bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Gathering Real World Evidence with Cluster Analysis for Clinical Decision Support
Authors: Xia Eryu  , Liu Haifeng  , Li Jing  , Mei Jing  , Li Xuejun  , Xu Enliang  , Li Xiang  , Hu Gang  , Xie Guotong  , Xu Meilin
Published: February 2025

Clinical decision support systems are information technology systems that assist clinical decision-making tasks, which have been shown to enhance clinical performance. Cluster analysis, which groups similar patients together, aims to separate patient cases into phenotypically heterogenous groups and defining therapeutically homogeneous patient subclasses. Useful as it is, the application of cluster analysis in clinical decision support systems is less reported. Here, we describe the usage of cluster analysis in clinical decision support systems, by first dividing patient cases into similar groups and then providing diagnosis or treatment suggestions based on the group profiles. This integration provides data for clinical decisions and compiles a wide range of clinical practices to inform the performance of individual clinicians. We also include an example usage of the system under the scenario of blood lipid management in type 2 diabetes. These efforts represent a step toward promoting patient-centered care and enabling precision medicine.
Validation of the Chinese Version of the Functional Oral Intake Scale (FOIS) Score in the Assessment of Acute Stroke Patients with Dysphagia
Authors: Zhou Hongzhen  , Zhu Yafang  , Zhang Xiaomei
Published: February 2025

This study aimed to validate the Chinese version of the Functional Oral Intake Scale (FOIS) score in acute stroke patients with dysphagia. A sample of 128 consecutive patients with acute stroke, admitted to Department of Neurology from April to October in 2016, completed the FOIS. The interrater reliability, criterion validity, discriminant validity, cross validation, and the sensitivity of FOIS scale were evaluated. Results showed that rater agreements were excellent for FOIS (Kw = 0.881, p < 0.001). A highly negative correlation between FOIS and WST (water swallow test) was detected (r = −0.937, p < 0.001). There was significant difference for FOIS level of patients with different evaluation outcomes (χ2= 126.551, p < 0.001). The FOIS evaluation results were significantly correlated with two physiological measures of swallowing. The Chinese version of the FOIS score is a reliable scale for evaluating the level of oral feeding function in patients with acute stroke.
Development of Day Care Management Systems for Elderly
Authors: Chiang Ming-Chu  , Yeh Yu-Ting  , Liu Chien-Tsai
Published: February 2025

The purpose of this study is to build a practical, highly efficient management information system (MIS) for elderly day care (EDC) centers to improve elders' lives. Based on system requirements and the management operation guidelines for EDC, we have developed an MIS. The introduction of the system will help EDC management to be more accurate, comprehensive, and efficient.
Social Media as a Communication Support for Persons with Mild Acquired Cognitive Impairment: A Social Network Analysis Study
Authors: Eghdam Aboozar  , Hamidi Ulrika  , Bartfai Aniko  , Koch Sabine
Published: February 2025

This study was conducted as a social network analysis of a Facebook group for Swedish speaking persons (1310 members) with perceived brain fatigue after an illness or injury to the brain to address the lack of research examining social media and the potential value of on-line support for persons with mild acquired cognitive impairment.
Setting the Agenda for Personal Health Records in Low- and Middle-Income Countries
Authors: Mwogi Thomas  , Were Martin C.
Published: February 2025

In the developed world, Personal Health Records (PHRs) have been demonstrated to improve patient adherence, reduce medical errors, improve patient-provider communication, improve chronic disease management, and promote behavior change. PHRs have not been widely adopted in low- and middle-income countries. There is rising use of smartphones, adoption of national-level electronic health systems, and change in historical perceptions on acceptance of technology. It is thus an opportune time to critically examine the potential role and approaches to PHRs in LMICs.
Methods for Faster and Efficient Data Entry in Electronic Medical Records
Authors: Gogia Shashi B.  , Malaviya Anand N.
Published: February 2025

Data entry remains the slowest link in the value chain inhibiting growth of Electronic Medical Records and attendant benefits towards Meaningful use. We designed templates for user forms customized by specialty. Here, we demonstrate the functionality of our software and provide instructions on how these can be adopted by other developers.
Bringing Knowledge to Users in One Click: Infobuttons in the Problem List of an EHR
Authors: Rodriguez Jose F.  , Mole Emilio S.  , Rubin Luciana  , Benitez Sonia E.  , Otero Carlos M.  , Luna Daniel R.  , Quiros Fernan
Published: February 2025

The infobuttons allows the solving of information needs. In our study, the use of Infobuttons is described, analyzing the number of queries to UpToDate® from the problem list of an Electronic Health Record. There were 26419 requests in 8 months. The highest average use occurred in June. The links to knowledge bases can help to solve information needs, even before they occur.
Extraction and Evaluation of Medication Data from Electronic Dental Records
Authors: Wang Yue  , Siddiqui Zasim  , Krishnan Anand  , Patel Jay  , Thyvalikakath Thankam
Published: February 2025

With an increase in the geriatric population, dental care professionals are presented with older patients who are managing their comorbidities using multiple medications. In this study, we developed a system to extract medication information from electronic dental records (EDRs) and provided patient distribution by the number of medications.
Developing an Evidence-Based Web-Education Program Designed to Help Nurses Learn to Care for Acutely Ill Intoxicated Patients in Emergency Departments
Authors: Koivunen Marita  , Noppari Eija  , Hakala Tiina  , Kautto Anna-Kaisa
Published: February 2025

A significant part of the patients treated in an emergency department are under the influence of alcohol or drugs. It is important to identify individuals of patient groups who might benefit from an intervention to reduce drug use. The aim of the study was to develop an evidence-based web-education program aimed at enhancing nurses' knowledge and skills in the care, assessment, and management of substance-related disorders among acutely ill patients in emergency departments.
Big Data in the ICU: Experience in the Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires
Authors: Astudillo José  , Zelechower Javier  , Traversaro Francisco  , Redelico Francisco  , Luna Daniel  , Quiros Fernan  , Risk Marcelo  , San Román Eduardo
Published: February 2025

Intensive care represents the critical care setting of a hospital, where fundamental, precise, and fast decisions have to be made. These decisions will affect the outcome of the patients in a matter of few hours. The knowledge of the therapeutic interventions applied in this setting is evolving, thus the perspective of Big Data may provide a new paradigm in the ICU. The conformation of a multidisciplinary team is essential to develop Big Data in the ICU.
Evaluation of SNOMED CT as a Reference Terminology for Standardized Data Queries in the Arden Syntax
Authors: Jenders Robert A.
Published: February 2025

Context: Arden Syntax is a standard that encodes knowledge as Medical Logic Modules (MLMs) but lacks a standard query data model and terminology.
CoMetaR: A Collaborative Metadata Repository for Biomedical Research Networks
Authors: Stöhr Mark R.  , Helm Gudrun  , Majeed Raphael W.  , Günther Andreas
Published: February 2025

The German Center for Lung Research (DZL) is a research network with the aim of researching respiratory diseases. To perform consortium-wide queries through one single interface, it requires a uniform conceptual structure. No single terminology covers all our concepts. To achieve a broadly accepted and complete ontology, we developed a platform for collaborative metadata management “CoMetaR”. Anyone can browse and discuss the ontology while editing can be performed by authenticated users.
An Open Metadata Schema for Clinical Pathway (openCP) in China
Authors: Xu Wei  , Zhu Yanxin  , Wang Xia
Published: February 2025

China has issued and implemented standard clinical pathways (Chinese standard CPs) since 2009; however, they are still paper-based CPs. The aim of the study is to reorganize Chinese standard CPs based on related Chinese medical standards, by using archetype approach, and develop an Open platform for CP (openCP) in China.
Method to Identify Diagnostic Rules for Pancreatic Cancer Using Laboratory Data Based on Bayesian Estimation
Authors: Manabe Shirou  , Shimai Yoshie  , Murata Taizo  , Fujii Ayumi  , Ueda Kanayo  , Nakagawa Akito  , Takeda Toshihiro  , Mihara Naoki  , Matsamura Yasushi
Published: February 2025

Early diagnosis and treatment of pancreatic cancer is challenging. We attempted to find diagnostic rules for pancreatic cancer from laboratory data in the Osaka University Hospital's data warehouse using Bayesian estimation. We calculated the pretest odds based on the number of laboratory tests and the cutoff value at which the diagnostic accuracy is over 20%. By this method, we identified diagnostic rules of 6 types for one item and 79 types for 2 items. Pancreatic cancer is difficult to detect from only general laboratory tests. However, this method may be promising in early diagnosis.
Computerized Cognitive Rehabilitation: Comparing Different Human-Computer Interactions
Authors: Quaglini Silvana  , Alloni Anna  , Cattani Barbara  , Panzarasa Silvia  , Pistarini Caterina
Published: February 2025

In this work we describe an experiment involving aphasic patients, where the same speech rehabilitation exercise was administered in three different modalities, two of which are computer-based. In particular, one modality exploits the “Makey Makey”, an electronic board which allows interacting with the computer using physical objects.
Use of an Off-the-Shelf Corporate Information Tool to Track a High-Level-Disinfection Process
Authors: Salazar Carolina  , de los Hoyos Jaime  , Izurieta Francisco  , Jara Daniel  , Capurro Daniel
Published: February 2025

High-Level Disinfection (HLD) of endoscopic equipment is a critical process to ensure patient safety. Although commercial tracking software is available, here we demonstrate the successful design and implementation of a HLD tracking system using pre-existing corporate information tools. After a brief development and implementation stage, the HLD unit is successfully tracking the process and are able to create simple visualizations to monitor and improve the existing procedures.
Development of Observation Support System Using Integrated Nursing Practice Data
Authors: Seto Ryoma  , Inoue Toshitaka  , Koeda Nobuyuki  , Yamashita Sayuri  , Komino Kotaro  , Yasoshima Takahiro
Published: February 2025

The purpose of this study was to develop a prototype nursing observation support system using integrated nursing practice data with nursing records, prescription data, and nurse call logs. These data show that the present observation system has improved. The system has the potential to provide improved observations of chest symptoms and pain management.
Patient Accessibility to Hospitals in Winter Road Conditions: GIS-Based Analysis Using Car Navigation Probe Data
Authors: Tanikawa Takumi  , Ohba Hisateru  , Yagahara Ayako  , Ogasawara Katsuhiko
Published: February 2025

The purpose of this study was to estimate geographical patient flow to hospitals during winter seasons using simulation analysis. We used probe data collected from car navigation systems and performed a Geographical Information System (GIS)-based analysis to determine the relationship between travel time to hospitals and winter road conditions. Accessibility to hospitals based on travel time in summer and winter was overlayed on a map to demonstrate the increase in travel time during winter.
Data Mining on Numeric Error in Computerized Physician Order Entry System Prescriptions
Authors: Wu Xue  , Wu Changxu
Published: February 2025

This study revealed the numeric error patterns related to dosage when doctors prescribed in computerized physician order entry system. Error categories showed that the ‘6’,‘7’, and ‘9’ key produced a higher incidence of errors in Numpad typing, while the ‘2’,‘3’, and ‘0’ key produced a higher incidence of errors in main keyboard digit line typing. Errors categorized as omission and substitution were higher in prevalence than transposition and intrusion.
Establishing Therapeutic Alliance in Mental Health Care via Cooperative Documentation
Authors: Perlich Anja  , von Thienen Julia  , Meinel Christoph
Published: February 2025

In talk-based mental health interventions, treatment outcomes can be decisively improved by enhancing the relationship between patient and therapist. We developed the interactive documentation system Tele-Board MED (TBM) with the goal of supporting patients and doctors in their cooperative task of patient care. The system offers a whiteboard-inspired graphical user interface which allows them to take notes jointly during the treatment session. Two proxy studies were conducted whereby TBM was introduced in a role play that showcased the dialogue in a therapy session. The patient role was played by a volunteer. The audience of human-centered design as well as eHealth experts rated the therapist-patient relationship in a session with and without TBM. The data collected via questionnaires shows that TBM consistently receives a positive rating from study participants (N = 36) in the areas of collaboration, communication, patient-doctor relationship, as well as patient empowerment.
Lessons Learned After Redesigning a Personal Health Record
Authors: Smith María I.  , Garcia Gabriela  , Simon Mariana  , Bruchanski Lucila  , Frangella Julia  , Sommer Janine A.  , Giussi María V.  , Luna Daniel R.
Published: February 2025

On May 2016, our institution implemented a redesign of the personal health record (PHR) with the aim of enhancing its use. The objective of this research was to know and to understand end users' opinions as regards PH functionalities and the difficulties they have addressed while using the new PHR version. Research was based on a self administered survey, patient interviews and focus groups performed with out-patients. Topics examined: ways of access to the PHR log-in web page, frequency of use, type of device, most used functionalities, the different uses patients gave to PHR, perception as regards the redesign. This research allowed us to know the uses patients give to the PHR in this institution and to understand the difficulties they found in what refers to its re-design. This information constitutes the clue to motivate and accompany PHR users in the process of adoption of a patient portal.
A Case-Based Study with Radiologists Performing Diagnosis Tasks in Virtual Reality
Authors: Venson José Eduardo  , Albiero Berni Jean Carlo  , Edmilson da Silva Maia Carlos  , Marques da Silva Ana Maria  , Cordeiro d'Ornellas Marcos  , Maciel Anderson
Published: February 2025

In radiology diagnosis, medical images are most often visualized slice by slice. At the same time, the visualization based on 3D volumetric rendering of the data is considered useful and has increased its field of application. In this work, we present a case-based study with 16 medical specialists to assess the diagnostic effectiveness of a Virtual Reality interface in fracture identification over 3D volumetric reconstructions. We developed a VR volume viewer compatible with both the Oculus Rift and handheld-based head mounted displays (HMDs). We then performed user experiments to validate the approach in a diagnosis environment. In addition, we assessed the subjects' perception of the 3D reconstruction quality, ease of interaction and ergonomics, and also the users opinion on how VR applications can be useful in healthcare. Among other results, we have found a high level of effectiveness of the VR interface in identifying superficial fractures on head CTs.
I Got 99 Problems, and eHealth Is One
Authors: Wass Sofie  , Vimarlund Vivian
Published: February 2025

Many eHealth initiatives are never implemented or merely end as pilot projects. Previous studies report that organisational, technical and human issues need to be properly taken into consideration if such initiatives are to be successful. The aim of this paper is to explore whether previously identified challenges within the area have remained in the Swedish eHealth setting or whether they have changed. After interviewing experts in eHealth, we present a classification of areas of concern. Recurrence of previously identified challenges was found, but also new issues were identified. The results of the study indicate that there is a need to consider organisational and semantic issues on both national and international levels. Legal and technical challenges still exist but it seems even more important to support eHealth initiatives financially, increase practitioners' knowledge in health informatics and manage new expectations from patients.
Development of Home-Based Sleep Monitoring System for Obstructive Sleep Apnea
Authors: Wu Peirong  , Chen Guan-Ting  , Cui Yanyan  , Li Jin-Wei  , Kuo Terry B.J.  , Chang Polun
Published: February 2025

Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) has been proven to increase the risk of high blood pressure, heart attack, stroke, obesity, and diabetes. If people would like to know whether they are suffering from this sleep disorder, they need to go to particular hospital with which a sleep center that could perform polysomnography (PSG); however, for most people, this is not convenient. Consequently, the goal of this study is to develop a convenient, lower priced, and easy-to-use home-based sleep monitoring system. The researchers have developed the “Sleep Healthcare Management System” for OSA patients and healthcare providers. It combines smartphone and wearable devices that can perform real-time sleep monitoring. Healthcare providers could apply their professional knowledge to provide customized feedback via a web application. When the patient is diagnosed with an abnormal sleep health condition, healthcare providers may be able to provide appropriate and timely care.
Is There a Priority Shift in Mental Health Clinical Trials?
Authors: Anand Vibha  , Ghosh Soumya  , Anand Amit
Published: February 2025

Mental health is the largest cost driver of healthcare. ClinicalTrials.gov is a web-based registry of trials conducted in human participants worldwide and serves as an important resource for both practice and research. We use the registry and dynamic topic modeling (DTM) methods to discover hidden topics and their evolution over last 17 years in trials in bipolar disorders. Our model suggests a “priority shift” from drugs to device and among populations studied in mental health trials. For example, transcranial magnetic stimulation for treatment resistant depression (TMS for TRD) trials have increased (χ2= 52.99, p < 0.001, n = 187) while standardized drug safety and efficacy trials have remained constant (χ2= 0.72, p = 0.39, n = 101) and more trials focused on pediatric and adolescents (χ2= 2.98, p = 0.08, n = 133) may have been conducted since FDAAA 2007. We also derive unique data-driven insights in the discovered topic areas in this model based study.
Semi-Automatic Mark-Up and UMLS Annotation of Clinical Guidelines
Authors: Becker Matthias  , Böckmann Britta
Published: February 2025

Clinical guidelines and clinical pathways are accepted and proven instruments for quality assurance and process optimization in the healthcare domain. To derive clinical pathways from clinical guidelines, the imprecise, non-formalized abstract guidelines must be formalized. The transfer of evidence-based knowledge (clinical guidelines) to care processes (clinical pathways) is not straightforward due to different information contents and semantical constructs. A complex step within this formalization process is the mark-up step and annotation of the text passages to terminologies. The Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) provides a common reference terminology as well as the semantic link for combining the clinical pathways to patient-specific information. This paper proposes a semi-automated mark-up and UMLS annotation for clinical guidelines by using natural language processing techniques. The algorithm has been tested and evaluated using a German breast cancer guideline.
Translational Morphosyntax: Distribution of Negation in Clinical Records and Biomedical Journal Articles
Authors: Cohen K. Bretonnel  , Goss Foster R.  , Zweigenbaum Pierre  , Hunter Lawrence E.
Published: February 2025

Prior knowledge of the distributional characteristics of linguistic phenomena can be useful for a variety of language processing tasks. This paper describes the distribution of negation in two types of biomedical texts: scientific journal articles and progress notes. Two types of negation are examined: explicit negation at the syntactic level and affixal negation at the sub-word level. The data show that the distribution of negation is significantly different in the two document types, with explicit negation more frequent in the clinical documents than in the scientific publications and affixal negation more frequent in the journal articles at the type level and token levels. All code is available on GitHubhttps://github.com/KevinBretonnelCohen/NegationDistribution
An Integrated Surveillance System to Examine Testing, Services, and Outcomes for Sexually Transmitted Diseases
Authors: Dixon Brian E.  , Tao Guoyu  , Wang Jane  , Tu Wanzhu  , Hoover Sarah  , Zhang Zuoyi  , Batteiger Teresa A.  , Arno Janet N.
Published: February 2025

Despite laws that require reporting of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) to governmental health agencies, integrated surveillance of STDs remains challenging. Data and information about testing are fragmented from information on treatment and outcomes. To overcome this fragmentation, data from multiple electronic systems spanning clinical and public health environments were integrated to create an STD surveillance registry. Electronic health records, disease case records, and birth registry records were linked and then stored in a de-identified, secure server for use by health officials and researchers. The registry contains nearly 6 million tests for 628,138 individuals over a 12-year period. The registry supports efforts to understand the epidemiology of STDs as well as health services and outcomes for those diagnosed with STDs. Specialized disease registries hold promise for collaboration across clinical and public health domains to improve surveillance efforts, reduce health disparities, and increase prevention efforts at the local level.
Analysis of Historical Medical Phenomena Using Large N-Gram Corpora
Authors: Kasáč Zdenko  , Schulz Stefan
Published: February 2025

Historically, numerous indirect references to real world phenomena have been conserved in literature. High-quality libraries of digitized books and their derivatives (like the Google NGram Viewer) have proliferated. These tools simplify the visualization of trends in phrase usage within the collective memory of language groups. A straightforward interpretation of these frequency changes is, however, too simplistic to draw conclusions about the underlying reality because it is affected by several sources of bias. Although these resources have been studied in social sciences and psychology, there is still lack of user-friendly, yet rigorous methods for analysis of phenomena relevant for medicine. We present a methodological framework to study relationships of observable phenomena quantitatively over periods, which span over centuries. We discuss its suitability for knowledge extraction from current and future large-scale, book-derived, n-gram collections.
Developing Methodologies to Find Abbreviated Laboratory Test Names in Narrative Clinical Documents by Generating High Quality Q-Grams
Authors: Kim Kyungmo  , Choi Jinwook
Published: February 2025

Laboratory test names are used as basic information to diagnose diseases. However, this kind of medical information is usually written in a natural language. To find this information, lexicon based methods have been good solutions but they cannot find terms that do not have abbreviated expressions, such as “neuts” that means “neutrophils”. To address this issue, similar word matching can be used; however, it can be disadvantageous because of significant false positives. Moreover, processing time is longer as the size of terms is bigger. Therefore, we suggest a novel q-gram based algorithm, named modified triangular area filtering, to find abbreviated laboratory test terms in clinical documents, minimizing the possibility to impair the lexicons' precision. In addition, we found the terms using the methodology with reasonable processing time. The results show that this method can achieve 92.54 precision, 87.72 recall, 90.06 f1-score in test sets when edit distance threshold(τ) = 3.
Enhancing Children's Safety by Barcoding Implementation at Breast Milk Feeding
Authors: Daus Mariana  , Maydana Thelma  , Rizzato Lede Daniel  , Luna Daniel
Published: February 2025

When newborns remain hospitalized in a neonatal intensive care unit, they are often unable to feed themselves and receive human milk through enteral nutrition devices such as orogastric or nasogastric probes. Therefore, the Nursing staff is responsible for the fractionation, storage and administration of human milk. Breast milk has a great biological complexity being the optimal food for the baby to provide all the nutrients needed. At the same time, it is a bodily fluid that carries the risk of disease transmission if not administered properly. Patient safety should be a priority in healthcare, and health information technologies could be used to avoid preventable adverse events. Barcoding technology has the ability to accurately verify patient identity and prescription accuracy before milk administration. This paper describes the steps followed to implement breast milk barcoding technology in an academic tertiary hospital.
Unsupervised Abbreviation Expansion in Clinical Narratives
Authors: Oleynik Michel  , Kreuzthaler Markus  , Schulz Stefan
Published: February 2025

Clinical narratives are typically produced under time pressure, which incites the use of abbreviations and acronyms. To expand such short forms in a correct way eases text comprehension and further semantic processing. We propose a completely unsupervised and data-driven algorithm for the resolution of non-lexicalised and potentially ambiguous abbreviations. Based on the lookup of word bigrams and unigrams extracted from a corpus of 30,000 pseudonymised cardiology reports in German, our method achieved an F1score of 0.91, evaluated with a test set of 200 text excerpts. The results are statistically significantly better (p < 0.001) than a baseline approach and show that a simple and domain-independent strategy may be enough to resolve abbreviations when a large corpus of similar texts is available. Further work is needed to combine this strategy with sentence and abbreviation detection modules, to adapt it to acronym resolution and to evaluate it with different datasets.
Phenotyping and Visualizing Infusion-Related Reactions for Breast Cancer Patients
Authors: Sun Deyu  , Sarda Gopal  , Skube Steven J.  , Blaes Anne H.  , Khairat Saif  , Melton Genevieve B.  , Zhang Rui
Published: February 2025

Infusion-related reactions (IRRs) are typical adverse events for breast cancer patients. Detecting IRRs and visualizing their occurance associated with the drug treatment would potentially assist clinicians to improve patient safety and help researchers model IRRs and analyze their risk factors. We developed and evaluated a phenotyping algorithm to detect IRRs for breast cancer patients. We also designed a visualization prototype to render IRR patients' medications, lab tests and vital signs over time. By comparing with the 42 randomly selected doses that are manually labeled by a domain expert, the sensitivity, positive predictive value, specificity, and negative predictive value of the algorithms are 69%, 60%, 79%, and 85%, respectively. Using the algorithm, an incidence of 6.4% of patients and 1.8% of doses for docetaxel, 8.7% and 3.2% for doxorubicin, 10.4% and 1.2% for paclitaxel, 16.1% and 1.1% for trastuzumab were identified retrospectively. The incidences estimated are consistent with related studies.
Design of a User-Centered Voluntary Reporting System for Patient Safety Events
Authors: Kang Hong  , Gong Yang
Published: February 2025

As the third leading cause of death in the U.S., patient safety events (PSE) are difficult to control due to multiple inputs from healthcare providers, systems, or even patients. Inspired by the success of reporting systems in other fields, PSE reporting systems could be a good resource to share and to learn from previous cases. However, the success of such systems in healthcare is yet to be seen due to the low report quality and the lack of interoperability and communication. A knowledge-based and user-centered PSE reporting system is needed to organize the scattered knowledge and improve user-friendliness. We described the development of a knowledge base for patient falls, the most frequent PSE. Based on the knowledge base, user-centered design features were incorporated into the system to improve the reporting accuracy, completeness, and timeliness. This prototype holds promise in improving PSE reporting quality and facilitating human-computer communication.
Global eHealth, Social Business and Citizen Engagement: A Natural Convergence?
Authors: Liaw Siaw-Teng  , Marcelo Alvin  , Narasimhan Padmanesan  , Ashraf Md. Mahfuz  , Ray Pradeep
Published: February 2025

This paper draws on the vision, mission and experience with the WHO Collaborating Centre on eHealth (WHOCC-eHealth) and Yunus Social Business Health Hub (YSBHH) based at UNSW Australia, and the Asia electronic Health Information Network (AeHIN). Global eHealth aims to provide equitable access to ICT and health care, particularly to the poor, vulnerable and disadvantaged. Social business aims to solve social and economic problem. Its best known product is microcredit financial services for the poor which are small loans that enable them to “produce something, sell something, earn something to develop self-reliance and a life of dignity”. Citizen engagement and community participation is integral to both constructs within the context of global partnerships for Integrated People-Centred Health Services (IPCHS) and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The eHealth dimension is consumer heath informatics, social media, mHealth and the Internet of Things. The convergence is multidimensional, mutually beneficial and requires good governance and leadership.
Comparison of Three English-to-Dutch Machine Translations of SNOMED CT Procedures
Authors: Cornet Ronald  , Hill Carly  , de Keizer Nicolette
Published: February 2025

Dutch interface terminologies are needed to use SNOMED CT in the Netherlands. Machine translation may support in their creation. The aim of our study is to compare different machine translations of procedures in SNOMED CT. Procedures were translated using Google Translate, Matecat, and Thot. Google Translate and Matecat are tools with large but general translation memories. The translation memory of Thot was trained and tuned with various configurations of a Dutch translation of parts of SNOMED CT, a medical dictionary and parts of the UMLS Metathesaurus. The configuration with the highest BLEU score, representing closeness to human translation, was selected. Similarity was determined between Thot translations and those by Google and Matecat. The validity of translations was assessed through random samples. Google and Matecat translated similarly in 85.4% of the cases and generally better than Thot. Whereas the quality of translations was considered acceptable, machine translations alone are yet insufficient.
Perceiving the Usefulness of the National Cancer Institute Metathesaurus for Enriching NCIt with Topological Patterns
Authors: He Zhe  , Chen Yan  , Geller James
Published: February 2025

The National Cancer Institute Thesaurus (NCIt), developed and maintained by the National Cancer Institute, is an important reference terminology in the cancer domain. As a controlled terminology needs to continuously incorporate new concepts to enrich its conceptual content, automated and semi-automated methods for identifying potential new concepts are in high demand. We have previously developed a topological-pattern-based method for identifying new concepts in a controlled terminology to enrich another terminology, using the UMLS Metathesaurus. In this work, we utilize this method with the National Cancer Institute Metathesaurus to identify new concepts for NCIt. While previous work was only oriented towards identifying candidate import concepts for human review, we are now also adding an algorithmic method to evaluate candidate concepts and reject a well defined group of them.
Consumer Health Informatics Aspects of Direct-to-Consumer Personal Genomic Testing
Authors: Gray Kathleen  , Stephen Remya  , Terrill Bronwyn  , Wilson Brenda  , Middleton Anna  , Tytherleigh Rigan  , Turbitt Erin  , Gaff Clara  , Savard Jacqueline  , Hickerton Chriselle  , Newson Ainsley  , Metcalfe Sylvia
Published: February 2025

This paper uses consumer health informatics as a framework to explore whether and how direct-to-consumer personal genomic testing can be regarded as a form of information which assists consumers to manage their health. It presents findings from qualitative content analysis of web sites that offer testing services, and of transcripts from focus groups conducted as part a study of the Australian public's expectations of personal genomics. Content analysis showed that service offerings have some features of consumer health information but lack consistency. Focus group participants were mostly unfamiliar with the specifics of test reports and related information services. Some of their ideas about aids to knowledge were in line with the benefits described on provider web sites, but some expectations were inflated. People were ambivalent about whether these services would address consumers' health needs, interests and contexts and whether they would support consumers' health self-management decisions and outcomes. There is scope for consumer health informatics approaches to refine the usage and the utility of direct-to-consumer personal genomic testing. Further research may focus on how uptake is affected by consumers' health literacy or by services' engagement with consumers about what they really want.
Application of Ontology Technology in Health Statistic Data Analysis
Authors: Guo Minjiang  , Hu Hongpu  , Lei Xingyun
Published: February 2025

Research Purpose: establish health management ontology for analysis of health statistic data. Proposed Methods: this paper established health management ontology based on the analysis of the concepts in China Health Statistics Yearbook, and used protégé to define the syntactic and semantic structure of health statistical data. Results: six classes of top-level ontology concepts and their subclasses had been extracted and the object properties and data properties were defined to establish the construction of these classes. By ontology instantiation, we can integrate multi-source heterogeneous data and enable administrators to have an overall understanding and analysis of the health statistic data. Conclusion: ontology technology provides a comprehensive and unified information integration structure of the health management domain and lays a foundation for the efficient analysis of multi-source and heterogeneous health system management data and enhancement of the management efficiency.
A Method for Constructing a New Extensible Nomenclature for Clinical Coding Practices in Sub-Saharan Africa
Authors: Van Laere Sven  , Nyssen Marc  , Verbeke Frank
Published: February 2025

Clinical coding is a requirement to provide valuable data for billing, epidemiology and health care resource allocation. In sub-Saharan Africa, we observe a growing awareness of the need for coding of clinical data, not only in health insurances, but also in governments and the hospitals. Presently, coding systems in sub-Saharan Africa are often used for billing purposes. In this paper we consider the use of a nomenclature to also have a clinical impact. Often coding systems are assumed to be complex and too extensive to be used in daily practice. Here, we present a method for constructing a new nomenclature based on existing coding systems by considering a minimal subset in the sub-Saharan region. Evaluation of completeness will be done nationally using the requirements of national registries. The nomenclature requires an extension character for dealing with codes that have to be used for multiple registries. Hospitals will benefit most by using this extension character.
Content and Trends in Medical Informatics Publications over the Past Two Decades
Authors: Wang Liqin  , Topaz Maxim  , Plasek Joseph M.  , Zhou Li
Published: February 2025

This study aims to identify subject content and trends in the medical informatics literature in order to shed light on the past, current, and future directions of diverse education and research activities. A list of 36 core medical informatics journals was compiled through expert consensus. We retrieved 60,862 articles from the U.S. National Library of Medicine's MEDLINE database that were published by those journals from 1992 to 2015. A series of descriptive analyses were conducted to reveal the historical productivity of the journals, publications trends, and the subject content based on the Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) term frequencies and debut years. We found 73 core topics and 72 new topics of medical informatics within three relevant MeSH categories (informatics, techniques, and healthcare).
Summarizing an Ontology: A “Big Knowledge” Coverage Approach
Authors: Zheng Ling  , Perl Yehoshua  , Elhanan Gai  , Ochs Christopher  , Geller James  , Halper Michael
Published: February 2025

Maintenance and use of a large ontology, consisting of thousands of knowledge assertions, are hampered by its scope and complexity. It is important to provide tools for summarization of ontology content in order to facilitate user “big picture” comprehension. We present a parameterized methodology for the semi-automatic summarization of major topics in an ontology, based on a compact summary of the ontology, called an “aggregate partial-area taxonomy”, followed by manual enhancement. An experiment is presented to test the effectiveness of such summarization measured by coverage of a given list of major topics of the corresponding application domain. SNOMED CT's Specimen hierarchy is the test-bed. A domain-expert provided a list of topics that serves as a gold standard. The enhanced results show that the aggregate taxonomy covers most of the domain's main topics.
Maximising the Opportunity for Healthy Ageing: Online Mental Health Measurement and Targeted Interventions
Authors: Iasiello Matthew  , Bartholomaeus Jonathan  , Jarden Aaron  , van Agteren Joseph
Published: February 2025

Longevity is a valuable resource for society, as older people are increasingly looking for new ways to contribute after retirement. Their contribution is however dependent upon their physical health, mental health and wellbeing. The potential role that mental health and wellbeing, two separate but interrelated constructs, play often are both under-recognised and insufficiently targeted. Positive ageing is a positive and constructive view of ageing, where older people actively work on maintaining a positive attitude, work towards keeping fit and healthy, and strive to maximize their wellbeing. Interventions stimulating positive ageing show promising results for both mental health and wellbeing, and telehealth can play an important role in improving the reach and effectiveness of positive ageing interventions. Telehealth solutions can also help researchers reliably measure and better understand the drivers of wellbeing at individual and population levels; results that can both form the basis for advancing the field of positive ageing and help inform public policy.
Detecting and Resolving Data Conflicts when Using International Claims Data for Research
Authors: Haux Christian  , Kalmus Olivier  , Trescher Anna-Lena  , Gabel Frank  , Listl Stefan  , Knaup Petra
Published: February 2025

Using claims data for research is well established. However, most claims data analyses are focused on single countries. Multi-national approaches are scarce. The application of different anonymization techniques before data are shared for research as well as differences in the reimbursement systems hamper the use of claims data from multiple countries. This paper analyses data conflicts that occur when international claims data sets are used for research and develops a generic process to detect and resolve these conflicts. The approach was successfully applied in the EU-funded ADVOCATE (Added Value for Oral Care) project that acquired data from health insurance providers, health funds or health authorities in six European countries.
Revealing Work Practices in Hospitals Using Process Mining
Authors: Mannhardt Felix  , Toussaint Pieter J.
Published: February 2025

In order to improve health care processes (both in terms of quality and efficiency), we do need insight into how these processes are actually executed in reality. Interviewing health personnel and observing them in their work, are proven field-work techniques for gaining this insight. In this paper, we will introduce a complementary technique. This technique, called process mining, is based on the automatic analysis of digital events, registered in different information systems that support clinical work. Based on an event log, process mining can help in constructing a model of the process (discovery) or with checking to which extend an actual process confirms to a prescriptive model of it (conformance). This paper will briefly discuss two examples, which illustrate the use of process mining.
Typology of Drug Misuse Created from Information Available in Health Fora
Authors: Bigeard Élise  , Grabar Natalia  , Thiessard Frantz
Published: February 2025

Patients seldom report the misuse of drugs to their physicians. Hence, other sources of information are necessary for studying these issues. We assume that online health fora can provide such information and propose to exploit them for building a typology of drug misuses. The misuses detected are structured according to the goals of patients: we distinguished three types of non-intentional misuses and 14 types of intentional misuses. This work will be used to guide future task of automatic extraction of drug misuses.
Shared Medical Imaging Repositories
Authors: Lebre Rui  , Bastião Luís  , Costa Carlos
Published: February 2025

This article describes the implementation of a solution for the integration of ownership concept and access control over medical imaging resources, making possible the centralization of multiple instances of repositories. The proposed architecture allows the association of permissions to repository resources and delegation of rights to third entities. It includes a programmatic interface for management of proposed services, made available through web services, with the ability to create, read, update and remove all components resulting from the architecture. The resulting work is a role-based access control mechanism that was integrated with Dicoogle Open-Source Project. The solution has several application scenarios like, for instance, collaborative platforms for research and tele-radiology services deployed at Cloud.
Views of Health Information Management Staff on the Medical Coding Software in Mashhad, Iran
Authors: Kimiafar Khalil  , Hemmati Fatemeh  , Banaye Yazdipour Alireza  , Sarbaz Masoumeh
Published: February 2025

Systematic evaluation of Health Information Technology (HIT) and users' views leads to the modification and development of these technologies in accordance with their needs. The purpose of this study was to investigate the views of Health Information Management (HIM) staff on the quality of medical coding software. A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted between May to July 2016 in 26 hospitals (academic and non-academic) in Mashhad, north-eastern Iran. The study population consisted of the chairs of HIM departments and medical coders (58 staff). Data were collected through a valid and reliable questionnaire. The data were analyzed using the SPSS version 16.0. From the views of staff, the advantages of coding software such as reducing coding time had the highest average (Mean=3.82) while cost reduction had the lowest average (Mean =3.20), respectively. Meanwhile, concern about losing job opportunities was the least important disadvantage (15.5%) to the use of coding software. In general, the results of this study showed that coding software in some cases have deficiencies. Designers and developers of health information coding software should pay more attention to technical aspects, in-work reminders, help in deciding on proper codes selection by access coding rules, maintenance services, link to other relevant databases and the possibility of providing brief and detailed reports in different formats.
How Can Information and Communication Technology Improve Healthcare Inequalities and Healthcare Inequity? The Concept of Context Driven Care
Authors: Yee Kwang Chien  , Bettiol Silvana  , Nash Rosie  , Macintyrne Kate  , Wong Ming Chao  , Nøhr Christian
Published: February 2025

Advances in medicine have improved health and healthcare for many around the world. The challenge is achieving the best outcomes of health via healthcare delivery to every individual. Healthcare inequalities exist within a country and between countries. Health information technology (HIT) has provided a mean to deliver equal access to healthcare services regardless of social context and physical location. In order to achieve better health outcomes for every individual, socio-cultural factors, such as literacy and social context need to consider. This paper argues that HIT while improves healthcare inequalities by providing access, might worsen healthcare inequity. In order to improve healthcare inequity using HIT, this paper argues that we need to consider patients and context, and hence the concept of context driven care. To improve healthcare inequity, we need to conceptually consider the patient's view and methodologically consider design methods that achieve participatory outcomes.
Multi-Sided Markets for Transforming Healthcare Service Delivery
Authors: Kuziemsky Craig  , Vimarlund Vivian
Published: February 2025

Changes in healthcare delivery needs have necessitated the design of new models for connecting providers and consumers of services. While healthcare delivery has traditionally been a push market, multi-sided markets offer the potential for transitioning to a pull market for service delivery. However, there is a need to better understand the business model for multi-sided markets as a first step to using them in healthcare. This paper addressed that need and describes a multi-sided market evaluation framework. Our framework identifies patient, governance and service delivery as three levels of brokerage consideration for evaluating multi-sided markets in healthcare.