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PubMed2006

Telemetric system for hydrology and water quality monitoring in watersheds of northern New Mexico, USA.

This study utilized telemetric systems to sample microbes and pathogens in forest, burned forest, rangeland, and urban watersheds to assess surface water quality in northern New Mexico. Four sites included remote mountainous watersheds, prairie rangelands, and a small urban area. The telemetric system was linked to dataloggers with automated event monitoring equipment to monitor discharge, turbidity, electrical conductivity, water temperature, and rainfall during base flow and storm events. Site data stored in dataloggers was uploaded to one of three types of telemetry: 1) radio in rangeland and urban settings; 2) a conventional phone/modem system with a modem positioned at the urban/forest interface; and 3) a satellite system used in a remote mountainous burned forest watershed. The major variables affecting selection of each system were site access, distance, technology, and cost. The systems were compared based on operation and cost. Utilization of telecommunications systems in this varied geographic area facilitated the gathering of hydrologic and water quality data on a timely basis.

Environmental Monitoring↗
PubMed2005

The state of medical informatics in India: a roadmap for optimal organization.

In India, the healthcare delivery systems are based on manual record keeping despite a good telecommunication infrastructure. Unfortunately, Indian policy makers are yet to realize the importance of medical informatics (including tele-health, which comprises e-Health and Telemedicine) in delivering healthcare. In the medical curriculum also, nowhere is this treated as a subject or even as a tool for learning. The final aim of most of the medical and paramedical students should be to become good users, and if possible, also experts for advancing medical knowledge base through medical informatics. In view of the fast changing world of medical informatics, it is essential to formulate a flexible syllabus rather than a rigid one for incorporating into the regular curriculum of medical and paramedical education. Only after that one may expect all members of the healthcare delivery systems to adopt and apply medical informatics optimally as a routine tool for their services.

Computers↗
PubMed1992

A controlled trial of self-nonstress test versus assisted nonstress test in the evaluation of fetal well-being.

OBJECTIVE: New portable devices have become available for home monitoring of fetal heart rates; these devices have the potential to immediately transmit these tracings to a medical facility. The null hypothesis of this study is the inability of mothers to perform their own nonstress tests (self-nonstress tests) and that such tests are not comparable to those performed by professional medical personnel (assisted nonstress tests). STUDY DESIGN: The feasibility of maternal self-testing was established in 50 high-risk patients followed by a controlled clinical trial conducted in 60 patients. The latter study represents the first controlled trial in which patients performed self-nonstress tests at their homes and transmitted the tracings via telecommunication to our perinatal unit. In all cases these patients came to our hospital within 60 minutes after the self-nonstress tests to have a perinatal nurse perform a second nonstress test. The pairs of self and assisted fetal heart rate tracings were independently reviewed by two investigators. RESULTS: The self and assisted tracing pairs were judged satisfactory for interpretation in 100% and 90%, respectively; self and assisted were interpreted by each examiner to be nonreactive in 20% and 14%, respectively. However, both examiners were unable to distinguish between tracings generated by assisted nonstress and self-nonstress tests. Furthermore, cost analysis revealed an estimated twofold savings with self-nonstress testing compared with the assisted nonstress test. CONCLUSION: Self-nonstress testing is a reliable and accurate method of antepartum fetal heart rate testing. This method of fetal assessment not only introduces a new approach to fetal surveillance with added convenience to patients, but may also significantly reduce medical cost without compromising the results of fetal testing.

Costs and Cost Analysis↗
PubMed1996

Radon in the workplace--a study of occupational exposure in BT underground structures.

During the period August 1993-October 1994 a study was undertaken throughout British Telecommunications plc to assess occupational exposure to radon. This paper is concerned only with that portion of the work concerned with underground structures. The results show that radon can build up to very high concentrations in manholes and implies a significant risk to those who need to work in them. For various reasons, which are explained, exposures are much less than predicted and in all but a very few cases the annual predicted radiation dose due to radon is expected to be below 5 milliSieverts (mSv). A safe system of work is described which seeks to ensure that no BT people receive an annual radiation dose of greater than 5 mSv as a result of occupational exposure to radon.

Humans↗
PubMed1992

Employee stress and health complaints in jobs with and without electronic performance monitoring.

Current applications of electronic performance monitoring based on job design theories that consider worker performance rather than stress issues are likely to generate unsatisfying and stressful jobs (Smith et al, 1986). This study examines critical job design elements that could influence worker stress responses in an electronic monitoring context. A questionnaire survey of employees in telecommunications companies representative of each region in the United States examined job stress in directory assistance, service representative and clerical jobs with specific emphasis on the influence of electronic monitoring of job performance, satisfaction and employee health. Useable surveys were received from 745 employees representing seven operating companies and AT & T; a response rate of about 25%. The results of this survey indicated that employees who had their performance electronically monitored perceived their working conditions as more stressful, and reported higher levels of job boredom, psychological tension, anxiety, depression, anger, health complaints and fatigue. It is postulated that these effects may be related to changes in job design due to electronic performance monitoring.

Journal Article↗
PubMed1992

Two key factors that belong in a macroergonomic analysis of electronic monitoring: Employee perceptions of fairness and the climate of organizational trust or distrust.

Two microergonomic elements not usually discussed in treatments of electronic monitoring of VDT clerical work are employee perceptions of fairness (in work standards and measurement process) and the overall climate of employee trust in management. The author's field studies found these factors serving as major mitigating or intensifying elements in the stress that clerical employees can experience when they perform intensive heavy-duty VDT applications, and as central variables in distinguishing beneficial from harmful monitoring programmes. A case study involving change in supervisory monitoring policies for 200 customer service agents at one of Federal Express Corporation's telecommunication call centres in the USA in 1985-86 demonstrates how a Unit Head at a non-union company long known for its positive employee relations policies installed monitoring practices that the call agents considered unfair and a breach of the company's traditional climate of employee-employer trust. Employee protests, when communicated to top management, led to discarding the unilaterally-instituted and quantity-oriented monitoring policy and replacing it with a consensually-developed supervisory monitoring system balancing quality and quantity elements in a way that satisfied both employees and management. The present system of supervisory monitoring of customer service work at Federal Express (1991) enjoys broad employee support, suggesting that a fair system of monitoring, applied in an environment of earned trust between employees and employer, can meet critical productivity and quality interests of employers in clerical VDT work without creating harmful employee stress and discontent. It also suggests that empirical investigation of the fairness and trust factors represents an important and practical area of research in a macroergonomic analysis of employee monitoring programs and impacts.

Journal Article↗
PubMed1995

Changes in health care: challenges for information system design.

It is widely recognized that the systematic availability of medical care services is a vital component of the social network. Although particular political, cultural and economic factors lead to different strategic approaches in different countries, all are faced with balancing resource allocation against the perceived desirability of the results. In many countries the social urgency to address this issue has reached a critical status. All of the current changes and challenges in health care delivery are to a large extent being driven by these considerations. Information systems consisting of telecommunication and computing technologies will play a key role in supporting emerging delivery systems. The purpose of this brief paper is to identify the major themes within this complex network of considerations and to serve perhaps as a road map in on-going system design and evaluation efforts.

Computer Systems↗
PubMed1988

An on-line computer data bank of monoclonal antibodies that recognize allergens--invitation for entries.

Monoclonal antibodies that recognize allergens are potentially extremely useful reagents for use in a variety of applications, including highly specific and sensitive assays for the standardization of allergen extracts and the measurement of environmental allergens, epitope mapping of allergens, comparison of IgE-binding determinants, and the immunolocalization of allergens in thin sections. Although monoclonal antibodies have many properties that enable them to be shared internationally, it is difficult to know from the literature what monoclonal antibodies are available and, in some cases, what are the individual characteristics of the antibodies. We are organizing an on-line data base of information about allergen-reactive monoclonal antibodies, which can be accessed by computer with international telecommunications networks. Each record of a monoclonal antibody includes details, if they are known, of allergen source and name, antibody production, complimentary antigenic determinant, names and addresses of the owners, availability of the antibody, and other important information. Investigators who have produced monoclonal antibodies that react with allergens are invited to submit details of the antibodies for inclusion in the data base.

Allergens↗
PubMed1990

Earth benefits from space life sciences.

Contributions of space exploration which are widely recognized are those dealing with the impact of space technology on public health and medical services in both urban and remote rural areas. Telecommunications, image enhancement, 3-dimensional image reconstructions, miniaturization, automation, and data analysis, have transformed the delivery of medical care and have brought about a new impetus to the field of biomedicine. Many areas of medical care and biological research have been affected. These include technological breakthroughs in such areas as: (1) diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of cardiovascular diseases, (2) new approaches to the understanding of osteoporosis, (3) early detection of genetic birth defects, (4) emergency medical care, and (5) treatment of chronic metabolic disorders. These are but a few examples where technology originally developed to support space medicine or space research has been applied to solving medical and health care delivery problems on Earth.

Aerospace Medicine↗
PubMed1992

Telescience testbed: operational support functions for biomedical experiments.

A telescience testbed was conducted to study the methodology of space biomedicine with simulated constraints imposed on space experiments. An experimental subject selected for this testbedding was an elaborate surgery of animals and electrophysiological measurements conducted by an operator onboard. The standing potential in the ampulla of the pigeon's semicircular canal was measured during gravitational and caloric stimulation. A principal investigator, isolated from the operation site, participated in the experiment interactively by telecommunication links. Reliability analysis was applied to the whole layers of experimentation, including design of experimental objectives and operational procedures. Engineering and technological aspects of telescience are discussed in terms of reliability to assure quality of science. Feasibility of robotics was examined for supportive functions to reduce the workload of the onboard operator.

Aerospace Medicine↗
PubMed1992

Nordic teleradiology development.

In the Nordic countries there are several reasons why teleradiology has been an interesting topic of research during the last years. The distances in rural areas are long, and radiology expert service is not available in every health centre which is able to provide X-rays. Also, the telecommunication network is on a very advanced level in the Nordic countries. The staff is well educated and they are used to operating with computers. This all means that the infrastructure to develop and use systems like teleradiology exists. This paper describes two separate systems developed in Norway and Finland. Their development has been in many respects the same. The common hardware and software features, as well as the differences and the clinical experiences, are discussed in this paper.

Computer Systems↗
PubMed1992

The European Community: standardization in medical informatics and imaging.

The use of informatics and telecommunications in health care and medicine has reached a stage where the application of standards is an absolute requirement. The AIM Programme of the CEC DGXIII stimulated the study of the subject, and has supported the set up of an official European platform for standardization in this field, the CEN TC251. The needs for standardization in one of the subareas, medical imaging, are described in detail. The future solutions of the problems concerned are regarded prerequisites for the general and practical use of PACS and IMACS.

European Union↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Image processing in nuclear pneumology.

The general aspects of methodology and image processing used in some of the nuclear pneumology techniques developed by our group are briefly described in this presentation. Three main subjects are considered: 1--Studies on pulmonary circulation, 2--Studies on pulmonary ventilation and perfusion and 3--Studies on alveolar-capillary barrier permeability. This is a multidisciplinary work that is the joint effort of three department: Biophysics Service (Faculty of Medicine, University of Coimbra), Department of Electronics and Telecommunications (University of Aveiro) and Pneumology Center (University of Coimbra).

Capillary Permeability↗
PubMed1996

A telemedicine system for remote cooperative medical imaging diagnosis.

Telemedicine is changing the classical form of health care delivery, by providing efficient solutions to an increasing number of new situations: here we consider those which require some type of computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) between health care professionals located in different clinical sites. This paper presents the design and development of a telemedicine system for remote computer-supported cooperative medical imaging diagnosis. The main and novel component of our system is a new CSCW distributed architecture, comprised by a collaborative toolkit to add audioconferencing, telepointing, window sharing, user's coordination and application synchronization facilities, either to existing or new medical imaging diagnosis applications. In comparison with existing CSCW products, mainly based on centralized architectures, our distributed toolkit is specially designed for telemedicine applications: to allow different levels of sharing between participants, to improve user feedback in highly interactive user interfaces, and to optimize the required communication bandwidth in order to implement a telemedicine CSCW application on almost any telecommunication network. This telemedicine CSCW system has been applied to build a cooperative medical imaging diagnosis application, in which two doctors, located in different hospitals, need to achieve a cooperative diagnosis on haemodynamic studies using cardiac angiography images. The design of the graphical user interface for this kind of telemedicine CSCW systems, a critical component which conforms any telemedicine application, is also addressed with a new methodological approach, to assure the system usability and final user acceptance. The telemedicine cardiac angiography pilot has been implemented, tested and evaluated within the Research Project 'FEST-Framework for European Services in Telemedicine' funded by EU AIM Programme.

Attitude to Computers↗
PubMed1990

Toxicological information series, IV. Information resources for chemical emergency response.

The need for rapidly available information by community agencies responding to chemical emergencies (leaks, spills, releases, fires, explosions, etc.) can be met by a number of resources. These resources include local poison control centers, the Toxicology Data Network (National Library of Medicine), the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, ATSDR/NLM's ANSWER, the National Chemical Response and Information Center, the National Pesticide Telecommunications Network, The National Response Center (U.S. Coast Guard), the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the National Safety Council, private-sector database vendors, and textbooks addressing hazardous substances.

Emergencies↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Picture archiving and communication system (PACS) networking: three implementation strategies.

This paper outlines the diverse Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS) networking implementation strategies at the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of Florida, and the University of Kansas. At the University of California at Los Angeles, a very high-speed network has been integrated into a hierarchical networking strategy, resulting in an entirely customized network for the local transmission of images. The University of Florida has chosen to implement networks for local transmission of images using commercially available equipment. The University of Kansas, specializing in teleradiology applications, uses commercial telecommunication circuits to implement long distance referral services to small hospitals.

Florida↗
PubMed1996

Global epidemiology and public health in the 21st century. Applications of new technology.

Epidemiology and public health need to change for the upcoming problems of the 21st century and beyond. We outline a four-point approach to produce this change. The first one is to take a systems approach to disease. The second approach discussed is the use of new techniques to "count" disease using capture-recapture. The third represents the application of telecommunications, especially the Internet, to public health. The fourth and final component represents the application, at the local health department level, of a total quality approach, as espoused by Deming, for the prevention of disease.

Computer Communication Networks↗
PubMed2005

Using behavioral risk factor surveillance data for heart disease and stroke prevention programs.

An effective state heart disease and stroke prevention program must be able to monitor changes in heart disease and stroke risk factors of the state population. The Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), a state-based telephone survey, has been an important source for monitoring health-related factors and evaluating the success of programs. The BRFSS currently includes modules on hypertension and cholesterol screening and awareness, cardiovascular disease preventive practices, and recognition of the signs and symptoms of heart attack and stroke as well as relevant modules on fruit and vegetable intake, physical activity, tobacco use, and diabetes. Publication topics included monitoring risk factors and clinical services, assessing progress toward national goals, assessing health disparities, and health status and health-related quality of life issues. States have used the BRFSS data for monitoring health risks in the state, assessing state and national health objectives, determining and providing data for public health campaigns, providing information for legislative proposals, and providing information that helps to initiate collaboration. Major methodologic issues involve validating self-reported data against direct measurement and assessing the effects of changes in telecommunications. As Centers for Disease Control's (CDC) national heart disease and stroke prevention program and each state health department program develop, state and even local level data will become more important to measure the burden of disease and program impact. State heart disease and stroke prevention programs are encouraged to work closely with state BRFSS coordinators to obtain vital information to measure the burden of heart disease and stroke in their state and to be able to measure program impact on addressing the first and third leading causes of death in the U.S.

Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System↗