Achieving k-anonymity in DataMarts used for gene expressions exploitation

Gene expression profiling is a sophisticated method to discover differences in activation patterns of genes between different patient collectives. By reasonably defining patient groups from a medical point of view, subsequent gene expression analysis may reveal disease-related gene expression patterns that are applicable for tumor markers and pharmacological target identification. When releasing patient-specific data for medical studies privacy protection has to be guaranteed for ethical and legal reasons. k-anonymisation may be used to generate a sufficient number of k data twins in order to ensure that sensitive data used in analyses is protected from being linked to individuals. We use an adapted concept of k-anonymity for distributed data sources and include various customisation parameters in the anonymisation process to guarantee that the transformed data is still applicable for further processing. We present a real-world medical-relevant use case and show how the related data is materialised, anonymised, and released in a data mart for testing the related hypotheses.

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

Front-Line Physicians' Satisfaction with Information Systems in Hospitals

Day-to-day operations management in hospital units is difficult due to continuously varying situations, several actors involved and a vast number of information systems in use. The aim of this study was to describe front-line physicians' satisfaction with existing information systems needed to support the day-to-day operations management in hospitals. A cross-sectional survey was used and data chosen with stratified random sampling were collected in nine hospitals. Data were analyzed with descriptive and inferential statistical methods. The response rate was 65 % (n = 111). The physicians reported that information systems support their decision making to some extent, but they do not improve access to information nor are they tailored for physicians. The respondents also reported that they need to use several information systems to support decision making and that they would prefer one information system to access important information. Improved information access would better support physicians' decision making and has the potential to improve the quality of decisions and speed up the decision making process.Peer reviewe