A big data approach to explore medical imaging repositories based on DICOM

Medical imaging repositories based on the DICOM format such as Picture Archiving and Communication Systems have a huge potential from a big data perspective. The study reported by this paper aimed to verify on how the big data lifecycle processes, from production to consumption might be implemented to take advantage of the DICOM standard and respective data sources. After identifying the different processes (i.e., data collection, integration, filtering, anonymization and enrichment, and knowledge extraction) the study demonstrate their implementation using an open-source application able to access the DICOM metadata independently of the medical imaging modalities and equipment manufacturers.publishe

Crowdsourcing technologies to promote citizens’ participation in smart cities, a scoping review

The scoping review reported by this article aimed to identify (i) the purposes of the studies using crowdsourcing technologies in the context of the smart cities’ implementations, (ii) the characteristics of the crowdsourcing technologies being used, and (iii) the maturity level of the solutions being proposed. An electronic search was conducted, and 29 studies were included in the review after the selection process. The results show a current interest in crowdsourcing campaigns using participatory reporting and participatory sensing to (i) support urban infrastructures’ maintenance, (ii) facilitate urban mobility, (iii) monitor the environment, (iv) manage crowds, (v) aggregate geographical information, and (vi) collect citizens’ perspectives about the cities. However, the results also show low maturity level of the proposed solutions and lack of consolidated evidence about their effectiveness, which difficulties their dissemination.publishe

Instrumentos genéricos de funcionalidade e atividade física: como identificar a incapacidade associada à dor

ABSTRACT - Aims: To determine whether generic measures of disability, depression and physical activity are able to differentiate participants with and without pain. Materials and methods: 504 adults aged ≥60 years old recruited at 18 primary care centers were assessed for: pain (NRS), disability (WHODAS), performance (SPPB), depressive symptoms (GDS) and physical activity (RAPA). Results: 376 (74.6%) participants reported pain; pain sites most commonly reported were: low back (54.6%), knee (50.8%), shoulder (29.5%), hip (27.9%) and neck (24.7%). Pain was associated with increased disability, depression and decreased physical activity. Conclusions: Generic instruments were able to capture pain associated changes.RESUMO - Objetivos: Explorar se instrumentos genéricos de funcionalidade, depressão e atividade física são capazes de diferenciar utentes com e sem dor. Materiais e métodos: 504 pessoas com 60 ou mais anos dos cuidados de saúde primários foram avaliadas quanto a: dor (NRS), funcionalidade percebida (WHODAS), performance (SPPB), depressão (GDS) e atividade física (RAPA). Resultados: 376 (74,6%) participantes referiram dor; os 5 segmentos corporais mais afetados foram: a lombar (54,6%), os joelhos (50,8%), os ombros (29,5%), a anca (27,9%) e a cervical (24,7%). A presença de dor estava associada a menor funcionalidade, depressão e menor atividade física. Conclusões: Instrumentos genéricos são capazes de distinguir alterações associadas à dor.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Analysis of the Data Consistency of Medical Imaging Information Systems: An Exploratory Study

In the context of medical imaging, a considerable amount of data is created on daily basis, which are produced and managed by multiple medical imaging and information systems. The professional and department performance, as well as the respective characterization, are supported by these data, which makes their quality a critical aspect to take into account. The work developed had the objective of analysing the existence of nonconformities related to the consistency of the Radiology Information Systems (RIS) and Picture and Communication System (PACS) databases, as well as their precision, accuracy, integrity and associated risks for the healthcare practice. Data belonging to 1068 computed radiography studies were analysed and ten nonconformities were identified, related to the patient name, patient age, patient date of birth, patient gender, study date, study time, institution identification, radiologist identification, number of radiographic projections performed, and billing code. The work carried out allowed identifying some lack of data quality, sometimes evidenced in the absence of consistency, precision, accuracy and integrity.publishe

Cyber resilience, a survey of case studies

Considering the potential magnitude and impact of cyber-attacks, organizations must be able to understand their capabilities to prevent, respond and re-cover from these attacks as well to implement and refine adequate resilience plans. Due to the importance of cyber resilience, this survey aimed to review relevant case studies published in the scientific literature. The identified case studies followed different approaches since some of them were focused on risk assessment and risk management processes and the complexity of their implementation, while others were focused on the use of well-known frameworks to assess cyber resilience or on proposing new cyber resilience frameworks and tools.publishe

The Fast Health Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standard and homecare, a scoping review

The scoping review reported by this article aimed to analyze the state of the art of the use of Fast Health Interoperability Resources (FHIR) in the development of homecare applications and was informed by the following research questions: (i) what type of homecare applications benefit from the use of FHIR?; (ii) what FHIR resources are being implemented?; (iii) what publicly available development tools are being used?; and (iv) how privacy and security issues are being addressed? An electronic search was conducted, and 27 studies were included in the scoping review after the selection process. The results show a current interest in using FHIR to implement: i) applications to provide interoperable measurement devices for home monitoring; (ii) applications to remotely collected Patient Reported Outcome Measures (PROM); (iii) Personal Health Records (PHR); and (iv) specific applications for self-management. According to the results, the FHIR resources being implemented are quite diverse and contribute for the challenge of handling the variability caused by diverse healthcare processes. However, the use of publicly available development tools (e.g., SMART on FHIR or HAPI) is not yet generalized. Moreover, just a small number of studies reported the validation of the implemented resources using publicly available FHIR validators. Finally, in terms of privacy and security issues, different approaches were identified: authentication and authorizations mechanisms, end-to-end encrypted messaging mechanisms, and decentralized management and audit trail based on blockchain technologies.publishe

Goal setting for cerebral palsy children in context therapy: improve reliability when linking to ICF

The linking process of information to ICF is a common task in different strategies used in rehabilitation practise but is a time consuming process mainly due to reliability issues. This work aims to developed additional rules to those already published in order to improve reliability of the linking process to ICF. The results are encouraging and these work could help to develop in formation technologies tools for facilitate this process

O ensino de informática em licenciaturas de ciências e tecnologia

The paper reflects the cumulative experience of lecturing the discipline Introdução à Informática. After a brief overview of the rationale and programme of the discipline, statistics concerning the absenteeism and approval rates will be presented.O artigo reflecte a experiência acumulada na leccionação da disciplina de Introdução à Informática. Após uma breve referência aos pressupostos e programa da disciplina apresentam-se alguns dados estatísticos relativamente ao absentismo, índices e médias de aprovação

Home monitoring in Portugal: an overview on current experiences

This paper aims to be a contribution to the discussion on the issue of innovation in healthcare since, in the author’s perspective, the health sector, and particularly the Portuguese National Health Service, needs changes in its "business model". There is a need of redirecting care provision to the citizen’s natural environment, namely considering the opportunities offered by information and communication technologies. For this purpose the authors surveyed projects already implemented in Portugal, within the Portuguese National Health Service, related to home monitoring, in order to make a critical analysis of the state of the art of ongoing projects. In this study, the authors identified four pilot experiences of home monitoring, all targeted at chronic disease. In spite of some results of these experiments are already known, there is a shortage of available information and scientific evidence, both about the implementation processes themselves and about their clinical, technical an d economic evaluation, which, in the opinion of the authors, also hinders their assessment and dissemination.publishe