Beneficial Effects of Soluble Guanylyl Cyclase Stimulation and Activation in Sickle Cell Disease Are Amplified by Hydroxyurea: In Vitro and In Vivo Studies.

The complex pathophysiology of sickle cell anemia (SCA) involves intravascular hemolytic processes and recurrent vaso-occlusion, driven by chronic vascular inflammation, which result in the disease's severe clinical complications, including recurrent painful vaso-occlusive episodes. Hydroxyurea, the only drug frequently used for SCA therapy, is a cytostatic agent, although it appears to exert nitric oxide/soluble guanylyl cyclase (sGC) modulating activity. As new drugs that can complement or replace the use of hydroxyurea are sought to further reduce vaso-occlusive episode frequency in SCA, we investigated the effects of the sGC agonists BAY 60-2770 (sGC activator) and BAY 41-2272 (sGC stimulator) in the presence or absence of hydroxyurea on SCA vaso-occlusive mechanisms and cell recruitment both ex vivo and in vivo.

From Raw Data to FAIR Data: The FAIRification Workflow for Health Research.

Background: FAIR (findability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability) guiding principles seek the reuse of data and other digital research input, output, and objects (algorithms, tools, and workflows that led to that data) making them findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable. GO FAIR - a bottom-up, stakeholder driven and self-governed initiative - defined a seven-step FAIRification process focusing on data, but also indicating the required work for metadata. This FAIRification process aims at addressing the translation of raw datasets into FAIR datasets in a general way, without considering specific requirements and challenges that may arise when dealing with some particular types of data.

Transfer Physical Therapists Knowledge: A Pre-Test to Minimize the Complexity of Physical Therapists' Quality Assessment of Shoulder Exercise Performance.

Exercise therapy aims to restore normal musculoskeletal function or to reduce pain in patients with musculoskeletal shoulder disorders. Especially during long-term treatments, patients perform unsupervised exercises at home. Harmful movement deviations should be identified and avoided.

Development of a Presentation Interface for Seismo- and Ballistocardiographic Data.

Ballistocardiography is a method to gain detailed information about body movements imparted by the ballistic forces associated with cardiac contraction. We measured using different setups and sensor positions to gain information of a reference signal of healthy adults. We used two resting state recordings and two recordings under physical stress (ergometer and treadmill) with stepwise increasing load.

Lessons Learned: Implementation of a Nationwide Innovative E-Learning Module for Health Enabling Technologies.

E-learning enables students to participate in online courses across universities. As a part of the HiGHmed joint teaching and training program, we developed an e-learning module entitled Health Enabling Technologies and Data based on the Gilly Salmon 5 stage model didactic concept. This course was implemented at a German Technical University in the winter semester 2019/20 and evaluated by the students after completion.

How to Decide upon Nursing Technologies - A Participation-Based Approach.

This study describes an approach to support decisions on the acquisition of innovative nursing technologies. The approach focusses a participatory design that involves nursing staff from the beginning of the process and aims at achieving positive results regarding identification with the decision of implementation and use of technologies by nursing staff.

Data Provenance Standards and Recommendations for FAIR Data.

This article reviews the main characteristics of five widely used data provenance models and recommendations. We suggest a set of six provenance properties that should be satisfied by any provenance model as a basis for further implementation of provenance mechanisms, supporting the findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR) principles for both, research and health data.

A Structured Measurement of Highly Synchronous Real-Time Ballistocardiography Signal Data of Heart Failure Patients.

Ballistocardiography (BCG) has gained more attention due to the fundamental goal of medical intervention in diagnostics and follow-up. BCG is particularly suitable for the study of heart failure, which a recent study has shown. The results of this working group shall be validated and reproduced with another study trial.

Detection of Psychomotor Agitation Pattern from Motion Sensor Data in a Living Environment of a Patient with Dementia.

Agitation is a symptom of many mental illnesses such as dementia. The aim of this work is to detect psychomotor agitation pattern in the living environment of a patient with dementia. To reach this goal, we built a smart home environment to collect the motion data of our patient.

Trodden Lanes or New Paths: Ballisto- and Seismocardiography Till Now.

Ballisto- and seismocardiography (BCG/SCG) are methods of studying blood circulation and cardiac function by using the vibration measurements at the body surface, e.g. via accelerometers.

Minimizing comprehensive geriatric assessment to identify deterioration of physical performance in a healthy community-dwelling older cohort: longitudinal data of the AEQUIPA Versa study.

Background: It is important to identify the relevant parameters of physical performance to prevent early functional decline and to prolong independent living. The aim of this study is to describe the development of physical performance in a healthy community-dwelling older cohort aged 70+ years using comprehensive assessment over two years and to subsequently identify the most relevant predictive tests for physical decline to minimize assessment.

Methods: Physical performance was measured by comprehensive geriatric assessment.

vivaGen - a survival data set generator for software testing.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via the original article.

Unobtrusive Health Monitoring in Private Spaces: The Smart Vehicle.

Unobtrusive in-vehicle health monitoring has the potential to use the driving time to perform regular medical check-ups. This work intends to provide a guide to currently proposed sensor systems for in-vehicle monitoring and to answer, in particular, the questions: (1) Which sensors are suitable for in-vehicle data collection? (2) Where should the sensors be placed? (3) Which biosignals or vital signs can be monitored in the vehicle? (4) Which purposes can be supported with the health data? We reviewed retrospective literature systematically and summarized the up-to-date research on leveraging sensor technology for unobtrusive in-vehicle health monitoring. PubMed, IEEE Xplore, and Scopus delivered 959 articles.

The International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics (IAHSI): IMIAs Academy is Now Established and on Track.

Objectives: To summarize the major activities of the International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics (IAHSI) from 2018 until 2019, and to provide an outline of actions planned for 2020.

Method: Reporting about these activities and actions by the members of the Academy's first Board.

Results: Academy bylaws were accepted by the Academy Plenary and the IMIA General Assembly on August 25th, 2019 and August 26th, 2019, respectively.

CASEPLUS-SimPat: An Intersectoral Web-Based Case Management System for Multimorbid Dementia Patients.

One main challenge of health care systems in future will be the care and treatment of dementia patients. To their advanced age, dementia patients do not only have limitations in cognition, perception, and articulation, but also suffer from several other diseases (multimorbidity). These patients have sophisticated needs for assistance, care, and treatment relying on different health care sectors.

Validation of Computerized Quantification of Ocular Redness.

Purpose: To show feasibility of computerized techniques for ocular redness quantification in clinical studies, and to propose an automatic, objective method.

Methods: Software for quantification of redness of the bulbar conjunctiva was developed. It provides an interface for manual and automatic sclera segmentation along with automated alignment of region of interest to enable estimation of changes in redness.

Development and evaluation of point-of-care testing recertification with e-learning.

One of the main requirements in point-of-care testing (POCT) is efficient operator training to avoid diagnostic errors. Considering a variety of users and time-independent learning, e-learning is preferred. However, in our experience, e-learning is not always accepted by employees.

Analysing the Scientific Publications of Peter Reichertz: Reflections from the Perspective of Medical Informatics Knowledge Today.

Professor Peter L. Reichertz is one of the most significant pioneers in the field of medical informatics worldwide. In 1969, 50 years ago, he became Professor at the Hannover Medical School.

Quantitation of large, middle and small hepatitis B surface proteins in HBeAg-positive patients treated with peginterferon alfa-2a.

Background & Aims: Hepatitis B virus (HBV) contains three viral surface proteins, large, middle and small hepatitis B surface protein (LHBs, MHBs, SHBs). Proportions of LHBs and MHBs are lower in patients with inactive vs active chronic infection. Interferon alfa may convert hepatitis B e antigen (HBeAg)-positive chronic hepatitis B (CHB) to an inactive carrier state, but prediction of sustained response is unsatisfactory.

Methods for a similarity measure for clinical attributes based on survival data analysis.

Background: Case-based reasoning is a proven method that relies on learned cases from the past for decision support of a new case. The accuracy of such a system depends on the applied similarity measure, which quantifies the similarity between two cases. This work proposes a collection of methods for similarity measures especially for comparison of clinical cases based on survival data, as they are available for example from clinical trials.

Vaccine Vectors Harnessing the Power of Cytomegaloviruses.

Cytomegalovirus (CMV) species have been gaining attention as experimental vaccine vectors inducing cellular immune responses of unparalleled strength and protection. This review outline the strengths and the restrictions of CMV-based vectors, in light of the known aspects of CMV infection, pathogenicity and immunity. We discuss aspects to be considered when optimizing CMV based vaccines, including the innate immune response, the adaptive humoral immunity and the T-cell responses.

The built environment and health: fostering interprofessional collaboration for better policy recommendations.

This paper describes the initiation and proceedings of a national consultation organized to appraise issues in the local built environment affecting public health, using an interprofessional and intersectoral approach. The consultation was hosted as a part of the onsite session of an international fellowship program in interprofessional education and practice, organized by the Manipal FAIMER Institute for Leadership in Interprofessional Education, India. One hundred and eight delegates from across academic disciplines including the health professions, management, public health, architecture, and engineering, participated in this event.

Clinical Decision-Support Systems for Detection of Systemic Inflammatory Response Syndrome, Sepsis, and Septic Shock in Critically Ill Patients: A Systematic Review.

Background: The design of computerized systems able to support automated detection of threatening conditions in critically ill patients such as systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) and sepsis has been fostered recently. The increase of research work in this area is due to both the growing digitalization in health care and the increased appreciation of the importance of early sepsis detection and intervention. To be able to understand the variety of systems and their characteristics as well as performances, a systematic literature review is required.

Using openEHR Archetypes for Automated Extraction of Numerical Information from Clinical Narratives.

Up to 80% of medical information is documented by unstructured data such as clinical reports written in natural language. Such data is called unstructured because the information it contains cannot be retrieved automatically as straightforward as from structured data. However, we assume that the use of this flexible kind of documentation will remain a substantial part of a patient's medical record, so that clinical information systems have to deal appropriately with this type of information description.

Extending a Knowledge-Based System with Learning Capacity.

Informal caregivers often complain about missing knowledge. A knowledge-based personalized educational system is developed, which provides caregiving relatives with the information needed. Yet, evaluation against domain experts indicated, that parts of the knowledge-base are incorrect.