Event Based Retrieval From Digital Libraries Containing Data Streams

The objective of this research is to study the issues involved in building a digital library that contains data streams and allows event-based retrieval. “Digital Libraries are storehouses of information available through the Internet that provide ways to collect, store, and organize data and make it accessible for search, retrieval, and processing” [29]. Data streams are sources of information for applications such as news-on-demand, weather services, and scientific research, to name a few. A data stream is a sequence of data units produced over a period of time. Examples of data streams are video streams, audio stream, and sensor readings. Saving data streams in digital libraries is advantageous because of the services provided by digital libraries such as archiving, preservation, administration, and access control. Events are noteworthy occurrences that happen during data streams. Events are easier to remember than specific time instances at which they occur; hence using them for retrieval is more commensurate with human behavior and can be more efficient via direct accessing instead of scanning. The focus of this research is not only on storing data streams in a digital library and using event-based retrieval, but also on relating streams and playing them back at the same time, possibly in a synchronized manner, to facilitate better understanding in research or other working situations. Our approach for this research starts by considering digital libraries for: stock market, news streams, census bureau statistics, weather, sports games, and the educational environment. For each of these applications, we form categories of possible users and the basic requirements for each of them. As a result, we identify a list of design goals that we take into consideration in developing the architecture of the library. To illustrate and validate our approach we implement a medical digital library containing actual Computed Tomography (CT) scan streams. It also contains sample medical text and audio streams to show the heterogeneity of the library. Streams are displayed in a concise, yet complete, way that makes it unproblematic for users to decide whether or not to playback a stream and to set playback options. The playback interface itself is organized in a way that accommodates synchronous and asynchronous streams and enables users to control the playback of these streams. We study the performance of the specialized search and retrieval processes in comparison to traditional search and retrieval processes. We conclude with a discussion on how to adapt the library to additional stream types in addition to suggesting other future efforts in this area

International Telemedicine/Disaster Medicine Conference: Papers and Presentations

The first International Telemedicine/Disaster Medicine Conference was held in Dec. 1991. The overall purpose was to convene an international, multidisciplinary gathering of experts to discuss the emerging field of telemedicine and assess its future directions; principally the application of space technology to disaster response and management, but also to clinical medicine, remote health care, public health, and other needs. This collection is intended to acquaint the reader with recent landmark efforts in telemedicine as applied to disaster management and remote health care, the technical requirements of telemedicine systems, the application of telemedicine and telehealth in the U.S. space program, and the social and humanitarian dimensions of this area of medicine

An HCI Study with the Lundbeck Institute

This working paper presents the first results of a close collaboration between the HCI-Research Group, at the Department of Informatics, CBS and the Lundbeck Institute.This report contains the resulting descriptions of analyses, investigations and evaluations carried out in the pre-phase. The working paper is written considering both the current and future context of the Lundbeck Institute and what we (in the HCI Research Group) know and need to know more about with respect to the future users of the e-learning activities. Another of our concern has been to investigate the Lundbeck Institute current activities and raise questions that the Institute needs to consider when contemplating a relatively large e-learning project. However, we find that the concepts investigated and the processes we have been through have a general relevance. We are thus grateful to the Lundbeck Institute for allowing publication of these pre-phase results

Clinical foundations and information architecture for the implementation of a federated health record service

Clinical care increasingly requires healthcare professionals to access patient record information that may be distributed across multiple sites, held in a variety of paper and electronic formats, and represented as mixtures of narrative, structured, coded and multi-media entries. A longitudinal person-centred electronic health record (EHR) is a much-anticipated solution to this problem, but its realisation is proving to be a long and complex journey. This Thesis explores the history and evolution of clinical information systems, and establishes a set of clinical and ethico-legal requirements for a generic EHR server. A federation approach (FHR) to harmonising distributed heterogeneous electronic clinical databases is advocated as the basis for meeting these requirements. A set of information models and middleware services, needed to implement a Federated Health Record server, are then described, thereby supporting access by clinical applications to a distributed set of feeder systems holding patient record information. The overall information architecture thus defined provides a generic means of combining such feeder system data to create a virtual electronic health record. Active collaboration in a wide range of clinical contexts, across the whole of Europe, has been central to the evolution of the approach taken. A federated health record server based on this architecture has been implemented by the author and colleagues and deployed in a live clinical environment in the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine at the Whittington Hospital in North London. This implementation experience has fed back into the conceptual development of the approach and has provided "proof-of-concept" verification of its completeness and practical utility. This research has benefited from collaboration with a wide range of healthcare sites, informatics organisations and industry across Europe though several EU Health Telematics projects: GEHR, Synapses, EHCR-SupA, SynEx, Medicate and 6WINIT. The information models published here have been placed in the public domain and have substantially contributed to two generations of CEN health informatics standards, including CEN TC/251 ENV 13606

DigiScope Collector - Unobtrosive collection and annotating of auscultations in real hospital environments

Mestrado em Informática MédicaMaster Programme in Medical Informatic

My Crohn’s disease on real-time information - User experience improvement through cross-platform applications

Reducing hospital institutionalization of citizen with chronic diseases is a major priority of western countries priorities. The more complex the health condition, the harder it is to coordinate clinical care. To improve the disease management and control, most patients need to use mobile applications that are available in online stores or web services because of the difficulty that a personal mobile phone has to get real time access to clinical data outside of a hospital. In terms of IBD - Inflammatory Bowel Disease - existing mobile phone solutions are very complex, because visually the interfaces communicates with the user through inadequate use of symbols in clinical features, which are inconsistent and have poor legibility. They also presents a lack of visual optimization between multiplatform systems. This increases the user's learning curve in terms of how to interpret and interact with these systems, generating an opportunity for these patients with abilities to innovate through the creation and development of solutions that solve their own problems related to the management and coordination of the disease. This thesis aims to analysis IBD patients behaviour related to disease management, identify the type of problems, both functional and communication, which occur in existing IBD m-Health and e-Health systems, and introduces two topics – communication and design studies – in the "User Innovator" model of Von Hippel (1976) which consists of users, that are, for example, patients with chronic diseases, and who innovate by creating solutions to solve personal problems because of unfavourable healthcare conditions. To validate in the design process the three perspectives – design, innovation and patient – were considered, and the framework “Human-social Interaction Model for e-Health Interfaces” was created, enabling a sustainable approach to research, with inputs from personal experience being used, introducing relevant feedback for the final goal of the preliminary studies, when creating the interface for mobile phone application particularly for Crohn’s disease, one of the IBD, with a new healthcare user experience. To reach the objective, a set of studies were conducted that were divided into two stages. The first, a literature review of the relationship between semiotics and interactive communication; the meaning of symbolic representation in interactive projects; new design research guidelines that define interfaces and features and that are more approachable for users; user perspectives towards technology for health supporting and controlling; the design and communication space on technological projects; the challenge for users/ patients who try to create systems to solve personal problems. The second part, presents the practical research that includes a survey of 279 participants with IBD; the empirical analysis of six case studies – mobile applications and multiplatform: context, features, design principles lifting, and usability testing A/B with the design features and principles of design on two of the six systems being compared. The results from the thesis challenge the concepts of mobile interface usability in health, providing users with a structured interpretation of medical information design and a guideline for designers with chronic diseases that would like to create solutions to monitor health problems.Reduzir a institucionalização hospitalar de cidadãos com doenças crónicas é uma das prioridades para os países ocidentais. Quanto maior for a complexidade das condições de saúde, mais difícil se torna a coordenação dos cuidados clínicos. Para melhorar o controle e a gestão da doença, a maioria destes pacientes recorre às aplicações para telemóvel disponíveis em lojas online e aos serviços na web pois, é difícil obter permissão para aceder a dados clínicos em tempo real no telemóvel pessoal a partir do hospital. No contexto da DII – Doença Inflamatória do Intestino – as soluções existentes apresentam níveis de complexidade visual elevados pois, a interface comunica com o utilizador através de símbolos clínicos inadequados em funcionalidades convencionais – fraca legibilidade e inconsistência; Apresenta também, fraca coerência visual entre sistemas multiplataforma. Estes cenários promovem no utilizador, um aumento da curva de aprendizagem relativamente à forma como estes interagem com os sistemas criando assim, uma abertura para o desenvolvimento de soluções pelos que têm habilidade para inovar através da criação e desenvolvimento de sistemas que resolvem os seus problemas com a gestão e coordenação da doença. Esta tese tem como objetivo analisar o comportamento dos pacientes com DII relativamente à gestão da sua doença. Identificar que tipo de problemas – funcionais e de comunicação – existem nas soluções atuais para telemóvel e web no contexto da DII, introduzindo novos temas – estudos em comunicação e design – no modelo "User Innovator" de Von Hippel (1976) que consiste em, utilizadores, como por exemplo, pacientes com doenças crónicas, que inovam ao criarem soluções para resolver os problemas pessoais, tais como, condições de saúde adversas. Para validar no processo de design a integração das três áreas – design, inovação e paciente – criamos a framework “Human-social Interaction Model for e-Health Interfaces” que nos permitiu uma abordagem sustentável à investigação, quando foram aplicados inputs provenientes de experiência pessoal das três perspectivas introduzindo feedback relevante para o objetivo final dos estudos preliminares, também quando criada a interface para dispositivos móveis focada na doença de Crohn, uma das DII, com uma nova experiência de utilizador na área da saúde. Para atingir o objectivo, realizou-se um conjunto de estudos que se encontram divididos em dois momentos: o primeiro, com revisão de literatura sobre a relação da semiótica com a comunicação interativa; o significado da representação simbólica em projetos interativos; as novas linhas de reflexão do Design que definem interfaces e funcionalidades mais próximas do utilizador; a perspectiva dos utilizadores perante a tecnologia como meio de suporte e controle da saúde; o espaço do design e da comunicação em projetos tecnológicos; o desafio para utilizadores/ pacientes que tentam criar sistemas para solucionar problemas pessoais. A segunda parte apresenta a investigação de campo com, um inquérito a 279 participantes com DII; análise empírica de seis casos de estudo – aplicações para telemóvel e multiplataforma: contexto, funcionalidades, levantamento de princípios do design, e testes de usabilidade A/B onde comparamos em dois dos seis sistemas, a articulação entre as funcionalidades e os princípios do design. Os resultados obtidos desafiam a usabilidade das interfaces para telemóvel no contexto da saúde, proporcionando aos utilizadores uma interpretação mais coerente do ponto de vista formal do design de informação médica e um caminho para designers com doenças crónicas que pretendem criar soluções para resolver problemas de monotorização da saúde

Development of an Integrated Telerehabilitation Information Management System to Support Remote Wheelchair Prescription

Information technology (IT) is central in providing Telerehabilitation (TR), which enables people with disabilities access to limited number of qualified practitioners with specialty expertise, especially at rural areas. Prior to 2008, most TR utilized non-integrated IT systems to provide its basic infrastructure. Using this approach, data management has to be done manually over multiple non-integrated systems, increasing the possibility of outdated or missing data. An integrated system that is open, flexible, extensible, and cost-effective was designed and developed as a solution to mitigate this problem. The work described in this dissertation elaborates the process of developing such system, called the Versatile and Integrated System for Telerehabilitation (VISYTER). VISYTER was intended to become a platform that is capable of delivering any TR, and was first used to support Remote Wheelchair Prescription (RWP), a TR effort to support clinicians in rural Pennsylvania to prescribe wheeled mobility and seating devices. The development process of VISYTER consisted of three main phases: identification and verification of requirements, validation, and evaluation. The requirement identification and verification phase involved a group of expert clinicians from RWP with the purpose of identifying the requirement of the system to support RWP: a system that can provide real-time teleconsultation and documentation support for prescribing a wheeled mobility intervention. Validation studies were conducted with help from ten individuals, including physicians, clinicians, and suppliers participated to validate VISYTER in their workplaces. All participants agreed that VISYTER can be used to properly support both the teleconsultation and documentation phase of RWP. Afterward, the usability of VISYTER was evaluated through a comparison study with a commonly utilized videoconferencing system in TR, POLYCOM. Twenty-six clinicians participated in a counterbalanced experimental study to measure the difference in usability for completing client assessment tasks using both systems. The study found VISYTER to be more efficient and less prone to error when compared to POLYCOM. Based on these findings, the study concluded that an integrated system could improve the usability TR delivery when compared to non-integrated systems approach

IAIMS newsletter

NewsletterThe IAIMS Newsletter (1996-2005) provides valuable information about library activities and resources as well as informative articles related to information technology