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.     

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 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.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

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。     

Telehealth and the global health network in the 21st century. From homecare to public health informatics

The Information Era we live in has created new challenges and opportunities. This age of information highways has an economic price, which has not been properly evaluated. Detailed studies are needed to prove the cost and medical effectiveness of these technologies as well as its effects in the quality of life. Our society's future may depend on it. People are living longer, discoveries in genetics and in information technology are not only helping produce newer drugs faster but also providing the opportunity to exploit new areas such as disease prevention. These technologies provide a variety of opportunities to address public health challenges such as universal access for the uneducated, counter-bioterrorism, telemedicine, distance education, and home care. These opportunities present new challenges such as: surveillance, privacy/confidentiality/security of personal information which will affect all of our lives. No strategy has been presented publicly (yet) addressing (neither) the benefits (n)or the pitfalls of such technologies. From an economic point of view it is an imperative necessity to understand the importance of the Information Technology Infrastructure (ITI) and what it is. The investments in creating and maintaining this ITI will not come from a single application area such as healthcare, but rather from a combination of sources such as electronic commerce, banking, financial, manufacturing, entertainment, travelling, weather forecasting, pharmaceuticals, education, defence and many other 'industries' or application areas.     

基于Web GIS的公共卫生监管系统的研究与应用

公共卫生是面向公众的特殊行业,其职责范围广泛。在公共卫生安全监管系统的开发中,需要从数据中提取出更直观和多角度的信息,为此引入地理信息系统(Geographic Information System,GIS)技术,借助GIS对信息显示的多样性和决策可视化的支持,并结合了组件技术与分布式技术。文章探讨了基于GIS的公共卫生安全监管系统的功能、设计思路及其开发的技术路线。     

基于数据仓库的突发公共卫生事件预警预报系统

预防和控制突发公共卫生事件关键是及时发现突发事件的先兆,实现预警.我国预警机制建设已有了初步进展,如基本做到了网络直报等,但仍存在认识不到位、预警指标体系和网络不健全,监测报告系统反应速度慢等问题.为此,提出了一种新的突发公共卫生事件预警预报方法,该方法将气象因素用于预警预报,挖掘出气象因素和疾病爆发的关系并据此实现预警预报.重点设计了突发公共卫生事件教据仓库,并选择决策树算法进行数据挖掘,设计并实现了突发公共卫生事件预警预报系统,该系统预警效果良好,其对于完善突发公共卫生事件早期预警体系有重要价值.     

Gland segmentation in colorectal cancer histopathological images using U-net inspired convolutional network

Neural Computing and Applications - The accurate gland segmentation from digitized H&E (hematoxylin and eosin) histology images with a wide range of histologic grades of cancer is quite...     

Competitive strategies of U.S. Presidential candidates in election campaigns

The structure of the Electoral College based U.S. Presidential elections system suggests a certain approach to choosing campaign strategies by U.S. Presidential candidates, and problems associated with finding competitive strategies of the candidates are considered. Most of the problems are formulated as discrete mathematical programming ones or as those with mixed variables, whereas some of the problems are formulated as game ones. Approaches to solving all the considered problems with the use of both widely available and experimental software are proposed.     

Evaluating the accessibility of public health websites: An exploratory cross-country study

Universal Access in the Information Society - Public health websites are regarded as official references that citizens of any country rely on for domestic and individual health affairs. For people...     

Probabilistic flooding in stochastic networks: Analysis of global information outreach

This article investigates probabilistic information dissemination in stochastic networks. The following problem is studied: A source node intends to deliver a message to all other network nodes using probabilistic flooding, i.e., each node forwards a received message to all its neighbors with a common network-wide forwarding probability ω. Question is: what is the minimum ω-value each node should use, such that the flooded message is obtained by all nodes with high probability? We first present a generic approach to derive the global outreach probability in arbitrary networks and then focus on Erd?s Rényi graphs (ERGs) and random geometric graphs (RGGs). For ERGs we derive an exact expression. For RGGs we derive an asymptotic expression that represents an approximation for networks with high node density. Both reliable and unreliable links are studied.