and through to accessing a Smart Online Electronic Health Record (SOEHR). The proposed system will critically assist in pre-hospital treatments, indentify availability of the nearest available specialized hospital and communicate with the Hospital Emergency Department System (HEDS) to provide early information about the incoming patient for preparation to receive and assist.
Image-based Classification of Parkinsonian Syndromes Using T2'-Atlases
Authors: Forkert Nils Daniel  , Schmidt-Richberg Alexander  , Holst Brigitte  , Münchau Alexander  , Handels Heinz  , Boelmans Kai
Published: February 2025

Parkinsonian syndromes (PS) are genetically and pathologically heterogeneous neurodegenerative disorders. Clinical distinction between different PS can be difficult, particularly in early disease stages. This paper describes an automatic method for the distinction between classical Parkinson's disease (PD) and progressive supranuclear palsy (PSP) using T2' atlases. This procedure is based on the assumption that regional brain iron content differs between PD and PSP, which can be selectively measured using T2' MR imaging. The proposed method was developed and validated based on 33 PD patients, 10 PSP patients, and 24 healthy controls. The first step of the proposed procedure comprises T2' atlas generation for each group using affine and following non-linear registration. For classification, a T2' dataset is registered to the atlases and compared to each one of them using the mean sum of squared differences metric. The dataset is assigned to the group for which the corresponding atlas yields the lowest value. The evaluation using leave-one-out validation revealed that the proposed method achieves a classification accuracy of 91%. The presented method might serve as the basis for an improved automatic classification of PS in the future.
Mobile Peer Support in Diabetes
Authors: Chomutare Taridzo  , Årsand Eirik  , Hartvigsen Gunnar
Published: February 2025

As in other domains, there has been unprecedented growth in diabetesrelated social media in the past decade. Although there is not yet enough evidence for the clinical benefits of patient-to-patient dialogue using emergent social media, patient empowerment through easier access to information has been proven to foster healthy lifestyles, and to delay or even prevent progression of secondary illnesses. In the design of diabetes-related social media, we need access to personal health data for modelling the core disease-related characteristics of the user. We discuss design aspects of mobile peer support, including acquisition of personal health data, and design artefacts for a healthcare recommender system. We also explore mentoring models as a tool for managing the transient relationships among peers with diabetes. Intermediate results suggest acquiring health data for modelling patients' health status is feasible for implementing a personalized and mobile peer-support system.
Facilitating Access to Laboratory Guidelines by Modeling their Contents and Designing a Computerized User Interface
Authors: Yasini Mobin  , Duclos Catherine  , Lamy Jean-Baptiste  , Venot Alain
Published: February 2025

Laboratory tests are not always prescribed appropriately. Guidelines for some important laboratory tests have been developed by expert panels in the Parisian region to maximize the appropriateness of laboratory medicine. However; these recommendations are not frequently consulted by physicians and nurses. We developed a system facilitating consultation of these guidelines, to increase their usability. Elements of information contained in these documents were identified and included in recommendations of different categories. UML modeling was used to represent these categories and their relationships to each other in the guidelines. We used the generated model to implement a computerized interface. The prototype interface, based on web-based technology was found to be rapid and easy to use. By clicking on provided keywords, information about the subject sought is highlighted whilst retaining the entire text of the guideline on-screen.
Populating the i2b2 Database with Heterogeneous Emr Data: a Semantic Network Approach
Authors: Mate Sebastian  , Bürkle Thomas  , Köpcke Felix  , Breil Bernhard  , Wullich Bernd  , Dugas Martin  , Prokosch Hans-Ulrich  , Ganslandt Thomas
Published: February 2025

In an ongoing effort to share heterogeneous electronic medical record (EMR) data in an i2b2 instance between the University Hospitals Münster and Erlangen for joint cancer research projects, an ontology based system for the mapping of EMR data to a set of common data elements has been developed. The system translates the mappings into local SQL scripts, which are then used to extract, transform and load the facts data from each EMR into the i2b2 database. By using Semantic Web standards, it is the authors' goal to reuse the laboriously compiled “mapping knowledge” in future projects, such as a comprehensive cancer ontology or even a hospital-wide clinical ontology.
Computing the Compliance of Physician Drug Orders with Guidelines Using an OWL2 Reasoner and Standard Drug Resources
Authors: Noussa Yao Joseph  , Séroussi Brigitte  , Bouaud Jacques
Published: February 2025

Assessing the conformity of a physician's prescription to a given recommended prescription is not obvious since both prescriptions are expressed at different levels of abstraction and may concern only a subpart of the whole order. Recent formalisms (OWL2) and tools (reasoners) from the semantic web technologies are becoming available to represent defined concepts and to handle classification services. We propose a generic framework based on such technologies, using available standardized drug resources, to compute the compliance of a given drug order to a recommended prescription, such that the subsumption relationship yields the conformity relationship between the order and the recommendation. The ATC drug classification has been used as a local ontology. The method has been successfully implemented for arterial hypertension management for which we had a sample of antihypertensive orders. However, supplemental standardized drug knowledge is needed to correctly compare drug orders to recommended orders.
Applying One-vs-One and One-vs-All Classifiers in k-Nearest Neighbour Method and Support Vector Machines to an Otoneurological Multi-Class Problem
Authors: Varpa Kirsi  , Joutsijoki Henry  , Iltanen Kati  , Juhola Martti
Published: February 2025

We studied how the splitting of a multi-class classification problem into multiple binary classification tasks, like One-vs-One (OVO) and One-vs-All (OVA), affects the predictive accuracy of disease classes. Classifiers were tested with an otoneurological data using 10-fold cross-validation 10 times with k-Nearest Neighbour (k-NN) method and Support Vector Machines (SVM). The results showed that the use of multiple binary classifiers improves the classification accuracies of disease classes compared to one multi-class classifier. In general, OVO classifiers worked out better with this data than OVA classifiers. Especially, the OVO with k-NN yielded the highest total classification accuracies.
Truecasing Clinical Narratives
Authors: Kreuzthaler Markus  , Schulz Stefan
Published: February 2025

Truecasing, or capitalization, is the rewriting of each word of an input text with its proper case information. Many medical texts, especially those from legacy systems, are still written entirely in capitalized letters, hampering their readability. We present a pilot study that uses the World Wide Web as a corpus in order to support automatic truecasing. The texts under scrutiny were German-language pathology reports. By submitting token bigrams to the Google Web search engine we collected enough case information so that we achieved 81.3% accuracy for acronyms and 98.5% accuracy for normal words. This is all the more impressive as only half of the words used in this corpus existed in a standard medical dictionary due to the excessive use of ad-hoc single-word nominal compounds in German. Our system performed less satisfactory for spelling correction, and in three cases the proposed word substitutions altered the meaning of the input sentence. For the routine deployment of this method the dependency on a (black box) search engine must be overcome, for example by using cloud-based Web n-gram services.
Sharing Sensitive Personal Health Information through Facebook: the Unintended Consequences
Authors: Househ Mowafa
Published: February 2025

The purpose of this paper was to explore the types of sensitive health information posted by individuals through social network media sites such as Facebook. The researcher found several instances in which individuals, who could be identified by their user profiles, posted personal and sensitive health information related to mental and genetic disorders and sexually transmitted diseases. The data suggest that Facebook users should be made aware of the potential harm that may occur when sharing sensitive health information publicly through Facebook. Ethical considerations in undertaking such research are also examined.
Challenges for Signal Generation from Medical Social Media Data
Authors: Dreesman Johannes  , Denecke Kerstin
Published: February 2025

Early detection of disease outbreaks is crucial for public health officials to react and report in time. Currently, novel approaches and sources of information are investigated to address this challenge. For example, data sources such as blogs or Twitter messages become increasingly important for epidemiologic surveillance. In traditional surveillance, statistical methods are used to interpret reported number of cases or other indicators to potential disease outbreaks. For analyzing data collected from other data sources, in particular for data extracted from unstructured text, it is still unclear whether these methods can be applied. This paper surveys existing methods for interpreting data for signal generation in public health. In particular, problems to be addressed when applying them to social media data will be summarized and future steps will be highlighted.
Patient Empowerment by Increasing Information Accessibility In a Telecare System
Authors: Topac Vasile  , Stoicu-Tivadar Vasile
Published: February 2025

Patient empowerment is important in order to increase the quality of the medical care and the life quality of the patients. In this respect, the paper describes how a telecare system can become more “friendly” with the assisted persons (elderly people or post-discharged patients) due to a specific feature addressing the patient access to information from medical texts. The according service is part of the server of a tele-care/tele-assistance system (TELEASIS) and adapts the medical text to “patient” lay person language, contributing in this respect to the patient empowerment process. This component is based on an original terminology interpretation engine which is being briefly described in this paper. The TELEASIS system has a specific interface dedicated to medical personnel allowing the addition and assignment of medical text to patients or group of patients, which can be later accessed by the patients adapted to a patient friendly language. The medial texts are saved on a central medical information database which contains different content formats (text, multimedia, videos). As a conclusion, the adapted information available for the assisted persons and the communication channels established in the system increase the possibility of patients being better informed on their health status.
Simplifying HL7 Version 3 messages
Authors: Worden Robert  , Scott Philip
Published: February 2025

HL7 Version 3 offers a semantically robust method for healthcare interoperability but has been criticized as overly complex to implement. This paper reviews initiatives to simplify HL7 Version 3 messaging and presents a novel approach based on semantic mapping. Based on user-defined definitions, precise transforms between simple and full messages are automatically generated. Systems can be interfaced with the simple messages and achieve interoperability with full Version 3 messages through the transforms. This reduces the costs of HL7 interfacing and will encourage better uptake of HL7 Version 3 and CDA.
Supporting openEHR Java Desktop Application Developers
Authors: Kashfi Hajar  , Torgersson Olof
Published: February 2025

The openEHR community suggests that an appropriate approach for creating a graphical user interface for an openEHR-based application is to generate forms from the underlying archetypes and templates. However, current generation techniques are not mature enough to be able to produce high quality interfaces with good usability. Therefore, developing efficient ways to combine manually designed and developed interfaces to openEHR backends is an interesting alternative. In this study, a framework for binding a pre-designed graphical user interface to an openEHR-based backend is proposed. The proposed framework contributes to the set of options available for developers. In particular we believe that the approach of combining user interface components with an openEHR backend in the proposed way might be useful in situations where the quality of the user interface is essential and for creating small scale and experimental systems.
Results of the 10
Authors: Pletneva Natalia  , Cruchet Sarah  , Simonet Maria-Ana  , Kajiwara Maki  , Boyer Célia
Published: February 2025

The Internet is increasingly being used as a means to search and communicate health information. As the mission of Health on the Net Foundation (HON) is to guide healthcare consumers and professionals to trustworthy online information, we have been interested in seeing the trend of the attitudes towards Internet use for health purposes since 1996. This article presents the results of the 10thHON survey conducted in July-August 2010 (in English and French). It was hosted on the HON site with links from Facebook and Twitter and from HONcode certified web sites. There were 524 participants coming mainly from France (28%), the UK (18%) and the USA (18%). 65% of participants represented the “general public”, while the remaining 35% were professionals. Information quality remains the main barrier users encounter while looking for health information online; at the same time, 79% believe they critically assess online content. Both patients and physicians consider the Internet to be helpful in facilitating their communication during consultations, although professionals are more sceptic than the general public. These results justify the continuing efforts of HON to raise public awareness regarding online health information and the ethical, quality and transparency issues, and to educate and guide users towards trustworthy health information.
Development of a New International Classification of Health Interventions Based on an Ontology Framework
Authors: Paviot Béatrice Trombert  , Madden Richard  , Moskal Lori  , Zaiss Albrecht  , Bousquet Cédric  , Kumar Anand  , Lewalle Pierre  , Rodrigues Jean Marie
Published: February 2025

: The WHO International Classification of Diseases is used in many national applications to plan, manage and fund through case mix health care systems and allows international comparisons of the performance of these systems. There is no such measuring tool for health interventions or procedures. To fulfil this requirement the WHO-FIC Network recommended in 2006 to develop an International Classification of Health Interventions (ICHI). This initiative is aimed to harmonise the existing national classifications and to provide a basic system for the countries which have not developed their own classification systems. It is based on the CEN/ISO ontology framework standard named Categorial Structure defined from a non formal bottom up ontology approach. The process of populating the framework is ongoing to start from a common model structure encompassing the ICD 9CM Volume 3 granularity.
The Archetype-Enabled EHR System ZK-ARCHE – Integrating the ISO/EN 13606 Standard and IHE XDS Profile
Authors: Kohler Michael  , Rinner Christoph  , Hübner-Bloder Gudrun  , Saboor Samrend  , Ammenwerth Elske  , Duftschmid Georg
Published: February 2025

The EHR system ZK-ARCHE automatically generates forms from ISO/EN 13606 archetypes. For this purpose the archetypes are augmented with components of the reference model to achieve so-called “comprehensive archetypes”. Data collected via the forms are stored in a list which associates each value with the path of the corresponding comprehensive archetype node coded as W3C XPath. From this list archetype-conformant EHR extracts can be created. The system is embedded with the IHE XDS profile to allow direct data exchange in an environment of distributed data storage.
Using a Logical Information Model-Driven Design Process in Healthcare
Authors: Cheong Yu Chye  , Bird Linda  , Tun Nwe Ni  , Brooks Colleen
Published: February 2025

A hybrid standards-based approach has been adopted in Singapore to develop a Logical Information Model (LIM) for healthcare information exchange. The Singapore LIM uses a combination of international standards, including ISO13606-1 (a reference model for electronic health record communication), ISO21090 (healthcare datatypes), SNOMED CT (healthcare terminology) and HL7 v2 (healthcare messaging). This logic-based design approach also incorporates mechanisms for achieving bi-directional semantic interoperability.
SNOMED CT Implementation: Implications of Choosing Clinical Findings or Observable Entities
Authors: Rasmussen Anne Randorff  , Rosenbeck Kirstine
Published: February 2025

Internationally, it is a priority to develop and implement semantically interoperable health information systems.[1] One required technology is the use of standardised clinical terminologies. The terminology, SNOMED CT, has shown superior coverage compared to other terminologies in multiple clinical fields. The aim of this paper is to analyse SNOMED CT implementation in an Electronic Health Record (EHR). More specifically, differences and consequences of applying clinical findings (CFs) as an alternative to observable entities (OEs) is analysed. Results show that CFs represents the content of the templates with better coverage, with more parent concepts and with a higher degree of fully defined terms than the OEs. We discuss the possibility to further evaluate the observable entity hierarchy to overcome a potential overlapping use of the two hierarchies.
Serious Adverse Event Reporting in a Medical Device Information System
Authors: Pecoraro Fabrizio  , Luzi Daniela
Published: February 2025

The paper describes the design of a module that manages Serious Adverse Events (SAEs) reporting within a Clinical investigation on Medical devices. This module is integrated in a Medical Device Information System (MEDIS) that collects data and documents exchanged between applicants and the National Competent Authority during the clinical investigation lifecycle. To improve information sharing among different stakeholders and systems MEDIS design and developed were based on the HL7 v.3 standards. The paper provides a conceptual model on SAEs based on HL7 RIM that underlines Medical Device characteristics.
The Single Source Architecture x4T to Connect Medical Documentation and Clinical Research
Authors: Dziuballe Philipp  , Forster Christian  , Breil Bernhard  , Thiemann Volker  , Fritz Fleur  , Lechtenbörger Jens  , Vossen Gottfried  , Dugas Martin
Published: February 2025

Clinical trials often require large and redundant documentation efforts, because information systems in patient care and research are separated. In two clinical trials we have assessed the number of study items available in the clinical information system for re-use in clinical research. We have analysed common standards such as HL7, IHE RFD and CDISC ODM, regulatory constraints and the documentation process. Based on this analysis we have designed and implemented an architecture for an integrated clinical trial documentation workflow. Key aspects are the re-use of existing medical routine data and the integration into current documentation workflows.
Facilitating the Iterative Design of Informatics Tools to Advance the Science of Autism
Authors: Kaufman David R.  , Cronin Patrick  , Rozenblit Leon  , Voccola David  , Horton Amanda  , Shine Alisabeth  , Johnson Stephen B.
Published: February 2025

This paper describes a usability evaluation study of an innovative first generation system (Data Dig) designed to retrieve phenotypic data from the large SFARI data set of 2700 families each of which has one child affected with autism spectrum disorder. The usability methods included a cognitive walkthrough and usability testing. Although the subjects were able to learn to use the system, more than 50 usability problems of varying severity were noted. The problems with the greatest frequency resulted from users being unable to understand meanings of variables, filter categories correctly, use the Boolean filter, and correctly interpret the feedback provided by the system. Subjects had difficulty forming a mental model of the organizational system underlying the database. This precluded them from making informed navigation choices while formulating queries. Clinical research informatics is a new and immensely promising discipline. However in its nascent stage, it lacks a stable interaction paradigm to support a range of users on pertinent tasks. This presents great opportunity for researchers to further this science by harnessing the powers of user-centered iterative design.
A Method to Measure the Reduction of CO
Authors: Di Giacomo Paola  , Håkansson Peter
Published: February 2025

Climate change is perhaps the topmost challenge of our time. To prevent climate change from severely impacting almost every facet of life on the planet, scientific consensus points to a need to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG), measured in terms of CO2equivalents (CO2e), by as much as 80 percent by 2050. So far the focus has centered on incremental reductions of CO2e emissions in areas in which they are highest, without negatively impacting the economy. But there is also a large untapped opportunity to drive economic growth by applying transformative solutions. In this paper, a method to evaluate CO2e reduction in the e-health applications is presented.