An Online Multilingual Medical Vocabulary/Thesaurus/Dictionary (MED-VTD) for Facilitating Understanding of Medical Texts

Medical texts (e.g., reports and medicine leaflets) are usually written by professionals (physicians, medical researchers, etc.) who use their own language and communication style. On the other hand, they are often read by health consumers or other medical professionals who do not have the same vocabularies and can have difficulties in text comprehension. Thus, to help a generic user in understanding a medical text, it would be desirable to have an online medical vocabulary/thesaurus/dictionary that he/she can easily look for finding the plain equivalent of any medical (technical) term and a definition of the term with the same kind of language. In this work, we present an online multilingu…

Characteristics and Subjective Evaluation of an Intelligent Empowering Agent for Health Person Empowerment

Empowerment is a process through which people acquire the necessary knowledge and self-awareness to understand their health conditions and treatment options, self-manage them, and make informed choices. Currently, few stand-alone applications for patient empowerment exist and people/patients often go on the Web to search for health information. Such information is mainly obtained through generic search engines and it is often overwhelming, too generic, and of poor quality. Intelligent Empowering Agents (IEA) can filter such information and assist the user in the understanding of health information about specific complaints or health in general. We have designed and developed a first prototy…

A web search methodology for different user typologies

Search engines and directories are the main tools used to find desired information into the ocean of digital contents that is the Web. However, they are not presently able to understand the user specific needs and starting knowledge because their inability to simulate the processes of human mind. Natural Language Processing, Folksonomy, Semantic Web and Serendipitous Surfing are some of the recent research fields towards understanding of human natural language and in general of real user needs. This work aims to add one step more to this evolution path by presenting a new search methodology that allows users to create new knowledge paths on the web based on their specific requirements. Thus…

Structuring didactic materials on the Web (Struct)

There is an universal agreement that the structuring of didactic materials helps the student in his/her learning process when dealing with such materials. It is then important for the teacher or a student to choose among different structures so to use the one that best conveys the desired knowledge. This need is nowadays a priority also in the e-learning world since several e-learning courses exist on the web and many more are created every day. Unfortunately, most of the existing e-learning platforms offer just a single way to organize the course contents (book structure). Whoever is interested in organizing the course contents in a different way (e.g, with a concept map) must use specific…

Proposed use of a conversational agent for patient empowerment

Empowerment is a process through which people acquire the necessary knowledge and self-awareness to understand their conditions and treatment options, make informed choices and self-manage their health conditions in daily life, in collaboration with medical professionals. Conversational Agents in healthcare could play an important role in the process of empowering a person but, so far, they have been seldom been used for this purpose. This paper presents the basic principles and preliminary implementation of a conversational health agent for patient empowerment. It dialogues with the user in a "natural" way, collects health data from heterogeneous sources and provides the user wit…

U-search: a meta engine for creation of knowledge paths on the web

The main tools used to find digital contents in the Web are search engines and directories but they are not presently able to understand the user specific needs and starting knowledge. This work presents "U-Search" a new meta engine that allows to create knowledge paths on the Web based on specific user requirements and knowledge levels. To this end, we consider different searcher categories such as a "basic searcher" who knows little about a topic and will look for more information, a "deep searcher" who will look for specific details on a topic that he/she already knows and a "wide searcher" who will look for expanding his/her knowledge domain with topics that are loosely related to the s…

Searching the internet for learning materials through didactic indicators

Internet offers a huge amount of didactic materials that can be used in creating new online courses. However, those materials need a deep analysis to understand their context and contents before their potential use. As a consequence, the search of didactic material in internet is often quite tedious and time consuming so the searcher usually limits his/her analysis to the first found web pages . To help users in finding efficiently and timely the most appropriate online materials, we have developed a system, called SAXEF (System for Automatic eXtraction of lEearning object Features), that is capable to automatically extract the didactic indicators (a sort of DNA) of any web page (or group o…

Facilitating Access to Health Web Pages with Different Language Complexity Levels

The number of people looking for health information on the Internet is constantly growing. When searching for health information, different types of users, such as patients, clinicians or medical researchers, have different needs and should easily find the information they are looking for based on their specific requirements. However, generic search engines do not make any distinction among the users and, often, overload them with the provided amount of information. On the other hand, specific search engines mostly work on medical literature and specialized web sites are often not free and contain focused information built by hand. This paper presents a method to facilitate the search of he…

A Framework for Opening Data and Creating Advanced Services in the Health and Social Fields

Open data is publicly available data that can be universally and readily accessed, used, and redistributed. Open data holds particular potential in the health and social sectors but, presently, health and social data are often published in a ‘closed’ format.There are different tools that allow to ‘open’ data, clean, structure and process them in order to elaborate them and build advanced services but, unfortunately, there is no single tool that can be used to perform all different tasks. We believe that the availability of Open Data in the health and social fields should be greatly increased and a way for creating new health and social services should be provided. In this paper, we present …

An Intelligent Empowering Agent (IEA) to Provide Easily Understood and Trusted Health Information Appropriate to the User Needs

AbstractMost members of the public, including patients, usually obtain health information from Web searches using generic search engines, which is often overwhelming, too generic, and of poor quality. Although patients may be better informed, they are often none the wiser and not empowered to communicate with medical professionals so that their care is compatible with their needs, values, and best interests. Intelligent Empowering Agents (IEA) use AI to filter medical information and assist the user in the understanding of health information about specific complaints or health in general. We have designed and developed a prototype of an IEA that dialogues with the user in simple language, c…

Design, development and validation of a system for automatic help to medical text understanding

Abstract Objective The paper presents a web-based application, SIMPLE, that facilitates medical text comprehension by identifying the health-related terms of a medical text and providing the corresponding consumer terms and explanations. Background The comprehension of a medical text is often a difficult task for laypeople because it requires semantic abilities that can differ from a person to another, depending on his/her health-literacy level. Some systems have been developed for facilitating the comprehension of medical texts through text simplification, either syntactical or lexical. The ones dealing with lexical simplification usually replace the original text and do not provide additi…

Finding the best web medical content for different learner categories

In the age of Internet where any kind of information can be easily found online, it is becoming increasingly evident that more and more people use the World Wide Web to seek health and medical information for understanding and learning. Different users have diverse needs, even when searching for the same topic. This is certainly true in healthcare, where a patient, a physician or a health executive might look for information on the same topic but have different necessities and bring different levels of reading ability and prior knowledge together with a different vocabulary. Generic search engines (like Google, Bing or Yahoo) work on the whole web but make generic searches often overloading…

SAXEF: A System for Automatic eXtraction of learning object Features

New online courses are often created by using existing materials on the net. However, those materials are usually proposed without information on their aims and the typology of users which they are destined to. Moreover, the contents are not clearly synthesized so that a complete analysis of the whole materials is often necessary to understand their relevance to the new course. Using our experience on the creation of online courses with existing web materials, we have thought how to help teachers in finding the best materials for the creation of new online courses. To this end, we have developed a system, called SAXEF (System for Automatic eXtraction of lEearning object Features), that is c…

Language complexity in on-line health information retrieval

The number of people searching for on-line health information has been steadily growing over the years so it is crucial to understand their specific requirements in order to help them finding easily and quickly the specific in-formation they are looking for. Although generic search engines are typically used by health information seekers as the starting point for searching information, they have been shown to be limited and unsatisfactory because they make generic searches, often overloading the user with the provided amount of results. Moreover, they are not able to provide specific information to different types of users. At the same time, specific search engines mostly work on medical li…

Creation of on-line courses using existing e-learning objects

Virtual Laboratories at Computer Science degree in Palermo University: A case study

Provision of tailored health information for patient empowerment: An initial study

Search of "right" health information by patients/citizens is an important step towards their empowerment. The number of health information seekers on the Internet is steadily increasing over the years so it is crucial to understand their information needs and the challenges they face during the search process. However, generic search engines do not make any distinction among the users and overload them with the amount of information. Moreover, specific search engines/sites mostly work on medical literature and are built by hand. This paper analyses the possibility of providing the user with tailored web information by exploiting the web semantic capabilities and, in particular, those of sch…

ULearn: Personalized Medical Learning on the Web for Patient Empowerment

Abstract. Health literacy constitutes an important step towards patient empowerment and the Web is presently the biggest repository of medical information and, thus, the biggest medical resource to be used in the learning process. However, at present web medical information is mainly accessed through generic search engines that do not take into account the user specific needs and starting knowledge and so are not able to support learning activities tailored to the specific user requirements. This work presents “ULearn” a meta engine that supports access, understanding and learning on the Web in the medical domain based on specific user requirements and knowledge levels towards what we call …

On-Line Retrieval of Health Information Based on Language Complexity, Information Customization and Information Quality

Abstract. A patient, nowadays, acquires on-line health information mainly by means of a search engine. Generic search engines have been shown to be limited and unsatisfactory, at times, because of their generic searches that overload users with the amount of results. Moreover, they are not able to provide customized information to different types of users. At the same time, specific search engines mostly work on medical literature and provide extracts from medical journals that are mainly useful for medical researchers and experts. As a consequence, the found health information may or may not help a user (mainly a non-expert one) for a full comprehension of what he/she is looking for (e.g.,…

An automatic system for helping health consumers to understand medical texts

Medical texts (reports, articles, etc.) are usually written by professionals (physicians, medical researchers, etc.) who use their own language and communication style. On the other hand, these texts are often read by health consumers (as in the case of medical reports) who do not have the same skills and vocabularies of the experts and can have difficulties in text comprehension. To help a health consumer in understanding a medical text, it would be desirable to have an automatic system that, given a text written with medical (technical) terms, translates them in simple or plain language and provides additional information with the same kind of language. We have designed such a system. It …

Supporting Learning Activities in the Health Sector through Open Data

The growing availability of Open Data for educational purposes is playing a key role in shaping and influencing the development of the learning processes. At the same time, Open Data have a particular potential in the health sector so that the major healthcare organizations, universities, colleges, and medical schools are in the process of creating high quality 'Open' education & training resources and tools. However, in this growing world of open health resources for educational purposes, the task of finding the right material can become very difficult mainly when using a general purpose search engine like google. Thus, to overcome this problem and facilitate the search and learning ac…

Text analysis module of a System for Automatic eXtraction of lEarning object Features (SAXEF)

Development and Practical Use of a Medical Vocabulary-Thesaurus-Dictionary for Patient Empowerment

Health empowerment can be obtained through an informative and educational intervention to increase one's ability to think critically and act autonomously. Medical texts are usually written by professionals and can be difficulty understood by non experts who do not have the same skills and vocabularies. Thus, it would be desirable to have an online medical vocabulary-thesaurus-dictionary that can help a non expert to easily find the consumer equivalent of medical (technical) terms and additional consumer information. To this end, we have developed an online multilingual medical vocabulary-thesaurus-dictionary by interconnecting different online sources, i.e., medical vocabularies to create a…

Tailored retrieval of health information from the web for facilitating communication and empowerment of elderly people

A patient, nowadays, acquires health information from the Web mainly through a “human-to-machine” communication process with a generic search engine. This, in turn, affects, positively or negatively, his/her empowerment level and the “human-to-human” communication process that occurs between a patient and a healthcare professional such as a doctor. A generic communication process can be modelled by considering its syntactic-technical, semantic-meaning, and pragmatic-effectiveness levels and an efficacious communication occurs when all the communication levels are fully addressed. In the case of retrieval of health information from the Web, although a generic search engine is able to work at…

A web search methodology for health consumers

Nowadays, many people use the World Wide Web to seek medical and health information but different users, such as providers (e.g., physicians) and consumers (e.g., patients), have different needs and bring different levels of reading ability and prior knowledge. Generic and specific search engines and specialized health sites either do not exploit the whole web or overload users with information. This creates difficulties mainly to consumers who often do not exactly know how to find the desired information. Thus, an information retrieval system for the web that 'drives' the user in finding the relevant information would be very beneficial. This paper describes a web search methodology for he…

On-Lab: A web environment for On-line Labs development

U-MedSearch: A Meta Search Engine of Medical Content for Different Users and Learning Needs

More and more people use Internet to look for medical information for understanding and learning but different users, such as experts (e.g., physicians) and consumers (e.g., patients), have different needs and bring different levels of reading ability and prior knowledge. Generic and specific search engines and specialized health sites either do not exploit the whole web or overload users with information of different nature. On the contrary, it is important for a user to immediately find the information on the topic being explored that has the 'right' amount of information and level of complexity. This paper presents a meta search engine of medical information on the web, U-MedSearch, that…

Improving Communication in Risk Management of Health Information Technology Systems by means of Medical Text Simplification

Health Information Technology Systems (HITS) are increasingly used to improve the quality of patient care while reducing costs. These systems have been developed in response to the changing models of care to an ongoing relationship between patient and care team, supported by the use of technology due to the increased instance of chronic disease. However, the use of HITS may increase the risk to patient safety and security. While standards can be used to address and manage these risks, significant communication problems exist between experts working in different departments. These departments operate in silos often leading to communication breakdowns. For example, risk management stakeholder…

User requirements and resource control for cooperative multimedia applications

The spread of distributed multimedia applications is setting forth a new set of challenges in the management of host and network resources for guaranteeing Quality of Service (QoS). When the multimedia applications compete for resources as in the case of a cooperative multimedia environment, the management task becomes even more difficult. In this work, we first discuss QoS for multimedia applications. We then present the architectural and implementation details of a Cooperative Multimedia Environment (CME) made up of Cooperative Multimedia Applications (COMMA), one for each user. A COMMA presents a user with a single interface that allows him to invite other users to a cooperative session,…