Description:
Culturally, philosophically and religiously diverse medical systems including Western medicine, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Ayurvedic Medicine and Homeopathic Medicine, once situated in places and times relatively unconnected from each other, currently co-exist to a point where patients must choose which system to consult. These decisions require comparative analyses, yet the divergence in key underpinning assumptions is so great that comparisons cannot easily be made. However, diverse medical systems can be meaningfully juxtaposed for the purpose of making practical decisions if relevant information is presented appropriately. Information regarding privacy provisions inherent in the typical practice of each medical system is an important element in this juxtaposition. In this paper the information needs of patients making decisions regarding the selection of a medical system, are examined.
Description:
Clinical decision-support is gaining widespread attention as medical institutions and governing bodies turn towards utilising better information management for effective and efficient healthcare delivery and quality assured outcomes. Amass of data across all stages, from disease diagnosis to palliative care, is further indication of the opportunities and challenges created for effective data management, analysis, prediction and optimization techniques as parts of knowledge management in clinical environments. A Data-driven Decision Guidance Management System (DD-DGMS) architecture can encompass solutions into a single closed-loop integrated platform to empower clinical scientists to seamlessly explore a multivariate data space in search of novel patterns and correlations to inform their research and practice. The paper describes the components of such an architecture, which includes a robust data warehouse as an infrastructure for comprehensive clinical knowledge management. The proposed DD-DGMS architecture incorporates the dynamic dimensional data model as its elemental core. Given the heterogeneous nature of clinical contexts and corresponding data, the dimensional data model presents itself as an adaptive model that facilitates knowledge discovery, distribution and application, which is essential for clinical decision support. The paper reports on a trial of the DD-DGMS system prototype conducted on diabetes screening data which further establishes the relevance of the proposed architecture to a clinical context.
Description:
Clinical decision-support is gaining widespread attention as medical institutions and governing bodies turn towards utilising better information management for effective and efficient healthcare delivery and quality assured outcomes. Amass of data across all stages, from disease diagnosis to palliative care, is further indication of the opportunities and challenges created for effective data management, analysis, prediction and optimization techniques as parts of knowledge management in clinical environments. A Data-driven Decision Guidance Management System (DD-DGMS) architecture can encompass solutions into a single closed-loop integrated platform to empower clinical scientists to seamlessly explore a multivariate data space in search of novel patterns and correlations to inform their research and practice. The paper describes the components of such an architecture, which includes a robust data warehouse as an infrastructure for comprehensive clinical knowledge management. The proposed DD-DGMS architecture incorporates the dynamic dimensional data model as its elemental core. Given the heterogeneous nature of clinical contexts and corresponding data, the dimensional data model presents itself as an adaptive model that facilitates knowledge discovery, distribution and application, which is essential for clinical decision support. The paper reports on a trial of the DD-DGMS system prototype conducted on diabetes screening data which further establishes the relevance of the proposed architecture to a clinical context.
Description:
A useful patient admission prediction model that helps the emergency department of a hospital admit patients efficiently is of great importance. It not only improves the care quality provided by the emergency department but also reduces waiting time of patients. This paper proposes an automatic prediction method for patient admission based on a fuzzy min–max neural network (FMM) with rules extraction. The FMM neural network forms a set of hyperboxes by learning through data samples, and the learned knowledge is used for prediction. In addition to providing predictions, decision rules are extracted from the FMM hyperboxes to provide an explanation for each prediction. In order to simplify the structure of FMM and the decision rules, an optimization method that simultaneously maximizes prediction accuracy and minimizes the number of FMM hyperboxes is proposed. Specifically, a genetic algorithm is formulated to find the optimal configuration of the decision rules. The experimental results using a large data set consisting of 450740 real patient records reveal that the proposed method achieves comparable or even better prediction accuracy than state-of-the-art classifiers with the additional ability to extract a set of explanatory rules to justify its predictions.
Description:
This article is devoted to an empirical investigation of performance of several new large multi-tier ensembles for the detection of cardiac autonomic neuropathy (CAN) in diabetes patients using sub-sets of the Ewing features. We used new data collected by the diabetes screening research initiative (DiScRi) project, which is more than ten times larger than the data set originally used by Ewing in the investigation of CAN. The results show that new multi-tier ensembles achieved better performance compared with the outcomes published in the literature previously. The best accuracy 97.74% of the detection of CAN has been achieved by the novel multi-tier combination of AdaBoost and Bagging, where AdaBoost is used at the top tier and Bagging is used at the middle tier, for the set consisting of the following four Ewing features: the deep breathing heart rate change, the Valsalva manoeuvre heart rate change, the hand grip blood pressure change and the lying to standing blood pressure change.
Description:
This article is devoted to an empirical investigation of performance of several new large multi-tier ensembles for the detection of cardiac autonomic neuropathy (CAN) in diabetes patients using sub-sets of the Ewing features. We used new data collected by the diabetes screening research initiative (DiScRi) project, which is more than ten times larger than the data set originally used by Ewing in the investigation of CAN. The results show that new multi-tier ensembles achieved better performance compared with the outcomes published in the literature previously. The best accuracy 97.74% of the detection of CAN has been achieved by the novel multi-tier combination of AdaBoost and Bagging, where AdaBoost is used at the top tier and Bagging is used at the middle tier, for the set consisting of the following four Ewing features: the deep breathing heart rate change, the Valsalva manoeuvre heart rate change, the hand grip blood pressure change and the lying to standing blood pressure change.
Description:
There are many different approaches for settling disputes on-line, such as simple email systems, fixed bid systems and intelligent systems. However, to date there have been no attempts to integrate decision support methods into the dispute resolution process for the purpose of supporting outcomes that are consistent with judicial reasoning. This paper describes how a model of judicial reasoning can be used to assist divorcees with the resolution of property issues online, in a manner that is consistent with decisions a judge would make if the matter was heard in Court. The approach uses an argument based model of the discretionary nature of decisions made by judges in Australian Family Law. This is integrated with a protocol for online dispute dialogue. Predictions of the likelihood of alternates outcomes is achieved with a series of Bayesian Belief Networks
Description:
There are many different approaches for settling disputes on-line, such as simple email systems, fixed bid systems and intelligent systems. However, to date there have been no attempts to integrate decision support methods into the dispute resolution process for the purpose of supporting outcomes that are consistent with judicial reasoning. This paper describes how a model of judicial reasoning can be used to assist divorcees with the resolution of property issues online, in a manner that is consistent with decisions a judge would make if the matter was heard in Court. The approach uses an argument based model of the discretionary nature of decisions made by judges in Australian Family Law. This is integrated with a protocol for online dispute dialogue. Predictions of the likelihood of alternates outcomes is achieved with a series of Bayesian Belief Networks
Description:
Cardiac complications of diabetes require continuous monitoring since they may lead to increased morbidity or sudden death of patients. In order to monitor clinical complications of diabetes using wearable sensors, a small set of features have to be identified and effective algorithms for their processing need to be investigated. This article focuses on detecting and monitoring cardiac autonomic neuropathy (CAN) in diabetes patients. The authors investigate and compare the effectiveness of classifiers based on the following decision trees: ADTree, J48, NBTree, RandomTree, REPTree, and SimpleCart. The authors perform a thorough study comparing these decision trees as well as several decision tree ensembles created by applying the following ensemble methods: AdaBoost, Bagging, Dagging, Decorate, Grading, MultiBoost, Stacking, and two multi-level combinations of AdaBoost and MultiBoost with Bagging for the processing of data from diabetes patients for pervasive health monitoring of CAN. This paper concentrates on the particular task of applying decision tree ensembles for the detection and monitoring of cardiac autonomic neuropathy using these features. Experimental outcomes presented here show that the authors' application of the decision tree ensembles for the detection and monitoring of CAN in diabetes patients achieved better performance parameters compared with the results obtained previously in the literature.
Description:
Recently, we have been witnessing an exponential growth in mobile health (mHealth) for health care. These solutions are all designed ultimate to enable the consumer to enjoy better health-care delivery and/or wellness. In order to understand this growing area, we believe it is necessary to develop a framework to analyse and evaluate these solutions. The purpose of this chapter is to proffer a suitable taxonomy to do this.
Description:
Technology currently encourages the capture and storage of vast quantities of data and information and so thinkers, reasoners, and decision-makers have available large resources to support their tasks. At the same time, there is a need to engage with an enormous range of complex issues that require reasoning and decisions that are actionable to address them. Approaches for Community Decision Making and Collective Reasoning: Knowledge Technology Support acts to provide knowledge for each individual in a group with the broad structural wealth of reasoning. It also acts as an explicit structure that technological devices for supporting reasoning within a group can hook onto. If you are interested in how groups can structure their activities towards making better decisions or in developing technologies for the support of decision-making in groups, then this book is an excellent way to understand the state of the art and possible ways forward.
Description:
Patients in many nations increasingly access diverse medical systems including Western medicine, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Homeopathy and Ayervedic medicine as globalisation advances. The trend toward co-existence of medical systems presents challenges for health informatics including the need to develop standards that can encompass the diversity required, the need to develop software applications that effectively inter-operate across diverse systems and the need to support patients when evaluating competing systems. This article advances the notion that the challenges can most effectively be met with the development of informatics approaches that do not assume the superiority of one medical system over another. Argument visualization to support patient decision making in selecting an appropriate medical system is presented as an application that exemplifies this stance
Description:
Patients in many nations increasingly access diverse medical systems including Western medicine, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Homeopathy and Ayervedic medicine as globalisation advances. The trend toward co-existence of medical systems presents challenges for health informatics including the need to develop standards that can encompass the diversity required, the need to develop software applications that effectively inter-operate across diverse systems and the need to support patients when evaluating competing systems. This article advances the notion that the challenges can most effectively be met with the development of informatics approaches that do not assume the superiority of one medical system over another. Argument visualization to support patient decision making in selecting an appropriate medical system is presented as an application that exemplifies this stance
Description:
The information age has enabled unprecedented levels of data to be collected and stored. At the same time, society and organizations have become increasingly complex. Consequently, decisions in many facets have become increasingly complex but have the potential to be better informed. Technologies for Supporting Reasoning Communities and Collaborative Decision Making: Cooperative Approaches includes chapters from diverse fields of enquiry including decision science, political science, argumentation, knowledge management, cognitive psychology and business intelligence. Each chapter illustrates a perspective on group reasoning that ultimately aims to lead to a greater understanding of reasoning communities and inform technological developments.
Description:
Abstract: - In time-critical and data intensive applications, efficient acquisition of sensitive datasets is a challenge because of network congestion, void regions and node failures that commonly occur in wireless sensor networks (WSN), while monitoring the wellbeing of patients with serious medical conditions. The sensor devices attached to such patients are used for monitoring the vital signs of those with serious heart problems, Parkinson disease, Epilepsy and high blood pressure. This paper typically focuses on the reliable acquisition of datasets and provides a fault-tolerant priority based routing scheme with Dynamic Jumping (FTMPR-DJ) for the energy-efficient acquisition and dissemination of datasets. A new fault-tolerant scheme has been proposed that will significantly minimize data loss and network congestion and is well supported with extensive experiments to show effectiveness of the proposed routing scheme.