Lessons learned from urgent computing in Europe: Tackling the COVID-19 pandemic.

PRACE (Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe), an international not-for-profit association that brings together the five largest European supercomputing centers and involves 26 European countries, has allocated more than half a billion core hours to computer simulations to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. Alongside experiments, these simulations are a pillar of research to assess the risks of different scenarios and investigate mitigation strategies. While the world deals with the subsequent waves of the pandemic, we present a reflection on the use of urgent supercomputing for global societal challenges and crisis management.

[Application of password manager software in health care]. / Jelszómenedzser szoftver alkalmazása az egészségügyben.

When using multiple IT systems, handling of passwords in a secure manner means a potential source of problem. The most frequent issues are choosing the appropriate length and complexity, and then remembering the strong passwords. Password manager software provides a good solution for this problem, while greatly increasing the security of sensitive medical data. This article introduces a password manager software and provides basic information of the application. It also discusses how to select a really secure password manager software and suggests a practical application to efficient, safe and comfortable use for health care. Orv. Hetil., 2016, 157(52), 2066-2073.

Adverse drug events with hyperkalaemia during inpatient stays: evaluation of an automated method for retrospective detection in hospital databases.

BACKGROUND: Adverse drug reactions and adverse drug events (ADEs) are major public health issues. Many different prospective tools for the automated detection of ADEs in hospital databases have been developed and evaluated. The objective of the present study was to evaluate an automated method for the retrospective detection of ADEs with hyperkalaemia during inpatient stays. METHODS: We used a set of complex detection rules to take account of the patient's clinical and biological context and the chronological relationship between the causes and the expected outcome. The dataset consisted of 3,444 inpatient stays in a French general hospital. An automated review was performed for all data and the results were compared with those of an expert chart review. The complex detection rules' analytical quality was evaluated for ADEs. RESULTS: In terms of recall, 89.5% of ADEs with hyperkalaemia "with or without an abnormal symptom" were automatically identified (including all three serious ADEs). In terms of precision, 63.7% of the automatically identified ADEs with hyperkalaemia were true ADEs. CONCLUSIONS: The use of context-sensitive rules appears to improve the automated detection of ADEs with hyperkalaemia. This type of tool may have an important role in pharmacoepidemiology via the routine analysis of large inter-hospital databases.

Service oriented architecture for clinical decision support: a systematic review and future directions.

The use of a service-oriented architecture (SOA) has been identified as a promising approach for improving health care by facilitating reliable clinical decision support (CDS). A review of the literature through October 2013 identified 44 articles on this topic. The review suggests that SOA related technologies such as Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) and Service Component Architecture (SCA) have not been generally adopted to impact health IT systems' performance for better care solutions. Additionally, technologies such as Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) and architectural approaches like Service Choreography have not been generally exploited among researchers and developers. Based on the experience of other industries and our observation of the evolution of SOA, we found that the greater use of these approaches have the potential to significantly impact SOA implementations for CDS.

Mobile Medical Education (MoMEd) - how mobile information resources contribute to learning for undergraduate clinical students - a mixed methods study.

BACKGROUND: Mobile technology is increasingly being used by clinicians to access up-to-date information for patient care. These offer learning opportunities in the clinical setting for medical students but the underlying pedagogic theories are not clear. A conceptual framework is needed to understand these further. Our initial questions were how the medical students used the technology, how it enabled them to learn and what theoretical underpinning supported the learning. METHODS: 387 medical students were provided with a personal digital assistant (PDA) loaded with medical resources for the duration of their clinical studies. Outcomes were assessed by a mixed-methods triangulation approach using qualitative and quantitative analysis of surveys, focus groups and usage tracking data. RESULTS: Learning occurred in context with timely access to key facts and through consolidation of knowledge via repetition. The PDA was an important addition to the learning ecology rather than a replacement. Contextual factors impacted on use both positively and negatively. Barriers included concerns of interrupting the clinical interaction and of negative responses from teachers and patients. Students preferred a future involving smartphone platforms. CONCLUSIONS: This is the first study to describe the learning ecology and pedagogic basis behind the use of mobile learning technologies in a large cohort of undergraduate medical students in the clinical environment. We have developed a model for mobile learning in the clinical setting that shows how different theories contribute to its use taking into account positive and negative contextual factors.The lessons from this study are transferable internationally, to other health care professions and to the development of similar initiatives with newer technology such as smartphones or tablet computers.

[About development of operativeness of medical information data system of central military clinical hospital n. a. N.N.Burdenko].

The authors presented the data about the development of operativeness of medical automated information data system of CMCH n. a. N.N.Burdenko with developing and formation of control center of hospitalization, data processing center, situation room and central archives of diagnostic data. It significantly improved diagnostic and treatment processes in hospital medical and preventive association. Consolidation of dependent prevention and treatment facilities of Moscow Region will provide effective administration of medical supply of attached cohort, administration of hospital association of CMCH n. a. N.N.Burdenko and medical service of the Armed Forces of Russian Federation, in general.

[Surveillance of infectious diseases at the EU level]. / Surveillance von Infektionskrankheiten auf europäischer Ebene.

The basis for EU wide surveillance was Decision 2119/98/EC of the European Parliament and the Council in 1998. Since May 2005 it is the task of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control to coordinate and further develop this network. One key function of the ECDC is to standardise European surveillance and especially to harmonise the procedures of the surveillance networks that developed independently of each other. As a first step, the EU case definitions have been revised jointly with the Member States and the Commission. All surveillance networks are evaluated with a standard protocol before a decision is made at the ECDC on the continuation of the individual network activities. Simultaneously, the development of The European Surveillance System (TESSy) progressed. Since the beginning of 2008 data users have been trained and TESSy has been in use since April 2008. In the future the main focus must be the improvement of the quality and comparability of the data as such data are the essential prerequisite for decision making in public health.

The use of the Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) among personnel and students in health care: a review.

BACKGROUND: Health care personnel need access to updated information anywhere and at any time, and a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) has the potential to meet these requirements. A PDA is a mobile tool which has been employed widely for various purposes in health care practice, and the level of its use is expected to increase. Loaded with suitable functions and software applications, a PDA might qualify as the tool that personnel and students in health care need. In Sweden today, despite its leadership role in mobile technologies, PDAs are not commonly used, and there is a lack of suitable functions and software applications. OBJECTIVE: The aim of the present review was to obtain an overview of existing research on the use of PDAs among personnel and students in health care. METHODS: The literature search included original peer-reviewed research articles written in English and published from 1996 to 2008. All study designs were considered for inclusion. We excluded reviews and studies focusing on the use of PDAs in classroom situations. From March 2006 to the last update in May 2008, we searched PubMed, CINAHL, Cochrane, IngentaConnect, and a local search engine (ELIN@Kalmar). We conducted a content analysis, using Nielsen's Model of System Acceptability as a theoretical framework in structuring and presenting the results. RESULTS: From the 900 references initially screened, 172 articles were selected and critically assessed until 48 articles remained. The majority originated in North-America (USA: n=24, Canada: n=11). The categories which emerged from our content analysis coincided to a certain extent to Nielsen's Model of System Acceptability (social and practical acceptability), including usefulness (utility and usability) subcategories such as learnability, efficiency, errors, and satisfaction. The studies showed that health care personnel and students used PDAs in patient care with varied frequency. Most of the users were physicians. There is some evidence that the use of a PDA in health care settings might improve decision-making, reduce the numbers of medical errors, and enhance learning for both students and professionals, but the evidence is not strong, with most studies being descriptive, and only 6 randomized controlled trials. Several special software programs have been created and tested for PDAs, and a wide range of situations for their use have been reported for different patient groups. Drug and medical information were commonly accessed by PDA users, and the PDA was often viewed as the preferred tool when compared to paper-based documents. Some users regarded the PDA easy to operate, while others found it difficult in the beginning. CONCLUSIONS: This overview of the use of PDAs revealed a positive attitude towards the PDA, which was regarded as a feasible and convenient tool. The possibility of immediate access to medical information has the potential to improve patient care. The PDA seems to be a valuable tool for personnel and students in health care, but there is a need for further intervention studies, randomized controlled trials, action research, and studies with various health care groups in order to identify its appropriate functions and software applications.

A framework for semantic interoperability in healthcare: a service oriented architecture based on health informatics standards.

Healthcare information is composed of many types of varying and heterogeneous data. Semantic interoperability in healthcare is especially important when all these different types of data need to interact. Presented in this paper is a solution to interoperability in healthcare based on a standards-based middleware software architecture used in enterprise solutions. This architecture has been translated into the healthcare domain using a messaging and modeling standard which upholds the ideals of the Semantic Web (HL7 V3) combined with a well-known standard terminology of clinical terms (SNOMED CT).

Data privacy considerations in Intensive Care Grids.

Novel eHealth systems are being designed to provide a citizen-centered health system, however the even demanding need for computing and data resources has required the adoption of Grid technologies. In most of the cases, this novel Health Grid requires not only conveying patient's personal data through public networks, but also storing it into shared resources out of the hospital premises. These features introduce new security concerns, in particular related with privacy. In this paper we survey current legal and technological approaches that have been taken to protect a patient's personal data into eHealth systems, with a particular focus in Intensive Care Grids. However, thanks to a security analysis applied over the Intensive Care Grid system (ICGrid) we show that these security mechanisms are not enough to provide a comprehensive solution, mainly because the data-at-rest is still vulnerable to attacks coming from untrusted Storage Elements where an attacker may directly access them. To cope with these issues, we propose a new privacy-oriented protocol which uses a combination of encryption and fragmentation to improve data's assurance while keeping compatibility with current legislations and Health Grid security mechanisms.

Security, safety, and related technology - the triangle of eHealth service provision.

The developing of innovative solutions in the emerging eHealth market requires strong economic efforts which may be justified only in presence of particularly suitable boundary conditions. Among the factors retained of primary importance for the development of eHealth, a correct approach to id-management is unanimously considered fundamental. Three keywords in the id-management context appear particularly important: standardization, security and safety. Standardization may contribute to increase the size and duration of the eHealth market, while security and safety may encourage all the stakeholders to trust in a appropriate and safe management of all the very sensitive personal data involved in the eHealth applications. The aim of the present paper is analyzing some security and safety issues in eHealth from the particular prospective of the identity management and standardization. The paper highlights the mission of the EU funded "BioHealth" project whose mission is to increase the stakeholders' knowledge about existing and emerging standards in eHealth with particular reference to identity management.

The adoption of IT security standards in a healthcare environment.

Security is a vital part of daily life to Hospitals that need to ensure that the information is adequately secured. In Portugal, more CIOs are seeking that their hospital IS departments are properly protecting information assets from security threats. It is imperative to take necessary measures to ensure risk management and business continuity. Security management certification provides just such a guarantee, increasing patient and partner confidence. This paper introduces one best practice for implementing four security controls in a hospital datacenter infrastructure (ISO27002), and describes the security assessment for implementing such controls.

[Consistent presentation of medical images based on CPI integration profile].

Because of different display parameters and other factors, digital medical images present different display states in different section offices of a hospital. Based on CPI integration profile of IHE, this paper implements the consistent presentation of medical images, and it is helpful for doctors to carry out medical treatments of teamwork.

Standardization of electroencephalography for multi-site, multi-platform and multi-investigator studies: insights from the canadian biomarker integration network in depression.

Subsequent to global initiatives in mapping the human brain and investigations of neurobiological markers for brain disorders, the number of multi-site studies involving the collection and sharing of large volumes of brain data, including electroencephalography (EEG), has been increasing. Among the complexities of conducting multi-site studies and increasing the shelf life of biological data beyond the original study are timely standardization and documentation of relevant study parameters. We present the insights gained and guidelines established within the EEG working group of the Canadian Biomarker Integration Network in Depression (CAN-BIND). CAN-BIND is a multi-site, multi-investigator, and multi-project network supported by the Ontario Brain Institute with access to Brain-CODE, an informatics platform that hosts a multitude of biological data across a growing list of brain pathologies. We describe our approaches and insights on documenting and standardizing parameters across the study design, data collection, monitoring, analysis, integration, knowledge-translation, and data archiving phases of CAN-BIND projects. We introduce a custom-built EEG toolbox to track data preprocessing with open-access for the scientific community. We also evaluate the impact of variation in equipment setup on the accuracy of acquired data. Collectively, this work is intended to inspire establishing comprehensive and standardized guidelines for multi-site studies.

Information governance standards for managing e-health information.

Integrity of patient information, from both a quality and a security perspective, is critical to patient care. In the UK, the information governance initiative of the National Health Service (NHS) provides a framework to monitor and control the management of confidential patient data. Information governance standards grew out of the Data Accreditation Programme, first proposed in the 1998 NHS document Information for Health. The Data Accreditation Programme was based on a three-stage assessment of data quality in acute hospitals. Stage one required internal review of policy and procedures for data input into computerized patient administration systems. Stage two involved an external audit to verify compliance with the standards. Stage three mandated audits of data outputs, focusing on clinical coding quality. Before stage three of the programme was fully implemented, the standards were incorporated into the information governance initiative, in which standards were expanded to include primary care and other health-care settings. These standards address many information management issues, including security and data quality, which are key concerns in telemedicine and e-health applications. Compliance is essential for the successful implementation of the NHS Care Records Service, which will allow sharing of electronically stored patient information across the UK.

Quality control methods for data entry in pathology using a computerized data management system based on an extended data dictionary.

In pathology, computerized data management systems have been used increasingly to facilitate a more efficient supply of information. Since data entry precedes data utilization, the reliability of the information stored strongly depends on the quality of data input. Despite its potential capability, most personal computer-based database software does not provide versatile and user-friendly data validation procedures. Therefore, we developed a data dictionary-driven data management system that enables the user to perform extensive validation routines without the need for hard programming. Using examples from an existing database for endometrial carcinomas, different types of data errors and their error traps are explained. It is pointed out that data type definitions, defaults, templates, or picture clauses are suitable means to avoid formal errors. Validations on data domains and ranges test whether data fall into a predefined scope. Relational checks control data validity within a context of different data items, whereas process routines provide automatic data computation, thereby circumventing user input. By exploiting the facilities of an extended data dictionary, a powerful tool is made available to secure various aspects of data integrity simultaneously with input. In this way, computerized data quality control can improve the efficiency and reliability of data management tasks in pathology.

Quality control in a medical information system.

Quality assurance techniques provide an opportunity to identify sources of error and to provide the feedback necessary to prevent their repetition. The authors outline an effort to define the steps required for effective quality management procedures in a computerized medical information system (MIS). The computerized management of medical information can be used not only to enhance current quality management activities but also to extend the realm of quality assurance to areas that have heretofore resisted management. Quality-management techniques have the potential for measuring and improving medical decision making processes central to patient care.

Verification of temporal scheduling constraints in clinical practice guidelines.

The computerization of clinical practice guidelines is a significant scientific challenge for the medical informatics community. One frequently reported factor hindering this objective is the existence of deficiencies within guideline knowledge. In this paper, we focus on the detection of flaws within temporal scheduling constraints. Temporal scheduling constraints are important elements of therapy management, and are frequently incorporated in clinical practice guidelines. We present a suitable verification method that is based on calculating the minimal network of temporal constraints on the execution of guideline activities. Our method serves three purposes: (1) it checks whether temporal scheduling constraints are consistent with scheduling constraints implied by control flow operators and the hierarchical structuring of a guideline; (2) it yields suggestions for an equivalent, yet more explicit representation of non-minimal constraints; (3) it can be used by the guideline interpreter to assemble feasible time intervals for the execution of each guideline activity. We evaluate our approach by applying it to a guideline specified in the Asbru language. For this purpose, we implemented a prototype verifier. Although we concentrate on the guideline representation language Asbru as the demonstration medium of our method within this paper, our approach can be reused to verify several alternative guideline representation formats.

A framework for an institutional high level security policy for the processing of medical data and their transmission through the Internet.

BACKGROUND: The Internet provides many advantages when used for interaction and data sharing among health care providers, patients, and researchers. However, the advantages provided by the Internet come with a significantly greater element of risk to the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information. It is therefore essential that Health Care Establishments processing and exchanging medical data use an appropriate security policy. OBJECTIVE: To develop a High Level Security Policy for the processing of medical data and their transmission through the Internet, which is a set of high-level statements intended to guide Health Care Establishment personnel who process and manage sensitive health care information. METHODS: We developed the policy based on a detailed study of the existing framework in the EU countries, USA, and Canada, and on consultations with users in the context of the Intranet Health Clinic project. More specifically, this paper has taken into account the major directives, technical reports, law, and recommendations that are related to the protection of individuals with regard to the processing of personal data, and the protection of privacy and medical data on the Internet. RESULTS: We present a High Level Security Policy for Health Care Establishments, which includes a set of 7 principles and 45 guidelines detailed in this paper. The proposed principles and guidelines have been made as generic and open to specific implementations as possible, to provide for maximum flexibility and adaptability to local environments. The High Level Security Policy establishes the basic security requirements that must be addressed to use the Internet to safely transmit patient and other sensitive health care information. CONCLUSIONS: The High Level Security Policy is primarily intended for large Health Care Establishments in Europe, USA, and Canada. It is clear however that the general framework presented here can only serve as reference material for developing an appropriate High Level Security Policy in a specific implementation environment. When implemented in specific environments, these principles and guidelines must also be complemented by measures, which are more specific. Even when a High Level Security Policy already exists in an institution, it is advisable that the management of the Health Care Establishment periodically revisits it to see whether it should be modified or augmented.

Protecting the patient by promoting end-user competence in health informatics systems-moves towards a generic health computer user "driving license".

The effectiveness and quality of health informatics systems' support to healthcare delivery are largely determined by two factors-the suitability of the system installed, and the competence of the users. However, the profile of users of large-scale clinical health systems is significantly different from the profile of end-users in other enterprises such as the finance sector, insurance, travel or retail sales. Work with a mental health provider in Ireland, who was introducing a customized electronic patient record (EPR) system, identified the strong legal and ethical importance of adequately skills for the health professionals and others, who would be the system users. The experience identified the need for a clear and comprehensive generic user qualification at a basic but robust level. The European computer driving license (ECDL) has gained wide recognition as a basic generic qualification for users of computer systems. However, health systems and data have a series of characteristics that differentiate them from other data systems. The logical conclusion was the recognition of a need for an additional domain-specific qualification-an "ECDL Health Supplement". Development of this is now being progressed.