The MISCAN-COLON simulation model for the evaluation of colorectal cancer screening.

A general model for evaluation of colorectal cancer screening has been implemented in the microsimulation program MISCAN-COLON. A large number of fictitious individual life histories are simulated in each of which several colorectal lesions can emerge. Next, screening for colorectal cancer is simulated, which will change some of the life histories. The demographic characteristics, the epidemiology and natural history of the disease, and the characteristics of screening are defined in the input. All kinds of assumptions on the natural history of colorectal cancer and screening and surveillance strategies can easily be incorporated in the model. MISCAN-COLON gives detailed output of incidence, prevalence and mortality, and the results and effects of screening. It can be used to test hypotheses about the natural history of colorectal cancer, such as the duration of progressive adenomas, and screening characteristics, such as sensitivity of tests, against empirical data. In decision making about screening, the model can be used for evaluation of screening policies, and for choosing between competing policies by comparing their simulated incremental costs and effectiveness outcomes.     

Configuring policies in public health applications

Public health is a complex practice due to the requirements of different jurisdictions. These requirements present a challenging environment in which to develop public health applications; software must be flexible in order to adapt to the complexities of different jurisdictions. One approach is to integrate policy management. Policies that define the rules governing an application can be created, modified, or deleted based on the deployment of that application. This paper describes a software architecture and expert system implementation of a policy manager designed to address jurisdictional requirements in public health applications. We define our policy requirements and policy model, the components of the architecture, and how the architecture has been used to implement our policy manager. Finally, we present examples of how the policy manager has configured policies used in three public health applications.     

Adjusting context-aware RFID in health screening center

Fast growing demands of health screening services give not only the new business opportunities to health care organization, but also hyper competition in health screening services due to rapid market entrance. The health screening centers attempt to implement RFID technologies. To fulfill the expected effect, however, a properly designed workflow which is able to analyze information and to efficiently support a screening process, is required. This research developed an optimized workflow model that improves efficiency and effectiveness, by using real-time information from context-aware RFID. It is expected that health screening centers get benefits from implementing this workflow model designed for using context-aware RFID and smart-phone.     

Promoting occupational health in secondary schools through virtual patients

Adolescents with asthma or allergies do not consider their disease when making their career choice. Therefore the aim of this project was to sensitize secondary school students for occupational diseases before they start working.Four virtual patients for secondary school students were created. They present their experiences as apprentices. Occupational diseases as well as prevention methods are discussed. Evaluation and longterm knowledge was assessed. Furthermore, a webpage (http://www.volle-puste.de/en/) was created, where free access to the virtual patients can be ordered by teachers.Virtual patients are suitable for age 13-16. On a scale from 1 (very good) to 6 (insufficient) students rated the use of the virtual patients with an overall mean of 2.7 (Standard deviation: 1.15). Long-term gain in knowledge was shown.Using virtual patients in adolescents is useful to enhance knowledge about occupational risks. Whether this contributes to an informed job choice has to be shown in further studies.     

Promoting occupational health in secondary schools through virtual patients

Adolescents with asthma or allergies do not consider their disease when making their career choice. Therefore the aim of this project was to sensitize secondary school students for occupational diseases before they start working.     

Source does matter: Contextual effects on online media-embedded health campaigns against childhood obesity

Provocative messages targeting childhood obesity are a central means to increase problem awareness. But what happens when different online media platforms take up the campaign, comment, re-contextualize, and evaluate it? Relating to preliminary findings of persuasion research, we postulate that source credibility perceptions vary across types of online media platforms and contextualization of the message. Individual characteristics, in particular weight-related factors, are assumed to influence message effects. A 3 (media type: blog, online news, Facebook) × 2 (reinforcement versus impairment context) experimental design with students (N = 749) aged between 13 and 18 years was conducted. Results show an interaction between media type and argumentation for affective self-perceptions of weight. Self-relevance varies based on different source credibility perceptions. Overall, campaign re-contextualization of provocative messages may result in negative persuasion effects and needs to be considered in campaign development.     

Promoting employee health in smart office: A survey

The advancement of Internet-of-Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence contribute to the prevailing development of smart office, which is capable of understanding employees’ context and adapting to their demands. The smart office brings numerous opportunities for delivering prevention and control measures of health issues associated with office work (e.g., musculoskeletal disorders and computer vision syndrome). Even though there exist multiple studies across different disciplines, there still lacks a holistic survey on the smart office for employee health promotion. Hence, this paper focuses on three contributions: (1) clarifying the fundamentals of smart office, (2) reviewing the key aspects of this theme based on 60 studies selected from a systematic survey process, and (3) identifying the challenges and future research opportunities. We hope this study can bring an interdisciplinary and collaborative perspective for employee health promotion and encourage more researches in this emerging and promising field.     

Web GIS在公共卫生领域的研究与应用

公共卫生行业是一个面向公众的政府事业。为解决公共卫生安全监管行业中直观地表达数据的空间特性和提取信息之间的关联性等问题,借助地理信息系统（GIS）技术,利用它对空间位置属性显示和决策可视化的支持等特点采实施公共卫生安全监管系统,同时探讨了基于GIS的公共卫生安全监管系统的功能、设计思路及技术路线,给同类系统的开发提供了参考。     

Formal interaction specification in public health surveillance systems using pi-calculus

This paper provides formal specification of interactions in typical public health surveillance systems involving healthcare agencies at local, state and federal levels. Although few standards exist for exchange of healthcare information, there is a general lack of formal models of the protocols involved in the interactions between the agencies. The quality of medical care provided is an end result of a well designed choreography of diverse services provided by different healthcare entities. One of the major challenges in this field appears to be explicit formal specification of such interactions. Such formal specification work is the first step leading to both design and verification of important properties of public healthcare systems. pi-calculus is a formal modeling technique for precise specification of semantics in interacting concurrent systems where mobility is involved. Two different configurations of public health surveillance systems are modelled using pi-calculus in this paper.     

Quantitative mass spectrometry for colorectal cancer proteomics

This review documents the uses of quantitative MS applied to colorectal cancer (CRC) proteomics for biomarker discovery and molecular pathway profiling. Investigators are adopting various labeling and label-free MS approaches to quantitate differential protein levels in cells, tumors, and plasma/serum. We comprehensively review recent uses of this technology to examine mouse models of CRC, CRC cell lines, their secretomes and subcellular fractions, CRC tumors, CRC patient plasma/serum, and stool samples. For biomarker discovery these approaches are uncovering proteins with potential diagnostic and prognostic utility, while in vitro cell culture experiments are characterizing proteomic and phosphoproteomic responses to disrupted signaling pathways due to mutations or to inhibition of drugable enzymes.     

面向重大公共卫生风险治理的应急物流协同演化仿真

为提高重大公共卫生风险治理过程中的应急物流效率,在分析政府与物流企业行为特征的基础上,设计了面向重大公共卫生风险治理的高效应急物流协同机制.通过构建地方政府与物流企业的演化博弈模型,探究了地方政府监管和物流企业协同的演化规律与路径,然后利用数值仿真来验证所提模型的可行性和有效性.结果表明,与商业物流协同机制相比,面向重...     

Distributed information fusion models for regional public health surveillance

Biosurveillance systems designed and deployed in the United States and abroad to allow public health authorities to monitor the health of their communities have significant design limitations despite their wide usage. One limitation is the lack of algorithmic solutions to combine local data sources for regional situation awareness. The objective of the current study is to develop and demonstrate the value of automated information fusion methods applied to the distributed neighboring public health sites. A prototype system consisting of distributed Bayesian models was designed to enable informed regional and local cognitive decision support response. The Intelligent Decision Support Network (IDSN) is composed of Bayesian Information Fusion Models (BIFMs) that target a particular syndrome or disease type. Using local data from county health departments in Northern Virginia for the time period between August 2005 and May 2007, we estimated the probability of a gastrointestinal (GI) outbreak in two ways: First, based on data from the local hospitals only; and second, based on the relative probability of outbreak by combining local hospital data and probabilities of GI events from the neighboring counties’ BIFMs. Preliminary findings showed that the network of distributed models detected events that would be undetected without multi-jurisdictional data.     

Creation of environmental health information system for public health service: A pilot study

Despite more than a decade of research on medical information systems, deficiencies exist in our capability of establishing an effective environmental health information infrastructure. In this research, we present a pilot study on creating a feasible environmental health information infrastructure. The newly-developed environmental health information system is a web-based platform that integrates databases, decision-making tools, geographic information systems for supporting public health service and policy making. The study, which is a part of a comprehensive effort known as Environmental Public Health Tracking proposed by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, opens the door for future research on a large scale nation-wide healthcare information infrastructure.

Promoting cooperation by setting a ceiling payoff for defectors under three-strategy public good games

The puzzle of altruistic behaviours among multi-agent systems poses a dilemma, which has been an overlapping topic that covers many subjects. The public goods game can be regarded as a paradigm for modelling and exploring it. In the traditional definition of public goods game, the equally divided benefit among all participants leads to the dominance of defection. Much effort has been made to explain the evolution of cooperation, including the model in which the payoff ceilings for defectors are introduced. Further, we study a three-strategy evolutionary public goods game by providing the role of being loners. The payoff ceilings will take effect when the number of cooperators exceeds some threshold. Analysis results by following the replicator dynamics indicate that lower values of the payoff ceilings can better promote levels of public cooperation. Importantly, a remarkable cyclic route has been found: when receiving relative lower benefits, loners act as catalysts, helping the population to escape from mutual defection to cooperation. And, the stable equilibrium points from cooperation to isolation can be realised by improving the fixed payoffs of loners. Finally, broader ceilings also for cooperators provide us more hints about how to suppress the spreading of defectors under certain conditions.     

Working in public health services in Brazil: the relationship between different rationalities

Success in a public health system is related to its ability to change its production process and to deal with general principles of the health system, such as universality and equity. The frameworks proposed by service marketing scholars have been developed primarily for private services; they focus on acceptance by the targeted client-users, and on the technical specifications of the new service delivery processes. Little attention has been given to the employees’ point of view and their activities to maintain service operations modulated by innovation. In a public health system, workers make decisions in real time related to users’ needs and the technical specifications of the process; therefore, it is very important to understand how the changes impact on employees’ activities and on the quality delivered for citizens. This article discusses how changes implemented in Sao Paulo, Brazil impact the organizational parameters and working activities for front-line workers.     

突发公共卫生事件的应急响应服务系统的分析与设计

阐述了贵州省疾病控制和预防中心目前阶段的工作成绩和存在的问题。在此基础上,设计了基于传染病学时空传播模型的突发公共卫生事件的应急响应服务系统。系统通过以事件驱动的服务动态整合机制,联合调度分布式的多种信息资源,进行多部门协同办案,为公共安全应急管理体系的建设提供了良好的技术支撑。     

Student perspectives on mentoring in a science outreach project

Abstract

The focus of this paper is an examination of mentorship relationships developed as a result of six students’ participation in a local community science centre sponsored through an NSERC/CRYSTAL project. Each year, a number of students participate in after‐school activities sponsored by the community science centre. Much of this work involves a one‐to‐one approach, with a middle years or high school student working with a professor partner. The professor acts as a mentor to the student, facilitating learning in a manner not always feasible within a school setting with large class sizes. For some students this research may be the basis of a science fair project; for others if is simply a study based on individual interest. Mentored students were interviewed about the nature of that mentorship, with the goal of describing the experience from the students’ perspective. Questions focused on the student's experience of working with a mentor, including how the mentorship relationship was formed, what the importance of the voluntary nature of mentoring was, what the benefits and challenges of working with a mentor were, how the mentorship relationship affected the level of content knowledge the student gained, and what effect the mentoring relationship had on the student's continuing interest in science. The mentorship program offers students the opportunity to work within a developing community of practice.