Search results for "Health informatics"
showing 10 items of 481 documents
An emotion-based online intervention for reducing anxiety and depression in cancer patients: Study protocol for a randomized controlled trial
2021
Abstract Background A cancer diagnosis can cause severe emotional distress and affect quality of life as well as social relationships. The transition from inpatient to outpatient treatment is burdened by stressful uncertainties and a gap of psycho-oncological care. In addition, further barriers, such as information deficits or fear of stigmatization, might hinder cancer patients to use psycho-oncological face-to-face interventions. Online interventions can be a low-threshold adjunct to existing face-to-face services. This study aims to evaluate the effect of the online self-help program epos (emotion-based psycho-oncological online self-help) on improving symptoms of anxiety and depression …
COVID-19 Contact Tracing and Data Protection Can Go Together
2020
We discuss the implementation of app-based contact tracing to control the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic and discuss its data protection and user acceptability aspects.
Big data analytics in healthcare: a systematic literature review
2020
The current study performs a systematic literature review (SLR) to synthesise prior research on the applicability of big data analytics (BDA) in healthcare. The SLR examines the outcomes of 41 stu...
The European COVID-19 drugs calculation tool: an aid for the estimation of the drugs needed during the SARS-CoV 2 pandemic
2021
Objective To create an informatics supportive tool, which can assist healthcare professionals in estimating potential requirements for essential drug supplies to respond to the current SARS-CoV-2 pandemic based on epidemiological forecasting. Methods The tool was based on a Susceptible-Infected-Removed (SIR) epidemiological model in which the population is divided into three compartments and transmission parameters are specified to define the rate at which people move between stages. Appropriate data entry was guaranteed by the creation of structured guided paths. The drugs needed for the forecasted patients were estimated according to a list of critical care drugs compiled by consulting pr…
Efficacy of an internet-based psychological intervention for problem gambling and gambling disorder: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial
2021
Gambling Disorder is a prevalent non-substance use disorder, which contrasts with the low number of people requesting treatment. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) could help to enhance the dissemination of evidence-based treatments and considerably reduce the costs. The current study seeks to assess the efficacy of an online psychological intervention for people suffering from gambling problems in Spain. The proposed study will be a two-arm, parallel-group, randomized controlled trial. A total of 134 participants (problem and pathological gamblers) will be randomly allocated to a waiting list control group (N = 67) or an intervention group (N = 67). The intervention program i…
Accurate estimation of retinal vessel width using bagged decision trees and an extended multiresolution Hermite model.
2012
We present an algorithm estimating the width of retinal vessels in fundus camera images. The algorithm uses a novel parametric surface model of the cross-sectional intensities of vessels, and ensembles of bagged decision trees to estimate the local width from the parameters of the best-fit surface. We report comparative tests with REVIEW, currently the public database of reference for retinal width estimation, containing 16 images with 193 annotated vessel segments and 5066 profile points annotated manually by three independent experts. Comparative tests are reported also with our own set of 378 vessel widths selected sparsely in 38 images from the Tayside Scotland diabetic retinopathy scre…
Active learning strategies for the deduplication of electronic patient data using classification trees.
2012
Graphical abstractDisplay Omitted Highlights? Active learning for medical record linkage is used on a large data set. ? We compare a simple active learning strategy with a more sophisticated variant. ? The active learning method of Sarawagi and Bhamidipaty (2002) 6] is extended. ? We deliver insights into the variations of the results due to random sampling in the active learning strategies. IntroductionSupervised record linkage methods often require a clerical review to gain informative training data. Active learning means to actively prompt the user to label data with special characteristics in order to minimise the review costs. We conducted an empirical evaluation to investigate whether…
Applying RUG-III for reimbursement of nursing facility care
2006
The Resource Utilization Groups (RUG-III) case-mix classification is becoming an internationally accepted methodology for determining payment for nursing facility and care. In this paper we discuss the key concepts of case-mix reimbursement and several different payment approaches based on RUG-III. In discussing the empirical evidence of case-mix reimbursement, we draw especially on the US experience. Clearly, the success of case-mix reimbursement depends not only on the payment design, but also on the ability to foresee market conditions and the regulatory environment in which the payment system is being implemented. Moreover, we demonstrate the need to develop a case-mix based reimburseme…
Adaptive scheduling of acceleration and gyroscope for motion artifact cancelation in photoplethysmography
2022
Background and objective: Recently, various algorithms have been introduced using wrist-worn photo-plethysmography (PPG) to provide high accuracy of instantaneous heart rate (HR) estimation, including during high-intensity exercise. Most studies focus on using acceleration and/or gyroscope signals for the motion artifact (MA) reference, which attenuates or cancels out noise from the MA-corrupted PPG signals. We aim to open and pave the path to find an appropriate MA reference selection for MA cancelation in PPG.Methods: We investigated how the acceleration and gyroscope reference signals correlate with the MAs of the distorted PPG signals and derived both mathematically and experimentally a…
Training Cognitive Functions Using Mobile Apps in Breast Cancer Patients: Systematic Review
2019
Background: Breast cancer is an invalidating disease and its treatment can bring serious side effects that have a physical and psychological impact. Specifically, cancer treatment generally has a strong impact on cognitive function. In recent years, new technologies and eHealth have had a growing influence on health care and innovative mobile apps can be useful tools to deliver cognitive exercise in the patient’s home. Objective: This systematic review gives an overview of the state-of-the-art mobile apps aimed at training cognitive functions to better understand whether these apps could be useful tools to counteract cognitive impairment in breast cancer patients. Methods: We searched in a …