An Ontology-Based Framework for a Telehealthcare System to Foster Healthy Nutrition and Active Lifestyle in Older Adults

In recent years, telehealthcare systems (TSs) have become more and more widespread, as they can contribute to promoting the continuity of care and managing chronic conditions efficiently. Most TSs and nutrition recommendation systems require much information to return appropriate suggestions. This work proposes an ontology-based TS, namely HeNuALs, aimed at fostering a healthy diet and an active lifestyle in older adults with chronic pathologies. The system is built on the formalization of users' health conditions, which can be obtained by leveraging existing standards. This allows for modeling different pathologies via reusable knowledge, thus limiting the amount of information needed to retrieve nutritional indications from the system. HeNuALs is composed of (1) an ontological layer that stores patients and their data, food and its characteristics, and physical activity-related data, enabling the inference a series of suggestions based on the effects of foods and exercises on specific health conditions; (2) two applications that allow both the patient and the clinicians to access the data (with different permissions) stored in the ontological layer; and (3) a series of wearable sensors that can be used to monitor physical exercise (provided by the patient application) and to ensure patients' safety. HeNuALs inferences have been validated considering two different use cases. The system revealed the ability to determine suggestions for healthy, adequate, or unhealthy dishes for a patient with respiratory disease and for a patient with diabetes mellitus. Future work foresees the extension of the HeNuALs knowledge base by exploiting automatic knowledge retrieval approaches and validation of the whole system with target users

Fostering the Collaboration among Healthcare Stakeholders with ICF in Clinical Practice: EasyICF

Part 17: Digital Tools and Applications for Collaborative HealthcareInternational audienceThe International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) is a standard framework organized as a top-down taxonomy composed of categories allowing to describe a person’s functioning within an environment (physical and social context). ICF aims at helping different clinical professionals and health stakeholders to adopt a common conceptual basis and standard definitions for the description of disabilities and impairments, thus easing the collaboration and clinical information exchange among different actors. ICF is not universally adopted in clinical practice: this is caused mainly by a lack of understanding of ICF and of the operative knowledge to qualify impairments. This work introduces EasyICF, an application designed to facilitate the use of ICF in defining wheelchair users’ health conditions for vocational therapists and clinical personnel. EasyICF takes into account the restrictions foreseen in the framework and is designed to support the definition of ICF categories for clinicians with little or no knowledge of the classification and its structure. The application was developed with the help of medical personnel and physical therapists, in a collaborative effort to develop a tool for daily clinical practice in the context of Return to Wor

ComfOnt: A Semantic Framework for Indoor Comfort and Energy Saving In Smart Homes

This work introduces ComfOnt, a semantic framework developed within the context of ambient assisted living, context awareness, and ambient intelligence Italian research projects. ComfOnt leverages knowledge regarding Smart Home inhabitants and their particular needs, the devices deployed inside the domestic environment (appliances, sensors, and actuators), the amount of their energy consumption, and indoor comfort metrics to provide dwellers with customized services. Developed reusing widely adopted ontologies, ComfOnt aims at providing inhabitants with the possibility of having personalized indoor comfort in their living environments and at helping them in scheduling their daily activities requiring appliances; in fact, the proposed semantic framework enables the representation of appliances’ energy consumption and the energy profile of the Smart Home, thus assisting the dwellers in avoiding power cuts and fostering energy savings. ComfOnt serves as a knowledge base for a prototypical application (DECAM) dedicated to Smart Home inhabitants; the architecture and the functionalities of DECAM are here presented

The Importance of Initial Evaluation by Trans Vaginal Sonography in Rudimentary Horn Pregnancy: A Case Report and Literature Review

Rudimentary&nbsp; horn&nbsp; pregnancy&nbsp; (RHP)&nbsp; as&nbsp; a&nbsp; rare&nbsp; incidence&nbsp; has&nbsp; been&nbsp; estimated&nbsp; at&nbsp; 1:76,000- 1:150,000 pregnancies. It has been also reported that 80-90% of RHP lead to uterine rupture in second trimester.&nbsp; Early&nbsp; diagnosis&nbsp; with&nbsp; the&nbsp; use&nbsp; of&nbsp; 3-dimentional&nbsp; ultrasonography&nbsp; (3-DUS)&nbsp; that&nbsp; is&nbsp; followed by&nbsp; laparoscopic&nbsp; resection&nbsp; of&nbsp; RH&nbsp; and&nbsp; ipsilateral&nbsp; fallopian&nbsp; tube&nbsp; is&nbsp; likely&nbsp; to&nbsp; be&nbsp; considered&nbsp; as&nbsp; the&nbsp; best management strategy that prevents maternal morbidity and mortality. We present a case of 9-week pregnancy&nbsp; in&nbsp; a&nbsp; non-communicating&nbsp; rudimentary&nbsp; horn&nbsp; with&nbsp; positive&nbsp; fetal&nbsp; heart&nbsp; rate&nbsp; (FHR)&nbsp; that&nbsp; was diagnosed by 3-DUS and successfully treated with laparoscopic resection.</p