A computer-based reporting system in radiology of the chest

The aim of this study was to compare our computer-aided report writing system to standard techniques. A computer-aided reporting system for reporting on chest X-rays was developed and linked with a UNIX-based radiology information system. The reporting system consists of different text modules which can be composed to a complete radiological report. The quality of the report, the system's efficiency, flexibility and availability at the radiology information system (RIS), as well as its acceptance by the users, were criteria we took as a basis of evaluation. Acceptance and flexibility of the system were tested by assessing necessary changes and additions performed to text modules and by subjective evaluation. The time spent on working with the reporting system was evaluated by performing a time-analysis study comparing the new system to the two conventional methods, the tape system and handwriting. On average, the readers needed 22.6 text modules for each report. For the users the most important advantages of the new system are that primarily fewer changes to or additions to the text are necessary, and when they cannot be avoided they can be performed more easily. In comparison with the tape system and handwritten reports, it took on average two and a half to three times longer to report on a chest X-ray. The printed report had left the department within 6.4 h using the tape system within 0.4 h when handwritten and within 1.4 h when recorded by the reporting system. The completeness of the set of modules and the logical order were positively assessed by the users. The demand of time for reporting increases, but the final report is available sooner.     

Management of radiologic archive in a diagnostic imaging department

One of the major and demanding problems in the management of a modern department of Radiology is undoubtedly the organization of a radiologic archive. Its management has been increasingly difficult in last years both for the increase in procedures and the number of radiologic exams. At the Radiology department of UCSC, since some years, this problem has been tackled. Major objectives have been identified in focusing on responsibilities, global management and planning of radiologic film retrieval and archiving integrated with health care activities (scheduling of admissions and exam appointments, reporting, discharge). Based on these assumptions, the archive has been divided into 3 sections, each dynamically integrated with the others. The 3 archives should be integrated with RIS and supported by information technology. RIS is considered the starting point of the process. In fact the system ensures communication to the archiving workstation and to the radiology room of patient admission and consequent execution of the exam which involves image production. This user-friendly procedure enables consistent information between RIS and archiving system and correct association of images to the patient medical report, for subsequent consultation.     

Cognizance of Visual Design Management in Life-Cycle Project Management

This paper presents a unique approach to information management within a life-cycle project management model. Focus is shifted from the delivery of the physical facility to the creation of a business to service the project objectives employing concurrent engineering∕construction approaches. Typical life-cycle objectives are life-cycle cost and net worth, or cost/worth ratio. The definition and broad design of the facility and its components will be a collective responsibility, discharged by composite teams whose members are drawn from the respective participants. Their inputs are evaluated in real time against the above objectives. The traditional responsibility for detailing and conformity to the relevant codes and standards will still reside with the relevant design professionals. This paper introduces a visual design management system that has been developed to reflect the fundamentals of information and design management within the life-cycle project management paradigm.     

The (un)reasonableness of reporting: Antecedents and consequences of reporting sexual harassment.

This study places the reporting of sexual harassment within an integrated model of the sexual harassment process. Two structural models were developed and tested in a sample (N=6,417) of male and female military personnel. The 1st model identifies determinants and effects of reporting; reporting did not improve--and at times worsened--job, psychological, and health outcomes. The authors argue that organizational responses to reports (i.e., organizational remedies, organizational minimization, and retaliation) as well as procedural satisfaction can account for these negative effects. The 2nd model examines these mediating mechanisms; results suggest that these mediators, and not reporting itself, are the source of the negative effects of reporting. Organizational and legal implications of these findings are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Motor skill: Feedback, knowledge, and structural issues.

Discusses feedback processing of and structural constraints on movement. From a review of the relevant research, it is argued that the time to process feedback has been generally overestimated for aiming movements of the hand and that visual information about the target and especially the hand is important, as is the rapid processing of kinesthetic feedback. It is proposed that skilled aiming movement is a product of tightly coupled efferent and afferent information within a sensorimotor system comprising the eyes, head, and hand. In consideration of the relationship between knowledge and movement, a review of the research suggests that production systems for motor skill should include constraints of musculoskeletal and neural structures as well as constraints of structure in environmental information. It is concluded that accounts of motor skills might profitably include movement dynamics (in physical terms), the skill-specific knowledge base through which objectives are defined, and the biological apparatus for realizing those objectives. (French abstract) (3? p ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Glycocoding as an information management system in embryonic development

The past 5 years have seen a burgeoning in the amount of data emerging from laboratories studying the early stages of embryogenesis. Much of this data implicates various aspects of glycobiology in the initiation and regulation of these processes. The level of analytical detail coming from these investigations has surpassed our ability to fully understand its overall significance within the context of the interactive/dynamic developmental process. This review proposes a pause in this seemingly endless quest for more detail so that we may take stock of our goals and objectives. The proposed goals include a mechanistic understanding of the process(es) involved in information managed at various 'transition points' during early embryogenesis, and an understanding of the mechanism(s) by which the spatial/temporal regulation of early development are managed. The 'transitions' which occur during cell to cell cluster, cell cluster to early organ architecture, and early organ architecture to functional organ development are fundamental and mirror the evolutionary process of biological information management. All of these 'transitions' involve increasing complexity, the development of hierarchies of information management systems (integrated bidirectionally), and spatial/temporal regulation which relies on historical events to map future structure and function. This review focuses on a relatively small number of studies which highlight these aspects of early development. A mechanism which involves glycocoding, an extension of the Roseman Hypothesis, and its direct use as an information management system is proposed and some supporting experimental evidence is presented. This extension of an existing hypothesis is related to several recent investigations, and is designed to broaden the experimental design of future studies so that these important process issues can be addressed.     

Finding Optimal Bus Service Routes: Internet-Based Methodology to Serve Transit Patrons

Internet-based transportation systems are becoming widespread due to advances in Internet, computing, and geospatial information system (GIS) technologies. An internet-based methodology that allows public transportation users to find routes and buses between pairs of origin and destination addresses is discussed in this paper. The methodology is considered as a framework where several different transportation-related objectives can be met. Of these objectives, finding the sequence of bus routes with a minimum number of bus-to-bus transfers between any two entered addresses is focused in the work presented in this paper. With the proposed methodology, users are provided with information on the bus routes (bus numbers) they should take and locations where they should get on and off the bus including all bus-to-bus transfer points. The methodology is intended to be easily accessible and available through standard Web browsers on the client machine and be interoperable with respect to data and software facilitating integration to other data and software. To demonstrate some of the features and capabilities of the methodology, a prototype of the methodology, called iBus, is also discussed.     

Issues of quality and practicability in task analysis: preliminary results from two surveys

Surveys of task analysis studies in two different industrial sectors within the UK, defence and nuclear power, have shown that there can be wide variability between them, both in terms of level of reporting and the depth of analysis. Particularly prevalent shortcomings were that data sources and methods were often either not specified or were described in insufficient detail. Thus users of the information could be asked to accept potentially costly design recommendations with little indication of the strength of the evidence, or of the effects of taking no action. Some tentative conclusions are drawn about the use of specific task analysis techniques but, while these are useful pointers, more evidence is required. Therefore, further study of task analysis techniques is needed in order to provide analysts with better guidance regarding the selection and use of task analysis methods and the reporting of task analysis findings.     

Liability issues in child abuse and neglect reporting statutes.

For nearly 30 years, psychologists have relied almost exclusively on child abuse and neglect reporting statutes to understand the legal duty to report child maltreatment. Although these statutes go far in delineating the contours of reporting requirements, mandated reporters may further their understandings of their duties through knowledge of judicial interpretation of these statutes. Accordingly, this article reviews the liability provisions found in the 50 states' child abuse and neglect reporting statutes and summarizes relevant court findings. Courts seem motivated by 2 key considerations, namely, that statutes should be interpreted broadly and that states' interests in such reporting is compelling. These opinions offer practical guidance as well as information relevant to the debate on how these reporting statutes should be reformed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The impact of same-day tests versus traditional overnight testing

Within the last decade, major technologic advances have been made in clinical microbiology that have resulted in the availability of a wide variety of different methods for the rapid reporting of test results. Included among these technologies are rapid methods for producing antimicrobial susceptibility reports that many regard as the most important information generated by the microbiology laboratory. Ideally, the early availability of this important information should favorably affect patient care by enabling the more judicious use of alternative drug therapies that are equally efficacious yet less toxic and less costly to the patient. Clinicians appear to have been reluctant to modify initial empiric therapies, however, despite the availability of the rapid antimicrobial susceptibility report. This article addresses some of the issues responsible for this long-standing problem and discusses and explores various strategies that can be implemented for improving the use and for controlling the cost of antimicrobial agents within the hospital.     

The multimedia workstation, electronic assistant to the health care professional

The health professional multimedia workstation is the natural entry point to health and knowledge networks. It should allow an easy and transparent management of all the data necessary for patient management. Multimedia nature of processed information reflects evolution of medical techniques that involve more and more complex objects such as video sequences or digitized signals. Workstations can be considered from 3 points of view: the professional end-users, the developers and the decision makers. The long term goal for the end-user is to establish an easy access in a working environment, that gives him/her the feeling of a single comprehensive application running on a single computer when the information system relies on a set of heterogeneous and geographically distributed components. Development of a workstation requires the integration into the same environment of tools to localize, access, manipulate and communicate the required information within a health information network. Analysis of the 445 Medline-indexed publications for the January 1991 to December 1994 period, that included the word workstation either in their title or in their abstract, helps in refining objectives and challenges both for the health professionals and the decision makers.     

Reporting results of latent growth modeling and multilevel modeling analyses: Some recommendations for rehabilitation psychology.

Objective: There has been a general increase in interest and use of modeling techniques that treat data as nested, whether it is people nested within larger units, such as families or treatment centers, or observations nested under people. The popularity can be witnessed by noting the number of new textbooks and articles related to latent growth curve modeling and multilevel modeling. This paper discusses both of these techniques in the context of longitudinal research designs, with the main purposes of highlighting some benefits and issues related to the use of these models and outlining guidelines for reporting results from studies using multilevel modeling or latent growth modeling. Implications: These longitudinal analytic techniques can be greatly beneficial to researchers conducting rehabilitation studies, but there are several issues related to their use and reporting that need to be taken into consideration. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Emerging Tools to Enable Construction Engineering

Those working within the domain of construction engineering—the planning and management of the construction of infrastructure assets—today employ a wide range of information technology tools. The vast majority of these tools are used on desktop computers processing tabular information associated with scheduling, tracking, updating statuses, reporting, and similar tasks. In spite of the significant penetration of information technology into construction engineering, there is little direct reuse of the engineering information created during the design phase. Likewise, access to rich engineering information and applications to exploit this information have yet to be extended to mobile workers on the construction jobsite in any significant way. This paper explores a sampling of some of the emerging information technology tools that may be effectively applied to support construction engineering in the field.     

Hyperemesis gravidarum

Exposure assessment of population groups is based on linkage of environmental and health data. This relationship can be hard to establish due to spatial and temporal lags in data sets. Environmental data generally refer to scattered sampling points, while epidemiological data integrate periods of time within administrative territories. GIS can be used as a basis for organizing health-related and environmental data sets. We examined potential health risk in the Rio de Janeiro city water supply based on the overlay of information layers containing data on the presence and quality of water supply services. We used census tracts as the primary georeferenced data, since they contain information on how households are supplied, water supply pipes, sources, and reservoirs, and water quality according to the monitoring program. Population groups exposed to risks were located and quantified using spatial operations among these layers and adopting different risk criteria. The main problems related to water supply are located on the northern slope of the Tijuca Mountain Range (involving the absence or poor quality of water) and in the western area of the city of Rio, where the population relies on alternative water supply sources. The different origins, objectives, and structures of data have to be analyzed critically, and GIS can be used as a data validation tool as well as an instrument for detailed identification of inconsistencies.     

Capturing Knowledge in Construction Projects: Knowledge Platform for Contractors

Managing knowledge effectively is critical to the survival and advance of a company, especially in project-based industries such as construction. However, capturing knowledge in construction projects is a tedious task, as knowledge is usually experience based, tacit, and hard to pass on to others. In this study, a survey was carried out among eight leading Turkish construction contractors that are operating within the international construction market. The specific objectives of this survey are to find out how the tacit and explicit knowledge are captured, stored, shared, and used in forthcoming projects, as well as major drivers and barriers for knowledge management. Based on the survey, it was determined that most of these firms do not have a knowledge management strategy and a systematic way of capturing and storing tacit knowledge. A conceptual framework is proposed to formalize the knowledge-capturing process within construction companies. To demonstrate how the conceptual framework can be implemented in practice, a Web-based system, namely, Knowledge Platform for Contractors (KPfC) is presented. It is hypothesized that KPfC can be used to manage both tacit and explicit knowledge effectively in construction projects.     

Optimal Siting of Fire Stations Using GIS and ANT Algorithm

Safety and emergency response are being given greater importance while planning infrastructure and transportation projects. This is particularly so, when transporting hazardous materials (HAZMAT) within a heavily urbanized area such as Singapore. The number and location of fire stations significantly influence the efficiency of emergency response during fire accidents. This paper presents an approach to suitably situating new fire stations, considering multiple objectives, using geographic information systems (GIS) and ANT, a novel Ant algorithm. The efficiency of the current fire station locations in covering HAZMAT transport routes is studied using a GIS. The ANT algorithm is implemented within a GIS environment to locate the additional fire stations so as to reduce the response time to an accident occurring on HAZMAT transport routes from 8?to?5?min. Other considerations include incorporating proper distance among fire stations and maximizing the area that can be served by these fire stations in 6?min. Computational experiments reveal that the proposed algorithm performs stably under different parameter settings and outperforms the conventional genetic algorithm. Furthermore, the integration of GIS with ANT offers enhanced spatial analytical capabilities, and our approach can be employed to solve further intricate optimization problems in transportation and infrastructure.     

Galactorrhea and gynecomastia as side effect of drugs

Galactorrhoea or gynaecomastia are common and innocent phenomena, especially in certain age groups. Sometimes, however, they are secondary to serious diseases such as hormone producing tumours. Furthermore, a wide variety of drugs may in different ways induce galactorrhoea or gynaecomastia. A good knowledge of these drugs may prevent unnecessary anxiety and investigations. In spite of an abundance of often anecdotal reports scattered in the literature, little information is available on the identity of the most important drugs causing galactorrhoea or gynaecomastia in medical practice. The country-wide network of regional centres for intensified adverse drug reactions reporting of the Netherlands Pharmacovigilance Foundation LAREB can provide useful information on these and other side effects.     

Computer Imagery and Visualization in Civil Engineering Education

Higher education institutions in the United Kingdom have invested significantly in the implementation of communication and information technology in teaching, learning, and assessment of civil and building engineering—with mixed results. This paper focuses on the use of digital imagery and visualization materials to improve student understanding. It describes ways in which these materials are being used in the civil and building engineering curriculum, and, in particular, how distributed performance support systems (DPSS) can be applied to make more effective use of digital imagery and visualization material. This paper centers on the extent to which DPSS can be used in a civil and building vocational and continuing professional development context by tutors in the form of an electronic course delivery tool and by students in the form of an open-access student information system. This paper then describes how a DPSS approach to education is being adopted at Loughborough University as part of the CAL-Visual project. After highlighting the main aims and objectives of the project and describing the system, this paper discusses some of the issues encountered during the design and implementation of a DPSS and presents some preliminary results from initial trials.     

危化品行业安全标准化管理信息系统的初探

通过分析危化品安全标准化管理系统的10个要素,确定管理信息系统的主要目标及使用的关键技术特点,建立了危化品安全标准化管理信息系统的10个功能模块。将危化品安全标准化管理设定的各类安全信息及安全管理内容融入到信息系统管理之中,实现了对安全管理过程中大量积累数据的分析和处理,实时动态地展示工艺、环境、设备、安全、管理状况和员工的危险行为。