Thirty years of artificial intelligence in medicine (AIME) conferences: A review of research themes

Over the past 30 years, the international conference on Artificial Intelligence in MEdicine (AIME) has been organized at different venues across Europe every 2 years, establishing a forum for scientific exchange and creating an active research community. The Artificial Intelligence in Medicine journal has published theme issues with extended versions of selected AIME papers since 1998

Natural language processing

Beginning with the basic issues of NLP, this chapter aims to chart the major research activities in this area since the last ARIST Chapter in 1996 (Haas, 1996), including: (i) natural language text processing systems - text summarization, information extraction, information retrieval, etc., including domain-specific applications; (ii) natural language interfaces; (iii) NLP in the context of www and digital libraries ; and (iv) evaluation of NLP systems

Development and evaluation of an intelligent handheld insulin dose advisor for patients with Type-1 diabetes

Diabetes mellitus is an increasingly common, chronic, incurable disease requiring careful monitoring and treatment so as to minimise the risk of serious long-term complications. It has been suggested that computers used by healthcare professionals and/or patients themselves may playa useful role in the diabetes care process. Seven key systems (AIDA, ADICOL, DIABETES, DIAS, IIumaLink, T-IDDM, POIRO) in the area of diabetes decision support, and their underlying techniques and approaches are summarised and compared. The development of the Patient-Oriented Insulin Regimen Optimiser (POIRO) for insulindependent (Type-I) diabetes, and its hybrid statistical and rule-based expert system is then taken forward. The re-implementation and updating of the system for the Palm OS family of modern Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) is described. The evaluation of this new version in a seven week, randomised, open, cross-over clinical pilot study involving eight patients on short-acting plus long-acting insulin basalbolus regimens showed it to be easy-to-operate, reliable, not time consuming and well liked by patients. Following this, the characteristics and use of all currently available insulin formulations, and the corresponding insulin regimens are summarised. Algorithms to provide dose advice and decision support for patients taking the new rapid-acting, intermediate-acting and premixed insulin formulations are then developed. The user interface is improved and extended, amongst others through the development and use of a model describing individual user's meal time habits. Implementation-related issues encountered are discussed, and further work and future directions are identified and outlined. Motivated by the complex and safety-critical nature of systems such as POIRO, we also report on the use of the B abstract machine notation for the formal specification of the original POIRO system, and focusing on projects and published case studies. review the use of formal methods in the development of medical computer systems

A diagnostic investigation and a corrective model for implementing change in response to innovation

Organizational change can be described as a series of activities oriented towards modifying behaviors and structures within the organization. These series of activities are interconnected internally and externally and are affected by human, operational and environmental factors that dynamically influence decisions and processes in the organization. There has been a significant amount of work in organizational change, using both behavioral and systemic approaches. Moreover it has been argued that research in change processes should include also the dynamic relationship between change processes and outcomes to detect how organizational change context, processes and the pace of change affect performance outcomes. Despite the amount of research, there is a need for more profound studies exploring the contexts, content, and processes involved in a change initiative. This research proposes a model to help organizations implement change initiatives with an increased likelihood of success. The Influence Model for Organizational Change – IMOC - was developed with the hope of better demonstrating the dynamics that take place in the organization by using a systems engineering view. As an exercise to verify the relationships that govern IMOC a systems dynamic simulation model was partially developed. The dynamic simulation confirmed the impact of variables such as employees’ and management participation, environment and delay in implementing policies on the level of resistance to change existing in the organization.Organizational change can be described as a series of activities oriented towards modifying behaviors and structures within the organization. These series of activities are interconnected internally and externally and are affected by human, operational and environmental factors that dynamically influence decisions and processes in the organization. There has been a significant amount of work in organizational change, using both behavioral and systemic approaches. Moreover it has been argued that research in change processes should include also the dynamic relationship between change processes and outcomes to detect how organizational change context, processes and the pace of change affect performance outcomes. Despite the amount of research, there is a need for more profound studies exploring the contexts, content, and processes involved in a change initiative. This research proposes a model to help organizations implement change initiatives with an increased likelihood of success. The Influence Model for Organizational Change – IMOC - was developed with the hope of better demonstrating the dynamics that take place in the organization by using a systems engineering view. As an exercise to verify the relationships that govern IMOC a systems dynamic simulation model was partially developed. The dynamic simulation confirmed the impact of variables such as employees’ and management participation, environment and delay in implementing policies on the level of resistance to change existing in the organization