Evaluation of a second-generation thyrotropin automated immunoassay.

We evaluated the analytical performance of the Vista automated immunoassay system for human thyrotropin determination. The operating characteristics as well as the analytical performance were assessed. The Vista human thyrotropin immunoassay showed a minimal detection limit of 0.08 mU/l and a functional sensitivity of 0.12 mU/l. The system meets the criteria for second-generation human thyrotropin assays

A rule-based decision support application for laboratory investigations management.

The appropriate management of clinical laboratory requests in specialised clinical units often requires the adherence to pre-defined protocols. We evaluated the impact of a rule-based expert system for clinical laboratory investigations management in a pediatric liver transplantation unit of our hospital. After one year, we observed an overall reduction in laboratory resources consumption for transplanted patients (-27%) and a decrease in the percentage of "STAT" requested tests (-44%). The percentage of tests ordered in agreement with the protocols for those patients increased from 33% before the introduction of the expert system to 45% when the system was used. The system was perceived by the clinicians as increasing the overall benefits in use of clinical resources, improving the laboratory data management, and saving time for the execution of laboratory ancillary tasks

Utilization of laboratory resources: developments in knowledge-based ordering systems.

This paper describes two rule based decision support systems. The first system is used to screen incoming test requests for adequacy on the basis of signs and symptoms volunteered by the requesting GPs. The system was tested using a database of 794 requests for a TSH test. About 17% of the test requests were correctly identified as unnecessary. In total, 0.5% of the tests were incorrectly labelled as unnecessary. This concerned 4% of the patients that appeared to have hyperthyroidism and 23% of the patients that appeared to have hypothyroidism on the basis of TSH and FT4 results. The other system is a rule-based clinical decision support system for the requesting of laboratory investigations, originally designed for use at a hospital within the UK, that was implemented in a predominantly French-speaking hospital in Belgium. This involved the modification of the system to allow multilingual operation, and also the implementation of a completely new set of investigation protocols. The purpose of this study was to assess the transferability, both of the system itself, and of its benefits. The system was introduced gradually and has only recently been in full operation. However, the findings from the first months of routine use of the system indicate that the transfer of the system to a different clinical environment has been successful. Although it is too early to assess fully the impact on laboratory utilization, the clinicians believe that it is improving the appropriateness of investigations

Contribution of the search for anti-Bartonella henselae antibodies in the diagnosis of the cat scratch disease in Belgium

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

The Cognitive Foundations of Fictional Stories

We hypothesize that fictional storiesare highly successful in human cultures partly because they activateevolved cognitive mechanisms, for instance for finding mates (e.g., in romance fiction), exploring the world (e.g., in adventure and speculative fiction), or avoiding predators (e.g., in horror fiction). In this paper, we put forward a comprehensive framework to study fiction through this evolutionary lens.The primary goal of this framework is to carve fictional storiesat their cognitive jointsusing an evolutionary framework. Reviewinga wide range of adaptive variations in human psychology–in personality and developmental psychology, behavioral ecology, and evolutionary biology, among other disciplines –, this framework also addresses the question ofinterindividual differences in preferences for different features in fictional stories. It generates a wide range of predictions about the patterns ofcombinations of such features, according to the pattenrs of variations in the mechanisms triggered by fictional stories. As a result of a highly collaborative effort, we present a comprehensive review of evolved cognitive mechanisms that fictional stories activate.To generate this review, we (1) listedmore than 70adaptivechallengeshumans faced in the course of their evolution, (2) identifiedthe adaptive psychological mechanisms that evolved in response to such challenges, (3) specifiedfoursources ofadaptive variabilityfor the sensitivity of each mechanism(i.e., personality traits, sex, age, and ecological conditions), and (4) linkedthese mechanismsto the story features that trigger them. This comprehensive framework lays the ground for a theory-driven research program for the study of fictional stories, their content, distribution, structure, andculturalevolution