Organizing health care: an ethical perspective

Indexación: Web of Science; Scielo.Health Care at population level is a complex problem. Having this in mind, the purpose of this paper is to focus on the goods that are ethically relevant in the process of caring for health at this level. We briefly analyze some of the Chilean health statistics that, although they show important improvements along the years, demonstrate that certain conditions are to be deemed as inadequate by both healthcare providers and patients. Ethics is a central component to determine how to structure and organize health care systems and how they should operate. We emphasize Human Dignity as an ethical corner stone of the Health Care System, along with other important values such as Justice and Humanization, under the scope of the Ends of Medicine, and other components such as technical competence of providers and the financing of the whole process. We conclude that as far as a health care system is organized in a way that medical practice is well ordered, primarily and fundamentally according the Ends of Medicine and the good of persons, such a health care system is ethically adequate.http://ref.scielo.org/9bt3z

Uso de minería de datos para identificar comportamientos erráticos en el sistema de liquidación de haberes en el Gobierno de la Provincia de Catamarca

En la actualidad la Minería de Datos (Data Mining) permite, a partir de diversos datos, obtener información sumamente relevante. Por otra parte, la liquidación de haberes es una de las actividades más importante en cualquier empresa y/u organización, la cual está sujeta a posibles errores al momento de efectuarla. Es por ello que la motivación de este trabajo es la de encontrar todas las posibles fallas o comportamientos erráticos, en la emisión de la Liquidación de Haberes de los empleados de la Administración Pública de la Provincia de Catamarca los cuales, debido al gran volumen de datos que se manejan, son difíciles de detectar y solucionar en forma manual. A partir de lo antes expuesto, se muestra la utilidad que brindan los procesos de la Minería de Datos en la búsqueda de conocimientos ocultos (fallas, comportamientos erróneos o anómalos) en las Bases de Datos del Sistema de Liquidación de Haberes; demostrándose de esta manera que, si la Dirección de Liquidación de Haberes, del Gobierno de la Provincia de Catamarca, aplicara en un futuro dicho proceso podría minimizar fallas en el proceso de liquidación de haberes.Eje: Base de datos y minería de datosRed de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

Big data and open data in education, evaluation of the scope of existing initiatives: case study Faculty of Technology and Applied Sciences of the National University of Catamarca

Data is the fuel of the 21st century. Increasingly our economies are driven by this input. Data has the potential to create social value, something that higher education institutions are beginning to rely on, as evidenced by the initiatives of public access to their data and the various advantages and benefits provided by big data in improving educational management, the development of customized curricula, monitoring the academic performance of students, as well as in the generation of digital repositories that are the product of years of academic, teaching and research activity. The present research aims to evaluate the scope of existing initiatives on the subject of Big Data and Open Data in education, in the Faculty of Technology and Applied Sciences of the National University of Catamarca (UNCA), producing an effective contribution with preliminary results for the research project called "ICT in the Service of Open Data: Current Situation, Conceptualization and Initiatives for Opening Public Information" which is being carried out in the Department of Informatics.Instituto de Investigación en Informátic

Uso de minería de datos para identificar comportamientos erráticos en el sistema de liquidación de haberes en el Gobierno de la Provincia de Catamarca

En la actualidad la Minería de Datos (Data Mining) permite, a partir de diversos datos, obtener información sumamente relevante. Por otra parte, la liquidación de haberes es una de las actividades más importante en cualquier empresa y/u organización, la cual está sujeta a posibles errores al momento de efectuarla. Es por ello que la motivación de este trabajo es la de encontrar todas las posibles fallas o comportamientos erráticos, en la emisión de la Liquidación de Haberes de los empleados de la Administración Pública de la Provincia de Catamarca los cuales, debido al gran volumen de datos que se manejan, son difíciles de detectar y solucionar en forma manual. A partir de lo antes expuesto, se muestra la utilidad que brindan los procesos de la Minería de Datos en la búsqueda de conocimientos ocultos (fallas, comportamientos erróneos o anómalos) en las Bases de Datos del Sistema de Liquidación de Haberes; demostrándose de esta manera que, si la Dirección de Liquidación de Haberes, del Gobierno de la Provincia de Catamarca, aplicara en un futuro dicho proceso podría minimizar fallas en el proceso de liquidación de haberes.Eje: Base de datos y minería de datosRed de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

Uso de minería de datos para identificar comportamientos erráticos en el sistema de liquidación de haberes en el Gobierno de la Provincia de Catamarca

En la actualidad la Minería de Datos (Data Mining) permite, a partir de diversos datos, obtener información sumamente relevante. Por otra parte, la liquidación de haberes es una de las actividades más importante en cualquier empresa y/u organización, la cual está sujeta a posibles errores al momento de efectuarla. Es por ello que la motivación de este trabajo es la de encontrar todas las posibles fallas o comportamientos erráticos, en la emisión de la Liquidación de Haberes de los empleados de la Administración Pública de la Provincia de Catamarca los cuales, debido al gran volumen de datos que se manejan, son difíciles de detectar y solucionar en forma manual. A partir de lo antes expuesto, se muestra la utilidad que brindan los procesos de la Minería de Datos en la búsqueda de conocimientos ocultos (fallas, comportamientos erróneos o anómalos) en las Bases de Datos del Sistema de Liquidación de Haberes; demostrándose de esta manera que, si la Dirección de Liquidación de Haberes, del Gobierno de la Provincia de Catamarca, aplicara en un futuro dicho proceso podría minimizar fallas en el proceso de liquidación de haberes.Eje: Base de datos y minería de datosRed de Universidades con Carreras en Informática (RedUNCI

Algunas amenazas actuales a la confidencialidad en medicina

Social, technical and legal conditions of the current practice of medicine make it necessary to insist on certain actions and circumstances that may jeopardize the confidentiality of information, offered by patients to their health providers. Therefore, some effects of the current Chilean law are analyzed in this respect, regarding access to data from the clinical record of a patient. Also, the risks of putting certain data on social networking sites are analyzed, as well as some of its effects on clinical practice. The reasons because of mandatory reporting of diseases, meaning danger to public health, is allowed, are mentioned. We also discuss the difficulties involved in managing the results of preventative health screenings and its knowledge by third parties, as well as some possible violations of personal privacy, regarding dissemination of some people health information and its further mention or figuration in mass media. We conclude that it is a must for both physicians and other health team members, to safeguard confidentiality of data to which they have had access, as well as the need to know the relevant law, in order to respect human dignity of patients, each one as a person. We address the attention to the possibility that, practicing in a different way, it could endanger the reliability of clinical records, also impairing the quality of people’s health care. (Rev Med Chile 2015; 143: 358-366) Key words: Access to Information; Confidentiality; Information Dissemination; Medical Records; Social Networkin

Incidencia de eventos adversos asociados a dispositivosmédicos en una institución de salud en Colombia

Este artículo presenta los resultados de un estudio retrospectivo de eventos adversos asociados a dispositivos médicos (EADMS), presentados en el período de enero a junio de 2010 en el servicio de Cirugía de una institución prestadora de saludo (IPS) en Colombia.This paper presents the results of a retrospective study of adverse events associated with medical devices (AEAMDS), presented during the period of January through June of 2010 in the Surgery Department of a healthcare institution in Colombia

Respecting patient intimacy

Indexación: Web of Science; Scielo.Transparency as a general rule for all our professional acts casts doubts about the statement of the Hippocratic Oath that says "Whatever I see or hear in the lives of my patients, I will keep secret, as considering all such things to be private". Medical secrecy protects the intimacy of patients, who reveal to their physicians their most hidden secrets aiming to recover their health. Therefore, physicians should receive those secrets with reverence and care, as servers and not as their owners. The values associated with the respect for personal intimacy are the anthropological basis of medical confidentiality. A medical act is performed by definition between two equally honorable individuals. Therefore, the professional honors the trust of his patient, maintaining strict confidence of what is revealed. Therefore, medical secrecy must be strengthened rather than weakened, pursuing common wealth and dignity.http://ref.scielo.org/cf3mx

Shifts in the protist community associated with an anticyclonic gyre in the Alboran Sea (Mediterranean Sea)

The diversity of protists was researched in the Alboran Sea (SW Mediterranean Sea) by means of high-throughput sequencing technologies based on the amplification of the V9 region of 18S rRNA. Samples were collected at different depths in seven stations following an environmental gradient from a coastal upwelling zone to the core of an oligotrophic anticyclonic gyre (AG). Sampling was performed during summer, when the water column was stratified. The superphyla Alveolata, Stramenopila and Rhizaria accounted for 84% of the total operational taxonomic units (OTUs). The most diverse groups were Dinophyceae (21% of OTUs), Marine Alveolates-II (MALV-II; 20%), Ciliophora (9%) and MALV-I (6%). In terms of read abundance, the predominant groups were Dinophyceae (29%), Bacillariophyta (14%), MALV-II (11%) and Ciliophora (11%). Samples were clustered into three groups according to the sampling depth and position. The shallow community in coastal stations presented distinguishable patterns of diatoms and ciliates compared with AG stations. These results indicate that there was a strong horizontal coupling between phytoplankton and ciliate communities. Abundance of Radiolaria and Syndiniales increased with depth. Our analyses demonstrate that the stratification disruption produced by the AG caused shifts in the trophic ecology of the plankton assemblages inducing a transition from bottom-up to top-down control.Versión del editor3,40

An ethical and medical perspective on the voluntary termination of pregnancy

Indexación: Web of Science; Scielo.“Voluntary termination of pregnancy” can refer to actions intended to make a delivery easier, to provide medical care to the fetus, or to protect the life or health of the mother. All of these are proper medical actions and are by definition voluntary. In other cases, the expression denotes a termination of pregnancy before the embryo or fetus is viable, leading to the death of the latter. This action is constitutive of abortion under current Chilean law. The product of conception living being, who develops in the womb during pregnancy, is an individual, both in the sense that it is different from its mother and father, and in that it is a biological individual. For these reasons, such living being constitutes another patient in itself. The free and voluntary medical action of health care professionals is geared toward disease prevention or health recovery and medical terminations of pregnancy, as distinguished from abortion, are not criminalized in our country. Therefore, the idea of legalizing abortive terminations of pregnancy so that they become “legitimate health care services” is a call to the medical community, which should engage in a debate about the meaning and consequences of an eventual mandate of the State that would be at odds with the Hippocratic tradition. A woman can feel that her health is at risk due to her pregnancy, and she certainly has the right to request medical help. Health professionals should care both at the medical and emotional level for all those who require their services, especially when such persons are undergoing situations of vulnerability and distress. When requested to perform an abortion, the physician faces dilemmas that should be addressed in line with the present state of the medical art.http://ref.scielo.org/c4ypf