Automatic identification of apnea through acoustic analysis for at-home screening.

Objective: Although many studies have analyzed breathing sounds in the diagnosis of obstructive sleep apnea syndrome, the recording of snoring sounds at home is hampered by the various background noises of daily life. Recordings also frequently include talking during sleep, which may infringe the privacy of patients.

Materials And Methods: A recording system used a bone conduction microphone to record snoring sounds.

Efficient health information management systems using wireless communications technology to aid disaster victims.

Japan is an earthquake-prone country, and disasters have a devastating effect on the lives of residents in stricken areas. Shelters can be constructed in order to secure the physical safety of residents, but there are no such provisions for the shock of experiencing a disaster, losing property and friends, and transitioning to an unfamiliar life in a shelter, all of which can lead to mental disorders. Caretakers such as medical doctors and nurses who are dispatched to disaster sites also face difficulties in the disruption of communications and transportation, thus a system able to secure efficient health management in those facilities is also required.

Types of infectious outbreaks and their impact in elderly care facilities: a review of the literature.

Background: infectious outbreaks in long-term care facilities (LTCFs) tend to have a significant impact on infection rates and mortality rates of the residents.

Objectives: this review aimed to update the information on pathogens identified in such outbreaks and to try to explore indicators that reflect the impact of outbreaks among residents and health care workers (HCWs).

Methods: MEDLINE (1966-2008) was used to identify outbreaks using the following thesaurus terms: 'Cross-Infection', 'Disease Outbreaks', 'Urinary-Tract Infections' and 'Blood-Borne Pathogens'.

Environmental control interventions for frontotemporal dementia with reversed sleep-wake cycles.

Background: This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of environmental control interventions using an integrated chip tag monitoring system for a frontotemporal dementia (FTD) patient.

Method: The subject was a male FTD patient (Pick type) with reversed sleep-wake cycles. For a 2-week period, the doors to all patients' rooms in the unit were kept open as a form of environmental control, and in the following 2 weeks, all doors were kept closed (intervention A).

Temporal patterns of movements in institutionalized elderly with dementia during 12 consecutive days of observation in Seoul, Korea.

Background: The availability of increasingly sophisticated technology has meant that ambulation can be measured with precision over an extended period.

Methods: An integrated circuit tag-monitoring system was set up to measure the distance moved in a dementia care unit in Korea in 2006. Various indicators were developed to measure temporal patterns of ambulation over time, such as the median distance moved per hour and the percentage of hours moved.

Feasibility study of the integrated circuit tag monitoring system for dementia residents in Japan.

Videotaping, direct observation, and biomechanical devices have been used to measure the wandering behavior of institutionalized people with dementia and to identify patterns of movement. Owing to technical limitations, the variability in movement patterns or the distance traveled could not be examined. The present study examined the feasibility of an integrated circuit tag monitoring system to monitor the movement patterns of Japanese dementia residents.

Communication network analysis in maternity hospital bulletin board system.

Recent changes in Japanese social environments consequently dropped total fertility rate, and poor interpersonal relationships in local communities have aggravated the environments for childbirth and child-rearing. Under such circumstances, we introduced a bulletin board system (BBS) to an official web-site of a maternity hospital to set up a community for its patients for communication regarding childbirth and the like. Based on the logs from BBS, we graphed types of communication among its users with to describe topologies.

Development of web-based qualitative and quantitative data collection systems: study on daily symptoms and coping strategies among Japanese rheumatoid arthritis patients.

With the sharp rise in Internet access in recent years, the Internet is increasingly being used for research. We have developed two new systems using the Internet for both quantitative and qualitative data collection. One is a dynamic system for creating questionnaires and collecting responses and the other is an individual patient support follow-up system.

A study of the medical record interface to natural language processing.

The information about a patient tends to be handled more on a computer system. However, it is not sufficiently rational enough because of the fundamental difference between man and a computer. Up to now, man has treated information using a natural language.