bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Applied Nursing Informatics Research – State-of-the-Art Methodologies using Electronic Health Record Data
Authors: Park Jung In  , Pruinelli Lisiane  , Westra Bonnie L.  , Delaney Connie W.
Published: February 2025

With the pervasive implementation of electronic health records (EHR), new opportunities arise for nursing research through use of EHR data. Increasingly, comparative effectiveness research within and across health systems is conducted to identify the impact of nursing for improving health, health care, and lowering costs of care. Use of EHR data for this type of research requires use of national and internationally recognized nursing terminologies to normalize data. Research methods are evolving as large data sets become available through EHRs. Little is known about the types of research and analytic methods for applied to nursing research using EHR data normalized with nursing terminologies. The purpose of this paper is to report on a subset of a systematic review of peer reviewed studies related to applied nursing informatics research involving EHR data using standardized nursing terminologies.
Width-based Algorithms for Classical Planning: New Results
Authors: Lipovetzky Nir  , Geffner Hector
Published: February 2025

We have recently shown that classical planning problems can be characterized in terms of a width measure that is bounded and small for most planning benchmark domains when goals are restricted to single atoms. Two simple algorithms have been devised for exploiting this structure: Iterated Width (IW) for achieving atomic goals, that runs in time exponential in the problem width by performing a sequence of pruned breadth first searches, and Serialized IW (SIW) that uses IW in a greedy search for achieving conjunctive goals one goal at a time. While SIW does not use heuristic estimators of any sort, it manages to solve more problems than a Greedy BFS using a heuristic like hadd. Yet, it does not approach the performance of more recent planners like LAMA. In this short paper, we introduce two simple extension to IW and SIW that narrow the performance gap with state-of-the-art planners. The first involves changing the greedy search for achieving the goals one at a time, by a depth-first search that is able to backtrack. The second involves computing a relaxed plan once before going to the next subgoal for making the pruning in the breadth-first procedure less agressive, while keeping IW exponential in the width parameter. The empirical results are interesting as they follow from ideas that are very different from those used in current planners.
Self-decomposable Global Constraints
Authors: Fages Jean-Guillaume  , Lorca Xavier  , Petit Thierry
Published: February 2025

Scalability becomes more and more critical to decision support technologies. In order to address this issue in Constraint Programming, we introduce the family of self-decomposable constraints. These constraints can be satisfied by applying their own filtering algorithms on variable subsets only. We introduce a generic framework which dynamically decompose propagation, by filtering over variable subsets. Our experiments over the CUMULATIVE constraint illustrate the practical relevance of self-decomposition.
Personalized Medicine - A Challenge for Cyprus
Authors: Schizas Christos N.
Published: February 2025

We were told at school, “If you want to solve a problem you have to identify it first”, you are then halfway towards the solution. This implied of course that the other half of the solution is a straight forward exercise, or it can be provided by a standard predetermined procedure which can be found on a shelf of ready-made solutions. This procedure, even though it has limitations, was followed extensively in solving medical problems and proved to be successful especially in cases where the available options for the solution were limited, and the only criteria to determine the final solution were cost, convenience, time, availability, etc. In other words the solution-treatment was primarily based on predetermined options, and not patient based.
Evaluating the Role of Health Informatics Professionals in Saudi Arabia: The Need for Collaboration
Authors: Alkraiji Abdullah I.  , Househ Mowafa
Published: February 2025

Saudi health authorities have acknowledged the role of health informatics professionals in improving the quality of medical services in Saudi Arabia. Different academic programs have been launched by different universities and medical colleges to produce qualified Saudi health informatics professionals. To date, there are no studies that have explained the role of health informaticians and their contribution towards the development of the Saudi health information infrastructure. In this study, the authors clarify health informatics practices and the different skills and job activities accomplished by health informaticians. With the growth in the number of Health Informatics programs within the country, there is a need to identify the current and future of HI professionals and to specify and clearly define the type of job titles describing health informatics roles. The Saudi HI educational programs need to work on linking their program objectives with a Saudi Health Informatics Career Framework (SHICF) and labor market needs. Ignoring such an important issue may result in unemployed Saudi HI graduates or HI graduates working in related fields other than HI.
Online Information Retrieval Systems and Health Professionals
Authors: Lialiou Pascalina  , Mantas John
Published: February 2025

The following paper presents a scientific contribution that explores the clinicians' use of online information retrieval systems for their clinical decision making. Particularly, the research focuses on the ability of doctors and nurses in seeking information through MEDLINE and ScienceDirect. The research process took place by an electronic form consisted of five clinical scenarios and an evaluation sheet. The results testify that only a small percent of clinicians use the recommended electronic bibliographic databasesand take the right clinical decision to the scenarios. Health professionals have to be educated in information searching and take advantage from the provided literature taking more useful and reliable answers on their clinical questions.
Exploring the Concepts of Privacy and the Sharing of Sensitive Health Information
Authors: Asiri Eman  , Asiri Hanan  , Househ Mowafa
Published: February 2025

People are increasingly sharing their personal information on social networks such as Facebook. Patients, in particular, join online support groups for specific conditions to get support and share their experience with other members of a social media group. Throughout this process, sensitive health information could be shared by group members as a part of this information exchange and privacy concerns can arise as a result. The purpose of this study is to explore various aspects relating to privacy and the sharing of sensitive health information through social media platforms. Our review found that social media such as Facebook already plays a large role in patients' lives as it helps patients to understand their health conditions and gain support from other people who suffer from the same condition. However, there are major concerns for those patients as their privacy and confidentiality can be harmed by improper use of their posted sensitive health information by governments, hospitals or individuals. More importantly, there is an increased need for laws and legislations that protect and empower patients. We recommend that healthcare organizations collaborate with social media software companies and create educational and awareness campaigns on the impacts of sharing sensitive health information through social media.
Improving IT-Support for Biobank Users
Authors: Skrowny Daniela  , Gusky Linda  , Grütz Romanus  , Lee Mahsa  , Umbach Nadine  , Nussbeck Sara Y.
Published: February 2025

To improve IT-support for biobank users by the Department of Medical Informatics (MI) a questionnaire was designed addressing topics regarding the provided software and the IT-support. Different stakeholders of supported projects were identified and the interviews were performed with five users. The developed questionnaire consisted of five sections and 50 questions. The results of the interviews showed an overall satisfaction with the software and the support. Differences were identified between “long-term” and “short-term” users. Most improvements should be made in the usability of the software. Furthermore, the interviewees showed a great interest in a user-group to discuss and compare the functionalities and workflows of the different research groups. The results of the interviews will be used to make a prioritized list of improvements for the software. After validating the questionnaire users of the other IT-Systems provided by the MI will be interviewed.
A Critical Review of Consumer Health Devices for Stress Self-Management
Authors: Lee Jeon  , Bedra McKenzie  , Finkelstein Joseph
Published: February 2025

A number of consumer health devices have been advertised as effective means to manage individual stress. However, objective evidence of their efficacy is not readily available. We present a critical analysis of evidence related to efficacy of stress management devices based on comprehensive literature review and information provided by the vendors. The analysis was conducted along four dimensions: metrics, theoretical frameworks, evaluation, and FDA clearance. The review resulted in identification of critical issues including limited information on operational characteristics, controversial theoretical underpinnings, and lack of systematic evaluation. Efficacy of these consumer devices has yet to be established.
Hospital based Treatment for Internet Addicts
Authors: Gioka Sophia  , Kefaliakos Antonis  , Ioannou Andriani  , Mechili Aggelos  , Diomidous Marianna
Published: February 2025

The importance of recognizing the symptoms of Internet addiction constitutes the first step for treatment. Internet use can be pathological, and the percentage of addicted people is increasing while people become dependent on technology and Internet continues to develop. This study is a systematic litterature review. An electronic literature search was conducted using as keywords internet addiction, psychological implications, internet abuse etc. to the following databases: Medline, PubMed and Google Schoolar. The majority of research was conducted in Europe and in North America. We found 20 surveys. 9 were excluded on the basis of screening due to full text articles were not available. The final number of included surveys was 11. Hospitals and clinics have to emerge with outpatient treatment services for Internet addiction recovery, and in some cases there may be a need for addiction rehabilitation centers as admitted from people with Internet addiction into inpatient care.
Novel Mobile-Health Technologies
Authors: Koutsouris Dimitris  , Giokas Kostas  , Iliopoulou Dimitra
Published: February 2025

Mobile Health is fast becoming one of the fastest growing sectors of health as health tries to shift to patient-centric solutions. Putting the patients in the centre of care also forces them to take control of their wellbeing, health management and/or disease management. This is especially relevant when the management is constant as it is the case with chronic diseases
Nutrition and Ageing
Authors: Minuti Andrea  , Patrone Vania  , Giuberti Gianluca  , Spigno Giorgia  , Pietri Amedeo  , Battilani Paola  , Ajmone Marsan Paolo
Published: February 2025

The world elderly population is rapidly increasing. This demographic change represents a new challenge for the society and demands for a multisectorial intervention to promote a long, healthy, and active life span. Between the factors that contribute in fostering a long healthy life, the nutritional regime plays a central role and is recognized as a major factor in the onset of chronic diseases. A better understanding of the interaction between nutrition and ageing is essential to unravel the mechanisms responsible for these positive/negative effects and to identify diet components promoting the quality of life in the old age and to contribute to the prevention of late-life disabilities. At Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, the research activity in food science is focusing on four main objectives: food quality, food safety, functional foods and diet balancing. These objectives are the target of multidisciplinary ongoing and future research activities for a better understanding of the link between diet and ageing. Briefly, the different activities are addressed to the study of the following subjects: the most relevant factors affecting food choices and habits of old aged persons; the effects of long term low dose supplementation of conjugated linoleic acid in mouse; the use of low glycemic index and high resistant starch foods to prevent diabetes and obesity; the adjuvant effect of food bacteria for vaccination; the role of food ingredients in disease; the immunosuppression effect of mycotoxins, and its relevance in ageing people; the production of sustainable and natural antioxidant ingredients to encourage a healthy diet. Our research projects emphasize an holistic and integrated approach that, by bringing together complementary research groups, can combine the collective expertise and thus provide a comprehensive assessment of the role of nutrition in healthy ageing people.
Patient Engagement: The Key to Redesign the Exchange Between the Demand and Supply for Healthcare in the Era of Active Ageing
Authors: Graffigna Guendalina  , Barello Serena  , Riva Giuseppe  , Bosio A. Claudio
Published: February 2025

The last decades' changes in the epidemiological trends of chronic disease – also due to the ageing population – and the increased length and quality of life among the majority of Western population have introduced important changes in the organization and management of the healthcare systems. Consequently, health systems throughout the world are searching for new and effective ways to make their services more responsive to new patients and the public's health needs and demands. The idea of patient engagement – borrowed from the marketing conceptualization of consumer engagement – moves from the assumption that making patients/clients co-producers of their health can enhance their satisfaction with the healthcare system as well as their responsibility in both care and prevention by improving clinical outcomes and reducing health delivery costs. To make people aware of their health services options by supporting them in the decision-making process and to engage them in enacting preventive and healthy behaviors is vital for achieving successful health outcomes and preventing waste of resources. In this chapter, we outline a model (PHE model) that explains the patients' subjective experience with their health management process and the levers that may enact the passage from one phase of the process to the other. Based on this conceptual model of patient engagement will be proposed a tool kit of priority actions that may sustain the patient in its process of engagement.
Methods for assessing the quality of data in public health information systems: A critical review
Authors: Chen Hong  , Yu Ping  , Hailey David  , Wang Ning
Published: February 2025

The quality of data in public health information systems can be ensured by effective data quality assessment. In order to conduct effective data quality assessment, measurable data attributes have to be precisely defined. Then reliable and valid measurement methods for data attributes have to be used to measure each attribute. We conducted a systematic review of data quality assessment methods for public health using major databases and well-known institutional websites. 35 studies were eligible for inclusion in the study. A total of 49 attributes of data quality were identified from the literature. Completeness, accuracy and timeliness were the three most frequently assessed attributes of data quality. Most studies directly examined data values. This is complemented by exploring either data users' perception or documentation quality. However, there are limitations of current data quality assessment methods: a lack of consensus on attributes measured; inconsistent definition of the data quality attributes; a lack of mixed methods for assessing data quality; and inadequate attention to reliability and validity. Removal of these limitations is an opportunity for further improvement.
Fitting clinical workflow: The case for wound care in a residential aged care home
Authors: Qian Siyu  , Yu Ping
Published: February 2025

Residential aged care homes have, or are in the process of implementing, electronic health record (EHR) systems to improve quality of care and reduce cost. For the system to deliver benefits, it must support nursing tasks and be seamlessly integrated into the nursing workflow. To identify whether and how an EHR system can do this most effectively, direct observation was conducted in a residential aged care home on nurses' use of EHR for wound care. The work processes of wound care and its documentation were investigated. Problems in the use of EHR were identified: 1) functional deficiencies of the EHR system which included a lack of functions to remind nurses of the existence of a wound chart, unavailability of an existent function when needed and a lack of sufficient detail in the information provided; 2) a lack of mobile devices to allow nurses to access the EHR system at the point-of-care, resulting in nurses using paper for point-of-care documentation. The findings suggest that continuous improvement in both the EHR system and its management is required to achieve integration of people, task, process and technology for the optimal benefits of EHR.
Patients' adoption of the e-appointment scheduling service: A case study in primary healthcare
Authors: Zhang Xiaojun  , Yu Ping  , Yan Jun
Published: February 2025

The aim of this study is to investigate patients' initial acceptance and ongoing use of a simple but typical type of consumer e-health service – an e-appointment scheduling (EAS) system – in order to identify facilitators and barriers for patients' adoption of e-health services in primary healthcare. In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted to gather patients' background information, their awareness of the system, their feedbacks on the characteristics of the system, and their reasons for use or not use the system. A total of 125 patients aged between 17 and 74 were interviewed. Study results show that 89% of the interviewed patients had shown reluctance to adopt this online service. The identified barriers for acceptance include many patients' lack of access to the internet, lack of awareness of the service, low computer skills and incompatibility of the online appointment service with many patients' habits of face-to-face or phone-call based medical appointment making. Health service providers need to consider the general public's acceptance for online services before implementing consumer e-health systems.
Battling the challenges of training nurses to use information systems through theory-based training material design
Authors: Galani Malatsi  , Yu Ping  , Paas Fred  , Chandler Paul
Published: February 2025

The attempts to train nurses to effectively use information systems have had mixed results. One problem is that training materials are not adequately designed to guide trainees to gradually learn to use a system without experiencing a heavy cognitive load. This is because training design often does not take into consideration a learner's cognitive ability to absorb new information in a short training period. Given the high cost and difficulty of organising training in healthcare organisations, there is an urgent need for information system trainers to be aware of how cognitive overload or information overload affect a trainee's capability to acquire new knowledge and skills, and what instructional techniques can be used to facilitate effective learning.
A conceptual model for analysing informal learning in online social networks for health professionals
Authors: Li Xin  , Gray Kathleen  , Chang Shanton  , Elliott Kristine  , Barnett Stephen
Published: February 2025

Online social networking (OSN) provides a new way for health professionals to communicate, collaborate and share ideas with each other for informal learning on a massive scale. It has important implications for ongoing efforts to support Continuing Professional Development (CPD) in the health professions. However, the challenge of analysing the data generated in OSNs makes it difficult to understand whether and how they are useful for CPD. This paper presents a conceptual model for using mixed methods to study data from OSNs to examine the efficacy of OSN in supporting informal learning of health professionals. It is expected that using this model with the dataset generated in OSNs for informal learning will produce new and important insights into how well this innovation in CPD is serving professionals and the healthcare system.
Automatic annotation of ICD-to-MedDRA mappings with SKOS predicates
Authors: Declerck Gunnar  , Souvignet Julien  , Rodrigues Jean-Marie  , Jaulent Marie-Christine
Published: February 2025

Robust alignments between ICD and MedDRA are essential to enable the secondary use of clinical data for pharmacovigilance research. UMLS makes available ICD-to-MedDRA mappings, but they are only poorly specified, which introduces difficulties when exploited in an automatic way. SKOS vocabulary can help achieve quality and machine-processable mappings. We have developed an algorithm based on several simple rules which annotates automatically ICD-to-MedDRA mappings with SKOS predicates. The method was tested and evaluated on a sample of ICD-10-to MedDRA mappings extracted from UMLS. The algorithm demonstrated satisfying performances, especially for skos:exactMatch properties, which suggests that automatic methods can be used to improve the quality of terminology mappings.
Adverse Drug Event Notification on a Semantic Interoperability Framework
Authors: Krahn Tobias  , Eichelberg Marco  , Müller Frerk  , Gönül Suat  , Laleci Erturkmen Gokce B.  , Sinaci A. Anil  , Appelrath H.-Jürgen
Published: February 2025

Adverse drug events (ADEs) are common, costly and one of the most important issues in contemporary pharmacotherapy. Current drug safety surveillance methods are largely based on spontaneous reports. However, this is known to be rather ineffective. There is a lack of automated systems checking potential ADEs on routine data captured in electronic health records (EHRs); present systems are usually built directly on top of specific clinical information systems through proprietary interfaces. In the context of the European project “SALUS”, we aim to provide an infrastructure as well as a tool-set for accessing and analyzing clinical patient data of heterogeneous clinical information systems utilizing standard methods. This paper focuses on two components of the SALUS architecture: The “Semantic Interoperability Layer” (SIL) enables an access to disparate EHR sources in order to provide the patient data in a common data model for ADE detection within the “ADE Detection and Notification Tool” (ANT). The SIL in combination with the ANT can be used in different clinical environments to increase ADE detection and reporting rates. Thus, our approach promises a profound impact in the domain of pharmacovigilance.
Big Data in Medical Informatics: Improving Education Through Visual Analytics
Authors: Vaitsis Christos  , Nilsson Gunnar  , Zary Nabil
Published: February 2025

A continuous effort to improve healthcare education today is currently driven from the need to create competent health professionals able to meet healthcare demands. Limited research reporting how educational data manipulation can help in healthcare education improvement. The emerging research field of visual analytics has the advantage to combine big data analysis and manipulation techniques, information and knowledge representation, and human cognitive strength to perceive and recognise visual patterns. The aim of this study was therefore to explore novel ways of representing curriculum and educational data using visual analytics. Three approaches of visualization and representation of educational data were presented. Five competencies at undergraduate medical program level addressed in courses were identified to inaccurately correspond to higher education board competencies. Different visual representations seem to have a potential in impacting on the ability to perceive entities and connections in the curriculum data.
Towards evidence-based CDSSs implementing the medical reasoning contained in CPGs: application to antibiotic prescription
Authors: Tsopra Rosy  , Venot Alain  , Duclos Catherine
Published: February 2025

Clinical practice guidelines (CPGs) are documents giving recommendations based on expert reasoning, weighing up the pros and cons of treatments on the basis of the available evidence. We propose a new approach to the construction of clinical decision support systems (CDSS), making use of the evidence-based medical reasoning used by experts in CPGs. In this study, we determined whether this approach could retrieve the recommendations for antibiotic prescription for empirical treatment in primary care. Methods: We manually extracted, from CPGs, all the properties of antibiotics underlying recommendations for their prescription or non-prescription. We then used these properties to establish an algorithm in the form of a sequence of conditions, leading to a list of recommended antibiotics. The optimal sequence was determined by studying, for each sequence, the degree of similarity between the list of antibiotics recommended in CPGs and the list obtained with the algorithm. Results: 12 antibiotic properties were used in the form of conditions in an algorithm. For 95% of clinical situations, 10 sequences retrieved the recommended treatment. Discussion: This algorithm could be used in a CDSS for antibiotic treatment and would be useful for experts drawing up CPGs.
Web-Based Training: Readiness and Perceptions of Nurses
Authors: Uslu Esra  , Buldukoglu Kadriye  , Zayim Nese
Published: February 2025

This study was conducted as a descriptive study in order to determine the views of nurses working a university hospital on web-based training. Population consisted of all the nurses working in the hospital. It was found out that nurses use computer at the moderate level (46.5 %), they benefit from Internet at a good level (46.5 %), almost all of them use Internet to make searches about professional issues (94.6%), they want to update their professional knowledge (90.1%) and they find it difficult to reach information on such grounds as time constraint (81.1 %) and lack of appropriate environment (62.1 %) and they want to receive a web-based training (87.1 %). It is important that web-based training programmes be generalised in the field of nursing where there exists a time problem, studies as regards to how to integrate these programmes into continuing education be increased and their results be reflected on the practices.
Identifying gaps between current and expected ICT competencies of nurses in Serbia
Authors: Paunic Sanja  , Stojkovic Ivana
Published: February 2025

Introducing of ICT in the health care system in Serbia started 19 years ago and systematic training of nurses and technicians has not been realized yet. The primary objective of this paper is to determine the gap between the sets of ICT competencies of nurses and technicians acquiring education and experience and the necessary skill set required for their daily work. The qualitative research included questioning of the focus group of experts and 400 nurses and technicians employed in secondary and tertiary health institutions in Serbia. Based on the analysis of existing literature we choose the Informatics competencies for nurses at four levels of practice (Staggers, Gassert, Curran, 2001), and for the purposes of this study, we used a list of competencies of the first, and partially of the second and third level. At the start, the group of 12experts had the task to eliminate some of listed competencies to express the subjective expectations of the ICT competencies of nurses. After that nurses and medical technicians were expected to grade, by Likert scale, their level of knowledge and skills for each of the 39 competencies, respectively. The answers were analyzed using measure of central tendency and distribution of results was done by median. Comparison of perceived competence of the nurses and the desired/expected level by managers shows that there is difference in 25 of the 39 offered statements. Managers expect that nurses are great users of administrative applications for staff scheduling and for maintaining employee records, while nurses declared that these programs they use relatively poorly or not at all. The larger gap is also observed when it comes to computer skill for documenting patient care - experts expect that nurses do it well, and nurses, again, estimate that their documentation skills are relatively poor. The same situation is with use of ICT for patient education. It can be concluded that further training is required in the field of ICT, either through additional training in the workplace, either through formal education. Due to the fact that ICT competencies are becoming part of the basic, functional sets, it should be considered the correction of curricula of secondary schools for nurses.
Prospective Assessment of an innovative test for prostate cancer screening using the VITA process model framework
Authors: Gantner-Bär Marion  , Meier Florian  , Kolominsky-Rabas Peter  , Djanatliev Anatoli  , Metzger Armin  , Voigt Wieland  , Prokosch Hans-Ulrich  , Sedlmayr Martin
Published: February 2025

Healthcare innovations are crucial for enhancing patient treatment and a high-quality healthcare system. However, bringing new technologies, methods and procedures into the healthcare market is challenging. Enormous amounts of financial, personnel and organizational resources are required with no upfront certainty for the medical and economic benefit. A new and innovative approach uses interdisciplinary medical, technical and economic expertise to forecast effects of healthcare innovations already at the early research and concept phase of an idea and before major investments are made. A process model framework was developed to operationalize this structured assessment of healthcare innovations. The Visionary Iterative Tailored Approach (VITA) is based on conceptual modeling, simulation and health economics evaluation. Its application for the prospective assessment of an innovative prostate cancer screening is presented.
Integrating Personalized Health Information from MedlinePlus in a Patient Portal
Authors: Borbolla Damian  , Del Fiol Guilherme  , Taliercio Vanina  , Otero Carlos  , Campos Fernando  , Martinez Marcela  , Luna Daniel  , Quiros Fernan
Published: February 2025

The objective of this paper is to describe the implementation and use of context aware information in Spanish from MedlinePlus embedded in a Patient Portal. Personalized information can help patients solve problems, make treatment decisions, gain confidence in their ability to care for themselves and communicate with providers. To integrate MedlinePlus information in our institutional PHR we used the HL7 Context-Aware Knowledge Retrieval Standard, also known as the Infobutton Standard. After analysing one year of use, patients accessed MedlinePlus information in Spanish in a similar rate to other personalized information generated locally. Infobuttons associated to laboratory test results were used in approximately 10% of patients portal sessions when reviewing lab results.
Managing Complex Therapies Outside Hospitals. An Analysis of GPs Practices of how to support Medication at Home
Authors: Piras Enrico Maria  , Miele Francesco  , Bruni Attila  , Coletta Claudio  , Zanutto Alberto
Published: February 2025

Support systems for the management of prescriptions are commonplace in hospitals, whilst they are rarely found in general practice. This exploratory study draws on a qualitative survey conducted with focus groups to investigate the information needs of General Practitioners (GPs) in regard to the therapeutic management of complex patients, the purpose being to identify possible areas of application. The question addressed is whether the systems existing in hospitals can be usefully adapted and used by GPs or if a different approach needs to be adopted to design other tools. The analysis shows that the information needs of GPs relative to medication management are significantly different from those of their hospital colleagues because the former are not directly responsible for the administration but instead operate within a care network on which they cannot exercise direct control. This study suggests that support systems for therapy management should be designed on the assumption that it derives from cooperative work by a heterogeneous network of actors, and therefore with functionalities intended to satisfy the coordination needs of all the actors involved in the process.
Development of Structured Clinical Process Model of Dementia
Authors: Tsuru Satoko  , Mizuki Maiko  , Wako Fumiko  , Omori Miho  , Nakayama Takeo
Published: February 2025

As Japan is aging rapidly with more people with dementia, healthcare providers need to develop and share the care delivery model in order to respond to the need of not only the patients' but also of the families' and society's. The authors have developed a disease management and care system of the people with dementia based on the previous model developed by us for other diseases. Through the case reviews of the patients, this model proved to be useful in visually describing the patients' courses. We are going to develop as a next step a model to foresee the patients' progress so that we may be able to make timely interventions. Additionally, we have a plan to use it to improve the Japanese guideline of dementia care.
Reporting of drug allergies for use in a national decision support system
Authors: Bernstein Knut
Published: February 2025

In Denmark, there are plans for establishing a national decision support system, providing on-line support for physicians during drug prescribing. This includes establishment of a national database containing information about each patient's drug allergies. Allergy information already exists in medication modules in hospital systems and primary care systems and thus constitutes a potential source for the national allergy database. This paper reports an analysis of local data structure, content and registration policies with the aim to re-use existing allergy data. The result of the analysis is that due to lack of harmonisation most existing cannot be re-used in the national database. The paper propose a common dataset for allergy data where national and international standards were considered.
Analysis of eligibility criteria from ClinicalTrials.gov
Authors: Doods Justin  , Dugas Martin  , Fritz Fleur
Published: February 2025

Electronic health care records are being used more and more for patient documentation. This electronic data can be used for secondary purposes, for example through systems that support clinical research. Eligibility criteria have to be processable for such systems to work, but criteria published on ClinicalTrials.gov have been shown to be complex, making them challenging to re-use. We analysed the eligibility criteria on ClinicalTrials.gov using automatic methods to determine whether the criteria definition and number changed over time. From 1998 to 2012 the average number of words used to describe eligibility criteria per year increased by 46%, while the average number of lines used per year only slightly increases until 2000 and stabilizes afterwards. Whether the increase of words resulted in increased criteria complexity or whether more data elements are used to describe eligibility needs further investigation.
Web-site Evaluation Tools: A Case Study in Reproductive Health Information
Authors: Aslani Azam  , Pournik Omid  , Abu-Hanna Ameen  , Eslami Saeid
Published: February 2025

Background and Objective: Internet forms an opportunity to inform, teach, and connect professionals and patients. However, much information on Internet is incomplete, inaccurate, or misleading, and not only in the medical domain. Because of the potential for damage from misleading and inaccurate health information, many organizations and individuals have published or implemented scoring tools for evaluating the appropriateness or quality of these resources. The objective of this study is to identify and summarize scoring tools that have evaluated web-sites providing reproductive health information in order to compare them and recommend an overarching evaluation tool.
Quality of life of patients with spinal cord injury in Italy: preliminary evaluation
Authors: Rognoni Carla  , Fizzotti Gabriella  , Pistarini Caterina  , Quaglini Silvana
Published: February 2025

Quality of life is a complex concept, entailing the person's physical health and level of independence, as well as psychological well-being, social participation and the relationship with specific and relevant aspects of the environment. The World Health Organization encourages the integration of a comprehensive definition of health when examining patient-related outcomes after injury or disease. This study aims at evaluating the quality of life of 130 Italian patients with spinal cord injury, focusing on the associations among functional status and health dimensions elicited by SF-36 questionnaire. The subscale scores that revealed a stronger impact of the lesion were those related to the physical domains, especially for the physical functioning and physical role functioning. Physical functioning scores were significantly different in the acute phase with respect to chronic phase, in inpatients with respect to outpatients and in patients with lower functional impairment versus patients with higher functional impairment. Moreover, the functional impairment influenced significantly physical role, bodily pain and vitality scales. Disease phases also showed significantly different scores for general health. No differences were highlighted between tetraplegic and paraplegic patients.
eHCM: Resources Reduction & Demand Increase, cover the gap by a managerial approach powered by an IT solutions
Authors: Buccioli Matteo  , Agnoletti Vanni  , Padovani Emanuele  , Perger Peter
Published: February 2025

The economic and financial crisis has also had an important impact on the healthcare sector. Available resources have decreased, while at the same time costs as well as demand for healthcare services are on the rise. This coalescing negative impact on availability of healthcare resources is exacerbated even further by a widespread ignorance of management accounting matters. Little knowledge about costs is a strong source of costs augmentation. Although it is broadly recognized that cost accounting has a positive impact on healthcare organizations, it is not widespread adopted. Hospitals are essential components in providing overall healthcare. Operating rooms are critical hospital units not only in patient safety terms but also in expenditure terms. Understanding OR procedures in the hospital provides important information about how health care resources are used. There have been several scientific studies on management accounting in healthcare environments and more than ever there is a need for innovation, particularly by connecting business administration research findings to modern IT tools. IT adoption constitutes one of the most important innovation fields within the healthcare sector, with beneficial effects on the decision making processes. The e-HCM (e-Healthcare Cost Management) project consists of a cost calculation model which is applicable to Business Intelligence. The cost calculation approach comprises elements from both traditional cost accounting and activity-based costing. Direct costs for all surgical procedures can be calculated through a seven step implementation process.
COCHCOMO: A Change Effort Estimation Tool for Software Development Phase
Authors: Kama Nazri  , Basri Sufyan  , Asl Mehran Halimi  , Ibrahim Roslina
Published: February 2025

It is important for software project manager to make effective decisions when managing software changes during software development. One type of information that helps to make the decision is the estimation of the change effort produced by the changes. One of the inputs that help to decide whether to accept or reject the changes is by having reliable estimation on the change effort. From software development perspective, the estimation has to take into account the inconsistent states of software artifacts across project lifecycle i.e., fully developed and partially developed. This research introduces a new change effort estimation tool (Constructive Change Cost Model or COCHCOMO) that is able to take into account the inconsistent states of software artifacts in its estimation process. This tool was developed based on our extended version of static and dynamic impact analysis techniques. Extensive experiments using several case studies have been conducted in which the results show acceptable error rates have been achieved.
Automatic Music Emotion Classification Using Artificial Neural Network Based on Vocal and Instrumental Sound Timbres
Authors: Mokhsin Mudiana Binti  , Rosli Nurlaila Binti  , Wan Adnan Wan Adilah  , Abdul Manaf Norehan
Published: February 2025

Detecting emotion features in a song remains as a challenge in various area of research especially in music emotion classification (MEC). In order to classify selected song with certain mood or emotion, the algorithms of the machine learning must be intelligence enough to learn the data features as to match the features accordingly to the accurate emotion. Until now, there were only few studies on MEC that exploit timbre features from vocal part of the song incorporated with the instrumental part of a song. Most of existing works in MEC done by looking at audio, lyrics, social tags or combination of two or more classes. The question is does exploitation of both timbre features from both vocal and instrumental sound features helped in producing positive result in MEC? Thus, this research present works on detecting emotion features in Malay popular music using artificial neural network by extracting timbre features from both vocal and instrumental sound clips. The findings of this research will collectively improve MEC based on the manipulation of vocal and instrumental sound timbre features, as well as contributing towards the literature of music information retrieval, affective computing and psychology.
From the Avalanche of Numbers to Big Data: A Comparative Historical Perspective on Data Protection in Transition
Authors: Ambrose Meg Leta
Published: February 2025

The big data revolution, like many changes associated with technological advancement, is often compared to the industrial revolution to create a frame of reference for its transformative power, or portrayed as altogether new. This article argues that between the industrial revolution and the digital revolution is a more valuable, yet overlooked period: the probabilistic revolution that began with the avalanche of printed numbers between 1820 and 1840. By comparing the many similarities between big data today and the avalanche of numbers in the 1800s, the chapter situates big data in the early stages of a prolonged transition to a potentially transformative epistemic revolution, like the probabilistic revolution. As scholars and policymakers consider the type of newness presented by big data, the comparative exercise utilizes history to organize, address, and refine issues emerging today.
Evaluating success of mobile health projects in the developing world
Authors: Ginige J. Anupama  , Maeder Anthony J.  , Long Vanessa
Published: February 2025

Many mobile health (mHealth) projects, typically deploying pilot or small scale implementations, have been undertaken in developing world settings and reported with a widely varying range of claims being made on their effectiveness and benefits. As a result, there is little evidence for which aspects of such projects lead to successful outcomes. This paper describes a literature review of papers from PubMed undertaken to identify strong contributions to execution and evaluation of mHealth projects in developing world settings, and suggests a template for classifying the main success factors to assist with collating evidence in the future.
Repair of masonry arch bridges with respect to longitudinal cracking and load assessment
Authors: Byrne Tríona  , O'Dwyer Dermot
Published: February 2025

This paper outlines a case study on the rehabilitation of a masonry arch bridge on Woodhouse Estate, Co. Waterford, Ireland. The main structural defect with this bridge is longitudinal cracking, which has led to lateral spread of the spandrel walls. Different repair techniques are discussed and the most suitable repair technique for longitudinal cracking is identified. The resulting information is used to define a set of guidelines for repair of masonry arch bridges with respect to longitudinal cracking. A procedure is also developed for load assessment of a masonry arch bridge, based on Heyman's classic line of thrust assessment. Microsoft Excel's ‘Solver’ is used as an optimisation tool, to determine the maximum allowable imposed load on a masonry arch. These values can then be used in conjunction with Coulomb's analysis to identify the limits on the horizontal thrust under varying axle loads and under pre-repair and post-repair bridge conditions.
Reducing CO
Authors: Haas Michiel
Published: February 2025

Concrete is the main construction material in the world with over 9 billion m3/year being produced. That leads to a CO2emission of over 5 billion tons of CO2/year, whereby more than half is caused by the OPC (Ordinary Portland Cement). It is expected that the concrete use will rise until 2050, an increase of 260%, that means the CO2emission will increase with the same percentage to 13 billion tons CO2. To reduce the immense CO2emission, it is necessary to use other binders than only OPC, for instance Supplementary Cementing Materials (SCM) and Non-Portland Cement (NPC). But it is also possible to make real bio-cement out of biomass, so bio-cement can be grown.
Compressive strength and durability of fly ash stabilized dolomitic waste as a lightweight construction material
Authors: Aneke Ikechukwu F.  , Okonta Felix N.
Published: February 2025

Due to the seriousness of environmental pollution and the production of huge energy consuming building and construction materials, the development of new eco-friendly and energy saving building materials to overcome these issues has been gaining increasing attention. South Africa has largest number of dolomite deposits in southern Africa, if not in the entire Africa. Nonetheless most of the dolomite in South Africa has some impurities of which they are neglected in dumping site (millions of tons). This paper looked at finding alternative use for this dolomitic waste (DW) by stabilizing this waste with another waste called fly ash (FA), introduction of gypsum as an activator will trigger a pozzolanic reaction in presences of water. As a result of this, the product of this reaction will be a useful material in construction and as well solve the difficulties i.e. environmental, social and cost often associated with storing and handling of this waste. This work went as far as providing an alternative for low-cost construction materials that can help deal with South African housing problems.