A comparative study of optical character recognition in health information system

MHealth Institutes are transitioning between documents in physical format and digital format. It is pertinent and important to develop applications that helps health professionals on this transition. An application that would aid the process of digitalization of documents was developed using a Python library. To help with the decision of which library to use, a study was made regarding the precision and speed of execution of PyOCR, PyTesseract and TesseOCR.FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (undefined

Steps towards intelligent diabetic foot ulcer follow-up based on deep learning

Diabetes is a chronic disease that affects the effective production of insulin in an individual. This incapacity leads to great damage to the cardiovascular system as well as the nervous system. Unfortunately this is a very present disease in today’s population. Indeed, global diabetes prevalence is estimated to be between 9,5% and 10,5%. Diabetic patients have a need for constant monitoring and evaluation by the healthcare professional whenever diabetic foot wounds show symptoms of infection and ulceration. The high number of patients with this diagnosis makes follow-up a problem for health professionals as well as for the patient. Lack of communication and access to health care are major contributing factors to lower extremity amputations, high mortality and morbidity interventions. In order to solve this gap, the present work presents an architecture for the development of a collaborative and decision support tool, between not only health professionals but also patients, capable of rapidly and automatically identifying, assessing and treating ulcer and symptoms of the pathology. This automation will be implemented through classification models with Deep Learning.FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia(NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000086

Open Science in Pandemic Times: A Literature Review

In late 2019, a new SARS-Cov-2 class virus originally appeared in the city of Wuhan in China. It quickly spread through human contact, reaching more than 100,000 confirmed daily cases worldwide by the end of May 2020. The results of some previous outbreaks have revealed that data sharing is critical in the effectiveness of its treatment, as well as in early warnings of future crises. In this sense, this literature review article aims to identify open approaches and their advantages and disadvantages in the context of health emergencies. Thus, an overview of the impact of Open Science for the current pandemic is presented, leaving open questions and suggestions for future work.FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope: UIDB/00319/202

Enseñanza y aprendizaje remoto de emergencia y las competencias digitales del profesorado

The challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic forced schools to quickly mobilize toward emergency remote teaching and learning (ERTL) practices. Teachers’ digital competences were essential in this context. This study aims to identify the ERTL practices adopted in Portugal and how they were perceived by teachers of students aged 3 to 18. Data were gathered through a questionnaire administered online during April and May 2020 to 329 teachers. ERTL was perceived as an opportunity to develop their own and their students’ digital competences. Teachers expressed a moderately positive view of the process and reported an experience of work overload. The pedagogical practices implemented by teachers during this period were diverse and differed according to gender, self-assessment of digital competence, and level of education taught. Results point to the importance of continued teacher training to achieve quality distance education.Los retos planteados por la pandemia de COVID-19 han obligado a una rápida movilización de las escuelas hacia las prácticas de enseñanza y aprendizaje remoto de emergencia (EARE) y las competencias digitales de los profesores han sido esenciales en este contexto. El presente estudio tiene por objetivo identificar las prácticas de EARE adoptadas en Portugal y la manera en que éstas fueron percibidas por profesores de alumnos de entre 3 y 18 años de edad. Se recopilaron datos a través de un cuestionario aplicado en línea en abril y mayo de 2020 a 329 profesores. La EARE se percibió como una oportunidad para el desarrollo de las competencias digitales tanto de los propios profesores como de sus alumnos. Los profesores valoraron el proceso de manera moderadamente positiva y manifestaron una experiencia de sobrecarga de trabajo. Las prácticas pedagógicas aplicadas por los profesores durante este periodo fueron variadas y diferían según el sexo, la autoevaluación de la competencia digital y el nivel educativo impartido. Los resultados señalan la importancia de la formación docente continua para lograr una educación a distancia de calidad.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The development of a pervasive Web application to alert patients based on business intelligence clinical indicators: a case study in a health institution

This paper proposes the development of a pervasive Web application based on business intelligence clinical indicators created with the data stored into the health information systems of a Portuguese health institution in the last 3 years i.e. between the beginning of 2015 and the end of 2017. With this computational tool, it is principally intended to reduce the number of appointments, surgeries, and medical examinations that were not carried out in the hospital most likely due to forgetfulness since most patients who attend this health institution are elderly people and memory loss is very common with increasing age. Therefore, patients and/or their caregivers and family members are alerted via SMS in advance and appropriately by health professionals through the Web application. This alternative is cheaper, faster, and more customizable than sending those SMS using a smartphone. Advantages liked with the use of this solution also include decreasing losses concerning time, human resources, and money.This work has been supported by Compete POCI-01-0145- FEDER-007043 and FCT—Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia within the Project Scope UID/CEC/00319/2013

Emergency remote teaching and learning in Portugal: preschool to secondary school teachers’ perceptions

Emergency remote teaching and learning (ERTL) represent a critical and challenging time for teachers globally. To understand how Portuguese teachers interpreted their ERTL experiences of the first lockdown, we started by asking: What perspectives do teachers have about ERTL? Answering three open questions made available online between April and May of 2020, a sample of 305 preschool, basic, and secondary school teachers expressed their perspectives on (i) difficulties throughout ERTL; (ii) students’ constraints in participating in ERTL; (iii) the potential and benefits resulting from this exceptional period. Data were analyzed using content analysis. While Portuguese teachers perceived ERTL with concern, a majority also saw it as an opportunity. Workload, work conditions, and time management were the most frequently mentioned difficulties. Regarding students’ constraints, teachers emphasized participation, the role of parents, lack of contact, and autonomy. Despite the constraints and difficulties, teachers highlighted gains such as the development of digital competencies and the opportunity to transform teaching and learning. Only 18 teachers suggested there were no positive outcomes from this experience. Since this is an exploratory study, further studies are needed to triangulate the findings.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Data warehousing through multi-agent systems in the medical arena

Comunicação apresentada na International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Decision Support, 1, Porto, 2004.In this paper it is presented AIDA, an Agency for Integration, Archive and Diffusion of Medical Information. It configures a data warehouse, developed using Multi-Agent technology, that integrates and archives information from heterogeneous sources of a health care unit. AIDA is like a symbiont, with a close association with core applications at any health care facility, namely the Picture Archive Communication System, the Radiological Information System and the Electronic Medical Record Information System, that are built upon pro-active agents and communicate with the AIDA’s ones

Agent driven diagnosis in medicine

Embedding Machine Learning technology into Agent Driven Diagnosis Systems adds a new potential to the realm of Medicine, and in particular to the imagiology one. However, despite all the research done in the last years on the development of methodologies for designing MultiAgent Systems (MAS), there is no methodology suitable for the specification and design of MAS in complex domains where both the agent view and the organizational view can be modelled. Current multi-agent approaches either take a centralist, static approach to organizational design or take an emergent view in which agent interactions are not pre-determined, thus making it impossible to make any predictions on the behavior of the whole systems. Most of them also lack a model of the norms in the environment that should rule the behavior of the agent society as a whole and/or the actions of individuals. In this paper, we propose a framework for modelling agent organizations, and we illustrate the different components of a society with one modality, the Axial Computed Tomography scenario, combining two methodologies for problem solving, the Artificial Neural Networks and the Case Based Reasoning ones

Health data management in the medical arena

In this paper it is presented an Agency for Integration, Archive and Diffusion of Medical Information (AIDA), which configures a data warehouse, developed using Multi-Agent technology. AIDA is like a symbiont, with a close association with core applications present at any health care facility, such as the Picture Archive Communication System, the Radiological Information System or the Electronic Medical Record Information System. Multi-Agent Systems also configure a new methodology for problem solving

Intelligent nutrition in healthcare and continuous care

In the healthcare industry, the patient's nutrition is a key factor in their treatment process. Every user has their own specific nutritional needs and requirements. An appropriate nutrition policy can therefore help the patient's recovery process and alleviate possible symptoms. Food recommender systems are platforms that offer personalised suggestions of recipes to users. However, there is a lack of usage of recipe recommendation systems in the healthcare sector. Multiple challenges in representing the domain of food and the patient's needs make it complicated to implement these systems. The present project aims to develop a platform for an intelligent planning of the user's meals, based on their clinical conditions. The application of machine learning algorithms on nutrition, in healthcare services and continuous care is thus a key topic of research. This platform will be tested and deployed at the Social Cafeteria of Vila Verde (Cantina Social da Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Vila Verde). The development of this project will use the Design Science Research (DSR) investigation methodology, ensuring that the solution to the problem accomplishes all needs and requirements of the professionals, while elucidating new knowledge both for the institution and the scientific community.FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (UID/CEC/00319/2019