Automatic de-identification of electronic health records : an Australian perspective

We present an approach to automatically de-identify health records. In our approach, personal health information is identified using a Conditional Random Fields machine learning classifier, a large set of linguistic and lexical features, and pattern matching techniques. Identified personal information is then removed from the reports. The de-identification of personal health information is fundamental for the sharing and secondary use of electronic health records, for example for data mining and disease monitoring. The effectiveness of our approach is first evaluated on the 2007 i2b2 Shared Task dataset, a widely adopted dataset for evaluating de-identification techniques. Subsequently, we investigate the robustness of the approach to limited training data; we study its effectiveness on different type and quality of data by evaluating the approach on scanned pathology reports from an Australian institution. This data contains optical character recognition errors, as well as linguistic conventions that differ from those contained in the i2b2 dataset, for example different date formats. The findings suggest that our approach compares to the best approach from the 2007 i2b2 Shared Task; in addition, the approach is found to be robust to variations of training size, data type and quality in presence of sufficient training data.

Impact of ambient temperature on children's health : a systematic review

Children are vulnerable to temperature extremes. This paper aimed to review the literature regarding the relationship between ambient temperature and children’s health and to propose future research directions. A literature search was conducted in February 2012 using the databases including PubMed, ProQuest, ScienceDirect, Scopus and Web of Science. Empirical studies regarding the impact of ambient temperature on children’s mortality and morbidity were included. The existing literature indicates that very young children, especially children under one year of age, are particularly vulnerable to heat-related deaths. Hot and cold temperatures mainly affect cases of infectious diseases among children, including gastrointestinal diseases, malaria, hand, foot and mouse disease, and respiratory diseases. Paediatric allergic diseases, like eczema, are also sensitive to temperature extremes. During heat waves, the incidences of renal disease, fever and electrolyte imbalance among children increase significantly. Future research is needed to examine the balance between hot- and cold-temperature related mortality and morbidity among children; evaluate the impacts of cold spells on cause-specific mortality in children; identify the most sensitive temperature exposure and health outcomes to quantify the impact of temperature extremes on children; elucidate the possible modifiers of the temperature and children’s health relationship; and project children’s disease burden under different climate change scenarios.

Climate change and children’s health : a call for research on what works to protect children

Climate change is affecting and will increasingly influence human health and wellbeing. Children are particularly vulnerable to the impact of climate change. An extensive literature review regarding the impact of climate change on children’s health was conducted in April 2012 by searching electronic databases PubMed, Scopus, ProQuest, ScienceDirect, and Web of Science, as well as relevant websites, such as IPCC and WHO. Climate change affects children’s health through increased air pollution, more weather-related disasters, more frequent and intense heat waves, decreased water quality and quantity, food shortage and greater exposure to toxicants. As a result, children experience greater risk of mental disorders, malnutrition, infectious diseases, allergic diseases and respiratory diseases. Mitigation measures like reducing carbon pollution emissions, and adaptation measures such as early warning systems and post-disaster counseling are strongly needed. Future health research directions should focus on: (1) identifying whether climate change impacts on children will be modified by gender, age and socioeconomic status; (2) refining outcome measures of children’s vulnerability to climate change; (3) projecting children’s disease burden under climate change scenarios; (4) exploring children’s disease burden related to climate change in low-income countries, and ; (5) identifying the most cost-effective mitigation and adaptation actions from a children’s health perspective.

School nurses and partnerships for health education : team teaching in the secondary school curricula

The purpose of this research is to examine School Based Youth Health Nurses experience of partnerships for health education and team teaching. The School Based Youth Health Nurse Program is a contemporary model of school nursing in Queensland, Australia. The role of the School Based Youth Health Nurse consists of individual health consultations and health promotion. This research analyses a subset of qualitative data collected for a larger project about the experience of school based youth health nursing. The Health Promoting Schools model is used as a deductive framework. The findings reveal five subthemes across the three areas of the Health Promoting Schools approach. There are two subthemes within the curriculum, teaching and learning area; We were on the same page so to speak and I can go and do my reports or whatever. There are two sub-themes within the partnerships and services area; I had a beautiful science teacher who was just delightful and really just wanted to do things in partnerships and It’s all airy fairy arty farty stuff that’s not important. There is one theme in the school organisation, ethos and environment area; I just don’t know how well the top of these organisations communicate with the bottom of those organisations. Successful partnerships for health education and team teaching between school nurses and teachers are based on personal relationships based on rapport which lead to trust and reciprocity. Partnerships are limited by teachers understanding of the role of the school nurse and engagement with school nurses in the classroom. Administrative support from the top down is fundamental.

We have a lot to learn yet : a postcolonial lens in health promotion

Health promotion progresses a social justice and empowerment agenda and thus emphasises working with people to increase their control over their health. Certainly, Australia has experienced much success in this endeavour and is internationally recognised as a leader. However, health promotion has failed Indigenous Australians; a fact that is echoed in the health outcomes that ironically provide us with the “moral imperative” to act. Further investigation has also revealed health promotion’s foundation in colonial imaginings. Thus, this paper calls for the culture of health promotion to be examined as a risk factor for poor Indigenous health. To complement this call, this paper presents findings of an ethnographic study of Indigenous health promotion practice, undertaken from a postcolonial and critical whiteness framework. These findings provide a narrative of strength and innovative approaches, highlighting the value of Indigenous knowledge. These findings also contradict the biomedical tendency to construct culture as illness-producing. More broadly, this study’s findings entail important lessons for health promotion to consider, if it is to move beyond the rhetoric, to truly increase people’s control over their health.

The Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster and percetions of health risk communication : a case study

This case study was conducted to explore the perceptions of health risk messages sent by the Japanese Government following the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster. The content of health risk messages from the Japanese Government and the Japanese national broadcaster (NHK) were analysed and semi-structured interviews were conducted with a sample of Tokyo residents. Initially, participants trusted these messages but as the crisis unfolded they became sceptical about the messages. Participants felt the messages did not communicate health risk information effectively because the messages were; not supported by evidence, inconsistent, delayed and changed over time. Despite widespread access to the internet, social media and mobile telephones, most participants relied on television news for information about the health risks. The Japanese Government urgently needs to re-build trust by engaging the community in the planning and development phases of health risk communication strategies.

How stable is the well-being of Australian mothers who care for young children with special health care needs?

Ninety-seven percent of children who have special health care needs are cared for by their mothers. These mothers cite that their informal care work can be intrinsically rewarding, however, the role is not without substantial difficulties and consequences. We investigated differences in the health and well-being of mothers whose young children do and do not have special health care needs. Quantitative data are drawn from Growing Up in Australia: The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children. This study employs a matched-case control methodology to compare the experiences of a group of 292 mothers whose children are identified as having long term special health care needs to those mothers whose children are typically developing at two time points; Wave 1 (2004) and Wave 3 (2008). The findings support previous research that mothers of children with special health care needs have poorer general health and mental health than mothers whose children do not have special needs. Mothers of children with special health care needs also perceived life as more difficult. Longitudinally, this study also shows that maternal well-being remains relatively stable during the years when children are transitioning to formal schooling. Implications for policy makers, practitioners and early childhood professionals are discussed.

Using a public key registry for improved trust and scalability in national E-health systems

An increasing number of countries are faced with an aging population increasingly needing healthcare services. For any e-health information system, the need for increased trust by such clients with potentially little knowledge of any security scheme involved is paramount. In addition notable scalability of any system has become a critical aspect of system design, development and ongoing management. Meanwhile cryptographic systems provide the security provisions needed for confidentiality, authentication, integrity and non-repudiation. Cryptographic key management, however, must be secure, yet efficient and effective in developing an attitude of trust in system users. Digital certificate-based Public Key Infrastructure has long been the technology of choice or availability for information security/assurance; however, there appears to be a notable lack of successful implementations and deployments globally. Moreover, recent issues with associated Certificate Authority security have damaged trust in these schemes. This paper proposes the adoption of a centralised public key registry structure, a non-certificate based scheme, for large scale e-health information systems. The proposed structure removes complex certificate management, revocation and a complex certificate validation structure while maintaining overall system security. Moreover, the registry concept may be easier for both healthcare professionals and patients to understand and trust.

Partial mediation role of self-efficacy between positive social interaction and mental health in family caregivers for dementia patients in Shanghai

We explored the mediation effect of caregiver self-efficacy on the influences of behavioral and psychological symptoms (BPSD) of dementia care recipients (CRs) or family caregivers’ (CGs) social supports (informational, tangible and affectionate support and positive social interaction) on CGs’ mental health. We interviewed 196 CGs, using a battery of measures including demographic data of the dyads, CRs’ dementia-related impairments, and CGs’ social support, self-efficacy and the Medical Outcome Study (MOS) Short-Form (SF-36) Health Survey. Multiple regression analyses showed that gathering information on self-efficacy and managing CG distress self-efficacy were the partial mediators of the relationship between positive social interaction and CG mental health. Managing caregiving distress self-efficacy also partial mediated the impact of BPSD on CG mental health. We discuss implications of the results for improving mental health of the target population in mainland China.

Research participation by people with intellectual disability and mental health issues : an examination of the processes of consent

Balancing the demands of research and ethics is always challenging and even more so when recruiting vulnerable groups. Within the context of current legislation and international human rights declarations, it is strongly advocated that research can and must be undertaken with all recipients of health care services. Research in the field of intellectual disability presents particular challenges in regard to consenting processes. This paper is a critical reflection and analysis of the complex processes undertaken and events that occurred in gaining informed consent from people with intellectual disability to participate in a study exploring their experiences of being an inpatient in mental health hospitals within Aotearoa/New Zealand. A framework based on capacity, information and voluntariness is presented with excerpts from the field provided to explore consenting processes. The practical implications of the processes utilised are then discussed in order to stimulate debate regarding clearer and enhanced methods of gaining informed consent from people with intellectual disability.

Socio-demographic characteristics, modifiable lifestyle factors, and health as predictors of mental health in midlife and older Australian women: a multilevel investigation

Background Poor mental health is a significant cause of morbidity and mortality, yet debate continues about factors most likely to predict poor mental health outcomes. Objective This cohort study examines the influence of modifiable lifestyle factors, menopausal symptoms, and physical health on the mental health of midlife and older Australian women. Methods: Random sampling was used to recruit women aged 40-55, from rural and urban areas of Queensland, Australia. Overall, 340 women completed mailed surveys on socio-demographic characteristics, midlife symptoms (Greene Climacteric Scale©), modifiable lifestyle factors, and mental health (SF-12©) in 2001, 2004 and 2011. Hierarchical repeated-measure models were used to explore the correlates of poor mental health over time. Results The mean age [SD] at baseline was 55 [2.7] years, most were married (73%, n=248) and 18% were pre-menopausal. The model suggested that variance in mental health widened and showed a non-linear increase with age. Decrements in mental health were associated with an increase in midlife symptoms (Greene psychological scale, P <0.01; Greene somatic scale, P <0.05), time (P <0.01), poor physical health (P <0.01) and individual variance (P <0.01). Socio-demographics and lifestyle factors had little influence on mental health over time. Conclusion Findings suggest that while women’s mental health may decline during midlife, the effect is temporary; in older women, physical health and individual factors seem to be increasingly significant. This research highlights the importance of active health promotion as a means of enhancing both physical and mental health in midlife women.

Insider comes out : an artist's inquiry and narrative about the relationship of art and mental health

Background Through an account of prevailing experiences of art and mental illness, this paper aims to raise awareness, open dialogue and create agency about art created by people with experience of mental illness. Methods This paper draws on personal narrative and inquiry by an artist with mental illness and data collected as part of a larger participatory action research project that investigated understandings of identity, art and mental illness. Result An inquiry through art raised awareness and attentiveness to the importance of choice in identity construction and exposed frequent dichotomies in art and mental illness that were negotiated to eschew prescribed social stratification. As an artist, the first author challenged values present in one idea and absent in the other, and the options and concessions available to authorise her own dialogue and agency of being an artist. Conclusion Constructing an identity is an important part of being human, the labels that we choose or are chosen for us attribute to our identity. Reflections and recommendations are offered to consider expanded ways of thinking about art and mental illness and the functions that art play in identity construction.

Setting water quality objectives for the health of freshwater fish

An important responsibility of the Environment Protection Authority, Victoria, is to set objectives for levels of environmental contaminants. To support the development of environmental objectives for water quality, a need has been identified to understand the dual impacts of concentration and duration of a contaminant on biota in freshwater streams. For suspended solids contamination, information reported by Newcombe and Jensen [ North American Journal of Fisheries Management , 16(4):693--727, 1996] study of freshwater fish and the daily suspended solids data from the United States Geological Survey stream monitoring network is utilised. The study group was requested to examine both the utility of the Newcombe and Jensen and the USA data, as well as the formulation of a procedure for use by the Environment Protection Authority Victoria that takes concentration and duration of harmful episodes into account when assessing water quality. The extent to which the impact of a toxic event on fish health could be modelled deterministically was also considered. It was found that concentration and exposure duration were the main compounding factors on the severity of effects of suspended solids on freshwater fish. A protocol for assessing the cumulative effect on fish health and a simple deterministic model, based on the biology of gill harm and recovery, was proposed. References D. W. T. Au, C. A. Pollino, R. S. S Wu, P. K. S. Shin, S. T. F. Lau, and J. Y. M. Tang. Chronic effects of suspended solids on gill structure, osmoregulation, growth, and triiodothyronine in juvenile green grouper epinephelus coioides . Marine Ecology Press Series , 266:255--264, 2004. J.C. Bezdek, S.K. Chuah, and D. Leep. Generalized k-nearest neighbor rules. Fuzzy Sets and Systems , 18:237--26, 1986. E. T. Champagne, K. L. Bett-Garber, A. M. McClung, and C. Bergman. {Sensory characteristics of diverse rice cultivars as influenced by genetic and environmental factors}. Cereal Chem. , {81}:{237--243}, {2004}. S. G. Cheung and P. K. S. Shin. Size effects of suspended particles on gill damage in green-lipped mussel perna viridis. Marine Pollution Bulletin , 51(8--12):801--810, 2005. D. H. Evans. The fish gill: site of action and model for toxic effects of environmental pollutants. Environmental Health Perspectives , 71:44--58, 1987. G. C. Grigg. The failure of oxygen transport in a fish at low levels of ambient oxygen. Comp. Biochem. Physiol. , 29:1253--1257, 1969. G. Holmes, A. Donkin, and I.H. Witten. {Weka: A machine learning workbench}. In Proceedings of the Second Australia and New Zealand Conference on Intelligent Information Systems , volume {24}, pages {357--361}, {Brisbane, Australia}, {1994}. {IEEE Computer Society}. D. D. Macdonald and C. P. Newcombe. Utility of the stress index for predicting suspended sediment effects: response to comments. North American Journal of Fisheries Management , 13:873--876, 1993. C. P. Newcombe. Suspended sediment in aquatic ecosystems: ill effects as a function of concentration and duration of exposure. Technical report, British Columbia Ministry of Environment, Lands and Parks, Habitat Protection branch, Victoria, 1994. C. P. Newcombe and J. O. T. Jensen. Channel suspended sediment and fisheries: A synthesis for quantitative assessment of risk and impact. North American Journal of Fisheries Management , 16(4):693--727, 1996. C. P. Newcombe and D. D. Macdonald. Effects of suspended sediments on aquatic ecosystems. North American Journal of Fisheries Management , 11(1):72--82, 1991. K. Schmidt-Nielsen. Scaling. Why is animal size so important? Cambridge University Press, NY, 1984. J. S. Schwartz, A. Simon, and L. Klimetz. Use of fish functional traits to associate in-stream suspended sediment transport metrics with biological impairment. Environmental Monitoring and Assessment , 179(1--4):347--369, 2011. E. Al Shaw and J. S. Richardson. Direct and indirect effects of sediment pulse duration on stream invertebrate assemb ages and rainbow trout ( Oncorhynchus mykiss ) growth and survival. Canadian Journal of Fish and Aquatic Science , 58:2213--2221, 2001. P. Tiwari and H. Hasegawa. {Demand for housing in Tokyo: A discrete choice analysis}. Regional Studies , {38}:{27--42}, {2004}. Y. Tramblay, A. Saint-Hilaire, T. B. M. J. Ouarda, F. Moatar, and B Hecht. Estimation of local extreme suspended sediment concentrations in california rivers. Science of the Total Environment , 408:4221--

De-Identification of health records using Anonym: Effectiveness and robustness across datasets

Objective Evaluate the effectiveness and robustness of Anonym, a tool for de-identifying free-text health records based on conditional random fields classifiers informed by linguistic and lexical features, as well as features extracted by pattern matching techniques. De-identification of personal health information in electronic health records is essential for the sharing and secondary usage of clinical data. De-identification tools that adapt to different sources of clinical data are attractive as they would require minimal intervention to guarantee high effectiveness. Methods and Materials The effectiveness and robustness of Anonym are evaluated across multiple datasets, including the widely adopted Integrating Biology and the Bedside (i2b2) dataset, used for evaluation in a de-identification challenge. The datasets used here vary in type of health records, source of data, and their quality, with one of the datasets containing optical character recognition errors. Results Anonym identifies and removes up to 96.6% of personal health identifiers (recall) with a precision of up to 98.2% on the i2b2 dataset, outperforming the best system proposed in the i2b2 challenge. The effectiveness of Anonym across datasets is found to depend on the amount of information available for training. Conclusion Findings show that Anonym compares to the best approach from the 2006 i2b2 shared task. It is easy to retrain Anonym with new datasets; if retrained, the system is robust to variations of training size, data type and quality in presence of sufficient training data.

Health monitoring of short-and medium-spen bridges using an improved modal strain energy method

Increasing the importance and use of infrastructures such as bridges, demands more effective structural health monitoring (SHM) systems. SHM has well addressed the damage detection issues through several methods such as modal strain energy (MSE). Many of the available MSE methods either have been validated for limited type of structures such as beams or their performance is not satisfactory. Therefore, it requires a further improvement and validation of them for different types of structures. In this study, an MSE method was mathematically improved to precisely quantify the structural damage at an early stage of formation. Initially, the MSE equation was accurately formulated considering the damaged stiffness and then it was used for derivation of a more accurate sensitivity matrix. Verification of the improved method was done through two plane structures: a steel truss bridge and a concrete frame bridge models that demonstrate the framework of a short- and medium-span of bridge samples. Two damage scenarios including single- and multiple-damage were considered to occur in each structure. Then, for each structure, both intact and damaged, modal analysis was performed using STRAND7. Effects of up to 5 per cent noise were also comprised. The simulated mode shapes and natural frequencies derived were then imported to a MATLAB code. The results indicate that the improved method converges fast and performs well in agreement with numerical assumptions with few computational cycles. In presence of some noise level, it performs quite well too. The findings of this study can be numerically extended to 2D infrastructures particularly short- and medium-span bridges to detect the damage and quantify it more accurately. The method is capable of providing a proper SHM that facilitates timely maintenance of bridges to minimise the possible loss of lives and properties.