Studies in health technology and informatics
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Non-contact measurements of cardiac pulse can provide robust measurement of heart rate (HR) without the annoyance of attaching electrodes to the body. In this paper we explore a novel and reliable method to carry out video-based HR estimation and propose various performance improvement over existing approaches. The investigated method uses Independent Component Analysis (ICA) to detect the underlying HR signal from a mixed source signal present in the RGB channels of the image. ⋯ We found that some of these methods are quite effective and efficient in terms of improving accuracy and latency of the system. We have made the code of our algorithms openly available to the scientific community so that other researchers can explore how to integrate video-based HR monitoring in novel health technology applications. We conclude by noting that recent advances in video-based HR monitoring permit computers to be aware of a user's psychophysiological status in real time.
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2015
Making an APPropriate Care Program for Indigenous Cardiac Disease: Customization of an Existing Cardiac Rehabilitation Program.
Cardiovascular disease is a major health problem for all Australians and is the leading cause of death in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. In 2010, more then 50% of all heart attack deaths were due to repeated events. Cardiac rehabilitation programs have been proven to be effective in preventing the recurrence of cardiac events and readmission to hospitals. ⋯ To address these barriers, CSIRO developed an IT enabled cardiac rehabilitation program delivered by mobile phone through a smartphone app and succesfully trialed it in an urban general population. If these results can be replicated in Indigenous populations, the program has the potential to significantly improve life expectancy and help close the gap in health outcomes. The challenge described in this paper is customizing the existing cardiac health program to make it culturally relevant and suitable for Indigenous Australians living in urban and remote communities.
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2015
Development and evaluation of task-specific NLP framework in China.
Natural language processing (NLP) has been designed to convert narrative text into structured data. Although some general NLP architectures have been developed, a task-specific NLP framework to facilitate the effective use of data is still a challenge in lexical resource limited regions, such as China. ⋯ In this framework, a shared and evolving ontology mechanism was designed. The result has shown that such a free text driven platform will accelerate the NLP technology acceptance in China.
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2015
High Override Rate for Opioid Drug-allergy Interaction Alerts: Current Trends and Recommendations for Future.
This study examined trends in drug-allergy interaction (DAI) alert overrides for opioid medications - the most commonly triggered alerts in the computerized provider order entry (CPOE). We conducted an observational analysis of the DAI opioid alerts triggered over the last decade (2004-2013, n=342,338) in two large academic hospitals in Boston (United States). We found an increasing rate of DAI alert overrides culminating in 89.7% in 2013. ⋯ About one-third of the alert override reasons pointed to irrelevant alerts (i.e."Patient has tolerated the medication before") and 44.9% were unknown. Those findings warrant further investigation into providers' reasons for high override rate. User interfaces should evolve to enable less interruptive and more accurate alerts to decrease alert fatigue.
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jan 2015
Supporting prolonged COPD monitoring using an application for mobile devices.
COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) is the most frequent form of chronic respiratory disease. During the progress of this disease, phases of aggravation of pulmonary function (exacerbations) can occur, which reduce the quality of life. Clinical experience shows that single investigations are insufficient. ⋯ A connection to a Hospital Information System will be possible through an included Health Level 7 interface. This offers an improved site-independent patient care. The project is planned to be in development until 2016.