bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Understanding the Digital Divide in the Clinical Setting: The Technology Knowledge Gap Experienced by U.S. Safety Net Patients during Teleretinal Screening
Authors: George Sheba  , Moran Erin  , Fish Allison  , Ogunyemi Lola
Published: February 2025

Differential access to everyday technology and healthcare amongst safety net patients is associated with low technological and health literacies, respectively. These low rates of literacy produce a complex patient “knowledge gap” that influences the effectiveness of telehealth technologies. To understand this “knowledge gap”, six focus groups (2 African-American and 4 Latino) were conducted with patients who received teleretinal screenings in U.S. urban safety-net settings. Findings indicate that patients' “knowledge gap” is primarily produced at three points: (1) when patients' preexisting personal barriers to care became exacerbated in the clinical setting; (2) through encounters with technology during screening; and (3) in doctor-patient follow-up. This “knowledge gap” can produce confusion and fear, potentially affecting patients' confidence in quality of care and limiting their disease management ability. In rethinking the digital divide to include the consequences of this knowledge gap faced by patients in the clinical setting, we suggest that patient education focus on both their disease and specific telehealth technologies deployed in care delivery.
Prospective Multicenter Case-Control Study of Telemedicine For Home Medical Care
Authors: Kohri Takayuki  , Sakamaki Tetsuo  , Hasegawa Takashi  , Okada Hiroki  , Morita Hiroyuki  , Saito Yuichiro  , Ishizuka Tatsuo  , Tsuji Masatsugu  , Ogasawara Bunyu  , Ota Takamasa
Published: February 2025

We evaluated the safety and efficacy of the combined use of remote medical services for patients with stroke, cancer, neuromuscular diseases, and other conditions, who are being cared for at home. This study was conducted as a part of a multicenter joint trial supported by the Health and Labour Sciences Research Grant for the ‘Comparative Study of the home telemedicine in Japan’.
Applying Ontological Realism to Medically Unexplained Syndromes
Authors: Doing-Harris Kristina  , Meystre Stephane M.  , Samore Matthew  , Ceusters Werner
Published: February 2025

The past decade has witnessed an increased interest in what are called “medically unexplained syndromes” (MUS). We address the question of whether structuring the domain knowledge for MUS can be achieved by applying the principles of Ontological Realism in light of criticisms about their usefulness in areas where science has not yet led to insights univocally endorsed by the relevant communities. We analyzed whether the different perspectives held by MUS researchers can be represented without taking any particular stance and whether existing ontologies based on Ontological Realism can be further built upon. We did not find refutation of the applicability of the principles. We found the Ontology of General Medical Science and Information Artifact Ontology to provide useful frameworks for analyzing certain MUS controversies, although leaving other questions open.
Making Knowledge on Healthcare Technologies Understandable: An Ontology for Lab-on-a-Chip Systems
Authors: Nussbeck Gunnar  , Soltani Nazli  , Denecke Kerstin
Published: February 2025

Technology for supporting diagnosis and treatment is becoming more complex. New developments are coming up and need to be evaluated from various perspectives. Researchers from other disciplines are seldom experts in healthcare technology. The relevant terminology needs to be settled to be able to communicate interdisciplinary. In this paper, we introduce an approach on how to make complex knowledge related to technological developments in healthcare accessible and understandable for experts from other domains. In particular, we consider the field of lab-on-a-chip systems [1]. For this field, we develop an ontology that enables researchers to get insights into the domain and to study the related ethical, sociological, and legal aspects.
Development of DASH Mobile: A mHealth Lifestyle Change Intervention for the Management of Hypertension
Authors: Mann Devin M.  , Kudesia Valmeek  , Reddy Shivani  , Weng Michael  , Imler Daniel  , Quintiliani Lisa
Published: February 2025

Several landmark studies based on the DASH diet have established the effectiveness of a lifestyle approach to blood pressure control that emphasizes a diet rich in fruits and vegetables with moderate portions of low-fat dairy and lean protein along with increased physical activity and reduced sodium intake. However, this evidence base remains underused due feasibility limitations of implementing these intense in-person interventions and poor engagement with desktop computer based versions. Mobile technologies such as smartphones and wireless sensors have the ability to deliver behavioral interventions in-the-moment and with reduced user burden. DASH Mobile is a new mHealth system being developed to deliver this evidence-based lifestyle intervention to hypertensive patients. The system consists of an Android based “app” that facilitates easy tracking of DASH food portions, integrated Bluetooth blood pressure, weight and pedometer monitoring, goal setting, simple data visualizations and multimedia video clips to train patients in the basic concepts of the lifestyle change plan. At present, the system is undergoing usability testing with a pilot clinical trial planned for Spring 2013.
Context Sensitive Health Informatics: Concepts, Methods and Tools
Authors: Kuziemsky Craig  , Nøhr Christian  , Aarts Jos  , Jaspers Monique  , Beuscart-Zephir Marie-Catherine
Published: February 2025

Context is a key consideration when designing and evaluating health information technology (HIT) and cannot be overstated. Unintended consequences are common post HIT implementation and even well designed technology may not achieve desired outcomes because of contextual issues. While context should be considered in the design and evaluation of health information systems (HISs) there is a shortcoming of empirical research on contextual aspects of HIT. This conference integrates the sociotechnical and Human-Centered-Design (HCD) approaches and showcases current research on context sensitive health informatics. The papers and presentations outlines theories and models for studying contextual issues and insights on how we can better design HIT to accommodate different healthcare contexts.
Digital communication to support clinical supervision: Considering the human factors
Authors: Mather Carey  , Marlow Annette  , Cummings Elizabeth
Published: February 2025

During the last three years the School of Nursing and Midwifery at the University of Tasmania has used a needs assessment survey to explore the needs of organizations and nursing professionals that facilitate and clinically supervise Bachelor of Nursing students in the workplace. Findings from the survey indicated that staff at healthcare organizations wanted a communication strategy that was easily accessible by clinicians who supervised students during work integrated learning placements. In particular they wanted to receive timely information related to the role and function of supervisors in practice. The development of the digital strategy to strengthen the development of a community of practice between the University, organizations, facilities and clinical supervisors was identified as the key method of improving communication. Blogging and micro blogging were selected as methods of choice for the implementation of the digital strategy because they were easy to set up, use and enable equity of access to geographically dispersed practitioners in urban and rural areas. Change champions were identified to disseminate information about the strategy within their workplaces. Although clinicians indicated electronic communication as their preferred method, there were a number of human factors at a systems and individual level identified to be challenges when communicating with clinical supervisors who were based off-campus. Information communication technology policies and embedded culture towards social presence were impediments to using this approach in some organizations. Additionally, it was found that it is necessary for this group of clinicians to be educated about using digital methods to undertake their role as clinical supervisors in their varied clinical practice environments.
Understanding the information dynamics of medication administration in residential aged care facilities (RACFs): A prerequisite for design of effective ICT systems
Authors: Tariq Amina  , Georgiou Andrew  , Westbrook Johanna
Published: February 2025

Medication information is a critical part of the information required to ensure residents' safety in the highly collaborative care context of RACFs. Studies report poor medication information as a barrier to improve medication management in RACFs. Research exploring medication work practices in aged care settings remains limited. This study aimed to identify contextual and work practice factors contributing to breakdowns in medication information exchange in RACFs in relation to the medication administration process. We employed non-participant observations and semi-structured interviews to explore information practices in three Australian RACFs. Findings identified inefficiencies due to lack of information timeliness, manual stock management, multiple data transcriptions, inadequate design of essential documents such as administration sheets and a reliance on manual auditing procedures. Technological solutions such as electronic medication administration records offer opportunities to overcome some of the identified problems. However these interventions need to be designed to align with the collaborative team based processes they intend to support.
A Framework for reporting on Human Factor/Usability studies of Health Information Technologies
Authors: Peute Linda W.  , Driest Keiko F.  , Marcilly Romaric  , Bras Da Costa Sabrina  , Beuscart-Zephir Marie-Catherine  , Jaspers Monique W.M.
Published: February 2025

Increasingly, studies are being published on the potential negative effect of introducing poor designed Health Information Technology (HIT) into clinical settings, relating to technology-induced errors and adverse events. Academic research on HIT design and evaluation is an extremely important source of information in providing new insights into factors contributing to successful system (re)design efforts, system user-friendliness and usability issues and safety critical aspects of HIT design. However, these studies have been inconsistent and incomprehensive in their reporting, complicating the appraisal of outcomes, generalizability of study findings, meta-analysis and harmonization of the available evidence. To improve identification of type of use errors and safety related issues regarding design and implementation of HIT, consensus on issues to be reported on in scientific publications is a necessary step forward. This study presents the first approach to a framework providing a set of principles to follow for comprehensive and unambiguous reporting of HIT design and usability evaluation studies with the objective to reduce variation, improve on the publication reporting quality and proper indexation of these studies. This framework may be helpful in expanding the knowledge base not only concerning the application of Human Factors (HF)/Usability studies of HIT but also improve the knowledge base of how to (re)design and implement effective, efficient and safe HIT.
Personal Data: Changing Selves, Changing Privacies
Authors: Ess Charles  , Fossheim Hallvard
Published: February 2025

We first use Medium Theory to develop the tension between print and digital media, i.e as contrasts between literacy-print and the secondary orality of contemporary online communication. Literacy-print facilitates high modern notions of individual selfhood requisite for democratic polities and norms, including equality and gender equality. By contrast, secondary orality correlates with more relational conceptions of selfhood, and thereby more hierarchical social structures. Recent empirical findings in Internet Studies, contemporary philosophical theory, Western virtue ethics and Confucian traditions elaborate these correlations, as do historical and contemporary practices and theories of “privacy.” Specifically, traditional conceptions of the relational self render individual “privacy” into something solely negative: by contrast, high modern conceptions of autonomous individuals render individual privacy into a foundational positive good and right. Hence, the shift towards relational selves puts the conception of selfhood – at work in current EU efforts to bolster individual privacy – at risk.
Design for Sustainability of Product-Service Systems in the Extended Enterprise
Authors: Peruzzini Margherita  , Germani Michele  , Marilungo Eugenia
Published: February 2025

A recent trend in modern manufacturing companies is moving from products to services. Indeed, services allow creating new business opportunities and increasing the value perceived by the customers. At the same time, sustainability is a crucial aspect for industry, which pays more and more attention to realize efficient and sustainable solutions. The research challenge is defining a structured methodology to understand how to design for sustainability considering Product Service Systems (PSS) and evaluating the effect of shifting from products to services. While product sustainability can be assessed by several tools, sustainability of PSS is almost unexplored. Furthermore, PSS requires creating an extended value creation network. This paper defines an integrated product-service lifecycle and proposes a methodology to identify a set of KPIs for both PSS and products and to compare different use scenarios. It adopts a holistic approach to assess sustainability on the basis of the three main impacts: environmental, economical and social. The methodology is illustrated by means of an industrial case study focusing on water heaters; it analyses an innovative PSS “Hot water as a Service” supported by an extended network, and compares it with the traditional scenario based on product selling supported by a vertical supply-chain. The final aim is to evaluate the service benefits and to support company decision-making.
FDMU – Functional Spatial Experience Beyond DMU?
Authors: Fukuda Shuichi  , Lulić Zoran  , Stjepandić Josip
Published: February 2025

To stay competitive, the companies have to respond quickly to the changing demands of customers. At the same time, the products become more and more complex, including more complex functionalities, and enterprises now have to deal with concurrent multi-disciplinary environments if they want to optimize their products globally. This would come with the development of in-process simulations, but new methods and new tools are needed in order to enable a bridge between the development domains. An important approach is Digital Mock-up (DMU), which provides a robust development method to enable the spatial integration in concurrent environment. In the past decade the DMU has been implemented as a mandatory development method ensuring good project progress within distributed collaborative development. Nevertheless, there is a strong need to pursue the product development by additional methods, which progress beyond DMU. The development of mechatronic systems involves many disciplines, which utilize their own specific methods, processes as well as software tools in order to create partial models of an overall system. A very tight collaboration of the disciplines is essential, since all the partial models are interdependent. However, information between these engineering domains is exchanged only periodically. Progressing rapidly in short steps, the developers need an assisting tool to vividly obtain the first impression on functional behavior of their products (“physicalisation of data”) in each stage of product development. This paper describes a new approach of cross-skill engineering cooperation between various engineering domains (mechanical, electrical, software etc.) called Functional DMU which provides a first, quick insight (functional spatial experience) in the recent progress of singular development tasks and corresponding results in the context of the whole product.
External Validity Indices for Unsupervised Feature Selection
Authors: Bejara Javier
Published: February 2025

Unsupervised feature selection is a dificult task because a reference partition is not available to evaluate the relevance of the features. Different consensus clustering methods have proposed to use external validity indices to assess the agreement of partitions obtained by clustering algorithms with difierent parameter values. Theses indices are independent of the characteristics of the attributes describing the data, the way the partitions are represented or the shape of the clusters. This independence allows to assess the similarity of partitions with different subsets of attributes.
Graph-based and Transition-based Dependency Parsers with Hash Kernels
Authors: Bohnet Bernd
Published: February 2025

In this paper, we compare a higher order graph-based parser and a transition-based parser with beam search. These parsers provide a higher accuracy than a second order MST parser and a deterministic transition-based parser. We apply and compare the output on languages, which have not been in the research focus of Shared Tasks. The parser are implemented in a uniform framework. The transition-based parser was newley implemented and we revised the graph-based parser. The graph-based parser has to our knowlege the highest published scores for French and Czech with 90.40 and 81.43 labeled accuracy score.
Modeling the Multicultural Issues in Software Engineering Processes
Authors: Statkaityte Rasa  , Jaakkola Hannu
Published: February 2025

The trend of globalization has been seen for several decades. Wider markets, the vicinity of the client, cheaper working force and wider IT-professional pools are driving software organizations to offshore software product development. As the result, the software engineering (SE) teams are distributed and multicultural. Differences in cultural backgrounds cause various issues which often stay unrecognized and unsolved for years in global organizations. The operation of software developing organizations is divided into SE processes, described in international standards such as ISO/IEC 15504. SE processes are impacted by cultural factors in global environment because software development relies heavily on the communication with the client and among the team members. The aim of this paper is to propose a tool for cultural sensitivity assessment in SE processes. Cultural sensitivity assessment model (CSAM) helps to identify cultural factors that impact the outcomes of the SE processes. The results of the cultural sensitivity identification in SE processes can be further benefited in cultural training, strategy planning or even software process improvement (SPI).
On Modelling Context-Sensitive Communication based on SPA-Architecture Case study: Bear Vocalization
Authors: Heimbürger Anneli
Published: February 2025

The paper discusses on context-based schema - the sensing, processing and actuating (SPA) architecture - for situation specific communication. In this paper, we apply the schema to bear communication research. The main idea of our research is to identify groups of voice sequences which are typical for certain situations such as waking up from hibernation, cubs coming out for the first time from the den, a female bear teaching her cubs, cubs playing, mating and defense of territory. The communication schema of a brown bear seems to be very goal-oriented and situation specific. Once we can identify context-dependent communication schemas, we will be able to better interpret bear vocalization. The bear communication ABC can be used by scientists, authorities, teachers, students, hikers and especially citizens living in bear-rich areas. For environmental conservation initiatives and programs, it is also important to interpret, early enough, weak signals coming from the bears' natural environments.
Toward the Development of a Virtual Electrosurgery Training Simulator
Authors: Allen Brian F.  , Schwaitzberg Steven D.  , Jones Daniel B.  , De Suvranu
Published: February 2025

We propose a principled approach to the design of a computer-based, virtual reality simulator specifically for electrosurgical training. The design builds on the Fundamental Use of Surgical Energy (FUSE) program's didactic curriculum and the results of a survey of domain experts on the roles of cognitive knowledge and hands-on training for a selection of electrosurgery tasks. The resulting design focuses narrowly on the tissue effects caused during electrosurgery and the identified physician-controllable factors causing those effects.
PATIENT: Physical Anatomical Trainer Instrumented for Education and Non-Subjective Testing
Authors: Galea Anna M.  , Klem Eric  , Duong Minh  , LeRoy Kristen  , O'Toole Shannon
Published: February 2025

The PATIENT manikin (Physical Anatomical Trainer Instrumented for Education and Non-subjective Testing) is designed with the conflicting needs of a highly modular system for ultimate scenario flexibility and cost containment, and a highly realistic system. PATIENT provides a unique combination of capital and disposable components, with each organ treated as a limited-reuse component. The organs contain unobtrusive instrumentation which informs the PATIENT control unit of the organ status. The control unit can adjust whole-body parameters to reflect the local physiology. PATIENT enables tailored simulations, from Point of Injury training of basic life support, through hospital training including surgical interventions.
Commercial Videoconferencing for Use in Telementoring Laparoscopic Surgery
Authors: Guo Yanbo  , Henao Oscar  , Jackson Timothy  , Quereshy Fayez  , Okrainec Allan
Published: February 2025

Telementoring is a useful tool for laparoscopic surgical education. However, current systems have high barriers to entry that prevent widespread adoption. Using commercial videoconferencing applications for telementoring would lower cost and technical barriers. This study examines nine of these options.
pWeb: A High-Performance, Parallel-Computing Framework for Web-Browser-Based Medical Simulation
Authors: Halic Tansel  , Ahn Woojin  , De Suvranu
Published: February 2025

This work presents a pWeb – a new language and compiler for parallelization of client-side compute intensive web applications such as surgical simulations. The recently introduced HTML5 standard has enabled creating unprecedented applications on the web. Low performance of the web browser, however, remains the bottleneck of computationally intensive applications including visualization of complex scenes, real time physical simulations and image processing compared to native ones. The new proposed language is built upon web workers for multithreaded programming in HTML5. The language provides fundamental functionalities of parallel programming languages as well as the fork/join parallel model which is not supported by web workers. The language compiler automatically generates an equivalent parallel script that complies with the HTML5 standard. A case study on realistic rendering for surgical simulations demonstrates enhanced performance with a compact set of instructions.
From Trauma in Austere Environments to Combat or Medical School: How Blended Hyper-Realism in the Real and Virtual Worlds Can Better Prepare Surgeons
Authors: Laporta Anthony J.  , Hoang Tuan  , Moloff Alan  , Tieman Michael  , Schwartz Brian D.  , Slack Sean  , Chalut Carissa  , Kang Jeff  , Unangst Alicia
Published: February 2025

Surgical and simulation development have always been closely associated with military activity. The last ten years have continued that trend, allowing for training in real time, under reality-based conditions, learning technical and clinical skills with the dynamic of true human factors and team training in the actual environment. We present data from diverse activities in three separate scenarios: second-year medical students in clinical scenarios; the U.S. Ski Team physicians training in austere conditions; the U.S. Navy Fleet Surgical Team training for sea and land deployment.
Ultrasound-Stimulated Vibro-Acoustography for High-Resolution Differentiation Based on Viscoelastic Properties of Tissue Mimicking Phantoms
Authors: Maccabi Ashkan  , Arshi Armin  , Garritano James  , Saddik George  , Kohanbash Elnaz  , Tajudeen Bobby A.  , St. John Maie  , Grundfest Warren S.  , Taylor Zachary D.
Published: February 2025

In the absence of an imaging technique that provides imagery of diseased tissue with high diagnostic accuracy and contrast, surgeons must often excise excess healthy tissue surrounding neoplasms to ensure complete removal of malignant tissues. Additional approaches that are commonly used in the detection of tumor regions include palpation and conventional ultrasound to locate the affected area. However, these techniques suffer from limitations such as minimal specificity and lack of depth penetration. Lack of specificity results in the production of unclear diseased tissue regions, and therefore fails to offer surgeons a reliable and accurate image guidance tool. The proposed work provides an alternative diagnostic modality termed ultrasound-stimulated vibro-acoustography (USVA) that aims to generate detailed images characterized by viscoelastic properties of tissues. We demonstrate selective imaging using phantom tissue samples of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) that are altered and arranged into unique geometries of varying elastic topology. Determining the precision and sensitivity of the USVA imaging system in identifying boundary regions as well as intensity ranges associated with tissue phantom targets will provide additional important information to allow for a non-invasive tool to distinguish diseased tissues from normal tissues in an in vivo setting.
Virtual Reality as Allocentric/Egocentric Technology for the Assessment of Cognitive Decline in the Elderly
Authors: Morganti Francesca  , Riva Giuseppe
Published: February 2025

Wayfinding ability has a high adaptive value, allowing humans to efficiently explore an environment in order to have a goal-oriented activity. This is done thanks to the capacity of individuals to actively acquire knowledge during interaction. Recently, different studies examined the wayfinding performances of older adults in Virtual Reality. While these studies underlined a greater difficulty with the wayfinding task in the elderly subjects, the effects of age on specific aspects of navigational tasks are less well specified. More, a recent study (Konishi & Bohbot, 2013) suggested that older people who use spatial navigational strategies (navigation is achieved by orientating oneself in relation to an allocentic landmark map) in their everyday lives may have increased gray matter in the hippocampus and enhance their probability of healthy and successful aging. To evaluate this hypothesis we tested 176 subjects (from 20 to 89 years old) in wayfinding ability by using an interactive computer-based evaluation tool – the VR Maze spatial task – that requires the translation of the allocentric spatial knowledge to the corresponding egocentric one and its organization to perform a goal directed wayfinding. More, the study explored the relationships of these abilites with traditional paper and pencil measures of memory, executive and attentive functions. Data show how some aspects of spatial ability impairment are not clearly detectable using classical tests, whereas they become evident using the VR Maze spatial task. This difference is even more marked in the wayfinding ability evaluation of the elderly population. Finally, the VR Maze spatial task appears to be correlated with classical neuropsychological tests.
Realism, Criterion Validity, and Training Capability of Simulated Diagnostic Cerebral Angiography
Authors: Nguyen Ngan  , Eagleson Roy  , Boulton Mel  , de Ribaupierre Sandrine
Published: February 2025

Computer-based simulation is increasingly used in medical education for training, assessment, credentialing, and practice. Compared to medical specialties such as anesthesiology and general surgery, the adoption of simulation for neurointerventional training has been slow. This may be due to the limited number of neurointerventional simulators available and the lack of research assessing their validity and training capability. The objective of this study was to assess the realism, validity, and training capability of computer-based simulation for diagnostic cerebral angiography using a commercially available simulator called the ANGIO Mentor Express.
The Impact of Secondary-Task Type on the Sensitivity of Reaction-Time Based Measurement of Cognitive Load for Novices Learning Surgical Skills Using Simulation
Authors: Rojas David  , Haji Faizal  , Shewaga Rob  , Kapralos Bill  , Dubrowski Adam
Published: February 2025

Interest in the measurement of cognitive load (CL) in simulation-based education has grown in recent years. In this paper we present two pilot experiments comparing the sensitivity of two reaction time based secondary task measures of CL. The results suggest that simple reaction time measures are sensitive enough to detect changes in CL experienced by novice learners in the initial stages of simulation-based surgical skills training.
Anatomic Surface Reconstruction from Sampled Point Cloud Data and Prior Models
Authors: Sun Deyu  , Rettmann Maryam E.  , Holmes III David R.  , Linte Cristian  , Cameron Bruce  , Liu Jiquan  , Packer Douglas  , Robb Richard A.
Published: February 2025

In this paper, we propose an approach for reconstruction of an anatomic surface model from point cloud data using the Screened Poisson Surface Reconstruction algorithm, which requires a collection of points and their normal vectors. Various algorithms exist for estimating normal vectors for point cloud data; however, in this work we describe a novel approach to estimating the normal vectors from a high-resolution prior model. In many medical applications, a preoperative high-resolution scan is acquired for diagnostic and planning purposes, whereas intraoperative, lower fidelity imaging is utilized during the procedure. This approach assumes an already existing registration between intra-operatively acquired data and the preoperative model. We conducted simulation experiments to evaluate the effect of registration error, point sampling rate, and noise levels on the acquired point cloud data samples. In addition, we evaluated the effect of using both the closest point, as well as a neighborhood of closest points on the prior model for estimating the normal. Our results showed that surface reconstruction error increases with higher registration error; however, acceptable performance was achieved with clinically-acceptable registration error. In addition, the best reconstruction was obtained when estimating the normal using only the closest point on the prior model, as opposed to utilizing a neighborhood of points. When combining the effect of all factors (Gaussian sampling noise of zero mean and σ=1.8mm; Gaussian translational error of zero mean and σ=2.0mm; and Gaussian rotational error of zero mean and σ=3°) the overall RMS reconstruction error was 0.88±0.03mm.
Development of AR Surgical Navigation Systems for Multiple Surgical Regions
Authors: Suzuki Naoki  , Hattori Asaki  , Iimura Jiro  , Otori Nobuyoshi  , Onda Shinji  , Okamoto Tomoyoshi  , Yanaga Katsuhiko
Published: February 2025

The purpose of our research is to develop surgical navigation systems to enhance surgical safety. Our systems make use of augmented reality technology to superimpose, on the surgery screen on a real time basis, patients' organ models reconstructed in 3D from their X-ray CT data taken before surgery. By doing so, the systems display anatomical risk materials, tumors and blood vessels which surgeons cannot see with their naked eyes. This will in turn lead to surgeons intuitively grasping the inner structures of the operational fields. We so far have been developing navigation systems that can conduct surgeries in various fields. The basic structure of the navigation systems are the same. The navigation systems uses different peripheral equipment and different methods to display navigation images which best meet the demands of each type of surgery. In this thesis, we report on our navigation systems for 2 types of surgery – endoscopic sinus surgery and hepatobilialy-pancreatic surgery.
Liver Biomechanical Model for Virtual Palpation
Authors: Tibamoso Gerardo  , Perez-Gutierrez Byron  , Uribe-Quevedo Alvaro
Published: February 2025

Palpation is a diagnostic technique used for evaluating physical properties of abdominal tissues and organs. The emulation of this procedure using virtual simulators is challenging due to trades between realism and interactivity. In this paper a virtual palpation system of the liver is proposed using a polyhedral mesh with a first order viscoelastic model defined in terms of its biomechanical properties extracted from experimental data. The hepatic tissue model is approximated to large deformations leading to a realistic haptic response of the procedure.
The Israel National Hospital Discharge Register: An Essential Component of Data Driven Healthcare
Authors: Haklai Ziona  , Mostovoy Dmitry  , Gordon Ethel-Sherry  , Karger Jean Chaim  , Reichert Assa
Published: February 2025

The Israel National Hospital Discharge Register (INHDR) is an essential section of healthcare data. It includes record for each admission to hospital wards during the last twenty years, and the data are increasing by digitally updated information from hospitals on continually a monthly or quarterly basis. The register contains encrypted patient identity number, admission number, demographic and geographic data, hospitalization data, diagnoses, procedures and accounting data. The goal of the register is to measure medical and surgical services in hospitals, to compare hospital activity among regions, gender and age and population groups within the country and among other countries, to analyse the difference between periods. This large-scale hospital data helps in planning of the hospital services, analysing the health status of the population, disease and injury surveillance, and helps in performance of quality indicators. It assists decision makers at the Ministry of Health (MOH) in their daily and on-going missions.
Accuracy in Pedometers: Dependent on the Technology for Measurement?
Authors: Åkerberg Anna  , Söderlund Anne  , Lindén Maria
Published: February 2025

Today, there are a variety of pedometers available based on different technologies. The aim of this study was to investigate step measurement accuracy regarding two different pedometer technologies, spring-suspended lever arm and accelerometers, in six walking environments, compared to a reference method. Descriptive data indicates that the spring-suspended lever arm pedometer had the largest SD and underestimated the steps in five out of six walking environments. The ANOVA showed that both pedometer technologies performed accurate measurements in one of the walking environments. However, none of the pedometer technologies performed accurate step measurements in all six walking environments.
Representing the Glasgow Coma Scale in IT: Proper Specification is Required for Assessment Scales
Authors: Goossen William  , Oemig Frank
Published: February 2025

In healthcare a huge amount of assessment scales and score systems are in use to abbreviate and summarize the results of clinical observations to interpret a patient's condition in a valid and reliable manner. It is challenging to convey the information in a semantic interoperable form to other systems. A bad approach would be to invent individual models for each of them. Within this paper we would like to demonstrate that a generic model is sufficient by demonstrating the realization with the Glasgow Coma Scale.
Policy Management Standards Enabling Trustworthy pHealth
Authors: Blobel Bernd  , Davis Mike  , Ruotsalainen Pekka
Published: February 2025

Current paradigm changes for improving safety, quality and efficiency of care processes under massive deployment of information and communication technologies (ICT) place high requirements on privacy and security. These mainly focus on privilege management and access control harmonized in international standards and their further evolution. NIST and ISO, but especially HL7 play a prominent role in this context. Starting with classic role-based access control (RBAC) foundations to new specifications for security and privacy labeling of segmented health information, HL7 security is presented as a scalable intermediate solution on the way to comprehensive privilege management and access control by explicit, ontology-based, formal and therefore machine-processable policies. The successfully balloted HL7 labeling specification supports context-sensitive communication and cooperation between different stakeholders and processes with different purposes of use, based on meta-data of information, actors and processes involved. Basics of policy management and practical solutions are discussed.
Improving Emergency Medical Dispatching with Emphasis on Mass-Casualty Incidents
Authors: Kleinoscheg Gabriel  , Burgsteiner Harald  , Bernroider Martin  , Kiechle Günter  , Obermayer Maria
Published: February 2025

Dispatching ambulances is a demanding and stressful task for dispatchers. This is especially true in case of mass-casualty incidents. Therefore, the aim of this work was to investigate if and to what extent the dispatch operation of the Red Cross Salzburg can be optimized on such occasions with a computerized system. The basic problem of a dynamic multi-vehicle Dial-a-Ride Problem with time windows was enhanced according to the requirements of the Red Cross Salzburg. The general objective was to minimize the total mileage covered by ambulances and the waiting time of patients. Furthermore, in case of emergencies suitable adaptions to a plan should be carried out automatically. Consequently, the problem is solved by using the Adaptive Large Neighborhood Search. Evaluation results indicate that the system outperforms a human dispatcher by between 2.5% and 36% within 1 minute of runtime concerning total costs. Moreover, the system's response time in case that a plan has to be updated is less than 1 minute on average.
Education for eHealth – A Status Analysis
Authors: Herzog Juliane  , Pohn Birgit  , Forjan Mathias  , Sauermann Stefan  , Urbauer Philipp
Published: February 2025

eHealth is not only a growing market, but also an important factor for new healthcare systems. National and European initiatives implicitly demand a higher level of knowledge in the areas of healthcare, engineering and management. As part of the eLearning4eHealth project an initial web based study was performed concentrating on European and global eHealth related educational programs. The results show that eHealth related courses do not evenly exist for the identified professions. 43% of the offered programs are focused on the engineering sector, whereas only 21% are available for the management sector. In order to offer compatible and comparable state of knowledge in the identified fields of profession and knowledge, further educational programs may be necessary. Despite the found shortcomings, results have shown that international activities have started in order to close the gaps and improve the quality of knowledge in the interdisciplinary field of eHealth.
Estimation of Respiratory Flow by Means of Normal Lung Sound
Authors: Schudt Florian  , Gross Volker  , Weissflog Andreas  , Mursina Ljudmila  , Koehler Ulrich  , Sohrabi Keywan
Published: February 2025

The respiratory flow is a good indicator of sleep-related breathing disorders. Common praxis is to use a pneumotachograph as the golden standard for flow measurement. However, it does not have to be necessarily the best possible test device for long-term condition, because the device is very uncomfortable and rarely suitable for measurement during sleep. A computer-based method to determine the respiratory flow, called ThorAKUSTIK, yielded a highly positive correlation between the calculated flow out of the tracheal breath sound and a measured flow signal. In order to avoid noise interference due to a breath-mask or a pneumotachograph, in this study we applied the ThorAKUSTIK-method to lung sound which was measured at the back of 18 subjects and investigated the correlation between the calculated flow and the measured flow by a pneumotachograph. The new method showed a highly positive correlation (r = 0.89 and 0.90). Additionally we examined the use of an accelerometer signal to distinguish between inspiration and expiration. In this case we got high correlation coefficients of r = 0.87 and 0.88 between the calculated and measured airflow as well.
Ethical Aspects of Using Medical Social Media in Healthcare Applications
Authors: Denecke Kerstin
Published: February 2025

The advances in internet and mobile technologies and their increased use in healthcare led to the development of a new research field: health web science. Many research questions are addressed in that field, starting from analysing social-media data, to recruiting participants for clinical studies and monitoring the public health status. The information provided through this channel is unique in a sense that there is no other written source of experiences from patients and health carers. The increased usage and analysis of health web data poses questions on privacy, and ethics. Through a literature review, the current awareness on ethical issues in the context of public health monitoring and research using medical social media data is determined. Further, considerations on the topic were collected from members of the IMIA Social Media Working group.
The Split of Information Needs Support Between the Users and Information Technology
Authors: Skyrius Rimvydas
Published: February 2025

The paper examines the complex part of business user information needs in terms of IT support and split of support functionality between IT and users. Several dimensions of information needs are combined in respect to possible potential of IT support, and compared to related approaches in other research. The relation between automated efficiency and human flexibility shows that in the process of user informing in complex situations, the “last mile” should be left to human information functions. Regarding this relation, possible ways of flexible satisfaction of complex information needs are discussed.
An agent-based Collaborative Platform for spunlace nonwovens manufacturing in Algeria: A combined use between Ontology and WEB 2.0 technologies
Authors: Taghezout Noria  , Benkaddour Fatima Zohra  , Benhacine Fatima Zohra
Published: February 2025

In this paper a collaborative WEB platform is proposed to implement the collaborative manufacturing environment. This is to offer maximum interoperability between all the distributed participants of a Collaborative Manufacturing Network (CMN) and their management information systems. Furthermore, this paper develops a simple framework to help to understand the collaboration that is afforded by Web 2.0 applications. The proposed framework is used to examine how production of agents can create, share and exchange experiences on diagnosis and resources failures with each other to have new ideas or useful information for the decision-making. The agent-based approach provides a collaborative WEB interface to facilitate the remote interaction with human users involved in the risk management process. The global collaborative decision model is applied to the spunlace nonwovens production industry.
Compelling Evidence that Exposure Therapy for PTSD Normalizes Brain Function
Authors: Roy Michael J.  , Costanzo Michelle E.  , Blair James R.  , Rizzo Albert A.
Published: February 2025

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is helping us better understand the neurologic pathways involved in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). We previously reported that military service members with PTSD after deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan demonstrated significant improvement, or normalization, in the fMRI-measured activation of the amygdala, prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate gyrus following exposure therapy for PTSD. However, our original study design did not include repeat scans of control participants, rendering it difficult to discern how much of the observed normalization in brain activity is attributable to treatment, rather than merely a practice effect. Using the same Affective Stroop task paradigm, we now report on a larger sample of PTSD-positive combat veterans that we treated with exposure therapy, as well as a combat-exposed control group of service members who completed repeat scans at 3-4 month intervals. Findings from the treatment group are similar to our prior report. Combat controls showed no significant change on repeat scanning, indicating that the observed differences in the intervention group were in fact due to treatment. We continue to scan additional study participants, in order to determine whether virtual reality exposure therapy has a different impact on regional brain activation than other therapies for PTSD.
Identifying User Behavior in domain-specific Repositories
Authors: Van Hoek Wilko  , Shen Wei  , Mayr Philipp
Published: February 2025

This paper presents an analysis of the user behavior of two different domain-specific repositories. The web analytic tool etracker was used to gain a first overall insight into the user behavior of these repositories. Moreover, we extended our work to describe an apache web log analysis approach which focuses on the identification of the user behavior. Therefore the user traffic within our systems is visualized using chord diagrams. We could find that recommendations are used frequently and users do rarely combine searching with faceting or filtering.
Promoting the Meaningful Use of Health Information for New Zealand Consumers
Authors: Honey Michelle  , Roy Dianne  , Bycroft Janine  , Boyd Mary-Anne  , Raphael Deborah
Published: February 2025

A cornerstone of ‘meaningful use’ of health information is engaging consumers and their families. Yet for consumers to be engaged requires an informed population and therefore focus on consumer's health information needs. Reports indicated consumers want health information, yet little was known about their internet use or perception of electronic health information. This New Zealand study surveyed consumers to gain an understanding of their health information requirements. Some 1783 questionnaires were available for descriptive statistical analyses. The internet was the third most preferred source of health information. Two thirds of participants had used the internet to access health information, because of the speed of access and to find information before going to the doctor. There was little awareness or use of existing New Zealand-based online health resources. Study implications include promoting existing resources and increasing the use of electronic communication between consumers and healthcare providers as these are currently underutilized.