Professional Networks in the Life Sciences: Linking the Linked

The world wide web has furthered the emergence of a multitude of online expert communities. Continued progress on many of the remaining complex scientific questions requires a wide ranging expertise spectrum with access to a variety of distinct data types. Moving beyond peer-to-peer to community-to-community interaction is therefore one of the biggest challenges for global interdisciplinary Life Sciences research, including that of cancer. Cross-domain data query, access, and retrieval will be important innovation areas to enable and facilitate this interaction in the coming years

Gestión del control de acceso en historiales clínicos electrónicos: revisión sistemática de la literatura

ResumenObjetivoEste trabajo presenta los resultados de una revisión sistemática de la literatura relacionada con aspectos del control de acceso en sistemas de historias clínicas electrónicas, la seguridad en entornos inalámbricos y la formación de los usuarios de dichos sistemas en temas de privacidad y seguridad.MétodosComo fuente de información se utilizaron artíıculos originales encontrados en las bases de datos Medline, ACM Digital Library, Wiley InterScience, IEEE Digital Library, Science@Direct, MetaPress, ERIC, CINAHL y Trip Database, publicados entre enero de 2006 y enero de 2011. Se extrajeron 1208 artículos usando una cadena de búsqueda predefinida, y el resultado fue revisado por los autores. El resultado final de la selección fue de 24 artículos.Resultados21 de los artículos encontrados mencionaban las políticas de acceso a los sistemas de historias clínicas electrónicas. Once artículos discuten si deben ser las personas o las entidades quienes concedan los permisos en las historias clínicas electrónicas. Los entornos inalámbricos sólo se consideran en tres artículos. Finalmente, sólo cuatro citan expresamente que es necesaria la formación técnica de los usuarios.ConclusionesEl control de acceso basado en roles es el mecanismo preferido para implementar la política de acceso por los diseñadores de historias clínicas electrónicas. El control de acceso es gestionado por usuarios y profesionales médicos en la mayoría de los sistemas, lo que promulga el derecho del paciente a controlar su información. Por último, la seguridad en entornos inalámbricos no es considerada en muchos casos, y sin embargo, una línea de investigación es la eSalud en entornos móviles, conocida como mHealth.AbstractObjectiveThis study presents the results of a systematic literature review of aspects related to access control in electronic health records systems, wireless security and privacy and security training for users.MethodsInformation sources consisted of original articles found in Medline, ACM Digital Library, Wiley InterScience, IEEE Digital Library, Science@Direct, MetaPress, ERIC, CINAHL and Trip Database, published between January 2006 and January 2011. A total of 1,208 articles were extracted using a predefined search string and were reviewed by the authors. The final selection consisted of 24 articles.ResultsOf the selected articles, 21 dealt with access policies in electronic health records systems. Eleven articles discussed whether access to electronic health records should be granted by patients or by health organizations. Wireless environments were only considered in three articles. Finally, only four articles explicitly mentioned that technical training of staff and/or patients is required.ConclusionRole-based access control is the preferred mechanism to deploy access policy by the designers of electronic health records. In most systems, access control is managed by users and health professionals, which promotes patients’ right to control personal information. Finally, the security of wireless environments is not usually considered. However, one line of research is eHealth in mobile environments, called mHealth

Service for the pseudonymization of electronic healthcare records based on ISO/EN 13606 for the secondary use of information

The availability of electronic health data favors scientific advance through the creation of repositories for secondary use. Data anonymization is a mandatory step to comply with current legislation. A service for the pseudonymization of electronic healthcare record (EHR) extracts aimed at facilitating the exchange of clinical information for secondary use in compliance with legislation on data protection is presented. According to ISO/TS 25237, pseudonymization is a particular type of anonymization. This tool performs the anonymizations by maintaining three quasi-identifiers (gender, date of birth and place of residence) with a degree of specification selected by the user. The developed system is based on the ISO/EN 13606 norm using its characteristics specifically favorable for anonymization. The service is made up of two independent modules: the demographic server and the pseudonymizing module. The demographic server supports the permanent storage of the demographic entities and the management of the identifiers. The pseudonymizing module anonymizes the ISO/EN 13606 extracts. The pseudonymizing process consists of four phases: the storage of the demographic information included in the extract, the substitution of the identifiers, the elimination of the demographic information of the extract and the elimination of key data in free-text fields. The described pseudonymizing system was used in three Telemedicine research projects with satisfactory results. A problem was detected with the type of data in a demographic data field and a proposal for modification was prepared for the group in charge of the drawing up and revision of the ISO/EN 13606 norm

What You Can Scrape and What Is Right to Scrape: A Proposal for a Tool to Collect Public Facebook Data

In reaction to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Facebook has restricted the access to its Application Programming Interface (API). This new policy has damaged the possibility for independent researchers to study relevant topics in political and social behavior. Yet, much of the public information that the researchers may be interested in is still available on Facebook, and can be still systematically collected through web scraping techniques. The goal of this article is twofold. First, we discuss some ethical and legal issues that researchers should consider as they plan their collection and possible publication of Facebook data. In particular, we discuss what kind of information can be ethically gathered about the users (public information), how published data should look like to comply with privacy regulations (like the GDPR), and what consequences violating Facebook's terms of service may entail for the researcher. Second, we present a scraping routine for public Facebook posts, and discuss some technical adjustments that can be performed for the data to be ethically and legally acceptable. The code employs screen scraping to collect the list of reactions to a Facebook public post, and performs a one-way cryptographic hash function on the users' identifiers to pseudonymize their personal information, while still keeping them traceable within the data. This article contributes to the debate around freedom of internet research and the ethical concerns that might arise by scraping data from the social web

Region-based volumetric medical image retrieval

Volumetric medical images contain an enormous amount of visual information that can discourage the exhaustive use of local descriptors for image analysis, comparison and retrieval. Distinctive features and patterns that need to be analyzed for finding diseases are most often local or regional, often in only very small parts of the image. Separating the large amount of image data that might contain little important information is an important task as it could reduce the current information overload of physicians and make clinical work more efficient. In this paper a novel method for detecting key-regions is introduced as a way of extending the concept of keypoints often used in 2D image analysis. In this way also computation is reduced as important visual features are only extracted from the detected key regions. The region detection method is integrated into a platform-independent, web-based graphical interface for medical image visualization and retrieval in three dimensions. This web-based interface makes it easy to deploy on existing infrastructures in both small and large-scale clinical environments. By including the region detection method into the interface, manual annotation is reduced and time is saved, making it possible to integrate the presented interface and methods into clinical routine and work ows, analyzing image data at a large scale

Towards case-based medical learning in radiological decision making using content-based image retrieval

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Radiologists' training is based on intensive practice and can be improved with the use of diagnostic training systems. However, existing systems typically require laboriously prepared training cases and lack integration into the clinical environment with a proper learning scenario. Consequently, diagnostic training systems advancing decision-making skills are not well established in radiological education.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We investigated didactic concepts and appraised methods appropriate to the radiology domain, as follows: (i) Adult learning theories stress the importance of work-related practice gained in a team of problem-solvers; (ii) Case-based reasoning (CBR) parallels the human problem-solving process; (iii) Content-based image retrieval (CBIR) can be useful for computer-aided diagnosis (CAD). To overcome the known drawbacks of existing learning systems, we developed the concept of image-based case retrieval for radiological education (IBCR-RE). The IBCR-RE diagnostic training is embedded into a didactic framework based on the Seven Jump approach, which is well established in problem-based learning (PBL). In order to provide a learning environment that is as similar as possible to radiological practice, we have analysed the radiological workflow and environment.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We mapped the IBCR-RE diagnostic training approach into the Image Retrieval in Medical Applications (IRMA) framework, resulting in the proposed concept of the IRMAdiag training application. IRMAdiag makes use of the modular structure of IRMA and comprises (i) the IRMA core, i.e., the IRMA CBIR engine; and (ii) the IRMAcon viewer. We propose embedding IRMAdiag into hospital information technology (IT) infrastructure using the standard protocols Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM) and Health Level Seven (HL7). Furthermore, we present a case description and a scheme of planned evaluations to comprehensively assess the system.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>The IBCR-RE paradigm incorporates a novel combination of essential aspects of diagnostic learning in radiology: (i) Provision of work-relevant experiences in a training environment integrated into the radiologist's working context; (ii) Up-to-date training cases that do not require cumbersome preparation because they are provided by routinely generated electronic medical records; (iii) Support of the way adults learn while remaining suitable for the patient- and problem-oriented nature of medicine. Future work will address unanswered questions to complete the implementation of the IRMAdiag trainer.</p

An Agent Framework for Dynamic Health Data Aggregation for Research Purposes

This paper presents a model of a MAS framework for dynamic aggregation of population health data for research purposes. The contribution of the paper is twofold: First, it describes a MAS architecture that allows one to built on the fly anonymized databases from the distributed sources of data. Second, it shows how to improve the utility of the data with the growth of the database

Metodología integral de protección de datos electrónicos médicos, aplicado al almacenamiento, acceso y análisis forense de las historias clínicas en Colombia

La Historia Clínica tiene unas características especiales que requieren un manejo diferente desde el punto de vista de la seguridad informática. Dadas las condiciones que anteceden para mantener su integridad, además de cumplir con la normatividad propia de cada país, se hace conveniente la transformación de la forma tradicional mediante manuscritos, a la utilización de las tecnologías de información. Con esta evolución, los incidentes de seguridad cibernética en un sector tan crítico como este, tienen un gran impacto en la sociedad, considerando que la información de la historia clínica podría ser usada de manera inadecuada, permitiendo el robo de identidad, ingreso no autorizado, daño de la información u alteración de los datos del paciente. Aplicando la Resolución Colombiana 1995 de 1999 [1], se desprende que la información del paciente debe registrarse cronológicamente, de la misma manera que los actos médicos, procedimientos ejecutados por el equipo de médico o cualquiera intervenga en su atención, a lo largo de los planteamientos hechos, los sistemas de salud se van volviendo cada vez más vulnerables a incidentes de seguridad informática, en consecuencia a la automatización, las tecnologías de información, los volúmenes de información y la conexión con los pacientes; Al mismo tiempo la inclusión de la seguridad en los sistemas de información de salud no es una prioridad. El resultado de esta investigación es una metodología integral que permita asegurar la accesibilidad al sistema, garantizar la integridad de los datos, además de la posibilidad de realizar un análisis forense en caso de ser vulnerado, al mismo tiempo logrando mitigar las causas, generando alertas, y factores por los cuales los datos electrónicos médicos en historias clínicas no logran ser protegidos.The Clinical History has some special characteristics that require different management from the point of view of computer security. Given the above conditions to maintain its integrity, in addition for complying with the regulations of each country, it is convenient to modify the traditional form by means of manuscripts, to the use of information technologies. With this evolution, the incidents of cybersecurity in a sector as critical as this one, have a great impact on society, such as information on history. Damage to information or alteration of patient data. Applying Colombian Resolution 1995 of 1999 [1], it follows that patient information must correspond chronologically, in the same way as medical acts, procedures performed by the doctor's team or any intervention in their care, throughout the given the facts, health systems are becoming increasingly vulnerable to computer security, automation, information technology, information and connection with patients; At the same time, the inclusion of security in health information systems is not a priority. The result of this research is a comprehensive methodology that allows accessibility in the system, the integrity of the data, the possibility of carrying out an analysis in the case of vulnerability, the same time in which mitigation of the causes is being achieved, generating alerts, electronic data in clinics cannot be protecte

A novel metadata management model to capture consent for record linkage in longitudinal health research studies

Background: Informed consent is an important feature of longitudinal research studies as it enables the linking of administrative data of participants to data collected at baseline such as survey answers. The lack of standardised models to capture consent elements can lead to substantial challenges and a structured approach to capturing consent-related metadata can address these. Objectives: The aims were to: a) explore the state-of-art for recording consent; b) identify key elements of consent required for record linkage; and c) create and evaluate a novel metadata management model to capture consent-related metadata. Methods: The main methodological components of our work were: a) a systematic literature review and qualitative analysis of consent forms; b) the development and evaluation of a novel metadata model. Discussion: We qualitatively analyzed 61 manuscripts and 30 consent forms. We extracted data elements related to obtaining consent for linkage. We created a novel metadata management model for consent and evaluated it by comparison with existing standards and by iteratively applying it to case studies. Conclusion: The developed model can facilitate the standardised recording of consent for linkage in longitudinal research studies and enable the linkage of external participant data. Furthermore, it can provide a structured way of recording consent-related metadata and facilitate the harmonization and streamlining of processes

A Multiagent System for Dynamic Data Aggregation in Medical Research

The collection of medical data for research purposes is a challenging and long-lasting process. In an effort to accelerate and facilitate this process we propose a new framework for dynamic aggregation of medical data from distributed sources. We use agent-based coordination between medical and research institutions. Our system employs principles of peer-to-peer network organization and coordination models to search over already constructed distributed databases and to identify the potential contributors when a new database has to be built. Our framework takes into account both the requirements of a research study and current data availability. This leads to better definition of database characteristics such as schema, content, and privacy parameters. We show that this approach enables a more efficient way to collect data for medical research