bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Public Health Triangulation to inform decision-making in Belgium
Authors: Bossuyt N.  , van Casteren V.  , Goderis G.  , Wens J.  , Moreels S.  , Vanthomme K.  , de Clercq E.
Published: February 2025

We assessed the impact of a nation-wide ambulatory care complex intervention (the “care trajectory program”) on quality of care in Belgium. We used the three-step public health triangulation method described in this paper and data from four different data sources: a national reimbursement database, an electronic patient record-based general practitioner network, the Belgian general practitioner sentinel network, and a new national registry for care trajectory patients. By applying our method and using the available evidence, we identified key findings that have been accepted by experts and stakeholders. We also produced timely recommendations for the decision-making process, four years after the start of the care trajectory program.
Visual Analytics in Medical Education: Impacting Analytical Reasoning and Decision Making for Quality Improvement
Authors: Vaitsis Christos  , Nilsson Gunnar  , Zary Nabil
Published: February 2025

The medical curriculum is the main tool representing the entire undergraduate medical education. Due to its complexity and multilayered structure it is of limited use to teachers in medical education for quality improvement purposes. In this study we evaluated three visualizations of curriculum data from a pilot course, using teachers from an undergraduate medical program and applying visual analytics methods. We found that visual analytics can be used to positively impacting analytical reasoning and decision making in medical education through the realization of variables capable to enhance human perception and cognition on complex curriculum data. The positive results derived from our evaluation of a medical curriculum and in a small scale, signify the need to expand this method to an entire medical curriculum. As our approach sustains low levels of complexity it opens a new promising direction in medical education informatics research.
Self healing creep steel: gold as healing agent
Authors: Zhang S.  , van Dijk N.H.
Published: February 2025

Autonomous repair of creep damage can be achieved during high-temperature creep in iron based alloys by the addition of gold as a solute healing agent. The creep lifetime at a temperature of 550 °C is found to be extended significantly by the introduction of about 1 at.% of solute Au in the ferritic Fe matrix, when the alloy has been homogenized at elevated temperature and subsequently quenched. Combined electron microscopy techniques demonstrate that the improved creep properties result from the selective Au precipitation at the early-stage creep cavities, preferentially formed on grain boundaries oriented perpendicular to the applied stress. The selective precipitation of gold atoms at the free surface of a creep cavity results in pore filling, and, thereby, self healing of the creep damage. The large difference in atomic size between the Au and Fe strongly reduces the nucleation of precipitates in the matrix. As a result, the matrix acts as a reservoir for supersaturated solute until damage occurs. Grain boundaries and dislocations act as fast routes for solute gold transport from the matrix to the creep damage. The efficiency to heal creep damage is found to depend strongly on the applied stress. For lower stress levels filling fractions of up to 80% have been observed for the open-volume creep damage.
Development of an Eating Aid – From the User Needs to a Product
Authors: Lindborg Ann-Louise  , Lindén Maria
Published: February 2025

In this paper, the development process of an eating aid is described. The assistive devices must be worth using. To achieve this, the starting point has been the users need. The development started from the needs of an individual person, the inventor of the aid. The development has been about increasing the positive experience of the aid and decrease negative experience through an iterative development process. The development includes several evaluations, described in the paper, and as a conclusion, it is important to include the users throughout the development process.
Advanced Decision Support System for Older Adults
Authors: Baig Mirza Mansoor  , Gholamhosseini Hamid  , Connolly Martin J.  , Lindén Maria
Published: February 2025

Decision support systems are rapidly becoming part of today's healthcare delivery. The paradigm has shifted from traditional and manual recording to computer-based electronic records and, further, to handheld devices as versatile and innovative healthcare monitoring systems. The current study focuses on interpreting multiple physical signs and early warning for hospitalized older adults so that severe consequences can be minimized. Data from a total of 30 patients have been collated in New Zealand Hospitals under local and national ethics approvals. The system records blood pressure, heart rate (pulse), oxygen saturation (SpO2), ear temperature and blood glucose levels from hospitalized patients and transfers this information to a web-based software application for remote monitoring and further interpretation. Ultimately, this system is aimed to achieve a high level of agreement with clinicians' interpretation when assessing specific physical signs such as bradycardia, tachycardia, hypertension, hypotension, hypoxemia, fever and hypothermia and to generate early warnings.
ECG Artifact Removal from Surface EMG Signal Using an Automated Method Based on Wavelet-ICA
Authors: Abbaspour Sara  , Lindén Maria  , Gholamhosseini Hamid
Published: February 2025

This study aims at proposing an efficient method for automated electrocardiography (ECG) artifact removal from surface electromyography (EMG) signals recorded from upper trunk muscles. Wavelet transform is applied to the simulated data set of corrupted surface EMG signals to create multidimensional signal. Afterward, independent component analysis (ICA) is used to separate ECG artifact components from the original EMG signal. Components that correspond to the ECG artifact are then identified by an automated detection algorithm and are subsequently removed using a conventional high pass filter. Finally, the results of the proposed method are compared with wavelet transform, ICA, adaptive filter and empirical mode decomposition-ICA methods. The automated artifact removal method proposed in this study successfully removes the ECG artifacts from EMG signals with a signal to noise ratio value of 9.38 while keeping the distortion of original EMG to a minimum.
Social Function of Active Robotic Path Planning
Authors: Chen Pei-Yu  , Lian Feng-Li  , Su Kuo-Ho  , Yang Jr-Syu  , Yang Chan-Yun
Published: February 2025

People can get easily helps from intelligently autonomous mobile agents nowadays. The services from the agents maintain social function as a part of human-robot interaction (HRI). As the technical developments improve increasingly, there are still lacks of clarification of the social functions which the mobile agents can achieve, and relationship-discovery between the human beings and the agents subject to the HRI. From sociological aspect, this study seeks the sociological relevance created by this kind of HRI, and evaluates the corresponding social value by taking significant examples. Starting from a causality analysis between the social needs which the human beings desire and the accessible services which the agents can provide, this paper confirms first the value of navigating an agent to finish the service, and recognizes the navigation as one part of the interaction during the service. The core technique of this kind of robotic interaction monitors the dynamic changes of environment, provides an adequate route plan to reach the goal service, and reacts properly the environmental changes during approaching the goal.
Optimal material-removal-ratio parameters in multi-wire sawing process by fractal geometry
Authors: Wu Sung-Hua
Published: February 2025

Factors of affecting the saw blade life are included process error and precision control. Process errors are contained the design of cutting tooth geometry, banding angle, tool surface coating and tool rigidity; precision includes the vibration of machine tool, cutting mechanism and the workpiece properties. Unsuitable set-up of the above factors will result in preferentially failure and wear for the tool life. In this study, importing the dynamic random factors and the conditions of fractal geometry, can be extended from the cutting quasi-static system to high-speed dynamic-random cutting system (Kinematic-Radom Chip load, KRCL). On the other hand, in which given tool geometry conditions and environmental parameters set-up, can be optimized as the maximum material removal rate (MMR) by differential analytical-geometry (differential analytic-geometry method). According to the results of simulation, the undeformed chip distribution was Gaussian characteristics distribution for most sections of entire cutters, but the largest damaged occurred on the sinusoidal–wave non-exact boundary for sawing process. For adjusting the process parameters by fractal geometry, the optimal parameters can be used on unit wave pitch 6mm, cutters numbers of unit wave 5, tangential force 100N, vertical force 300N, cutting force 200N, cutter width for tool geometry 0.8mm, and removal depth for the first cutter 0.15mm for sawing mechanism 2-DOF, and the maximum removal-material ratio 4.5mm/s for unit pitch in machining process.
A Cluster Validity Indexing Method Based on Entropy for Solving Cluster Overlapping Problem
Authors: Lin Phen-Lan  , Huang Ping-Hsuan  , Huang Po-Whei
Published: February 2025

Data clustering technique can be used in many fields, such as data mining, statistical data analysis, image analysis, pattern recognition, etc. Good clustering can result in computational reduction in related application programs; however, it is hard to achieve without knowing how many clusters that a data set should be partitioned, which is common in many applications. The way to find the optimal number of clusters is called cluster validity. In this paper, we proposed a new cluster validity indexing method that aims to solve cluster overlapping problem. Our method adapts the concept of cluster validity index defined as the ratio of compactness and separation and enhances it by integrating an entropy-based weight to the definition of separation so that the new weighted-separation of two overlapped clusters will be larger than that of two non-overlapped clusters, where the distance between the two cluster-centroids are the same. Experiments on six synthetic datasets comprising 3 to 10 clusters with some clusters overlapped each other demonstrate that our proposed method achieves 100% accuracy of validity index for all these datasets and is superior to all other compared methods.
Telemonitoring and Medical Care Supporting of Patients with Chronic Respiratory Diseases
Authors: Sohrabi Keywan  , Mursina Ljudmila  , Seifert Oskar  , Scholtes Michael  , Hoehle Lukas  , Hildebrandt Olaf  , Koehler Ulrich  , Schneider Henning  , Gross Volker
Published: February 2025

Experts refer to innovative telemonitoring technologies to deal with chronic respiratory diseases, especially the chronic obstructive pulmonary disease – COPD. In chronic respiratory diseases, sudden acute exacerbations may occur that can be life-threatening in some cases. Telemonitoring solutions help to detect the beginning of an impaired medical condition and can induce an adequate countermeasure in time. As soon as individually determined parameters are passed, appropriate warning signs can be transmitted. As part of a project, a new monitoring device for the detection of COPD-typical parameters has been utilized and optimized. Furthermore, an innovative 3D-Video-System was used to enable the implementation of physical exercises in the domestic environment. The systems assists the patient during the entire training unit and creates a feedback based on the quality of his or her exercises.
Standardized Quality Assurance Forms for Organ Transplantations with Multilingual Support, Open Access and UMLS Coding
Authors: Varghese Julian  , Schulze Sünninghausen Sarah  , Dugas Martin
Published: February 2025

Quality assurance (QA) is a key factor to evaluate success of organ transplantations. In Germany QA documentation is progressively developed and enforced by law. Our objective is to share QA models from Germany in a standardized format within a form repository for world-wide reuse and exchange. Original QA forms were converted into standardized study forms according to the Operational Data Model (ODM) and shared for open access in an international forms repository. Form elements were translated into English and semantically enriched with Concept Unique Identifiers from the Unified Medical Language System (UMLS) based on medical expert decision. All forms are available on the web as multilingual ODM documents. UMLS concept coverage analysis indicates 92% coverage with few but critically important definition gaps. New content and infrastructure for harmonized documentation forms is provided in the domain of organ transplantations enabling world-wide reuse and exchange.
Evaluation of the Styrian Personal eXray-Record
Authors: Neurohr Philipp  , Seifter Peter
Published: February 2025

The European PALANTE project aims to improve patient empowerment. The Austrian contribution to the PALANTE objectives is the personal, electronic Xray-Record “eRöntgenpass”, which has been available to the public since October 2014. The eXray-Record is integrated into the patient portal of the Styrian Hospital Cooperation KAGes and can accesses data of recent radiological examinations which were carried out in KAGes hospitals. The main goal is to provide necessary information on the personal radiological exposure to allow for informed decisions of patients, when discussing diagnostic alternatives with health care providers. This paper describes the multi-step process of setting up an evaluation for these goals which can be adapted to other online portals for accessing medical data. Pre-tests showed that the integration of the evaluation process from the beginning of the project has led to a more concise evaluation method which is still able to produce relevant data for assessing the project objectives. This emphasizes the necessity of an integrated evaluation process from the beginning of portal development in contrast to an evaluation task at the end of the development.
Standardized Mappings – A Framework to Combine Different Semantic Mappers into a Standardized Web-API
Authors: Neuhaus Philipp  , Doods Justin  , Dugas Martin
Published: February 2025

Background: Automatic coding of medical terms is an important, but highly complicated and laborious task.
The Medical Ontology “HoPRO”
Authors: Keramaris Vasilios A.  , Danas Konstantinos
Published: February 2025

Current researches in health informatics provide the techniques and tools enabling the development of efficient hospital information ecosystem that can be made to exchange data with each other and thus provide a coherent patient oriented environment. In order to achieve this desired HIS interoperability, it is important to provide a clear understanding of the HIS ecosystem during the analysis phase that will provide the infrastructure of this ecosystem and lead to the development of systems that will be able to correspond with each other. Such an ontology is described here and its value will be demonstrated through a case study.
Taming Big Data: An Information Extraction Strategy for Large Clinical Text Corpora
Authors: Gundlapalli Adi V.  , Divita Guy  , Carter Marjorie E.  , Redd Andrew  , Samore Matthew H.  , Gupta Kalpana  , Trautner Barbara
Published: February 2025

Concepts of interest for clinical and research purposes are not uniformly distributed in clinical text available in electronic medical records. The purpose of our study was to identify filtering techniques to select ‘high yield’ documents for increased efficacy and throughput. Using two large corpora of clinical text, we demonstrate the identification of ‘high yield’ document sets in two unrelated domains: homelessness and indwelling urinary catheters. For homelessness, the high yield set includes homeless program and social work notes. For urinary catheters, concepts were more prevalent in notes from hospitalized patients; nursing notes accounted for a majority of the high yield set. This filtering will enable customization and refining of information extraction pipelines to facilitate extraction of relevant concepts for clinical decision support and other uses.
Nora: A Vocabulary Discovery Tool for Concept Extraction
Authors: Divita Guy  , Carter Marjorie E.  , Durgahee B.S. Begum  , Pettey Warren E.  , Redd Andrew  , Samore Matthew H.  , Gundlapalli Adi V.
Published: February 2025

Coverage of terms in domain-specific terminologies and ontologies is often limited in controlled medical vocabularies. Creating and augmenting such terminologies is resource intensive. We developed Nora as an interactive tool to discover terminology from text corpora; the output can then be employed to refine and enhance natural language processing-based concept extraction tasks. Nora provides a visualization of chains of words foraged from word frequency indexes from a text corpus. Domain experts direct and curate chains that contain relevant terms, which are further curated to identify lexical variants. A test of Nora demonstrated an increase of a domain lexicon in homelessness and related psychosocial factors by 38%, yielding an additional 10% extracted concepts.
Well Drinking Water Fluoride Content and Dental Fluorosis in Al-Butana Region of Central Sudan
Authors: Abdel-Magid Hago M.  , Abdellah Abdelmonem M.  , Yahia Nadia A.
Published: February 2025

In this study the F-ion concentration levels of 209 well water samples belonging to previous construction analysis (CA) and a total of 121 well water samples belonging to the current study (CS) in Al-Butana region of Central Sudan were investigated and located (mapped) using the geographical information system (GIS). The GIS- map indicates that the majority of F-levels ranging between 0.5 and 1.5 mg/l dominates the northern part of the study area and the levels below 0.5 mg/l dominates the southern part of the study area whereas the levels above 1.5 mg/l are limited and are scattered, randomly, throughout the study area.
Accuracy of Chest Wall Tumor Resection Guided by Navigation: Experimental Model
Authors: Ritacco Lucas E.  , Smith David E.  , Mancino Axel V.  , Farfalli German L.  , Aponte-Tinao Luis Alberto  , Milano Federico E.
Published: February 2025

Difficulty in identification wall chest tumors lead to unnecessary wide resections. Optical navigation and preoperative virtual planning are assets for surgeries that require exactness and accuracy. These tools enable physicians to study real anatomy before surgery and to follow an established pathway during procedure ensuring effectiveness. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate that Preoperative Virtual Planning is a useful tool in chest tumor interventions to define oncological margins successfully. Moreover, it is possible to use a virtual specimen in order to quantify accuracy. Optical navigation has been used in surgical procedures such as neurosurgery, orthopaedics and ENT over the last ten years. This principle is used in order to orientate the surgeon in three dimensional spaces during the surgery. Surgeons are guided intraoperatively with navigation and are able to obtain a correspondence between images acquired and processed before the surgery and the real anatomy.
A Frequency-based Strategy of Obtaining Sentences from Clinical Data Repository for Crowdsourcing
Authors: Li Dingcheng  , Rastegar Mojarad Majid  , Li Yanpeng  , Sohn Sunghwan  , Mehrabi Saeed  , Komandur Elayavilli Ravikumar  , Yu Yue  , Liu Hongfang
Published: February 2025

In clinical NLP, one major barrier to adopting crowdsourcing for NLP annotation is the issue of confidentiality for protected health information (PHI) in clinical narratives. In this paper, we investigated the use of a frequency-based approach to extract sentences without PHI. Our approach is based on the assumption that sentences appearing frequently tend to contain no PHI. Both manual and automatic evaluations on 500 sentences out of the 7.9 million sentences of frequencies higher than one show that no PHI can be found among them. The promising results provide potentials of releasing those sentences for obtaining sentence-level NLP annotations via crowdsourcing.
Are we talking about the same patient?
Authors: Roussi Khawllah  , Soussa Vanessa  , Dunn Lopez Karen  , Balasubramanian Abhinaya  , Keenan Gail M.  , Burton Michel  , Bahroos Neil  , DiEugenio Barbara  , Boyd Andrew D.
Published: February 2025

The objective of this study is to determine the degree of similarities between the clinical terms used by physicians and nurses in their documentation.
On Analyzing Readmissions Using A Trajectory Model: Evidence From Israel
Authors: Ben-Assuli Ofir  , Padman Rema  , Bowman Martha  , Leshno Moshe  , Shabtai Itamar
Published: February 2025

The problem of readmission, wherein patients are readmitted for the same or a related condition shortly after discharge, has become a challenge worldwide from care quality and financial perspectives. In this study, we explore 30-day readmission data for predicting who is likely to be readmitted and understanding key factors contributing to preventable readmissions using the developmental trajectory of creatinine level as a key laboratory marker of serious illness and a potential predictor of future readmission. Using Electronic Health Record data on 928 patients over ten different visits to emergency departments across Israel, we apply a semi-parametric, statistical, group-based trajectory model to elicit three distinct creatinine-based trajectories over time with differing 30-day readmission rates for males and females. Analysis of readmission risk stratification of the patient population using other relevant factors is ongoing research.
Development of an Ontology to Recommend Exercises from Conceptual Maps
Authors: Ito Márcia  , Ciriaco Pereira Débora Lina N.
Published: February 2025

The recommendation of exercise plans requires several variables to be considered (e.g., patient's conditions and preferences) and are normally complex to analyze. To facilitate this analysis we proposed the creation of an ontology to assist professionals to recommend exercises. We interviewed 2 experts and this resulted in IDEF diagram and conceptual map. The conceptual map proved to be the preferred way that experts gained more understanding compared with the IDEF diagram. In addition, we also used the conceptual map to validate the formal structure of experts' ideas. From the conceptual map we created an ontology that is being reviewed. After this, we plan to incorporate the ontology into a decision support system that will assist professionals to recommend exercises for their patients.
Utility of Arden Syntax for Representation of Fuzzy Logic in Clinical Quality Measures
Authors: Jenders Robert A.
Published: February 2025

Background: Prior work has established that fuzzy logic is prevalent in clinical practice guidelines and that Arden Syntax is suitable for representing clinical quality measures (CQMs). Approved since then, Arden Syntax v2.9 (2012) has formal constructs for fuzzy logic even as new formalisms are proposed to represent quality logic. Objectives: Determine the prevalence of fuzzy logic in CQMs and assess the utility of a contemporary version of Arden Syntax for representing them. Methods: Linguistic variables were tabulated in the 329 Assessing Care of the Vulnerable Elderly (ACOVE-3) CQMs, and these logic statements were encoded in Arden Syntax. Results: In a total of 392 CQMs, linguistic variables occurred in 30.6%, and Arden Syntax could be used to represent these formally. Conclusions: Fuzzy logic occurs commonly in CQMs, and Arden Syntax offers particular utility for the representations of these constructs.
A Framework for Modeling Workflow Execution by an Interdisciplinary Healthcare Team
Authors: Kezadri-Hamiaz Mounira  , Rosu Daniela  , Wilk Szymon  , Kuziemsky Craig  , Michalowski Wojtek  , Carrier Marc
Published: February 2025

The use of business workflow models in healthcare is limited because of insufficient capture of complexities associated with behavior of interdisciplinary healthcare teams that execute healthcare workflows. In this paper we present a novel framework that builds on the well-founded business workflow model formalism and related infrastructures and introduces a formal semantic layer that describes selected aspects of team dynamics and supports their real-time operationalization.
Evaluating Business Value of IT in Healthcare: Three Clinical Practices from Australia and the US
Authors: Haddad Peter  , Schaffer Jonathan L.  , Wickramasinghe Nilmini
Published: February 2025

Exponentially increasing costs in healthcare coupled with poor quality and limited access have motivated the healthcare industry to turn to IS/IT solutions to overcome these issues and facilitate superior healthcare delivery. In an environment of rapid development of new clinical informatics solutions claiming to provide better healthcare delivery, there is a paucity of systematic frameworks to robustly measure the actual value of these systems. The promised business value of these solutions has been elusive; hence, this study offers an approach for the evaluation of the business value of health IS/IT solutions based on a conceptual model, which has been validated using three clinical case studies.
Characterizing the Structure of a Patient's Care Team through Electronic Encounter Data Analysis
Authors: He Shan  , Gurr Greg  , Rea Susan  , Thornton Sidney N.
Published: February 2025

As the field of medicine grows more complicated and doctors become more specialized in a particular field, the number of healthcare providers involved in healing an individual patient increases. This is particularly true of patients with multiple chronic conditions. Establishing effective communications among the care providers becomes critical to facilitate care coordination and more efficient resource use, which will ultimately result in health outcome improvement. The first step for care coordination is to understand who have been involved in a patient's care and their relationships with the patient. The widespread adoption of Electronic Health Records provides us an opportunity to explore solutions to well-coordinated care. This paper presents the concept of a patient's care team and demonstrates the feasibility of identifying relevant healthcare providers for an individual patient by leveraging electronic patient encounter data. Combined with network analysis techniques, we further visualize the care team structure with quantified strength of patient-provider relationships. Our work is foundational to the larger goal of patient-centered, coordinated care in the digital age of healthcare.
Validating the Access to an Electronic Health Record: Classification and Content Analysis of Access Logs
Authors: Alassia Leandro Noer  , Benítez Sonia  , Roberto Luna Daniel  , González Bernaldo de Quiros Fernán
Published: February 2025

Electronic Health Records (EHRs) have made patient information widely available, allowing health professionals to provide better care. However, information confidentiality is an issue that continually needs to be taken into account. The objective of this study is to describe the implementation of rule-based access permissions to an EHR system. The rules that were implemented were based on a qualitative study. Every time users did not meet the specified requirements, they had to justify access through a pop up window with predetermined options, including a free text option (“other justification”).
An Intelligent Ecosystem for Providing Support in Prehospital Trauma Care in Cuenca, Ecuador
Authors: Timbi-Sisalima Cristian  , Rodas Edgar B.  , Salamea Juan C.  , Sacoto Hernán  , Monje-Ortega Diana  , Robles-Bykbaev Vladimir
Published: February 2025

According to facts given by the World Health Organization, one in ten deaths worldwide is due to an external cause of injury. In the field of pre-hospital trauma care, adequate and timely treatment in the golden period can impact the survival of a patient.
Trust, Perceived Risk, Perceived Ease of Use and Perceived Usefulness as Factors Related to mHealth Technology Use
Authors: Schnall Rebecca  , Higgins Tracy  , Brown William  , Carballo-Dieguez Alex  , Bakken Suzanne
Published: February 2025

Mobile technology use is nearly ubiquitous which affords the opportunity for using these technologies for modifying health related behaviors. At the same time, use of mobile health (mHealth) technology raises privacy and security concerns of consumers. The goal of this analysis was to understand the perceived ease of use, usefulness, risk and trust that contribute to behavioral intention to use a mobile application for meeting the healthcare needs of persons living with HIV (PLWH). To understand these issues, we conducted focus group sessions with 50 persons living with HIV and 30 HIV healthcare providers. We used the e-commerce acceptance model to analyze our focus group data. Findings from the study demonstrated the need for mHealth to be perceived as useful, easy to use, with little perceived risk accompanied by a measure of trust in the creators of the technology. Findings from this work can inform future work on patients and providers' perceptions of risk, trust, ease of use and usefulness of mHealth technology.
Leveraging Electronic Tablets and a Readily Available Data Capture Platform to Assess Chronic Pain in Children: The PROBE system
Authors: Anand Vibha  , Spalding Steven J.
Published: February 2025

The Patient Risks Outcomes and Barriers Evaluation (PROBE) system is developed using a readily available data capture platform (REDCap) and iPads. PROBE performs complete and consistent assessment of pain at every patient visit in pediatric rheumatology practices of our very large healthcare system. Using evidence based clinical guidelines, it combines the following essential elements for care: 1) screening for behavioral risks for chronic pain such as anxiety, sleep deprivation, or painful conditions affecting a caregiver living in child's home, 2) capturing disease activity related measures and enabling 3) clinical decision support. In this demonstration project we describe PROBE and evaluate it for usability in practice. Using PROBE, we observed significant differences for behavioral risk factors in children with juvenile idiopathic arthritis in those who report chronic pain vs. not.
Classification of Contextual Use of Left Ventricular Ejection Fraction Assessments
Authors: Kim Youngjun  , Garvin Jennifer  , Goldstein Mary K.  , Meystre Stéphane M.
Published: February 2025

Knowledge of the left ventricular ejection fraction is critical for the optimal care of patients with heart failure. When a document contains multiple ejection fraction assessments, accurate classification of their contextual use is necessary to filter out historical findings or recommendations and prioritize the assessments for selection of document level ejection fraction information. We present a natural language processing system that classifies the contextual use of both quantitative and qualitative left ventricular ejection fraction assessments in clinical narrative documents. We created support vector machine classifiers with a variety of features extracted from the target assessment, associated concepts, and document section information. The experimental results showed that our classifiers achieved good performance, reaching 95.6% F1-measure for quantitative assessments and 94.2% F1-measure for qualitative assessments in a five-fold cross-validation evaluation.
Calculation of Cardiac Kinetic Energy Index from PET images
Authors: Sims John  , Oliveira Marco Antônio  , Meneghetti José Claudio  , Gutierrez Marco Antônio
Published: February 2025

Cardiac function can be assessed from displacement measurements in imaging modalities from nuclear medicine Using positron emission tomography (PET) image sequences with Rubidium-82, we propose and estimate the total Kinetic Energy Index (KEf) obtained from the velocity field, which was calculated using 3D optical flow(OF) methods applied over the temporal image sequence. However, it was found that the brightness of the image varied unexpectedly between frames, violating the constant brightness assumption of the OF method and causing large errors in estimating the velocity field. Therefore total brightness was equalized across image frames and the adjusted configuration tested with rest perfusion images acquired from individuals with normal (n=30) and low (n=33) cardiac function. For these images KEf was calculated as 0.5731±0.0899 and 0.3812±0.1146 for individuals with normal and low cardiac function respectively. The ability of KEf to properly classify patients into the two groups was tested with a ROC analysis, with area under the curve estimated as 0.906. To our knowledge this is the first time that KEf has been applied to PET images.
Problem Oriented Medical Record: Characterizing the Use of the Problem List at Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires
Authors: Franco Mariano  , Giussi Bordoni Maria Victoria  , Otero Carlos  , Landoni Mariana Clara  , Benitez Sonia  , Borbolla Damian  , Luna Daniel
Published: February 2025

Problem oriented medical record (POMR) was born in late sixties. Expecting an ordered, complete and updated medical record were some of the goals of its founder. Several healthcare institutions have included problem list into their clinical records but some concerns have been reported. These concerns are in reference to their voluminosity, incompleteness and outdatedness. This study attempts to understand how healthcare professionals are using the problem list at Hospital Italiano de Buenos Aires (HIBA). We believe it is essential to understand the local reality applied to our own applications and cultural instances of documentation. This report is the basis from which several improvements could be made in order to meet the goals of Weed's proposal.
The need for cost-benefit analyses of eHealth in low and middle-income countries
Authors: Fritz Fleur  , Kebede Mihiretu  , Tilahun Binyam
Published: February 2025

Cost and benefit analyses are crucial for eHealth interventions, especially in low and middle income countries (LMIC). We performed a scoping review, with goals to acquire an overview of cost-benefit studies and to collect indicators that are being used for costs and savings with respect to eHealth. Of all retrieved articles, 29 were included in our analysis and 21 contained cost/savings indicators which we categorized into outcome measures with respect to providers, patients and other stakeholders. Nearly all authors stated that more evidence from economic analyses by health economists are urgently needed and that pilot projects should collect cost related data for evaluation.
Using a Participatory Action Research Design to Develop an Application Together with Young Adults with Spina Bifida
Authors: Lidström Helene  , Lindskog-Wallander Magnus  , Arnemo Eva
Published: February 2025

Introduction: Young adults with spina bifida often have cognitive difficulties. As a result, young adults with disabilities are facing challenges with respect to housing, education, relationships and vocation which increases risk of unemployment.
Usability of RemindMe – An Interactive Web-Based Mobile Reminder Calendar: A Professional's Perspective
Authors: Bolic Baric V.  , Tegelström V.  , Ekblad E.  , Hemmingsson H.
Published: February 2025

Aim: The aim of the study was to examine the usability of an interactive web-based mobile reminder calendar (RemindMe) developed for supporting individuals in organizing, planning and executing activities in everyday life, from the perspectives of professionals.
Ontology-based Semantic Support to Improve Accessibility of Graphics
Authors: Murillo-Morales Tomás  , Miesenberger Klaus
Published: February 2025

We aim to ease the process of authoring accessible graphics as well as taking a first step towards the long-term goal of allowing blind persons to access graphics autonomously. We are developing and experimenting with a hierarchical set of knowledge bases related to the presentation of visual objects and cues in the form of ontologies that will act as the formal, axiomatic underpinnings of an accessibility layer or, later on, a graphics reader/browser for blind and visually impaired people. The concept and prototypes of smart (or communicative) graphics [1], in which readers obtain information about the syntactic and semantic content through the use of e.g. a natural language interface, should be expanded by exploiting the benefits of formal semantics supported by domain- and task-aware ontologies describing the elements, visual cues and relations used for visualization or visual display.
Testing usability of Mobile Shower Commodes for adults with Spinal Cord Injury: research method and overview
Authors: Friesen Emma L.  , Russell Trevor G.  , Theodoros Deborah
Published: February 2025

This paper provides an overview of research to develop a new questionnaire testing mobile shower commode usability. It describes the methodology used to develop the questionnaire, and reports significant findings that have been published in peer-reviewed journals. Implications of the research and recommendations for further research on mobile shower commode usability are discussed.
The Role of the IT Department in Organizational Redesign
Authors: Petersen Lone Stub
Published: February 2025

Focus within eHealth research is often on development and implementation. However, the role of information systems maintenance and management is often neglected. In order for the IT department to accommodate the needs of the hospitals and continuous change of organization and practice there is a need for developing an understanding of the complex relationship between the IT department and clinical practice. In this paper the concept of redesign is used to deepen our understanding of IT related organizational change in healthcare organizations. In the paper I argue that the IT department is a central partner, steward and power in organizational change and learning in hospitals as the IT department serve both as a barrier and a catalyst of change and flexibility in the organization through management of information systems maintenance and redesign. Therefore it is important to consider and secure appropriate forms for stewarding redesign and learning in cooperation between the health care organizations and the IT department.
Understanding the Context of Patient Safety Through The Lenses of Three IMIA Working Groups
Authors: Kuziemsky Craig E.  , Nøhr Christian  , Borycki Elizabeth M.  , Kushniruk Andre W.  , Senathirajah Yalini
Published: February 2025

Delivering safe patient centered care remains an important yet elusive goal across healthcare systems worldwide. The complexity of healthcare delivery and the unique contexts where it is delivered necessitates patient safety solutions that go beyond individual perspectives. This paper articulates the current state of patient safety research and HIT from the perspective of three International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) working groups. Each WG will describe patient safety issues within their domain. We then integrate the three WG perspectives into an integrated model to support research, education and policy development for patient safety where HIT is concerned.
Tweet-SCAN: An event discovery technique for geo-located tweets
Authors: Capdevila Joan  , Cerquides Jesús  , Nin Jordi  , Torres Jordi
Published: February 2025

Twitter has become one of the most popular Location-Based Social Networks (LBSNs) that enables bridging physical and virtual worlds. Tweets, 140-character-long messages published in Twitter, are aimed to provide basic responses to the What's happening? question. Occurrences and events in the real life are usually reported through geo-located tweets by users on site. Uncovering event-related tweets from the rest is a challenging problem that necessarily requires exploiting different tweet features. With that in mind, we propose Tweet-SCAN, a novel event discovery technique based on the density-based clustering algorithm called DB-SCAN. Tweet-SCAN takes into account four main features from a tweet, namely content, time, location and user to cluster homogeneously event-related tweets. This new technique models textual content through a probabilistic topic model called Hierarchical Dirichlet Process and introduces Jensen-Shannon distance for the task of neighborhood identification in the textual dimension. As a matter of fact, we show Tweet-SCAN performance in a real data set of geo-located tweets posted during Barcelona local festivities in 2014, for which some of the events were known beforehand. By means of this data set, we are able to assess Tweet-SCAN capabilities to discover events, justify using a textual component and highlight the effects of several parameters.
Using Multi-Agent Systems to mediate in an assistive social network for elder population
Authors: Barrué Cristian  , Cortés Atia  , Moreno Jonatan  , Pérez-Pasalodos Miguel  , Cortés Ulises
Published: February 2025

Nowadays ubiquitous connectivity, portable computing, pervasive sensing, novel interfaces, cheap and fast computing units, and advances in robotic devices and actuators are changing our lives, our living environments, and our social interaction. To truly benefit the elderly and fragile population, commodities based on these novel technologies need to be autonomous and interactive, and must be capable of anticipating user needs, managing complex and unforeseen situations on their own, seamlessly interfacing with casual end-users, and gracefully terminating their functioning when unrecoverable errors occur. Our main aim is to provide a model for developing a multi-agent system integrated into a medical social network. It must provide a tool for developing assistive services to support elderly patients with disabilities in their daily life.
Using Kernel Alignment for Feature Selection in Schizophrenia Diagnostic
Authors: Martín Mario  , Béjar Javier  , Espósito Gennaro  , Català Neus  , Cortés Ulises  , Viñas Ferran  , Tarragó Josep  , Rojo Emilio  , Nowak Rafal
Published: February 2025

We present a feature selection method for neuroimaging techniques to find objective criteria for diagnosis of schizophrenia. The method is based on kernel alignment with the ideal kernel using Support Vector Machines (SVM) in order to detect relevant features for the diagnostic task.
Boosting Classification Based Similarity Learning by using Standard Distances
Authors: López-Iñesta Emilia  , Arevalillo-Herráez Miguel  , Grimaldo Francisco
Published: February 2025

Metric learning has been shown to outperform standard classification based similarity learning in a number of different contexts. In this paper, we show that the performance of classification similarity learning strongly depends on the sample format used to learn the model. We also propose an enriched classification based set-up that uses a set of standard distances to supplement the information provided by the feature vectors of the training samples. The method is compared to state-of-the-art metric learning methods, using a linear SVM for classification. Results obtained show comparable performances, slightly in favour of the method proposed.
Dynamic electronic institutions for patient treatment adherence monitoring
Authors: Gómez-Sebastià Ignasi  , Cortés Ulises  , Vázquez-Salceda Javier
Published: February 2025

In the coming years most therapies for managing chronic diseases will be performed away from the institutional care setting. Patients will be required to autonomously follow their prescribed treatment. Information technologies applied to health care can provide support for medication adherence, specially in patients with diseases that require poly-pharmacological treatment. These scenarios can benefit from norm-aware electronic distributed systems based on agent technologies that can ensure compliance with the different actors to the expected behaviours and medical policies. In this paper we present a framework to manage normative change at execution time applied to the creation of intelligent distributed services to safely assist patients in several daily tasks related to their health care, focused (but not restricted to) pharmacological treatment adherence.
Random sets-based system for geotechnical soundings density estimation
Authors: Boumezerane Djamalddine
Published: February 2025

The required number of soundings for geotechnical site investigation depends on different factors such as geology of the site, soil variability and the type of project to build. There are indications only on the minimal number of soundings according to the codes of practice (Eurocode7), and this number depends only on the area of the project.
A Framework for Risk Assessment of Groundwater Drawdown Induced Subsidence
Authors: Sundell Jonas  , Rosén Lars  , Norberg Tommy  , Wladis David  , Alén Claes
Published: February 2025

Sub-surface constructions generally involve drainage of groundwater, which can induce land subsidence in compressible soil deposits and cause extensive damage costs in urban areas. A probabilistic framework, in accordance with the risk management framework outlined by the International Standard Organization (ISO), for assessing risks of groundwater drawdown induced subsidence is presented here. The framework consists of five modules: (1) A stratified geostatistical (Kriging) procedure for probabilistic spatial analysis of soil layers. This module is necessary for a detailed understanding of the soil stratification, drainage paths, and their potential spatial variations; (2) A stochastic hydrogeological model capable of representing possible groundwater drawdowns for a specific sub-surface construction; (3) A stochastic subsidence model; (4) A model for estimating the economic consequences and calculating the risk, i.e. the expected cost, of groundwater induced subsidence; and (5) A module for evaluating the need for additional information to reduce the risk of erroneous decisions with respect to risk acceptance criteria based on economic Value of Information Analysis (VOIA), i.e. a cost-benefit analysis (CBA) of additional information collection alternatives for suggested strategies to reduce or control subsidence. The modelled land-area is represented by a grid with calculation points. When the three first modules are linked together in a Monte Carlo-simulation, it is possible to estimate the spatial distribution of probability of subsidence and evaluate the sensitivity to different model and parameter assumptions. An estimation of the risk of subsidence is performed by combining the probability of land subsidence with the locations and expected damage costs of existing buildings across the modeled area (module 4). With sensitivity analysis, significant weaknesses can be identified and robust safety measures at locations with significant risks for subsidence can be planned for. Uncertainties can be communicated by mapping and comparing different outcomes of the model, e.g. the expected value and the 95th percentile of the risk. Together with affected stakeholders the assumptions and the outcomes of the model should be discussed - both how well the model describes the system dynamics and how safety measures should be implemented.