• Title/Summary/Keyword: Clinical decision rules

Search Result 16, Processing Time 0.028 seconds

Design and Implementation of Healthcare System for Chronic Disease Management

  • Song, Mi-Hwa
    • International Journal of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
    • /
    • v.10 no.3
    • /
    • pp.88-97
    • /
    • 2018
  • Chronic diseases management can be effectively achieved through early detection, continuous treatment, observation, and self-management, rather than a radar approach where patients are treated only when they visit a medical facility. However, previous studies have not been able to provide integrated chronic disease management services by considering generalized services such as hypertension and diabetes management, and difficult to expand and link to other services using only specific sensors or services. This paper proposes clinical rule flow model based on medical data analysis to provide personalized care for chronic disease management. Also, we implemented that as Rule-based Smart Healthcare System (RSHS). The proposed system executes chronic diseases management rules, manages events and delivers individualized knowledge information by user's request. The proposed system can be expanded into a variety of applications such as diet and exercise service in the future.

Diagnosis of Abusive Head Trauma : Neurosurgical Perspective

  • Kwak, Young Ho
    • Journal of Korean Neurosurgical Society
    • /
    • v.65 no.3
    • /
    • pp.370-379
    • /
    • 2022
  • Abusive head trauma (AHT) is the most severe form of physical abuse in children. Such injury involves traumatic damage to the head and/or spine of infants and young children. The term AHT was introduced to include a wider range of injury mechanisms, such as intentional direct blow, throw, and even penetrating trauma by perpetuator(s). Currently, it is recommended to replace the former term, shaken baby syndrome, which implicates shaking as the only mechanism, with AHT to include diverse clinical and radiological manifestations. The consequences of AHT cause devastating medical, social and financial burdens on families, communities, and victims. The potential harm of AHT to the developing brain and spinal cord of the victims is tremendous. Many studies have reported that the adverse effects of AHT are various and serious, such as blindness, mental retardation, physical limitation of daily activities and even psychological problems. Therefore, appropriate vigilance for the early recognition and diagnosis of AHT is highly recommended to stop and prevent further injuries. The aim of this review is to summarize the relevant evidence concerning the early recognition and diagnosis of AHT. To recognize this severe type of child abuse early, all health care providers maintain a high index of suspicion and vigilance. Such suspicion can be initiated with careful and thorough history taking and physical examinations. Previously developed clinical prediction rules can be helpful for decision-making regarding starting an investigation when considering meaningful findings. Even the combination of biochemical markers may be useful to predict AHT. For a more confirmative evaluation, neuroradiological imaging is required to find AHT-specific findings. Moreover, timely consultation with ophthalmologists is needed to find a very specific finding, retinal hemorrhage.

An integrated Method of New Casuistry and Specified Principlism as Nursing Ethics Methodology (새로운 간호윤리학 방법론;통합된 사례방법론)

  • Um, Young-Rhan
    • Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing Administration
    • /
    • v.3 no.1
    • /
    • pp.51-64
    • /
    • 1997
  • The purpose of the study was to introduce an integrated approach of new Casuistry and specified principlism in resolving ethical problems and studying nursing ethics. In studying clinical ethics and nursing ethics, there is no systematic research method. While nurses often experience ethical dilemmas in practice, much of previous research on nursing ethics has focused merely on describing the existing problems. In addition, ethists presented theoretical analysis and critics rather than providing the specific problems solving strategies. There is a need in clinical situations for an integrated method which can provide the objective description for existing problem situations as well as specific problem solving methods. We inherit two distinct ways of discussing ethical issues. One of these frames these issues in terms of principles, rules, and other general ideas; the other focuses on the specific features of particular kinds of moral cases. In the first way general ethical rules relate to specific moral cases in a theoretical manner, with universal rules serving as "axioms" from which particular moral judgments are deduced as theorems. In the seconds, this relation is frankly practical. with general moral rules serving as "maxims", which can be fully understood only in terms of the paradigmatic cases that define their meaning and force. Theoretical arguments are structured in ways that free them from any dependence on the circumstances of their presentation and ensure them a validity of a kind that is not affected by the practical context of use. In formal arguments particular conclusions are deduced from("entailed by") the initial axioms or universal principles that are the apex of the argument. So the truth or certainty that attaches to those axioms flows downward to the specific instances to be "proved". In the language of formal logic, the axioms are major premises, the facts that specify the present instance are minor premises, and the conclusion to be "proved" is deduced (follows necessarily) from the initial presises. Practical arguments, by contrast, involve a wider range of factors than formal deductions and are read with an eye to their occasion of use. Instead of aiming at strict entailments, they draw on the outcomes of previous experience, carrying over the procedures used to resolve earlier problems and reapply them in new problmatic situations. Practical arguments depend for their power on how closely the present circumstances resemble those of the earlier precedent cases for which this particular type of argument was originally devised. So. in practical arguments, the truths and certitudes established in the precedent cases pass sideways, so as to provide "resolutions" of later problems. In the language of rational analysis, the facts of the present case define the gounds on which any resolution must be based; the general considerations that carried wight in similar situations provide warrants that help settle future cases. So the resolution of any problem holds good presumptively; its strengh depends on the similarities between the present case and the prededents; and its soundness can be challenged (or rebutted) in situations that are recognized ans exceptional. Jonsen & Toulmin (1988), and Jonsen (1991) introduce New Casuistry as a practical method. The oxford English Dictionary defines casuistry quite accurately as "that part of ethics which resolves cases of conscience, applying the general rules of religion and morality to particular instances in which circumstances alter cases or in which there appears to be a conflict of duties." They modified the casuistry of the medieval ages to use in clinical situations which is characterized by "the typology of cases and the analogy as an inference method". A case is the unit of analysis. The structure of case was made with interaction of situation and moral rules. The situation is what surrounds or stands around. The moral rule is the essence of case. The analogy can be objective because "the grounds, the warrants, the theoretical backing, the modal qualifiers" are identified in the cases. The specified principlism was the method that Degrazia (1992) integrated the principlism and the specification introduced by Richardson (1990). In this method, the principle is specified by adding information about limitations of the scope and restricting the range of the principle. This should be substantive qualifications. The integrated method is an combination of the New Casuistry and the specified principlism. For example, the study was "Ethical problems experienced by nurses in the care of terminally ill patients"(Um, 1994). A semi-structured in-depth interview was conducted for fifteen nurses who mainly took care of terminally ill patients. The first stage, twenty one cases were identified as relevant to the topic, and then were classified to four types of problems. For instance, one of these types was the patient's refusal of care. The second stage, the ethical problems in the case were defined, and then the case was analyzed. This was to analyze the reasons, the ethical values, and the related ethical principles in the cases. Then the interpretation was synthetically done by integration of the result of analysis and the situation. The third stage was the ordering phase of the cases, which was done according to the result of the interpretation and the common principles in the cases. The first two stages describe the methodology of new casuistry, and the final stage was for the methodology of the specified principlism. The common principles were the principle of autonomy and the principle of caring. The principle of autonomy was specified; when competent patients refused care, nurse should discontinue the care to respect for the patients' decision. The principle of caring was also specified; when the competent patients refused care, nurses should continue to provide the care in spite of the patients' refusal to preserve their life. These specification may lead the opposite behavior, which emphasizes the importance of nurse's will and intentions to make their decision in the clinical situations.

  • PDF

Data Mining for High Dimensional Data in Drug Discovery and Development

  • Lee, Kwan R.;Park, Daniel C.;Lin, Xiwu;Eslava, Sergio
    • Genomics & Informatics
    • /
    • v.1 no.2
    • /
    • pp.65-74
    • /
    • 2003
  • Data mining differs primarily from traditional data analysis on an important dimension, namely the scale of the data. That is the reason why not only statistical but also computer science principles are needed to extract information from large data sets. In this paper we briefly review data mining, its characteristics, typical data mining algorithms, and potential and ongoing applications of data mining at biopharmaceutical industries. The distinguishing characteristics of data mining lie in its understandability, scalability, its problem driven nature, and its analysis of retrospective or observational data in contrast to experimentally designed data. At a high level one can identify three types of problems for which data mining is useful: description, prediction and search. Brief review of data mining algorithms include decision trees and rules, nonlinear classification methods, memory-based methods, model-based clustering, and graphical dependency models. Application areas covered are discovery compound libraries, clinical trial and disease management data, genomics and proteomics, structural databases for candidate drug compounds, and other applications of pharmaceutical relevance.

Distinction of Hot-Cold Using Fuzzy Inference (퍼지 추론에 의한 한열 판별)

  • Jang, Yun Ji;Kim, Young Eun;Kim, Chul;Song, Mi Young;Rhee, Eun Joo
    • The Journal of the Society of Korean Medicine Diagnostics
    • /
    • v.19 no.3
    • /
    • pp.141-149
    • /
    • 2015
  • Objectives Recently the fuzzy logic is widely used in the decision making, identification, pattern recognition, optimization in various fields. In this study, we propose the fuzzy logic as the objective method of distinguishing hot and cold, the basis of diagnosis in Korean medicine. Methods We developed fuzzy inference system to distinguish whether the subjects had hot or cold. The cold and hot questionnaire of Korean traditional university textbook, the pulse rate and the DITI value of face used in the system. These three kinds of information were defined as 'fuzzy sets,' and 54 fuzzy rules were established on the basis of clinical practitioners' knowledge. The fuzzy inference was performed by using the Mamdani's method. To evaluate the usefulness of the fuzzy inference system, 200 cases of data measured in the Woosuk university hospital of oriental medicine were used to compare the determining hot, normal, cold results obtained from the experts and from the proposed system. Results As a result, 100 cases of "cold", 54 cases of "normal", and 34 cases of "hot" were matched between the experts and the proposed system. This fuzzy system showed the conformity degree of 94%(${\kappa}=0.853$). Conclusions In this study, we could express the process of distinguishing hot-cold using the fuzzy logic for objectification and quantification of hot-cold identification. This is the first study that introduce a fuzzy logic for distinguish pattern identification. The degree of the heat characteristic of the patients inferred by this system could provide a more objective basis for diagnosing the hot-cold of patients.

Evidence based practice within the complementary medicine context

  • McLean, Lisa;Micalos, Peter Steve;McClean, Rhett;Pak, Sok Cheon
    • CELLMED
    • /
    • v.6 no.3
    • /
    • pp.15.1-15.4
    • /
    • 2016
  • Evidence based practice (EBP) is a system of applying the most current and valid high quality evidence to support clinical decision making in a healthcare setting. In the twenty five years since its inception, EBP has become the accepted benchmark for excellence in healthcare. Although the system emerged within the biomedical sciences, in the years since EBP has become normative across all healthcare modalities from dentistry, allied health to complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). Practicing evidence based medicine within any modality potentially offers the patient the best available care based on high quality evidence. Yet it is the nature of the evidence that provokes some questions about the suitability of EBP across all modalities of healthcare. The meta analysis of randomized controlled trial (RCT) stands at the pinnacle of the hierarchy of evidence in EBP. This forms a challenge to CAM due to the difficulty in reducing the elementals of a holistic naturopathic assessment of a patient into an answerable question to be tested within a RCT. On one level this makes EBP paradigmatically incompatible with CAM, yet on another level it presents the opportunity to redefine the parameters of what is considered high level evidence. EBP has become a tool, and at times a weapon wielded by governments and health insurance companies to direct healthcare funding and policy. The implications of the nature of accepted evidence are becoming far reaching. The pursuit of the best available healthcare for each individual is the focus of EBP. However, the injudicious use of this system to direct health policy is fraught with biomedical bias and dominance. This issue raises the challenge to CAM to present high level evidence according to the rules of evidence, or face the annihilation of centuries of empirical knowledge.