In this weeks Lecture i learned about Telemedicine, Telecare and Patient Monitoring System.

Telemedicine

Telemedicine is the use of ICT to provide and support healthcare when distance separates the participants.The objective of telemedicine to provide specialized health care consultation to patients in remote locations and to facilitate video-conferencing among health care experts for better treatment& care.

Telecare

Telecare is aservice that enables people, especially older and more vulnerable individuals, to live independently in their own home. Telecare enables an older person to remain living at home, helps ease the challenges of daily living and improve the sense of security and self confidence

Patient Monitoring System

Patient Monitoring is repeated or continuous observations or measurements of the patient, his or her physiological function, and the function of life support equipment, for the purpose of guiding management decisions, including when to make therapeutic interventions, and assessment of those interventions

In this lecture i have learned alot about the wide range of care that is available and how ICT is improving it. I think the future of ICT in healthcare will grow and grow and so this will improve the healthcare for not just the elderly but everyone.

Tutorial

This week there was no tutorial and we were asked to read about Data Mining Applications in Healthcare which we will discuss in week 9 and 10. I looked at this book and found it very intreseting and will help my Health Informatics studies and knowledge of it.

Practical

In this weeks practical we learned about datasets and repositories and used WEKA toll to help us. A few open repositories provide datasets for academics/researchers to use and researchers deposit datasets for others to use. We were given a few tasks to complete using WEKA and found this enjoying to do and intresting finding out the facts from the data.

Number of instances = 336

Number of attributes = 8

Data Set Characteristics = Multivariate

Attribute Characteristics = Real

Associated Tasks = Classification

Missing Values = No

Task 3

Do the values correspond to those you noted in task 2

–Number of attributes / instances

yes 

Do the values correspond to those you noted in task 2

–Number of attributes / instances

yes

 we used the following dataset.  http://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml/datasets/Localization+Data+for+Person+Activity

  Creating and adding arf fheader information

Does WEKA read your file? Any problems? If yes return to your data file and see if you can spot any syntax errors.

Yes i got the following error as i did not the correct information inserted.

When i corrected my errors i ran the program and got the following information.

This graph show the data found and how many times each event occured. An example for using this would be using a pressure pad at an elderly persons home to check how many times they leave the house and all this data is then put in a graph like this to make viewing information easier. I enjoyed this practical alot and learned so much from it that will help me in future assignments.

Communication is is a very important part in Healthcare and in this weeks lecture we were infomed about what is communicatiuon in Healthcare and how it works.

Communication Networks In Healthcare

Who needs to comminicate in Healthcare?

• Hospitals
• GPs 
• Parmacy
• Patients

Electronic communication system

 Electronic communication systems are a collection of communications networks, transmissions systems, relay stations, tributary stations and data terminal equipment capable of interconnection and interoperation.

Computer network types

• LAN (Local Area Network)
• WAN (Wide Area Network)

Local Are Network is a computer network covering a small physical area, like a home, office, or small group of buildings, such as a school or an airport. Wide Area Network is a computer network that covers a broad area (i.e., any network whose communications links cross metropolitan, regional or national boundaries.

Data Interchange Standards

• EDI (Electronic Data Interchange is the transfer of data between different companies using networks such as VANs Or the Internet.)
• HL7 ( Specifies standards, guidelines and methodoligies by which various healthcare systems can communicate with each other)

This is the HL7 website and has alot of information about them. http://www.hl7.org/

In this weeks lecture i leaned alot more information about communication and especially communication in Healthcare.

Tutorial 

In this weeks tutorial we discussed more about health in communication and got information about the week 7 practical.

 Practical

Week 7 practical we learned what is data mining and we got to use the Data mining tool. Data mining is searching for patterns in large ammounts of data examples of this are Health Data and Marketing. The Data Mining tool we used was WEKA.

Supervised algorithm is “taught” what patterns/classes to expect in the data during a training phase; after training algorithm classifies without further help.

Unsupervised is an attempt to find patterns without the use of a prior knowledge.

In the practical we were given a few taks to complete using the WEKA tool and the following is some of the completed tasks i completed.

1. 1.      What is the Total Number of Instances? 150
2. 2.      What is the percentage of Correctly Classified Instances? 96%
3. 3.      What is the percentage of Incorrectly Classified Instances? 4%

Cross Validation an approach by which the sets of scientific data generated using two or more methods are critically assessed.

Confusion matrix  is a visualization tool typically used in supervised learning. Each row of the matrix represents the instances in a predicted class, while each column represents the instances in an actual class. One benefit of a confusion matrix is that it is easy to see if the system is confusing two classes.

What would the matrix for a perfect model (100% success) look like?

The Matrix of a  perfect model will show the data going up in a diagonal row.

 Lecture 

Overview

Medical Data, Processing, E-Prescribing and PACS

In week 5 we did not have a tutorial and we were asked to work on assignment 2 and in week 6 we talked about England’s National Health Service plans for fully integrating an IT infrastructure into the current workflow practice.

 Practical

In week 5 we did not have a practical and we were asked to work on assignment 2. In week 6 practical we were given the opportunity to work with some MRI recordings and asked to complete questions using MatLab. I have taken a few questions that i was given and inserted into this weeks blog with the answers.

Question : What is a Voxel and what is the Voxel size in this set of images?

“A voxel (volumetric pixel or, more correctly, Volumetric Picture Element) is a volume element, representing a value on a regular grid in three dimensional space. This is analogous to a pixel, which represents 2D image data in a bitmap (which is sometimes referred to as a pixmap).”  (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voxel)

voxel_size =

    0.8594
    0.8594
    3.0000

 Question : What is the width of the skull in this image?

Answer = 173

Answer = 180

 Assignments

In week 5 and 6 i worked on assignment 2 that is due for 5th November.

In week 4 lecture we were informed that our first log submission had being graded and how the top marks were achieved. Finding out how top marks are achieved will help me achieve top marks in future Blogs.

We were asked to bring along head phones to the week 4 practical as the practical focuses on editing sound files using a program called GoldWave.

The lecture also informed us about the devices which are used for obtaining measurements from the human body to assit with detection or absense of disease.

Tutorial

In this weeks tutorial we discussed our findings about Telecare and Telehealth UK and Irish based companies that claim to provide or deliver technology solutions. I found a few companies in my research one of which was called Telecare Services association. “TSA aims to promote the Telecare industry and highlight the benifits of Telecare for services commissioners, services users and their friends, family and carers. TSA is a non-for profit, membership based organisation wholly owned by its members.” ( http://www.telecare.org.uk/)

Another company i found information on was Invicta Telecare who are found at http://www.invictatelecare.co.uk/

Practical

We were asked to bring along head phones to this weeks practical.

During the practical we used a program called Gold Wave to edit sound files.

Assignment Progress

Continue doing weekly blogs and also Assignment 2

In this weeks lecture we got an overview of the origin of patient informatics and the role of the internet in patient education. we were also informed about the evolution and roles of secure email and virtual visits as a new form of Patient- Doctor communication.

Tutorial

In this weeks tutorial we were shown products that help with improving health care. Some examples of productucts we were shown were heart moniter and tablet dispenser.

Practical

We were asked to research Telecare and Telehealth Uk and Irish based companies on the the web that claim to provide or deliver technology solutions for this domain. The information that we gather will form the disscussion for the tutorial in week 4.

Assignment Progress

Continue to work on weekly blog and also work on assignment 2 which is due in on the 7th November

Lecture was cancelled and we were asked to read research articles attached to week 1 folder.

Tutorial

Tutorial was a continuation of the week ones tutorial into  introduction to Matlab and some of the basic components of Matlab in preparation for the first Matlab tutorial in week 3. We were introduced on how to plott data using MatLab that has being found through medical research and the different charts that can be used.Graphing allows us to quickly assess vast amounts of data. We were also introduced to Contour, Surface and other Subplots .

Practical

During the practical lab we continued with exercises which helped us gain a better understanding of manipulating a visualising medical data. We were giving three exercises to complete that helped me learn more about using Matlab and the the functions that can be used to show medical data found.

 Assignment Progress

Assignment one continuation of weekly Blog

 Health Informatics is a class to inform us on the basic understanding of the fundamental aspects of ICT within healthcare.

 What is health Informatics?

Health Informatics deals with the resources, devices, and methods required to help study healthcare and use the information gathered to improve health and biomedicine.

“the scientific field that deals with resources, devices and formalised methods for optimising the storage, retrieval and management of biomedical information for problem solving and decision making” (Shortliffe, 1995).

 Lecture 

In the first week lecture we were given an overview of the module and an explanation of Health Informatics. We were informed about the assignments and the exam content.

Following the lecture i found out more information on Health Informatics in the internet and also information on the module to help me prepare myself for future lectures,assignments and exams. 

Tutorial 

In week one tutorial we were introduced to Matlab and some of the basic components of Matlab in preparation for the first Matlab tutorial in week 3.

 Practical

We were given a few simple exercises to complete and here is a few examples of the exercises we were given.

Evaluate the following statements in Matlab.

1. a = [1 2 3 4 5]

2. b = [6, 7, 8, 9]

3. c = [1; 2; 3; 4; 5]

4. d = [

1 2 3

4 5 6

7 8 9]

The following screen dump is showing Matlab and the exercises I completed.

The practical helped me understand the fundamentals of using MatLab and how it works.

 Knowledge management is the Process responsible for gathering, analysing, storing and sharing knowledge and information within an Organisation. Success in an increasingly competitive marketplace depends critically on the quality of knowledge which organisations apply to their key business processes. For example the supply chain depends on knowledge of diverse areas including raw materials, planning, manufacturing and distribution and product development requires knowledge of consumer requirements, new science, new technology, marketing etc. Knowledge management is a good way for property pal to gather,analyse and store information on their buisness. This in return for the buisness will help improve profit and revenue within the buisness. It will also retain key talent and expertise in the buisness. It will also help property pal to defend market share against new entraints. Property pal will also get the chance to penetrate new market segmants and reduse costs. This can also lead to property pal to develop new services in their buisness.

“Details of processes and procedures. Explicit knowledge can be readily detailed in procedural manuals and databases. Examples include records of meetings between sales representatives and key customers, procedures for dealing with customer service queries and management reporting processes.”

There are a few methods that property pal could use to increase the number of people who visits their site and i am going to talk about them in detail. The first method i am going to talk about is search marketing and search engine optimizationand this would benifit property pal as usually the earlier a site is presented in the search results or the higher it ranks the more searchers will visit that site.

Below is a graph of a company that monitered SEO in their buisness when they introduced it to their company and the effects howed that traffic increased.

Graph came from “http://freedig.blogspot.com/2008_01_01_archive.html“

I would not recommend property pal to use pay per click as they are a small buisness paying for people to view their website.

I would also recomend property pal to use offline communications as a way of traffic building on their website. A few ways of doing this that i feel would be a suitable are advertising in newspapers and also maybe sponing an event or sports team. Also direct mail, exhibitons and worrd of moth are good ways to get property pals webstite more users browsing their pages. Online partnerships would alos help traffic building and they have started to do this as they have teamed up with an Omagh estate agents and alos they have some large companies advertising on teir site such as sky and PC world.

Interactive ads and viral marketing would not be two that i would reccomend that much although display ads/banners and passing along emails would help build their traffic on propertypal.com. Even tho Property pal is not one of the leading property websites the points that i have talk about would help traffic building on their website.