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Often associated with marketing warfare, competitive intelligence has become an essential part of health-care organizations' strategic planning efforts. Without overstepping ethical boundaries, providers can gather a vast array of "intelligence" about their competition from public sources, from the marketplace and from competitors themselves.
Hospital managers, clinicians or their colleges, and the government departments of health are interested in a variety of information for understanding the performance of the health care system and making informed decisions. Intelligent reporting aims to provide the most relevant and reliable information to major stakeholders to facilitate evidence-based practice. The key element in the reporting system is its ability to identify unsatisfactory practice. The TIME (theatre information, management and efficiency) system developed at the North Queensland Clinical School and James Cook University aims to provide intelligible reports for better theatre management. It reflects an effective amalgamation of surgical expertise and systems management principles.
The Mini-Mental State exam is a widely used screening instrument for dementia. Recent research has suggested that errors in classification reported for this instrument may be due to premorbid levels of intelligence and education, Thirty-one ambulatory patients diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease were administered a standard neuropsychological testing battery. MMSE scores and intelligence are significantly correlated. However when memory ability is partialed out, the covariance of MMSE and intellectual abilities does not add any further information to that already provided by the memory scores.
High quality visualization of medical volume models as performed by the VOXEL-MAN and similar systems is still too time consuming and the interaction complicated when sophisticated tools like dissection are used. We hence developed a new paradigm allowing to create simpler derivatives of the model, called "intelligent movies". These are in QuickTime or QuickTime VR format which allow interactive exploration with two degrees of freedom. As a decisive novelty, we extended it by a pixelwise link to the knowledge base which may be queried in the image context. Thus scenes emphasizing a selected aspect of the volume model may be created as intelligent movies, which a user (referring physician, student) can explore largely with the functionality of VOXEL-MAN, but in real time--on any standard PC--and also via a JAVA applet within web browsers. This is shown with the example of 3D interactive anatomical atlases and clinical cases.
This study reports the initial results of an evaluation of Medcast, a commercial medical information service that uses intelligent pull technology to deliver medical information to practicing physicians. Medical news, CME, and other information are transferred by modem nightly to the physician's computers where this information can be accessed at a convenient time. A survey was faxed to 195 subscribers to the system. A total of 73 (39%) responded. The results indicate that prior to implementation of the Medcast system, almost 40 percent of the respondents did not use their computers for professional activities because of time constraints, costs and computer literacy problems. After implementation of Medcast, almost 70 percent of the respondents used the system two or more hours per week. Ninety percent of the respondents felt that use of the system has enhanced their practice. These findings have important implications for future efforts to implement medical informatics applications to support the information needs of practicing physicians. Experience with intelligent pull technology that is relatively easy to use may be a good way to break down attitudes and barriers to the use of computer systems to support clinical practice and may prepare physicians for a wider use of the Internet to support their future information needs.
On Earth intelligent life evolved as a natural consequence of the events set in motion when the planet formed over 4 billion years ago. Since chemical evolution and solar-system formation appear to be occurring throughout the universe, we theorize that our universe may be rich with planets populated by intelligent beings who, like us, can search for evidence of other technological civilizations. Terrestrial civilization now has this capability. But if we do not begin the search soon, we'll lose the opportunity to do it from Earth as interfering signals of Earthly origin rapidly close the microwave window.
We propose a new type of DNA chips with logical operations executable. In DNA computing researches, some methods have been developed to represent and evaluate Boolean functions on DNA strands. By employing the evaluation methods, we are able to deal with logical operations such as logical-and and logical-or for gene expressions. By combining with the DNA Coded Number method, we implement universal DNA chips which not only detect gene expressions but also find logical formulae of gene expressions. An important advantage of our intelligent DNA chip is that the intensity of the fluorescence at each element is not only proportional to the expression level of the genes in the sample but also proportional to the satisfiability level of the Boolean formula at the element with the gene expression pattern. These features of the intelligent DNA chip and the DCN method allow us more quantitative analyses of gene expression profiles and the logical operations.
The prospect of encountering extraterrestrial intelligent life raises important questions for religion and theology. Even if an actual encounter with extraterrestrials never actually takes place, or proves impractical, terrestrial religious thought already has resources that can render intelligible and allow us theologically to appreciate such an eventuality.
Intelligent multi-function limb treatment and rehabilitation instrument based on IBM-PC is introduced in this paper. It is mainly used for treatment and rehabilitation in the disablement of limb. The range speed and training time can be controlled and monitored. The instrument has the advantages of high reliability, easy operation and compact structure. It is a new kind of intelligent limb rehabilitation instrument.
In order to become a truly intelligent organisation, the health service needs to make much greater use of the wealth of evidence about effectiveness which its day-to-day activities can potentially provide. Evidence comes in many forms. Each context of health care has its own best configuration of forms of evidence (e.g. process and outcome) and ways of feeding evidence back to staff to help improve effectiveness. A strategy for creating a truly intelligent NHS will involve better routine data systems and more widespread skills in analysing and interpreting data to generate evidence. The single most important key to generating better evidence is getting staff committed to structured recording of clinical data as a valued part of the process of delivering care.
In this paper the results are presented of original research into the automatic and "intelligent" detection of breakpoints in Dissolved Oxygen (DO) profiles. The research has been based on a large body of data collected from laboratory SBRs operating on synthetic wastewater. Two different approaches were followed to identify the endpoints. The paper analyses and evaluates the results of automatic detection on the basis of geometric features in the DO profiles. This was followed by classification of the detected breakpoints using different soft computing techniques based on Neural Network (NN), Fuzzy Neural Network (FuNN) and Evolving Fuzzy Neural Network (EfuNN) software systems for breakpoint classification. A high rate of successful detection and classification was obtained with up to 96% of the decisions made correctly. In order to overcome the limitations of this system to adapt to dynamically changing process conditions, an intelligent control model was developed by a combination between an Evolving Fuzzy Neural Net (EfuNN) combined with a logic decision unit. This system has the ability to "learn on-the-fly" and adjust its response pattern in order to maintain a high rate of successful breakpoint detection under varying changing process conditions. This software system has been sucessfully embedded on a small programmable controller for integration into larger process control systems for the operation of SBR plants.
This study investigated the relationship between emotional intelligence (EI) and perceived stress (PS) in dental undergraduates. All dental undergraduates attending a UK dental school were invited to complete a questionnaire on age, gender, year of study, EI, and PS. Two hundred and thirteen students (48 percent male) participated, a response rate of 70 percent. The mean score for EI was 117.54 (S.D. 14.90) and PS was 17.73 (S.D. 6.49). Factor analysis confirmed four factors previously identified in the literature as comprising emotional intelligence: optimism/mood regulation, utilization of emotions, appraisal of emotions, and social skills. T-tests indicated that females had significantly higher EI scores than males. Mean PS scores were significantly higher for students aged over twenty-one years compared with those aged twenty-one years or less (p < 0.001), female compared to male students (p < 0.05), and those in higher years compared to those in lower years of study (p < 0.001). Correlational analysis showed an inverse relationship between EI and PS. Multiple regression analysis identified year of study, optimism/mood regulation, and gender as independent, significant predictors of PS. In conclusion, low EI scorers report more PS. Future research should investigate the relationships of EI and PS with impact on lifestyle behaviors, academic and clinical performance, and health outcomes.
This study assesses the effectiveness of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS) performance validity markers devised by Mittenberg et al. [Prof. Psychol.: Res. Pract. 26 (1995) 491] in the detection of malingered neurocognitive dysfunction (MND). Subjects were 65 traumatic brain injury (TBI) patients referred for neuropsychological evaluation. Twenty-eight met the Slick et al. [Clin. Neuropsychol. 13 (1999) 545] criteria for at least probable MND. The control group was comprised of 37 patients without external incentive and who thus did not meet the Slick et al. criteria. All subjects completed the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R or WAIS-III). The discriminant function score (DFS) and the vocabulary-digit span (VDS) difference score were calculated and sensitivity, specificity, and predictive power were examined for several cut-offs for each marker individually and the two combined. Classification accuracy for the DFS was acceptable and better than for VDS. The use of the two markers in combination resulted in no incremental increase in classification accuracy. Issues related to the clinical application of these techniques are discussed.
An Intelligent Patient Monitoring (IPM) framework is defined for the analysis and display of multiparameter trends from ICU patients. Wavelet analysis was utilized for detection of physiological events and artifacts in long-term trends. A group of 58 patients from the MIMIC database were identified in which the heart rate (HR), arterial blood pressure (ABP), and pulmonary artery pressure (PAP) were monitored. An estimated cardiac output (CO) signal, using HR and ABP, was shown to correlate strongly (r=.67) with actual CO measurements. Using wavelet analysis, automated artifact and physiological event detection algorithms were developed to monitor left ventricular hemodynamic function. Finally, an intelligent display system is presented for presentation of the data in ICU monitors.
Initiatives in healthcare knowledge management have provided some interesting solutions for the implementation of large-scale information repositories vis-à-vis the implementation of Healthcare Enterprise Memories (HEM). In this paper, we present an agent-based Intelligent Healthcare Information Assistant (IHIA) for dynamic information gathering, filtering and adaptation from a HEM comprising an amalgamation of (i) databases storing empirical knowledge, (ii) case-bases storing experiential knowledge, (iii) scenario-bases storing tacit knowledge and (iv) document-bases storing explicit knowledge. The featured work leverages intelligent agents and medical ontologies for autonomous HEM-wide navigation, approximate content matching, inter- and intra-repositories content correlation and information adaptation to meet the user's information request. We anticipate that the use of IHIA will empower healthcare stakeholders to actively communicate with an 'information/knowledge-rich' HEM and will be able to retrieve with ease 'useful' task-specific information via the presentation of cognitively intuitive queries.
The properties of biomedical intelligent polymer materials can be changed obviously when there is a little physical or chemical change in external condition. They are in the forms of solids, solutions and polymers on the surface of carrier, including aqueous solution of hydrophilic polymers, cross-linking hydrophilic polymers (i.e. hydrogels) and the polymers on the surface of carrier. In this paper are reviewed the progress in researches and the application of biomedical intelligent polymer materials.
Polymeric drug delivery system for insulin controlled-release is one of the most active fields of research and development in the world. Up to date, several kinds of intelligent drug carriers for glucose-responsive insulin delivery have been reported. On the basis of a large quantity of references on this topic, a review has been made on the developments of the intelligent polymeric systems for glucose-responsive insulin delivery.
In order to make intelligent biomedical clothing a market reality, a critical mass of scientific, technical and industrial capacities from various disciplines and industries must be successfully brought together. The textiles and clothing sector, i.e. the industry that transform natural or man-made fibres into yarns then with a myriad of processing options into complex tissues and finally into clothing, is undoubtedly a crucial element in such development. With Europe disposing of the world's most diverse, productive and innovative textiles and clothing industry, in addition to relevant expertise and resources in other scientific disciplines and industrial sectors, it could play a leading role in the advancement of the concept of intelligent biomedical clothing. In this process, a great number of challenges--firstly scientific and technical in nature--still need to be overcome and support from public funding programmes could constitute the necessary trigger for research and industrial efforts to be seriously undertaken. In view of the great benefits of such new products for the individual consumer, national health care systems and the society as a whole, a concerted effort in private-public partnership seems merited.