Unidade de Investigação - INESCC-DL – Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores de Coimbra [delegação Politécnico de Leiria]
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- Blind Guide: An Ultrasound Sensor-based Body Area Network for Guiding Blind PeoplePublication . Pereira, António; Nunes, Nelson; Vieira, Daniel; Costa, Nuno; Fernandes, Hugo; Barroso, JoãoWireless Sensor Networks, in particular Wireless Body Area Networks, is a technology suggested by the research community as allowing elderly people, or people with some kind of disability, to live in a safer, responsive and comfortable environment while at their homes. One of the most active threats to the autonomous life of blind people is the quantity and variety of obstacles they face while moving, whether they are obstacles in the footpath or obstacles coming out from the walls of buildings. Hence, it is necessary to develop a solution that helps or assists blind people while moving either in indoor or outdoor scenarios, simultaneously allowing the use of the use of white cane or the Seeing Eye dog. In this article, the authors propose the use of an ultra-sound based body area network for obstacle detection and warning as a complementary and effective solution for aiding blind people when moving from place to place. According to the cost estimates of the solution and to the negligible setup time, this could be a real effective complementary solution for blind people.
- Complexity Analysis of a Business Process Automation: Case Study on a Healthcare OrganizationPublication . Martinho, Ricardo; Rijo, Rui Pedro Charters Lopes; Nunes, AnaHealthcare organizations have been struggling to get Business Process Management (BPM) and associated Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) properly aligned to improve their patients' service and quality of care. Nevertheless, the highly structured nature of larger organizations such as hospitals hampers this alignment, and commonly ICT is applied to isolated tasks or fragments of processes. In this paper, we present and discuss the results, in terms of complexity, of the introduction of a new scheduling system within the medical appointment and exam business processes of a large hospital. During the case study, we began by modelling the processes using the Business Process Modelling and Notation (BPMN) standard. We then used abstract metrics to compare the complexity between old (before the introduction of the scheduling system) and new processes, and interpreted the obtained results. Finally, we derived important conclusions that will help guide us in further business process optimization endeavors.
- Decision Support System to Diagnosis and Classification of Epilepsy in ChildrenPublication . Rijo, Rui; Silva, Catarina; Pereira, Luis; Gonçalves, Dulce; Agostinho, MargaridaClinical decision support systems play an important role in organizations. They have a tight relation with the information systems. Our goal is to develop a system to support the diagnosis and the classification of epilepsy in children. Around 50 million people in the world have epilepsy. Epilepsy diagnosis can be an extremely complex process, demanding considerable time and effort from physicians and healthcare infrastructures. Exams such as electroencephalograms and magnetic resonances are often used to create a more accurate diagnosis in a short amount of time. After the diagnosis process, physicians classify epilepsy according to the International Classification of Diseases, ninth revision (ICD-9). Physicians need to classify each specific type of epilepsy based on different data, e.g., types of seizures, events and exams' results. The classification process is time consuming and, in some cases, demands for complementary exams. This work presents a text mining approach to support medical decisions relating to epilepsy diagnosis and ICD-9-based classification in children. We put forward a text mining approach using electronically processed medical records, and apply the K-Nearest Neighbor technique as a white-box multiclass classifier approach to classify each instance, mapping it to the corresponding ICD-9-based standard code. Results on real medical records suggest that the proposed framework shows good performance and clear interpretations, albeit the reduced volume of available training data. To overcome this hurdle, in this work we also propose and explore ways of expanding the dataset.
- A distributed multiagent system architecture for body area networks applied to healthcare monitoringPublication . Felisberto, Filipe; Laza, Rosalía; Fdez-Riverola, Florentino; Pereira, AntónioIn the last years the area of health monitoring has grown significantly, attracting the attention of both academia and commercial sectors. At the same time, the availability of new biomedical sensors and suitable network protocols has led to the appearance of a new generation of wireless sensor networks, the so-called wireless body area networks. Nowadays, these networks are routinely used for continuous monitoring of vital parameters, movement, and the surrounding environment of people, but the large volume of data generated in different locations represents a major obstacle for the appropriate design, development, and deployment of more elaborated intelligent systems. In this context, we present an open and distributed architecture based on a multiagent system for recognizing human movements, identifying human postures, and detecting harmful activities. The proposed system evolved from a single node for fall detection to a multisensor hardware solution capable of identifying unhampered falls and analyzing the users’ movement. The experiments carried out contemplate two different scenarios and demonstrate the accuracy of our proposal as a real distributed movement monitoring and accident detection system. Moreover, we also characterize its performance, enabling future analyses and comparisons with similar approaches.
- Managing Data in Screening Programs: Challenges and SolutionsPublication . Monteiro, Hugo; Oliveira, Mariana; Martinho, Ricardo; Martins, CarlosPopulation-based screening programs are vital public health initiatives that enable the early detection of diseases, significantly reducing both morbidity and healthcare costs. As these programs expand, the management of the extensive data they generate becomes increasingly complex, highlighting the need for structured digital solutions. This narrative review article presents a pragmatic framework aimed at clarifying big data analytics tailored to the needs and practices of healthcare professionals and administrators, focusing on effective integration into routine screening workflows. To achieve effective data utilization, the process begins with systematic archiving, which involves cloud-based storage solutions capable of securely maintaining various data formats in compliance with regulatory standards, thus ensuring long-term accessibility and continuity. Subsequent real-time processing of screening data facilitates rapid decision-making and patient management by providing immediate validation and analysis, essential for maintaining the responsiveness of screening services. Transformation processes play a critical role in converting diverse data inputs into standardized, consistent formats, enabling seamless communication and exchange among multiple healthcare systems. Integration further builds upon this standardization, merging data from different healthcare providers and diagnostic centers into centralized analytical platforms. This unified approach enables comprehensive patient monitoring and supports predictive modeling for early identification of at-risk individuals. Advanced analytics, particularly process mining and predictive techniques, reveal inefficiencies within screening workflows, highlighting areas needing improvement. These methods help healthcare managers to streamline operations, optimize resources, and enhance overall program performance. Real-time visualization tools provide administrators with continuous, practical insights into operational dynamics, despite existing challenges related to data governance and system interoperability. This article illustrates these concepts through concrete examples from the colorectal cancer screening program in Northern Portugal and the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The colorectal cancer screening scenario demonstrates how structured data management significantly boosts operational efficiency and healthcare accessibility. Meanwhile, the COVID-19 experience highlights the importance of having flexible digital infrastructures capable of quickly adapting to unexpected crises. Finally, ongoing investments in digital infrastructure, professional training, and comprehensive data governance are crucial for sustaining these improvements. This review provides clear, actionable knowledge to support healthcare professionals in adopting big data analytics effectively within preventive healthcare programs.
- Text Mining Applied to Electronic Medical RecordsPublication . Pereira, Luis; Rijo, Rui Pedro Charters Lopes; Silva, Catarina; Martinho, RicardoThe analysis of medical records is a major challenge, considering they are generally presented in plain text, have a very specific technical vocabulary and are nearly always unstructured. It is an interdisciplinary work that requires knowledge from several fields. The analysis may have several goals, such as assistance on clinical decision, classification of medical procedures, and to support hospital management decisions. This work presents the concepts involved, the relevant existent related work, and the main open issues for future research within the analysis of electronic medical records, using data and text mining techniques. It provides a comprehensive contextualization to all those who wish to perform an analytical work of medical records, enabling the identification of fruitful research fields. With the digitalization of medical records and the large amount of medical data available, this is an area of wide research potential.