Decision Support Systems to Promote Health and Well-being of People during their Working Age: the Case of the WorkingAge EU Project

The WorkingAge project aims at improving the psycho-physical condition of workers, with a special focus on ageing subjects. In this context, a Decision Support System, based on a hybrid data-driven/model-driven approach, fed with data coming from environmental and wearable sensors, aims to provide personalised advises to the worker. In this paper we briefly present the WorkingAge project and architecture, and then focus on the decision-making pipeline that, starting from raw data, generates the advises

HIV matters when diagnosing TB in young children: an ancillary analysis in children enrolled in the INPUT stepped wedge cluster randomized study

Abstract Background Children under age five years, particularly those living with HIV (CLHIV), are at risk for rapid progression of tuberculosis (TB). We aimed to describe TB clinical presentations, diagnostic pathways and treatment outcomes in CLHIV compared to children without HIV in Cameroon and Kenya. Methods This sub-analysis of a cluster-randomized trial evaluating the integration of pediatric TB services from May 2019 to March 2021 enrolled children age < 5 years with TB. We estimated the HIV infection rate with 95% confidence interval (CI). We compared TB clinical presentations, diagnostic pathways and treatment outcomes in CLHIV and children without HIV. Finally, we investigated whether HIV infection was associated with a shorter time to TB diagnosis (≤ 3 months from symptoms onset) after adjusting for covariates. Univariable and multivariable logistic regression analysis were performed with adjusted odds ratios (AORs) presented as measures of the association of covariates with HIV status and with shorter time to TB diagnosis. Results We enrolled 157 children with TB (mean age was 1.5 years) and 22/157 (14.0% [9.0-20.4%]) were co-infected with HIV. CLHIV were more likely to initially present with acute malnutrition (AOR 3.16 [1.14–8.71], p = 0.027). Most TB diagnoses (140/157, 89%) were made clinically with pulmonary TB being the most common presentation; however, there was weak evidence of more frequent bacteriologic confirmation of TB in CLHIV, 18% vs. 9% (p = 0.067), due to the contribution of lateral-flow urine lipoarabinomannan to the diagnosis. HIV positivity (AOR: 6.10 [1.32–28.17], p = 0.021) was independently associated with a shorter time to TB diagnosis as well as fatigue (AOR: 6.58 [2.28–18.96], p = 0.0005), and existence of a household contact diagnosed with TB (AOR: 5.60 [1.58–19.83], p = 0.0075), whereas older age (AOR: 0.35 [0.15–0.85], p = 0.020 for age 2–5 years), night sweats (AOR: 0.24 [0.10–0.60], p = 0.0022) and acute malnutrition (AOR: 0.36 [0.14–0.92], p = 0.034) were associated with a delayed diagnosis. The case fatality rate was 9% (2/22) in CLHIV and 4% (6/135) in children without HIV, p = 0.31. Conclusions These results altogether advocate for better integration of TB services into all pediatric entry points with a special focus on nutrition services, and illustrate the importance of non-sputum-based TB diagnostics especially in CLHIV. Trial registration NCT03862261, first registration 05/03/2019

Additional file 1 of HIV matters when diagnosing TB in young children: an ancillary analysis in children enrolled in the INPUT stepped wedge cluster randomized study

Supplementary Material

A survey on recent progress in control of swarm systems

It has been witnessed that swarm systems are superior to individual agents in performing complicated tasks. In recent years, new results in some branches of control for swarm systems have developed and investigated with respect to various objectives and scenarios. This survey is to take a glimpse into some newly developed control techniques for swarm systems, especially those presented after 2013. The covered topics include some up-to-date progress in the areas of consensus, formation, flocking, containment, optimal coverage/mission planning, and sensor networks. Contributions and connections of the mentioned references are discussed briefly. Based on the new results in control of swarm systems, some possible new future research topics are suggested