e-MIR2: a public online inventory of medical informatics resources

Background. Over the last years, the number of available informatics resources in medicine has grown exponentially. While specific inventories of such resources have already begun to be developed for Bioinformatics (BI), comparable inventories are as yet not available for Medical Informatics (MI) field, so that locating and accessing them currently remains a hard and time-consuming task. Description. We have created a repository of MI resources from the scientific literature, providing free access to its contents through a web-based service. Relevant information describing the resources is automatically extracted from manuscripts published in top-ranked MI journals. We used a pattern matching approach to detect the resources? names and their main features. Detected resources are classified according to three different criteria: functionality, resource type and domain. To facilitate these tasks, we have built three different taxonomies by following a novel approach based on folksonomies and social tagging. We adopted the terminology most frequently used by MI researchers in their publications to create the concepts and hierarchical relationships belonging to the taxonomies. The classification algorithm identifies the categories associated to resources and annotates them accordingly. The database is then populated with this data after manual curation and validation. Conclusions. We have created an online repository of MI resources to assist researchers in locating and accessing the most suitable resources to perform specific tasks. The database contained 282 resources at the time of writing. We are continuing to expand the number of available resources by taking into account further publications as well as suggestions from users and resource developers

BIRI: a new approach for automatically discovering and indexing available public bioinformatics resources from the literature

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The rapid evolution of Internet technologies and the collaborative approaches that dominate the field have stimulated the development of numerous bioinformatics resources. To address this new framework, several initiatives have tried to organize these services and resources. In this paper, we present the BioInformatics Resource Inventory (BIRI), a new approach for automatically discovering and indexing available public bioinformatics resources using information extracted from the scientific literature. The index generated can be automatically updated by adding additional manuscripts describing new resources. We have developed web services and applications to test and validate our approach. It has not been designed to replace current indexes but to extend their capabilities with richer functionalities.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We developed a web service to provide a set of high-level query primitives to access the index. The web service can be used by third-party web services or web-based applications. To test the web service, we created a pilot web application to access a preliminary knowledge base of resources. We tested our tool using an initial set of 400 abstracts. Almost 90% of the resources described in the abstracts were correctly classified. More than 500 descriptions of functionalities were extracted.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>These experiments suggest the feasibility of our approach for automatically discovering and indexing current and future bioinformatics resources. Given the domain-independent characteristics of this tool, it is currently being applied by the authors in other areas, such as medical nanoinformatics. BIRI is available at <url>http://edelman.dia.fi.upm.es/biri/</url>.</p

Nanoinformatics knowledge infrastructures: bringing efficient information management to nanomedical research

Nanotechnology represents an area of particular promise and significant opportunity across multiple scientific disciplines. Ongoing nanotechnology research ranges from the characterization of nanoparticles and nanomaterials to the analysis and processing of experimental data seeking correlations between nanoparticles and their functionalities and side effects. Due to their special properties, nanoparticles are suitable for cellular-level diagnostics and therapy, offering numerous applications in medicine, e.g. development of biomedical devices, tissue repair, drug delivery systems and biosensors. In nanomedicine, recent studies are producing large amounts of structural and property data, highlighting the role for computational approaches in information management. While in vitro and in vivo assays are expensive, the cost of computing is falling. Furthermore, improvements in the accuracy of computational methods (e.g. data mining, knowledge discovery, modeling and simulation) have enabled effective tools to automate the extraction, management and storage of these vast data volumes. Since this information is widely distributed, one major issue is how to locate and access data where it resides (which also poses data-sharing limitations). The novel discipline of nanoinformatics addresses the information challenges related to nanotechnology research. In this paper, we summarize the needs and challenges in the field and present an overview of extant initiatives and efforts

Association between Use of Enhanced Recovery after Surgery Protocol and Postoperative Complications in Total Hip and Knee Arthroplasty in the Postoperative Outcomes Within Enhanced Recovery after Surgery Protocol in Elective Total Hip and Knee Arthroplasty Study (POWER2)

Importance: The Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) care protocol has been shown to improve outcomes compared with traditional care in certain types of surgery. Objective: To assess the association of use of the ERAS protocols with complications in patients undergoing elective total hip arthroplasty (THA) and total knee arthroplasty (TKA). Design, Setting, and Participants: This multicenter, prospective cohort study included patients recruited from 131 centers in Spain from October 22 through December 22, 2018. All consecutive adults scheduled for elective THA or TKA were eligible for inclusion. Patients were stratified between those treated in a self-designated ERAS center (ERAS group) and those treated in a non-ERAS center (non-ERAS group). Data were analyzed from June 15 through September 15, 2019. Exposures: Total hip or knee arthroplasty and perioperative management. Sixteen individual ERAS items were assessed in all included patients, whether they were treated at a center that was part of an established ERAS protocol or not. Main Outcomes and Measures: The primary outcome was postoperative complications within 30 days after surgery. Secondary outcomes included length of stay and mortality. Results: During the 2-month recruitment period, 6146 patients were included (3580 women [58.2%]; median age, 71 [interquartile range (IQR), 63-76] years). Of these, 680 patients (11.1%) presented with postoperative complications. No differences were found in the number of patients with overall postoperative complications between ERAS and non-ERAS groups (163 [10.2%] vs 517 [11.4%]; odds ratio [OR], 0.89; 95% CI, 0.74-1.07; P =.22). Fewer patients in the ERAS group had moderate to severe complications (73 [4.6%] vs 279 [6.1%]; OR, 0.74; 95% CI, 0.56-0.96; P =.02). The median overall adherence rate with the ERAS protocol was 50.0% (IQR, 43.8%-62.5%), with the rate for ERAS facilities being 68.8% (IQR, 56.2%-81.2%) vs 50.0% (IQR, 37.5%-56.2%) at non-ERAS centers (P <.001). Among the patients with the highest and lowest quartiles of adherence to ERAS components, the patients with the highest adherence had fewer overall postoperative complications (144 [10.6%] vs 270 [13.0%]; OR, 0.80; 95% CI, 0.64-0.99; P <.001) and moderate to severe postoperative complications (59 [4.4%] vs 143 [6.9%]; OR, 0.62; 95% CI, 0.45-0.84; P <.001) and shorter median length of hospital stay (4 [IQR, 3-5] vs 5 [IQR, 4-6] days; OR, 0.97; 95% CI, 0.96-0.99; P <.001). Conclusions and Relevance: An increase in adherence to the ERAS program was associated with a decrease in postoperative complications, although only a few ERAS items were individually associated with improved outcomes

Video games and agency in contemporary society

In recent years, the idea of player control, or agency, has become central and explicit in certain video games and genres, affecting many debates concerning the study or definitions of video games. In spite of this, the notion of agency in video games has been rarely explicitly explored or defined in relation to its sociological and political dimensions. Hence, drawing on actor-network theory, (neo-)Foucauldian governmentality studies, and empirical data gathered over a three-year period, this paper expands to our understanding of video game player agency and moreover, argues that video games provide an important example and perspective to consider the contemporary nature and political basis of agency

Designing new methodologies for integrating biomedical information in clinical trials

In the new scenario of gEnomic medicine we are developing a system called INFOGENMED to inTegrate distributed and heterogeneus medical and genetic databases for improving information access