Computerization of workflows, guidelines and care pathways: a review of implementation challenges for process-oriented health information systems

There is a need to integrate the various theoretical frameworks and formalisms for modeling clinical guidelines, workflows, and pathways, in order to move beyond providing support for individual clinical decisions and toward the provision of process-oriented, patient-centered, health information systems (HIS). In this review, we analyze the challenges in developing process-oriented HIS that formally model guidelines, workflows, and care pathways. A qualitative meta-synthesis was performed on studies published in English between 1995 and 2010 that addressed the modeling process and reported the exposition of a new methodology, model, system implementation, or system architecture. Thematic analysis, principal component analysis (PCA) and data visualisation techniques were used to identify and cluster the underlying implementation ‘challenge’ themes. One hundred and eight relevant studies were selected for review. Twenty-five underlying ‘challenge’ themes were identified. These were clustered into 10 distinct groups, from which a conceptual model of the implementation process was developed. We found that the development of systems supporting individual clinical decisions is evolving toward the implementation of adaptable care pathways on the semantic web, incorporating formal, clinical, and organizational ontologies, and the use of workflow management systems. These architectures now need to be implemented and evaluated on a wider scale within clinical settings

Ambient-aware continuous care through semantic context dissemination

Background: The ultimate ambient-intelligent care room contains numerous sensors and devices to monitor the patient, sense and adjust the environment and support the staff. This sensor-based approach results in a large amount of data, which can be processed by current and future applications, e. g., task management and alerting systems. Today, nurses are responsible for coordinating all these applications and supplied information, which reduces the added value and slows down the adoption rate. The aim of the presented research is the design of a pervasive and scalable framework that is able to optimize continuous care processes by intelligently reasoning on the large amount of heterogeneous care data. Methods: The developed Ontology-based Care Platform (OCarePlatform) consists of modular components that perform a specific reasoning task. Consequently, they can easily be replicated and distributed. Complex reasoning is achieved by combining the results of different components. To ensure that the components only receive information, which is of interest to them at that time, they are able to dynamically generate and register filter rules with a Semantic Communication Bus (SCB). This SCB semantically filters all the heterogeneous care data according to the registered rules by using a continuous care ontology. The SCB can be distributed and a cache can be employed to ensure scalability. Results: A prototype implementation is presented consisting of a new-generation nurse call system supported by a localization and a home automation component. The amount of data that is filtered and the performance of the SCB are evaluated by testing the prototype in a living lab. The delay introduced by processing the filter rules is negligible when 10 or fewer rules are registered. Conclusions: The OCarePlatform allows disseminating relevant care data for the different applications and additionally supports composing complex applications from a set of smaller independent components. This way, the platform significantly reduces the amount of information that needs to be processed by the nurses. The delay resulting from processing the filter rules is linear in the amount of rules. Distributed deployment of the SCB and using a cache allows further improvement of these performance results

CHORUS Deliverable 2.1: State of the Art on Multimedia Search Engines

Based on the information provided by European projects and national initiatives related to multimedia search as well as domains experts that participated in the CHORUS Think-thanks and workshops, this document reports on the state of the art related to multimedia content search from, a technical, and socio-economic perspective. The technical perspective includes an up to date view on content based indexing and retrieval technologies, multimedia search in the context of mobile devices and peer-to-peer networks, and an overview of current evaluation and benchmark inititiatives to measure the performance of multimedia search engines. From a socio-economic perspective we inventorize the impact and legal consequences of these technical advances and point out future directions of research

Supporting Facility Management Processes through End-Users' Integration and Coordinated BIM-GIS Technologies

The integration of facility management and building information modelling (BIM) is an innovative and critical undertaking process to support facility maintenance and management. Even though recent research has proposed various methods and performed an increasing number of case studies, there are still issues of communication processes to be addressed. This paper presents a theoretical framework for digital systems integration of virtual models and smart technologies. Based on the comprehensive analysis of existing technologies for indoor localization, a new workflow is defined and designed, and it is utilized in a practical case study to test the model performance. In the new workflow, a facility management supporting platform is proposed and characterized, featuring indoor positioning systems to allow end users to send geo-referenced reports to central virtual models. In addition, system requirements, information technology (IT) architecture and application procedures are presented. Results show that the integration of end users in the maintenance processes through smart and easy tools can overcome the existing limits of barcode systems and building management systems for failure localization. The proposed framework offers several advantages. First, it allows the identification of every element of an asset including wide physical building elements (walls, floors, etc.) without requiring a prior mapping. Second, the entire cycle of maintenance activities is managed through a unique integrated system including the territorial dimension. Third, data are collected in a standard structure for future uses. Furthermore, the integration of the process in a centralized BIM-GIS (geographical information system) information management system admit a scalable representation of the information supporting facility management processes in terms of assets and supply chain management and monitoring from a spatial perspective

USING VIRTUAL OR AUGMENTED REALITY for the TIME-BASED STUDY of COMPLEX UNDERWATER ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXCAVATIONS

International audienceCultural Heritage (CH) resources are partial, heterogeneous, discontinuous, and subject to ongoing updates and revisions. The use of semantic web technologies associated with 3D graphical tools is proposed to improve access, exploration, exploitation and enrichment of these CH data in a standardized and more structured form. This article presents the monitoring work developed for more than ten years on the excavation of the Xlendi site. Around an exceptional shipwreck, the oldest from the Archaic period in the Western Mediterranean, we have set up a unique excavation at a depth of 110m assisted by a rigorous and continuous photogrammetry campaign. All the collected results are modelled by an ontology and visualized with virtual and augmented reality tools that allow a bidirectional link between the proposed graphical representations and the non-graphical archaeological data. It is also important to highlight the development of an innovative 3D mobile app that lets users study and understand the site as well as experience sensations close to those of a diver visiting the site

P2P, CSC and TE: A Survey on Hardware, Software and Data

Peer-to-Peer (P2P), Transactive Energy (TE) and Community Self-Consumption (CSC) are exciting energy generation and use models, offering several opportunities for prosumers, micro-grids and services to the grid; however, they require numerous components to function efficiently. Various hardware devices are required to transmit data and control the generation and consumption equipment, whereas software is needed to use the gathered information to monitor and manage the hardware and energy trading. Data can be gathered from a variety of origins from within the grid and external sources; however, these data must be well-structured and consistent to be useful. This paper sets out to gather information regarding the hardware, software and data from the several archetypes available, focusing on existing projects and trials in these areas to see what the most-common hardware, software and data components are. The result presents a concise overview of the hardware, software and data-related topics and structures within the P2P, TE and CSC energy generation and use models