Background: In the past 20 years, society has witnessed the following landmark scientific advances: (i) the sequencing of the human genome, (ii) the distribution of software by the open source movement, and (iii) the invention of the World Wide Web. Together, these advances have provided a new impetus for clinical software development: developers now translate the products of human genomic research into clinical software tools; they use open-source programs to build them; and they use the Web to deliver them. Whilst this open-source component-based approach has undoubtedly made clinical software development easier, clinical software projects are still hampered by problems that traditionally accompany the software process. This study describes the development of the BOADICEA Web Application, a computer program used by clinical geneticists to assess risks to patients with a family history of breast and ovarian cancer. The key challenge of the BOADICEA Web Application project was to deliver a program that was safe, secure and easy for healthcare professionals to use. We focus on the software process, problems faced, and lessons learned. Our key objectives are: (i) to highlight key clinical software development issues; (ii) to demonstrate how software engineering tools and techniques can facilitate clinical software development for the benefit of individuals who lack software engineering expertise; and (iii) to provide a clinical software development case report that can be used as a basis for discussion at the start of future projects.
Results: We developed the BOADICEA Web Application using an evolutionary software process. Our approach to Web implementation was conservative and we used conventional software engineering tools and techniques. The principal software development activities were: requirements, design, implementation, testing, documentation and maintenance. The BOADICEA Web Application has now been widely adopted by clinical geneticists and researchers. BOADICEA Web Application version 1 was released for general use in November 2007. By May 2010, we had > 1200 registered users based in the UK, USA, Canada, South America, Europe, Africa, Middle East, SE Asia, Australia and New Zealand.
Conclusions: We found that an evolutionary software process was effective when we developed the BOADICEA Web Application. The key clinical software development issues identified during the BOADICEA Web Application project were: software reliability, Web security, clinical data protection and user feedback.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1472-6947-12-30 | DOI Listing |
BMC Cancer
January 2025
Department of Radiation Oncology, First Affiliated Hospital of Kunming Medical University, 295 Xichang Road, Kunming, 650032, P. R. China.
Introduction: The core objective of this study was to precisely locate metastatic lymph nodes, identify potential areas in nasopharyngeal carcinoma patients that may not require radiotherapy, and propose a hypothesis for reduced target volume radiotherapy on the basis of these findings. Ultimately, we reassessed the differences in dosimetry of organs at risk (OARs) between reduced target volume (reduced CTV2) radiotherapy and standard radiotherapy.
Methods And Materials: A total of 209 patients participated in the study.
Malar J
January 2025
PATH, 2201 Westlake Ave Ste 200, Seattle, WA, 98121, USA.
Background: The World Health Organization conditionally recommends reactive drug administration to reduce malaria transmission in settings approaching elimination. However, few studies have evaluated the impact of reactive focal drug administration (rFDA) in sub-Saharan Africa, and none have evaluated it under programmatic conditions. In 2016, Senegal's national malaria control programme introduced rFDA, the presumptive treatment of compound members of a person with confirmed malaria, and reactive mass focal drug administration (rMFDA), an expanded effort including neighbouring compounds during an outbreak, in 10 low transmission districts in the north of the country.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBMC Cancer
January 2025
Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery I Section, Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430060, China.
Background: Gastric cancer peritoneal metastasis lacks effective predictive indices. This article retrospectively explored predictive values of DNA ploidy, stroma, and nucleotyping in gastric cancer peritoneal metastasis.
Methods: A comprehensive analysis was conducted on specimens obtained from 80 gastric cancer patients who underwent gastric resection at the Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery of Wuhan University Renmin Hospital.
BMC Urol
January 2025
Department of Urology, Beijing Children's Hospital, Capital Medical University, National Center for Children's Health, Nan Li Shi Lu Street No.56, Beijing, 100045, China.
Background: To analyze the clinical characteristics, complications and patients satisfaction of MIP hypospadias variant.
Methods: A retrospective analysis was performed for 31 patients with MIP admitted to our hospital from January 2008 to February 2023. All enrolled patients underwent telephone follow-up and a survey was conducted on the satisfaction of patients and their families.
NPJ Digit Med
January 2025
Graduate School of Data Science, Seoul National University, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
Polysomnography (PSG) is crucial for diagnosing sleep disorders, but manual scoring of PSG is time-consuming and subjective, leading to high variability. While machine-learning models have improved PSG scoring, their clinical use is hindered by the 'black-box' nature. In this study, we present SleepXViT, an automatic sleep staging system using Vision Transformer (ViT) that provides intuitive, consistent explanations by mimicking human 'visual scoring'.
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