bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Fitness in a U. K. Screening Sample – A Comparison with the Canadian Population
Authors: Robinson D. , Hale A. , Pearl A. 
Published: March 2018

Abstract:Fitness measurements were compared from approximately 12,000 men and 5,000 women attending the BUPA Health Screening Centre, London, with published Canadian levels. The mean (±SD) predicted VO2-max values in the BUPA group were 35.1 (±9.2) and 30.0 (±8.4) ml/kg/min for men and women aged 15-64 years, respectively. These compare with means of 44.1 and 34.3 in men and women of the same age in Canada. A comparison of flexibility measurements showed that in all age groups the BUPA subjects were less flexible than their Canadian counterparts, on average 28.7% and 25.1% lower for men and women, respectively. Comparison of grip strength showed BUPA values to be on average 8.1% lower in men and 9.5% lower in women than the Canadian levels. Analysis of variance showed that the fitness measurements reflect the recorded physical activity in the BUPA sample, and in particular the predicted VO2-max and flexibility exhibit linear relationships with age and exercise levels.
Health-Risk Appraisal Applied to Ordinary AMHTS
Authors: Okazaki N. , Hinohara S. , Sugiyama J. , Nakamura A. , Iwashimizu Y. , Kitagawa T. , Yoshida K. 
Published: March 2018

Abstract:The main purpose of an automatic health testing system (AMHTS) has changed from early detection to primary prevention. Health-risk appraisal is now widely available as a tool of health education aiming at the modification of unhealthy lifestyles. However, the opportunity to offer appropriate health education was less frequent for those who had no particular findings during AMHTS. The results of an AMHTS should be evaluated from the viewpoint of health-risk appraisal, because the system is expected to supply useful information regarding one’s lifestyle. Our system consists of two health-risk appraisal subsystems. One subsystem estimates the degree of improvement in medical indicators after a patient’s lifestyle has been modified. The other subsystem predicts the occurrence of abnormal findings in medical indicators. These health-risk appraisal subsystems provide patients with information about their health-risks, based on their AMHTS results. Our health-risk appraisal subsystems should play an important role in future health education through the application of ordinary AMHTS.
Monitoring Vigilance during Single and Serial Visual Evoked Potentials
Authors: Pottinger R. 
Published: March 2018

Abstract:Full- and half-field visual evoked potentials (VEPs) are used to evaluate functional effects of optic chiasm compression by pituitary tumours. Reduction in VEP amplitude, typically from the temporal fields of vision, can occur even without demonstrable clinical deficit. An inherent problem of prolonged or serial testing is that changing levels of vigilance may affect the VEP. Gradual decrease in vigilance during a test sequence or with serial testing may cause a reduction in amplitude of the response mimicking the abnormality sought. This has serious implications when monitoring the effect of medical treatment since it may give a false impression of tumour growth requiring urgent surgery to prevent blindness. This report illustrates the nature of the problem and describes techniques using electroencephalograms (EEG), which have been used in an attempt to monitor vigilance. The ultimate aim is to produce a system to automate such monitoring during VEP recording.
The Value to the Anaesthetist of Monitoring Cerebral Activity
Authors: Langford R. M. , Thomsen C. E. 
Published: March 2018

Abstract:The administration rate of general anaesthetic drugs is at present guided by clinical experience, and indirect indicators such as haemodynamic parameters. In the presence of muscle relaxants most of the clinical signs of inadequate anaesthesia are lost and accidental awareness may occur. A number of monitoring modalities, primarily based on analysis of the electroencephalogram (EEG), have been proposed for measurement of the anaesthetic depth. Moreover intraoperative cerebral monitoring may also provide the anaesthetist with early warning of cerebral ischaemia, or information on specific neurological pathways. To facilitate this, it is essential to combine analysis of the spontaneous EEG with recording of evoked potentials, to assess both cortical and subcortical activity/events. None of the reviewed methods, however promising, can alone meet all of the requirements for intraoperative monitoring of cerebral function. We suggest that the future direction should be to integrate several modalities in a single device, to provide valuable new information, upon which to base clinical management decisions.
A Comparative Summary of Six Health/Medical Informatics Programs
Authors: Dickhaus H. 
Published: March 2018

Abstract:This paper tries to compare six Health Informatics/Medical Informatics (HI/MI) programs by a number of attributes in standardized form. The different programs and their curricula were summarized at the 5th IMIA Working Conference on HI/MI Education at Heidelberg/Heilbronn. The presentation is condensed to a synoptical scheme. Most of the information used for this purpose is taken from five individual papers about the programs presented in this special issue of Methods of Information in Medicine.
Can Health/Medical Informatics be Regarded as a Separate Discipline?
Authors: Protti D. J. , van Bemmel J. H. , Gunzenhäuser R. , Haux R. , Warner H. , Douglas J. V. , Lang E. 
Published: March 2018

Abstract:The participants of the panel on education and training in Medical Informatics, concurred that health/medical informatics is today thriving as a separate discipline, despite inevitable uncertainties regarding the future. Conferees discussed the distinctions between physician-built systems and those designed by medical informaticians, focusing on methodology as critical to medical informatics.
Decision Making in a Case of Multiple Sclerosis — Preliminary Note
Authors: John I. 
Published: March 2018

Decision making was studied in a case of multiple sclerosis with the aim of understanding what sort of decision rules may be used to accept the final hypothesis in coming to a diagnosis. 17 persons, including 4 expert neurologists, 1 senior resident and 12 medical students interviewed a simulated patient.It was found that the final hypothesis depended on the examination of a relatively small number of aspects (clinical features). Little search was made for aspects of choice alternatives other than the favoured one, namely multiple sclerosis. The results thus did not support pattern recognition as being important in decision making, and one may speculate that elimination by aspect or simple dominance rules may have been used in this case. The findings emphasise the apparent need to look for important distinguishing criteria in coming to a diagnosis.This may have significant implications for medical education in that students may have to concentrate on learning heavily weighted distinguishing cues rather than long lists of individual clinical features of diseases.
INTERNIST-1/CADUCEUS: Problems Facing Expert Consultant Programs
Authors: Miller R. A. 
Published: March 2018

SummaryINTERNIST-1 is an experimental computer program for consultation in general internal medicine. On a series of test cases, its performance has been shown to be similar to that of staff physicians at a university hospital. Despite INTERNIST-1’s apparent success in dealing with complex cases involving multiple diagnoses in the same patient, many shortcomings in both its knowledge representation schemes and its diagnostic algorithms still remain. Among the known problems are lack of anatomical and temporal reasoning, inadequate representation of degrees of severity of findings and illnesses, and failure to reason properly about causality. These drawbacks must be corrected before INTERNIST-1’s successor program, CADUCEUS, can be used. It is estimated that CADUCEUS will not be ready for release to the general medical community for five to ten years.Broader problems faced by all medical diagnostic consultant systems are: design of an efficient human interface; development and completion of medical knowledge bases; expansion of diagnostic algorithms from simple heuristic rules to include a range of complex reasoning strategies, and development of a method for validating computer programs for clinical use.
Information System for Post-marketing Drug Surveillance Scheme on Small Computers
Authors: Moussa M. A. A. 
Published: March 2018

A drug information system (DARIS) has been created for handling reports on suspected drug reactions. The system is suitable for being run on desktop computers with a minimum of hardware requirements: 187 K read/write memory, flexible or hard disc drive and a thermal printer. The data base (DRUG) uses the QUERY and IMAGE programming capabilities for data entry and search. The data base to statistics link program (DBSTAT) enables data transfer from the data base into a file for statistical analysis and signalling suspected adverse drug reactions.The operational, medical and statistical aspects of the general population voluntary adverse drug reaction monitoring programme—recently initiated in the State of Kuwait—are described.
The Child Psychiatric Patient Database System of the Chinese University of Hong Kong
Authors: Wong C K. 
Published: March 2018

SummaryAn original child psychiatric patient database system developed in Hong Kong is reported. The system was developed mainly to meet the dilemma of the local working setting, namely heavy clinical and teaching commitments on the one hand and, on the other hand, the failure to make use of the massive and invaluable clinical materials for research purposes because there was no proper collection of data. The system was designed for routine clinical purposes with strong emphasis on practicability, and yet it also allows the systematic, comprehensive and prospective collection of clinical data. The first part of the system is a semistructured interview schedule which reflects the author’s usual style of interview, especially his preference for the family approach. Data are collected in two forms - a precoded and readily analyzable form, and a descriptive and non-coded form. The second part of the system is a computer program for converting the raw data to medical records. Some preliminary experience of using the system is also discussed. The system may easily be modified to suit different clinical styles and settings.
Decision Support Based on Laboratory Data
Authors: O’Moore Rory R. 
Published: March 2018

SummaryMedical decision support systems dealing with multiple diseases are presently in a phase of development or revision and, in the immediate future, are likely to be utilized only as part of ongoing research projects or in the field of medical education. Those decision support systems (DSS) which are in routine use have one major factor in common. They are applied in a single narrow domain or series of overlapping narrow domains. Blois and Wagner predicted this, suggesting that computer-based medical decision aids were inherently limited in their ability to assist clinicians in reaching decisions about undifferentiated patients, i. e., those for whom an initial high level general classification had not already been made. To be useful, the domain should be narrowed by the clinical acumen of the physician. A thoughtful working diagnosis on a laboratory request form provides a good example of this process.
Distribution of Variables Extracted from Spectral EEG-Analysis
Authors: Ferber G. , Eichholz G. 
Published: March 2018

For 1000 variables extracted from auto- and cross-spectra of two 12-channel montages, the empirical density function is investigated. Only a small group of them may be considered to have a univariate normal distribution. Another important group including the absolute and the relative power in the four classical frequency bands has distribution functions that may be more or less accurately approximated by gamma-type functions.A third group including some of the peak frequencies shows distribution functions with two peaks not assignable to any natural classification of the EEG.The power of discrimination between the four samples is investigated for each variable by means of Bayes-classification and by a quasi-Kolmogorov-statistic. Its quality is demonstrated using linear discriminant analysis.Correlations were computed to complete basic statistical information.
Statistical Aspects of Monitoring for Dangers in Drug Therapy)
Authors: FINNEY D. J. 
Published: March 2018

A therapeutic drug has a complicated life history, and some of the important stages of this are described in the paper. Before it can even be referred to as a drug, it must be identified as a chemical compound worth investigation as possibly having useful pharmacological properties. From among large numbers in this category, a few must be selected by a screening process. Toxicity tests and clinical trials each bring their special problems for the statistician. When a new drug has had its usefulness established, standardization of its potency by biological assay may be necessary, and this also uses statistical techniques.Most of the paper is concerned with adverse reactions to drugs when used in medical practice, and methods for detecting these. In response to recent recognition of dangers, systems for monitoring for adverse reactions to drugs that occur during normal therapeutic use have been developed in many countries. The paper outlines the logical basis of monitoring and discusses its practical implementation. New problems of statistical inference, as well as large data handling activities, arise in connexion with the interpretation of evidence that is very heterogeneous in origin. The basic statistical problem appears to be one of collecting and evaluating information that may constitute a degree of suspicion calling for intensive and more objectively planned research. This type of inference seems closer to the mode of thought of a criminal investigation department than to orthodox practice of statistical estimation or decision-making; I think it has new features that deserve further study.National monitoring organizations are now cooperating, through the World Health Organization, in an international project for the combination of evidence.
A Retrieval System for a Library of Pathology Reports, Slides and Kodachromes
Authors: GAYNON P. , WONG R. L. 
Published: March 2018

With the objective of providing easier access to pathology specimens, slides and kodachromes with linkage to x-ray and the remainder of the patient’s medical records, an automated natural language parsing routine, based on dictionary look-up, was written for Surgical Pathology document-pairs, each consisting of a Request for Examination (authored by clinicians) and its corresponding report (authored by pathologists). These documents were input to the system in free-text English without manual editing or coding.Two types of indices were prepared. The first was an »inverted« file, available for on-line retrieval, for display of the content of the document-pairs, frequency counts of cases or listing of cases in table format. Retrievable items are patient’s and specimen’s identification data, date of operation, name of clinician and pathologist, etc. The English content of the operative procedure, clinical findings and pathologic diagnoses can be retrieved through logical combination of key words. The second type of index was a catalog. Three catalog files — »operation«, »clinical«, and »pathology« — were prepared by alphabetization of lines formed by the rotation of phrases, headed by keywords. These keywords were automatically selected and standardized by the parsing routine and the phrases were extracted from each sentence of each input document. Over 2,500 document-pairs have been entered and are currently being utilized for purpose of medical education.
Multiphasic Screening as a Diagnostic Method in Preventive Medicine
Authors: Collen Morris 
Published: March 2018

An automated multiphasic screening program has been described utilizing automated and semi-automated electronic and mechanical equipment to rapidly provide comprehensive, quantitative, and precise testing for a large number of diseases.The data processing system and computer requirements of the program have been reviewed. The program incorporates a statistical method which automatically determines the likelihood of the presence or absence of selected diagnoses according to pre-determined sensitivity and specificity criteria.
The Computation of Results from Radioimmunoassays
Authors: Finney D. J. 
Published: March 2018

The use of radioimmunoassay (RIA) as a routine aid to clinical diagnosis makes it important that procedures for estimating the potency of each test sample are good, ancl that the validity of assumptions implicit in the calculations is regularly monitored. The task is non-trivial: if a laboratory regularly conducts varied assays, with perhaps 50-500 test samples in each, even simple manual processes (graphical or arithmetical) are very time-consuming. Only by making RIA analysis a standard computer task, can it be handled satisfactorily. If a comprehensive program serves many centres, the costs of “writing can be relatively small and other benefits can be secured — reduction in numerical mistakes, thorough examination of the adequacy of fitted response curves, production of limits of error for potency estimates, ancl ease of managing files.This paper is concerned with the principles that should underlie RIA software, and with requirements in respect of input, output, ancl analytical computations. Though not a detailed specification, it is a step towards producing a good program easily moved from one computer system to another and suitable for the computer facilities now becoming available in hospitals. If a proposed new program fails to supply many of the features described below, practitioners of radioimmunoassay not themselves expert hi statistics will be unwise to accept it as sufficient for their needs. Ease of input ancl clarity of output are essential but not sufficient in themselves. A user who adopts an apparently "simple" program may be safe for much of the time, but the occasional anomalous assay may lead to unsuspecting acceptance of wholly untrustworthy numerical conclusions.
Computer Aided Diagnosis – A Review of Research
Authors: Wardle Ann , Wardle L. 
Published: March 2018

Computer aided diagnosis is reviewed and an assessment made of the different models used for this purpose. These are discussed under three headings:1. Models based on physicians’ thought processes2. Models based on the physiological relationships manifested in the disease state,3. Statistical models.The models are assessed in terms of their accuracy by comparison with clinical methods. Typical results show that using the computer improves diagnostic accuracy by about 10%.It is concluded that Bayesian models are likely to give the best results since they are well suited to the probabilistic nature of medical data and can be adapted for use in many situations. Further research necessary for the improvement of Bayesian models is discussed.
Identification and Transformation of Terminal Morphemes in Medical English
Authors: Pratt A. W. , Pacak M. 
Published: March 2018

The system for the identification and subsequent transformation of terminal morphemes in medical English is a part of the information system for processing pathology data which was developed at the National Institutes of Health.The recognition and transformation of terminal morphemes is restricted to classes of adjectivals including the -ING and -ED forms, nominals and homographic adjective/noun forms.The adjective-to-noun and noun-to-noun transforms consist basically of a set of substitutions of adjectival and certain nominal suffixes by a set of suffixes which indicate the corresponding nominal form(s).The adjectival/nominal suffix has a polymorphosyntactic transformational function if it has the property of being transformed into more than one nominalizing suffix (e.g., the adjectival suffix -IC can be substituted by a set of nominalizing suffixes -Ø, -A, -E, -Y, -IS, -IA, -ICS): the adjectival suffix has a monomorphosyntactic transformational property if there is only one admissible transform (e.g., -CIC → -X).The morphological segmentation and the subsequent transformations are based on the following principles:a. The word form is segmented according to the principle of »double consonant cut,« i.e., terminal characters following the last set of double consonants are analyzed and treated as a potential suffix. For practical purposes only such terminal suffixes of a maximum length of four have been analyzed.b. The principle that the largest segment of a word form common to both adjective and noun or to both noun stems is retained as a word base for transformational operations, and the non-identical segment is considered to be a »suffix.«The backward right-to-left character search is initiated by the identification of the terminal grapheme of the given word form and is extended to certain admissible sequences of immediately preceding graphemes.The nodes which represent fixed sequences of graphemes are labeled according to their recognition and/or transformation properties.The tree nodes are divided into two groups:a. productive or activatedb. non-productive or non-activatedThe productive (activated) nodes are sequences of sets of graphemes which possess certain properties, such as the indication about part-of-speech class membership, the transformation properties, or both. The non-productive (non-activated) nodes have the function of connectors, i.e., they specify the admissible path to the productive nodes.The computer program for the identification and transformation of the terminal morphemes is open-ended and is already operational. It will be extended to other sub-fields of medicine in the near future.
Health Information Science at UVic: The Student Perspective
Authors: Anglin C. 
Published: March 2018

Abstract:The graduates and students of the School of Health Information Science (HIS) at the University of Victoria (UVic) have pioneered the Canadian sphere in health informatics since 1982. After six years of growth this co-operative education program has matured and establishment of a research base and graduate school has become a recent focus. In this context an evaluation of the HIS curriculum and co-op work experience from the student perspective was undertaken. Eighty-five persons, including 50 upper level students were surveyed. Thirty-five graduates were tracked and queried regarding their present employment, job satisfaction, future goals and perception oftheir professional status. In particular, students were queried on the retrospective value and/or shortcomings of the HIS co-op program. Their perceptions on the training that they have had or that they observe as leading to successful careers is documented. The student view on the ascribed role of ´change agent´ and concerns regarding the lack of professional identity are noted. The implications ofthese findings on the future form ofthe Health Information Science curriculum and the direction of its educational model are subsequently discussed.
Iliad: Moving Medical Decision-Making into New Frontiers
Authors: Warner H. R. 
Published: March 2018

Abstract:If the essence of clinical practice is a process of sequential problem-solving, whereby a physician works with a patient to formulate a series of decisions about diagnostic treatment, then it would naturally follow that the essence of medical education should evolve around the training of would-be clinicians in the difficult art of diagnostic decisionmaking. Yet this is not often the case.