Post-COVID-19-pandemic changes and clinical characteristics of invasive group a streptococcal infections from 2015 to 2023.

Purpose: Since winter 2022, invasive GAS (iGAS) infections have re-emerged in Europe, causing severe diseases in children and adults. We aimed to examine whether this reported post-pandemic increase was associated with an increased disease severity and/or a shift in clinical disease phenotypes.

Methods: We performed detailed clinical phenotyping of patients hospitalized with iGAS infections at a 1410-bed tertiary German Medical Center from 01/2015 to 09/2023.

Copper and its complexes in medicine: a biochemical approach.

The fundamental role of copper and the recognition of its complexes as important bioactive compounds in vitro and in vivo aroused an ever-increasing interest in these agents as potential drugs for therapeutic intervention in various diseases. The vast array of information available for their bioinorganic properties and mode of action in several biological systems, combined with the new opportunities offered by the flourishing technologies of medicinal chemistry, is creating an exciting scenario for the development of a novel generation of highly active drugs with minimized side effects which could add significantly to the current clinical research and practice. In this paper we attempt to summarize all the available-to-date information on these issues.

Across the Atlantic cooperation to address international challenges in eHealth and health IT: managing toward a common goal.

Purpose: Countries on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean have invested in health information and communication technologies. Since eHealth challenges cross borders a European Union-United States of America conference on public policies relating to health IT and eHealth was held October 20-21, 2008 in Paris, France.

Process: The conference was organized around the four themes: (1) privacy and security, (2) health IT interoperability, (3) deployment and adoption of health IT, and (4) Public Private Collaborative Governance.

eHealth in Europe: from Vision to Reality.

It is now 20 years that the European Union supports research and development of information and communication technologies based tools for healthcare (eHealth). From 1989 till today, funding has continually been increased, initiating new research, complementing Member State initiatives, strengthening European industrial competitiveness, and tackling new health and social problems related to the free movement of people in the EU. By now, many of the earlier visions and dreams have been realised or are close to wider implementation.

The road ahead.

The recent events dedicated to eHealth, such as eHealth 2003 and eHealth 2004 Ministerial conferences and exhibition, demonstrated clearly that a critical mass of users is being created who already use eHealth services and applications. Citizens, patients and health professionals are experiencing growing benefits from the use of eHealth applications which can increase citizen information, increase patient empowerment, speed up delivery, and reduce medical risks. Yet despite their availability and proven benefits, eHealth systems and services are not yet widely used in real-life medical or health situations.

Synergy between medical informatics and bioinformatics: facilitating genomic medicine for future health care.

In this paper, we review the results of BIOINFOMED, a study funded by the European Commission (EC) with the purpose to analyse the different issues and challenges in the area where Medical Informatics and Bioinformatics meet. Traditionally, Medical Informatics has been focused on the intersection between computer science and clinical medicine, whereas Bioinformatics have been predominantly centered on the intersection between computer science and biological research. Although researchers from both areas have occasionally collaborated, their training, objectives and interests have been quite different.

Establishing an agenda for biomedical informatics.

Objective: To describe potential areas of collaboration between Medical Informatics (BI) and Bioinformatics (BI) and their effects on planning future work in both disciplines.

Methods: Some reflections on the objectives and rationale underpinning MI and BI are given, and preliminary results from the BIOINFOMED workgroup, supported by the European Commission, are introduced.

Results: Applications from both subfields suggest topics for sharing and exchange between the subfields within the emerging field of Biomedical Informatics.

Medical informatics and bioinformatics: European efforts to facilitate synergy.

Over the past decade there have been several attempts to rethink the basic strategies and scope of medical informatics. Meanwhile, bioinformatics has only recently experienced a similar debate about its scientific character. Both disciplines envision the development of novel diagnostic, therapeutic, and management tools, and products for patient care.

Correcting organ motion artifacts in x-ray CT medical imaging systems by adaptive processing. I. Theory.

X-ray CT scanners provide images of transverse cross sections of the human body from a large number of projections. During the data acquisition process, which usually takes about 1 s, motion effects such as respiration, cardiac motion, and patient restlessness produce artifacts that appear as blurring, doubling, and distortion in the reconstructed images, and may lead to inaccurate diagnosis. To address this problem several processing techniques have been proposed that require a priori knowledge of the motion characteristics.

Improving user acceptance of health-care telematics.

Telehealth represents a new approach to health-care with the potential for improving accessibility and reducing costs. Over the years, technology has become increasingly interactive, cheaper and standardized. Despite this, the uptake of technology has been low.

Towards a health telematics infrastructure in the European Union.

Over the last decade information and communication technologies--telematics technologies--have demonstrated their potential to improve the quality, access and efficiency of health care. Health telematics applications are presently revolutionizing the developments not only in diagnosis, treatment, surveillance and rehabilitation of patients, but also on the side of the more collective aspects of health care and health prevention such as clinical trials, epidemiology and health education. Moreover, for the first time in the history of health care the emerging Health Information Infrastructure (HII), i.

From electronic medical record to personal health records: present situation and trends in European Union in the area of electronic healthcare records.

In this article we define the electronic healthcare record (EHR) and present its purpose as a tool for continuity of care. We consider the EHR system as a necessary tool for collaborative work of healthcare professionals linking the traditional stand alone physician's systems or departmental systems, which we refer to here as electronic medical record systems. We briefly describe the current usage of electronic medical records in EU and focus on the major challenges to wide implementation of electronic healthcare record systems.

Convincing cases: important component of user acceptance.

This paper is presenting the rational that lead to the organisation of the European workshop on Acceptance of Telematics Applications by Healthcare Professionals "Looking for the convincing cases," that took place in Thesaloniki 12-13 December, 1997. A brief overview is presented of the health telematics sector, the current situation of the usage of some applications, and major challenges towards wide implementation of health telematics applications. It focuses on user acceptance as one of the critical challenges towards wider implementation.

Towards personal health record: current situation, obstacles and trends in implementation of electronic healthcare record in Europe.

In this article, we define the electronic healthcare record and present its purpose as a tool for continuity of care. We briefly describe the current situation of usage and focus on the major challenges to wide implementation in Europe and beyond. Finally, we point out trends that show stronger involvement of the patients-citizens in the health care prevention and promotion processes, and discuss the impact on the future development of the electronic healthcare record into personal health records.

From electronic medical record to personal health record.

In this paper we attempt to provide a definition and purpose for the electronic patient record, point out the benefits of its use and outline the major challenges in wider implementation that are encountered world-wide. Finally, some trends are highlighted that are believed to play an important role in the future development and use of the electronic patient record.

Improving Tikhonov regularization with linearly constrained optimization: application to the inverse epicardial potential solution.

Two methods to improve on the accuracy of the Tikhonov regularization technique commonly used for the stable recovery of solutions to ill-posed problems are presented. These methods do not require a priori knowledge of the properties of the solution or of the error. Rather they exploit the observed properties of overregularized and underregularized Tikhonov solutions so as to impose linear constraints on the sought-after solution.