Defining and Scoping Participatory Health Informatics: An eDelphi Study.

Background: Health care has evolved to support the involvement of individuals in decision making by, for example, using mobile apps and wearables that may help empower people to actively participate in their treatment and health monitoring. While the term "participatory health informatics" (PHI) has emerged in literature to describe these activities, along with the use of social media for health purposes, the scope of the research field of PHI is not yet well defined.

Objective: This article proposes a preliminary definition of PHI and defines the scope of the field.

Implementation and Operational Analysis of an Interactive Intensive Care Unit within a Smart Health Context.

In the context of hospital management and operation, Intensive Care Units (ICU) are one of the most challenging in terms of time responsiveness and criticality, in which adequate resource management and signal processing play a key role in overall system performance. In this work, a context aware Intensive Care Unit is implemented and analyzed to provide scalable signal acquisition capabilities, as well as to provide tracking and access control. Wireless channel analysis is performed by means of hybrid optimized 3D Ray Launching deterministic simulation to assess potential interference impact as well as to provide required coverage/capacity thresholds for employed transceivers.

Lessons learned from the implementation of remote control for the interoperability standard ISO/IEEE11073-20601 in a standard weighing scale.

The Point of Care (PoC) version of the interoperability standard ISO/IEEE11073 (X73) provided a mechanism to control remotely agents through documents X73-10201 and X73-20301. The newer version of X73 oriented to Personal Health Devices (PHD) has no mechanisms to do such a thing. The authors are working toward a common proposal with the PHD Working Group (PHD-WG) in order to adapt the remote control capabilities from X73PoC to X73PHD.

Formalize clinical processes into electronic health information systems: Modelling a screening service for diabetic retinopathy.

Most healthcare services use information and communication technologies to reduce and redistribute the workload associated with follow-up of chronic conditions. However, the lack of normalization of the information handled in and exchanged between such services hinders the scalability and extendibility. The use of medical standards for modelling and exchanging information, especially dual-model based approaches, can enhance the features of screening services.

An integrated healthcare information system for end-to-end standardized exchange and homogeneous management of digital ECG formats.

This paper investigates the application of the enterprise information system (EIS) paradigm to standardized cardiovascular condition monitoring. There are many specifications in cardiology, particularly in the ECG standardization arena. The existence of ECG formats, however, does not guarantee the implementation of homogeneous, standardized solutions for ECG management.

A review on digital ECG formats and the relationships between them.

A plethora of digital ECG formats have been proposed and implemented. This heterogeneity hinders the design and development of interoperable systems and entails critical integration issues for the healthcare information systems. This paper aims at performing a comprehensive overview on the current state of affairs of the interoperable exchange of digital ECG signals.

Implementation methodology for interoperable personal health devices with low-voltage low-power constraints.

Traditionally, e-Health solutions were located at the point of care (PoC), while the new ubiquitous user-centered paradigm draws on standard-based personal health devices (PHDs). Such devices place strict constraints on computation and battery efficiency that encouraged the International Organization for Standardization/IEEE11073 (X73) standard for medical devices to evolve from X73PoC to X73PHD. In this context, low-voltage low-power (LV-LP) technologies meet the restrictions of X73PHD-compliant devices.

Seamless integration of ISO/IEEE11073 personal health devices and ISO/EN13606 electronic health records into an end-to-end interoperable solution.

The new paradigm of personal health demands open standards and middleware components that permit transparent integration and end-to-end interoperability from new personal health devices to healthcare information system. The use of standards seems to be the internationally accepted way to face this challenge. In this article, the implementation of an end-to-end standard-based personal health solution is presented.

Feasibility of a telemedicine framework for collaborative pacemaker follow-up.

We propose a telemedicine framework for remote and manufacturer independent pacemaker (PM) follow-up. The main goal is to provide the caregiver at the point-of-care with an efficient screening method to identify possible malfunction of the pacing system in collaboration with the specialist at the PM clinic. The concept was evaluated in a clinical trial on 44 patients (mean age 76 years).