An architecture for online comparison and validation of processing methods and computerized guidelines in intensive care units

Clinical decision support systems are a combination of software techniques to help the clinicians in their medical decision making process via functionalities ranging from basic signal analysis to therapeutic planning and computerized guidelines. The algorithms providing all these functionalities must be very carefully validated on real patient data and must be confronted to everyday clinical practice. One of the main problems when developing these techniques is the difficulty to obtain high-quality complete patient records, comprising data coming both from the biomedical equipment (high-frequency signals), and from numerous other sources (therapeutics, imagery, clinical actions, etc.). In this paper, we present an infrastructure for developing and testing such software algorithms. It is based on a bedside workstation where testing different algorithms simultaneously on real-time data is possible in the ward. It is completed by a collaborative portal enabling different teams to test their software algorithms on the same patient records, making comparisons and cross-validations more easily.     

Generation of RFID test datasets using RSN tool

This paper presents an RSN Tool to generate input datasets for testing RFID middleware. As RFID middleware takes an important role in entire RFID systems, its performance should be carefully evaluated under various business conditions. In general, evaluation of the RFID middleware requires a huge cost because the numerous RFID readers and tags need to be deployed to acquire the tag event stream. To facilitate low-cost testing of the middleware, we propose the RSN Tool which provides means of designing a virtual RFID infrastructure and generates a tag event stream automatically for the virtual infrastructure. Using the RSN Tool, we can easily obtain a semantically valid dataset, which captures both physical characteristics of RF communications and business activities of tags’ movements. This is a major differentiation point of our work compared from previous works, which merely create the randomized dataset based on a set of virtual RFID readers. We also discuss a step-by-step usage of the RSN Tool from the creation of a virtual infrastructure to the generation of tag events. The experimental analysis shows that the RSN Tool can create the near-real dataset, which closely reflects business activities of the real RFID infrastructure.     

基于RFID技术的无线定位系统

RFID是一种非接触式自动识别技术,它的应用非常广泛。SpotON系统、LANDMARC系统都是基于RFID的无线定位系统。文章介绍了RFID用于室内定位的4种不同的定位模式,同时介绍了采用RFID技术来简化对WLAN基础设施进行管理的思科无线定位解决方案。该解决方案可从WLAN基础设施内部跟踪数千个无线设备,从而简化WLAN管理,有效提高网络扩展性。     

RFID: Verbraucherängste und verbraucherschutz

RFID introduction is a hotly debated public policy issue. The technology enables physical environments to become more interactive and supportive by tagging each item with a chip that wirelessly communicates with a service-enriched backend infrastructure. Based on a number of user studies at Humboldt-Universität and at the Auto-ID Center, this article presents the major fears associated with RFID introduction. We show to what extent these fears are justified and derive a number of system requirements for giving users more control over an RFID-enabled IT infrastructure. After presenting several recent technical proposals for privacy protection, we focus on the question of controlled access to RFID tags. We conclude with a proposal for an easy-to-use private password model.     

RFID中间件的结构设计

RFID中间件是介于前端读写器硬件模块与后端数据库和应用软件之间的重要环节,它是RFID应用部署运作的中枢。针对目前相关企业的需求,设计了一种面向服务体系（SOA）的实时系统的RFID中间件结构, 并给出了设备管理及询问器相应的UML类图结构,对RFID中间件中各组成部分的作用和构成作了详细地说明。通过对一个基于餐饮系统应用的测试表明,中间件可提高系统的可移植性,增强了系统的可维护性和可靠性。     

基于SOA的RFID中间件的研究与实现

介绍了目前相对成熟的RFID中间件解决方案,包括基于Savant的RFID中间件、IBM RFID中间件和BEA WEBLOGIC RFID中间件,指出了它们的特点和不足。提出了一种基于面向服务架构(SOA)的RFID中间件架构,详细介绍了基础架构层的Edge Server、消息系统和数据接口的具体实现。并针对下一步研究工作做了简单说明。     

基于SOA应用JMX和JMS技术的RFID中间件设计

针对企业级的需求,提出了一种基于SOA技术及JMX和JMS的RFID中间件架构,介绍了基础架构的设备管理层、事件处理层和服务接口层的具体实现。实验证明,该架构达到了设计要求。     

Detecting relay attacks on RFID communication systems using quantum bits

RFID systems became widespread in variety of applications because of their simplicity in manufacturing and usability. In the province of critical infrastructure protection, RFID systems are usually employed to identify and track people, objects and vehicles that enter restricted areas. The most important vulnerability which is prevalent among all protocols employed in RFID systems is against relay attacks. Until now, to protect RFID systems against this kind of attack, the only approach is the utilization of distance-bounding protocols which are not applicable over low-cost devices such as RFID passive tags. This work presents a novel technique using emerging quantum technologies to detect relay attacks on RFID systems. Recently, it is demonstrated that quantum key distribution (QKD) can be implemented in a client–server scheme where client only requires an on-chip polarization rotator that may be integrated into a handheld device. Now we present our technique for a tag–reader scenario which needs similar resources as the mentioned QKD scheme. We argue that our technique requires less resources and provides lower probability of false alarm for the system, compared with distance-bounding protocols, and may pave the way to enhance the security of current RFID systems.

     

Design and development of the THYROID system

This paper discusses the design and development of our decision support system for thyroid function diagnostics, named Thyroid. The objective of our work has been to develop a decision support system for practical use. The Thyroid system has been designed to utilize the existing laboratory test results of the patient. The task of the system is to produce interpretative reports for the clinicians. The system is integrated with the laboratory information system of University Central Hospital of Turku. It has been under clinical testing for more than 2 years with over 1600 actual cases. The system has produced promising results and it has also shown the limitations of the knowledge-based systems in this infrastructure environment.     

Integration of Temporal Reasoning and Temporal-Data Maintenance into a Reusable Database Mediator to Answer Abstract, Time-Oriented Queries: The Tzolkin System

The ability to reason with time-oriented data is central to the practice of medicine. Monitoring clinical variables over time often provides information that drives medical decision making (e.g., clinical diagnosis and therapy planning). Because the time-oriented patient data are often stored in electronic databases, it is important to ensure that clinicians and medical decision-support applications can conveniently find answers to their clinical queries using these databases. To help clinicians and decision-support applications make medical decisions using time-oriented data, a database-management system should (1) permit the expression of abstract, time-oriented queries, (2) permit the retrieval of data that satisfy a given set of time-oriented data-selection criteria, and (3) present the retrieved data at the appropriate level of abstraction. We impose these criteria to facilitate the expression of clinical queries and to reduce the manual data processing that users must undertake to decipher the answers to their queries. We describe a system, Tzolkin, that integrates a general method for temporal-data maintenance with a general method for temporal reasoning to meet these criteria. Tzolkin allows clinicians to use SQL-like temporal queries to retrieve both raw, time-oriented data and dynamically generated summaries of those data. Tzolkin can be used as a standalone system or as a module that serves other software systems. We implement Tzolkin with a temporal-database mediator approach. This approach is general, facilitates software reuse, and thus decreases the cost of building new software systems that require this functionality.     

EPCglobal应用层事件引擎设计与实现

射频识别中间件的推出很好地解决了将物理基础架构收集到的信息传递给企业应用程序并且被企业应用程序所使用的技术与成本问题,加速了射频识别技术的推广使用。该文介绍了一个支持EPCglobal应用层事件规范的射频识别中间件引擎,引擎由内核模块、设备管理模块、事件过滤模块和配置模块组成,将应用程序和设备接口分离,过滤和处理读卡器捕获的原始观测值,提供设备管理和查询的应用程序级接口等功能。阐述该服务器的功能结构、设计和实现。     

The trouble with login: on usability and computer security in ubiquitous computing

Logging in by typing usernames and passwords is by far the most common way to access modern computer systems. However, such contemporary user authentication mechanisms are inappropriate in a ubiquitous computing environment, where users constantly are accessing a wide range of different devices. This paper introduces new concepts for user authentication in ubiquitous computing, such as the notion of proximity-based user authentication and silent login. The design of these new mechanisms is part of the design of a ubiquitous computing infrastructure for hospitals, which is grounded in field studies of medical work in hospitals. The paper reports from field studies of clinicians using an electronic patient record (EPR) and describes severe usability problems associated with its login procedures. The EPR’s login mechanisms do not recognize the nature of medical work as being nomadic, interrupted, and cooperative around sharing common material. The consequence is that login is circumvented and security is jeopardized.     

An adaptive RFID middleware for supporting metaphysical data independence

Sensor devices produce data that are unreliable, low-level, and seldom able to be used directly by applications. In this paper, we propose metaphysical data independence (MDI), a layer of independence that shields applications from the challenges that arise when interacting directly with sensor devices. The key philosophy behind MDI is that applications do not deal with any aspect of physical device data, but rather interface with a high-level reconstruction of the physical world created by a sensor infrastructure. As a concrete instantiation of MDI in such a sensor infrastructure, we detail MDI-SMURF, a Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) middleware system that alleviates issues associated with using RFID data through adaptive techniques based on a novel statistical framework. Met·a·phys·ics: A division of philosophy that is concerned with the fundamental nature of reality and being [2].     

MobileNurse: hand-held information system for point of nursing care

Healthcare information travels with patients and clinicians and therefore the need for information to be ubiquitously available is key to reliable patient care and reliable medical systems. We have implemented MobileNurse, a prototype point-of-care system using PDA. MobileNurse has four modules each of which performs: (1) patient information management; (2) medical order check; (3) nursing recording; and (4) nursing care plan. MobileNurse provides easy input interface and various outputs for nursing records. The system consists of PDAs and a mobile support system (MSS) which supports clinical data exchange between PDAs and hospital information system. Two synchronization modules have been developed to keep the patient data consistent between PDAs and MSS. Clinical trials were performed with six volunteered nurses. They tried MobileNurse for 1-day caring-simulated patients. According to the survey after the trials, most of volunteers agreed that MobileNurse is more helpful and convenient than other non-mobile care systems to check medical orders and retrieve the results of recent clinical tests at the bedside. Through the involvement, we found out that ease-to-use interface is the most critical successful factor for mobile patient care systems.     

基于Rifidi平台下的一种RFID端到端解决方案

RFID是一项无线电频率识别技术,使软件系统可以自动的探测和识别在现实中的物体。由于这种能力,RFID受到很多公司的热捧;可惜的是涉及到RFID一个新的业务的发展的投资方案,需要在时间、硬件和基础设施方面的重大投资。相反,Rifidi是一个工具,能够迅速和切实地进行RFID情景模拟,以探讨其发展的可能性在进行投资之前。而Prototyper是一款基于RifidiEmulator的仿真软件,仿真阅读器可以被创建并被放置在一个代表工厂和仓库的蓝图上,而且各种被创建的标签可以随意的拖动,远离或接近热点。这将会使你更容易地测试工作流程和业务逻辑,而不需要昂贵的硬件设置。任何问题都可以在这款软件上发现,并得以纠正。     

RFID driven robotic assembly for random mix manufacturing

This paper discusses an integration driven framework for enabling the RFID based identification of parts to perform robotic assembly operations in a random mix. The RFID infrastructure senses the newly arriving parts to be assembled and via an integration framework, the robots are able to recognize them and perform cooperative welding operations. The parts to be welded have different characteristics, in particular, variable in both dimensions and materials. The integration framework is demonstrated in a case study coming from the automotive industry.     

Ontology-driven hypothesis generation to explain anomalous patient responses to treatment

Within the medical domain there are clear expectations as to how a patient should respond to treatments administered. When these responses are not observed it can be challenging for clinicians to understand the anomalous responses. The work reported here describes a tool which can detect anomalous patient responses to treatment and further suggest hypotheses to explain the anomaly. In order to develop this tool, we have undertaken a study to determine how Intensive Care Unit (ICU) clinicians identify anomalous patient responses; we then asked further clinicians to provide potential explanations for such anomalies. The high level reasoning deployed by the clinicians has been captured and generalised to form the procedural component of the ontology-driven tool. An evaluation has shown that the tool successfully reproduced the clinician’s hypotheses in the majority of cases. Finally, the paper concludes by describing planned extensions to this work.     

Cognitive performance-altering effects of electronic medical records: an application of the human factors paradigm for patient safety

According to the human factors paradigm for patient safety, health care work systems and innovations such as electronic medical records do not have direct effects on patient safety. Instead, their effects are contingent on how the clinical work system, whether computerized or not, shapes health care providers’ performance of cognitive work processes. An application of the human factors paradigm to interview data from two hospitals in the Midwest United States yielded numerous examples of the performance-altering effects of electronic medical records, electronic clinical documentation, and computerized provider order entry. Findings describe both improvements and decrements in the ease and quality of cognitive performance, both for interviewed clinicians and for their colleagues and patients. Changes in cognitive performance appear to have desirable and undesirable implications for patient safety as well as for quality of care and other important outcomes. Cognitive performance can also be traced to interactions between work system elements, including new technology, allowing for the discovery of problems with “fit” to be addressed through design interventions.     

一种RFID资源命名和层次化寻址模型

为解决无线射频识别(RFID)技术不同标准之间的地址冲突和寻址问题,提出一种以RFID资源命名空间为基础的层次化寻址模型。分析RFID资源寻址的特性和现有RFID寻址技术,找出基于域名系统的寻址技术缺陷,介绍RFID资源命名空间的形式化表达方法,设计层次化寻址模型。在城市医疗废弃物监察系统中的应用验证了该模型的可行性。