Desarrollo de un sistema de Mediación Semántica, basado en Ontologías, de Bases de Datos Heterogéneas sobre Tecnologías Grid

Servicio Grid que resuelve consultas generadas por los usuarios. Dispone de un conjunto de mappings para resolver la integración, uno por cada Base de Datos que deba ser incluida en el proceso de integració

Towards Openness in Biomedical Informatics

Over the last years, and particularly in the context of the COMBIOMED network, our biomedical informatics (BMI) group at the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid has carried out several approaches to address a fundamental issue: to facilitate open access and retrieval to BMI resources —including software, databases and services. In this regard, we have followed various directions: a) a text mining-based approach to automatically build a “resourceome”, an inventory of open resources, b) methods for heterogeneous database integration —including clinical, -omics and nanoinformatics sources—; c) creating various services to provide access to different resources to African users and professionals, and d) an approach to facilitate access to open resources from research project

A New Method to Retrieve, Cluster And Annotate Clinical Literature Related To Electronic Health Records

The access to medical literature collections such as PubMed, MedScape or Cochrane has been increased notably in the last years by the web-based tools that provide instant access to the information. However, more sophisticated methodologies are needed to exploit efficiently all that information. The lack of advanced search methods in clinical domain produce that even using well-defined questions for a particular disease, clinicians receive too many results. Since no information analysis is applied afterwards, some relevant results which are not presented in the top of the resultant collection could be ignored by the expert causing an important loose of information. In this work we present a new method to improve scientific article search using patient information for query generation. Using federated search strategy, it is able to simultaneously search in different resources and present a unique relevant literature collection. And applying NLP techniques it presents semantically similar publications together, facilitating the identification of relevant information to clinicians. This method aims to be the foundation of a collaborative environment for sharing clinical knowledge related to patients and scientific publications

CDAPubMed: a browser extension to retrieve EHR-based biomedical literature

Over the last few decades, the ever-increasing output of scientific publications has led to new challenges to keep up to date with the literature. In the biomedical area, this growth has introduced new requirements for professionals, e.g., physicians, who have to locate the exact papers that they need for their clinical and research work amongst a huge number of publications. Against this backdrop, novel information retrieval methods are even more necessary. While web search engines are widespread in many areas, facilitating access to all kinds of information, additional tools are required to automatically link information retrieved from these engines to specific biomedical applications. In the case of clinical environments, this also means considering aspects such as patient data security and confidentiality or structured contents, e.g., electronic health records (EHRs). In this scenario, we have developed a new tool to facilitate query building to retrieve scientific literature related to EHRs. Results: We have developed CDAPubMed, an open-source web browser extension to integrate EHR features in biomedical literature retrieval approaches. Clinical users can use CDAPubMed to: (i) load patient clinical documents, i.e., EHRs based on the Health Level 7-Clinical Document Architecture Standard (HL7-CDA), (ii) identify relevant terms for scientific literature search in these documents, i.e., Medical Subject Headings (MeSH), automatically driven by the CDAPubMed configuration, which advanced users can optimize to adapt to each specific situation, and (iii) generate and launch literature search queries to a major search engine, i.e., PubMed, to retrieve citations related to the EHR under examination. Conclusions: CDAPubMed is a platform-independent tool designed to facilitate literature searching using keywords contained in specific EHRs. CDAPubMed is visually integrated, as an extension of a widespread web browser, within the standard PubMed interface. It has been tested on a public dataset of HL7-CDA documents, returning significantly fewer citations since queries are focused on characteristics identified within the EHR. For instance, compared with more than 200,000 citations retrieved by breast neoplasm, fewer than ten citations were retrieved when ten patient features were added using CDAPubMed. This is an open source tool that can be freely used for non-profit purposes and integrated with other existing systems

In vitro pilot study to determine the accuracy of the ARCUSdigma to determine condylar positions

En este trabajo pretendemos determinar la precisión, entendida como el grado de concordancia de las medidas entre si, de un pantógrafo electrónico (ARCUSdigma) en la determinación de dos posiciones condilares seleccionadas, sobre una muestra constituida por los modelos de siete pacientes montados en articulador semiajustable. Tras analizar los resultados obtenidos y teniendo en cuenta las limitaciones con que cuenta el estudio, podemos concluir que dicho instrumento presenta una alta precisión a la hora de realizar tales determinaciones.n this work we seek to determine the accuracy (it is the concordance of the measures) of an electronic pantograph (ARCUSdigma) to determine two condylar positions. We have a sample constituted by the models of seven patients mounted in a semiajustable articulator. In spite of the limitations of this study, the results indicate that the instrument has a high precision for these determinations

AFRICA BUILD Portal: developing a social network of African health researchers and educators

One of the main outputs of the project is a collaborative platform which integrates a myriad of research and learning resources. This article presents the first prototype of this platform: the AFRICA BUILD Portal (ABP 1.0). The ABP is a Web 2.0 platform which facilitates the access, in a collaborative manner, to these resources. Through a usable web interface, the ABP has been designed to avoid, as much as possible, the connectivity problems of African institutions. In this paper, we suggest that the access to complex systems does not imply slow response rates, and that their development model guides the project to a natural technological transfer, adaptation and user acceptance. Finally, this platform aims to motivate research attitudes during the learning process and stimulate user?s collaborations

Centric relation: concepts revision and recording techniques. Part I

La relación céntrica ha sido objeto de disparidad de criterios en la odontología durante más de un siglo. A lo largo de este trabajo, vamos a exponer diferentes métodos usados tanto para obtener el registro, como para comprobar su certeza y corroborar la posición condilar. Dado que no existe evidencia científica en el tema, en este trabajo, revisaremos los estudios experimentales que aparecen en la literatura. Los hemos divididos en dos partes, la primera relacionada con la definición de relación céntrica y la segunda parte relacionada con técnicas de registro, posición condilar y la discrepancia entre relación céntrica y oclusión céntrica.The centric relation has been controversial on dentistry during more of one century. Along of this work, we are going to expose different methods to recording as checking the accuracy and condilar position. Given that there aren’t scientific evidence, in this work, we review the researches ublicated. We have divided them into two parts; the first is related with the definition of centric relation and the second part is related with recording techniques, condilar position and centric relation- centric occlusion discrepancy

Building sustainable capacity for health research in africa through cloud computing applications

Access to information and continuous education represent critical factors for physicians and researchers over the world. For African professionals, this situation is even more problematic due to the frequently difficult access to technological infrastructures and basic information. Both education and information technologies (e.g., including hardware, software or networking) are expensive and unaffordable for many African professionals. Thus, the use of e-learning and an open approach to information exchange and software use have been already proposed to improve medical informatics issues in Africa. In this context, the AFRICA BUILD project, supported by the European Commission, aims to develop a virtual platform to provide access to a wide range of biomedical informatics and learning resources to professionals and researchers in Africa. A consortium of four African and four European partners work together in this initiative. In this framework, we have developed a prototype of a cloud-computing infrastructure to demonstrate, as a proof of concept, the feasibility of this approach. We have conducted the experiment in two different locations in Africa: Burundi and Egypt. As shown in this paper, technologies such as cloud computing and the use of open source medical software for a large range of case present significant challenges and opportunities for developing countries, such as many in Africa

¿Existe algo más fácil que un análisis estadístico?

En este artículo se exponen y argumentan diferentes razones, tanto a favor como en contra, referidas a la utilización de las aplicaciones informáticas desarrolladas para el análisis estadístico. La reflexión no se centra únicamente en torno a una relación de ventajas e inconvenientes. Se abordan otras cuestiones intrínsecamente relacionadas con la aplicación de la tecnología informática en el ámbito de la Estadística, como son la metodología, el razonamiento estadístico, la didáctica y un creciente mercado que demanda este tipo de programas informáticos. Las conclusiones enfatizan la importancia de la validez de los datos, sustentada en una adecuada metodología de investigación, y la necesidad de un amplio conocimiento del razonamiento estadístico. Advertir sobre los posibles problemas no significa en ningún caso obviar las aportaciones de estas aplicaciones informáticas

Using the emotional functioning in clinical practice to detect psychological distress in patients with advanced thoracic and colorectal cancer

Purpose: Patients with advanced cancer suffer significant decline of their psychological state. A rapid and reliable evaluation of this state is essential to detect and treat it and improve quality of life. The aim was to probe the usefulness of the emotional function (EF) subscale of the European Organization for Research and Treatment of Cancer Quality of Life Questionnaire C30 (EF-EORTC-QLQ-C30) to assess psychological distress in cancer patients. Methods: This is a multicenter, prospective, observational study involving 15 Spanish hospitals. Patients diagnosed with unresectable advanced thoracic or colorectal cancer were included. Participants completed the Brief Symptom Inventory 18 (BSI-18), the current the gold standard, and the EF-EORTC-QLQ-C30 to assess their psychological distress prior to initiating systemic antineoplastic treatment. Accuracy, sensitivity, positive predictive value (PPV), specificity, and negative predictive value (NPV) were calculated. Results: The sample comprised 639 patients: 283 with advanced thoracic cancer and 356 with advanced colorectal cancer. According to the BSI scale, 74% and 66% displayed psychological distress with an EF-EORTC-QLQ-C30 accuracy of 79% and 76% in detecting psychological distress in individuals with advanced thoracic and colorectal cancer, respectively. Sensitivity was 79 and 75% and specificity was 79 and 77% with a PPV of 92 and 86% and a NPV of 56 and 61% (scale cut-off point, 75) for patients with advanced thoracic and colorectal cancer, respectively. The mean AUC for thoracic cancer was 0.84 and, for colorectal cancer, it was 0.85. Conclusion: This study reveals that the EF-EORTC-QLQ-C30 subscale is a simple and effective tool for detecting psychological distress in people with advanced cancer