Interfacing Health Care Information Systems Design and Implementation

Terveydenhuollossa käytetään nykyisin informaatioteknologian (IT) mahdollisuuksia parantamaan hoidon laatua, vähentämään hoitoon liittyviä kuluja sekä yksinkertaistamaan ja selkeyttämään laakareiden työnkulkua. Tietojärjestelmät, jotka edustavat jokaisen IT-ratkaisun ydintä, täytyy kehittää täyttämään lukuisia vaatimuksia, ja yksi niistä on kyky integroitua saumattomasti toisten tietojärjestelmien kanssa. Järjestelmäintegraatio on kuitenkin yhä haastava tehtävä, vaikka sita varten on kehitetty useita standardeja. Tässä työssä kuvataan vastakehitetyn lääketieteellisen tietojärjestelmän liittymäratkaisu. Työssä pohditaan vaatimuksia, jotka tällaiselle sovellukselle asetetaan, ja myös tapa, jolla vaatimukset toteutuvat on esitetty. Liittymaratkaisu on jaettu kahteen osaan, tietojärjestelmaliittymään ja "liittymakoneeseen" (interfacing engine). Edellinen on käsittää perustoiminnallisuuden, jota tarvitaan vastaanottamaan ja lähettämään tietoa toisiin järjestelmiin, kun taas jälkimmäinen tarjoaa tuen tuotantoympäristössa käytettäville standardeille. Molempien osien suunnitelu on esitelty perusteellisesti tässä työssä. Ongelma ratkaistiin modulaarisen ja geneerisen suunnittelun avulla. Tämä lähestymistapa osoitetaan työssä kestäväksi ja joustavaksi ratkaisuksi, jota voidaan käyttää tarkastelemaan laajaa valikoimaa liittymäratkaisulle asetettuja vaatimuksia. Lisaksi osoitetaan kuinka tehty ratkaisu voidaan joustavuutensa ansiosta helposti mukauttaa vaatimuksiin, joita ei ole etukäteen tunnistettu, ja siten saavutetaan perusta myös tulevaisuuden tarpeille

Low cost eye tracking for human-machine interfacing

One of the main challenges for developers of new human-computer interfaces is to provide a more natural way of interacting with computer systems, avoiding excessive use of hand and finger movements. In this way, also a valuable alternative communication pathway is provided to people suffering from motor disabilities. This paper describes the construction of a low cost eye tracker using a fixed head setup. Therefore a webcam, laptop and an infrared lighting source were used together with a simple frame to fix the head of the user. Furthermore, detailed information on the various image processing techniques used for filtering the centre of the pupil and different methods to calculate the point of gaze are discussed. An overall accuracy of 1.5 degrees was obtained while keeping the hardware cost of the device below 100 euros.

Brain-computer music interfacing for continuous control of musical tempo

A Brain-computer music interface (BCMI) is developed to allow for continuous modification of the tempo of dynamically generated music. Six out of seven participants are able to control the BCMI at significant accuracies and their performance is observed to increase over time.

FORCe: fully online and automated artifact removal for brain-computer interfacing

A fully automated and online artifact removal method for the electroencephalogram (EEG) is developed for use in brain-computer interfacing. The method (FORCe) is based upon a novel combination of wavelet decomposition, independent component analysis, and thresholding. FORCe is able to operate on a small channel set during online EEG acquisition and does not require additional signals (e.g. electrooculogram signals). Evaluation of FORCe is performed offline on EEG recorded from 13 BCI particpants with cerebral palsy (CP) and online with three healthy participants. The method outperforms the state-of the-art automated artifact removal methods Lagged auto-mutual information clustering (LAMIC) and Fully automated statistical thresholding (FASTER), and is able to remove a wide range of artifact types including blink, electromyogram (EMG), and electrooculogram (EOG) artifacts.

qtl.outbred: Interfacing outbred line cross data with the R/qtl mapping software

Background qtl.outbred is an extendible interface in the statistical environment, R, for combining quantitative trait loci (QTL) mapping tools. It is built as an umbrella package that enables outbred genotype probabilities to be calculated and/or imported into the software package R/qtl. Findings Using qtl.outbred, the genotype probabilities from outbred line cross data can be calculated by interfacing with a new and efficient algorithm developed for analyzing arbitrarily large datasets (included in the package) or imported from other sources such as the web-based tool, GridQTL. Conclusion qtl.outbred will improve the speed for calculating probabilities and the ability to analyse large future datasets. This package enables the user to analyse outbred line cross data accurately, but with similar effort than inbred line cross data.

Interfacing prolog and VRML and its application to constraint visualization

A number of data description languages initially designed as standards for trie WWW are currently being used to implement user interfaces to programs. This is done independently of whether such programs are executed in the same or a different host as trie one running the user interface itself. The advantage of this approach is that it provides a portable, standardized, and easy to use solution for the application programmer, and a familiar behavior for the user, typically well versed in the use of WWW browsers. Among the proposed standard description languages, VRML is a aimed at representing three dimensional scenes including hyperlink capabilities. VRML is already used as an import/export format in many 3-D packages and tools, and has been shown effective in displaying complex objects and scenarios. We propose and describe a Prolog library which allows parsing and checking VRML code, transforming it, and writing it out as VRML again. The library converts such code to an internal representation based on first order terms which can then be arbitrarily manipulated. We also present as an example application the use of this library to implement a novel 3-D visualization for examining and understanding certain aspects of the behavior of CLP(FD) programs.

Interface adaptor logic: A new model for interfacing peripherals in IP based designs

The introduction of standard on-chip buses has eased integration and boosted the production of IP functional cores. However, once an IP is bus specific retargeting to a different bus is time-consuming and tedious, and this reduces the reusability of the bus-specific IP. As new bus standards are introduced and different interconnection methods are proposed, this problem increases. Many solutions have been proposed, however these solutions either limit the IP block performance or are restricted to a particular platform. A new concept is presented that can connect IP blocks to a wide variety of interface architectures with low overhead. This is achieved through the use a special interface adaptor logic layer.

Interfacing ASM with the MDG tool

In this paper we describe an approach to interface Abstract State Machines (ASM) with Multiway Decision Graphs (MDG) to enable tool support for the formal verification of ASM descriptions. ASM is a specification method for software and hardware providing a powerful means of modeling various kinds of systems. MDGs are decision diagrams based on abstract representation of data and axe used primarily for modeling hardware systems. The notions of ASM and MDG axe hence closely related to each other, making it appealing to link these two concepts. The proposed interface between ASM and MDG uses two steps: first, the ASM model is transformed into a flat, simple transition system as an intermediate model. Second, this intermediate model is transformed into the syntax of the input language of the MDG tool, MDG-HDL. We have successfully applied this transformation scheme on a case study, the Island Tunnel Controller, where we automatically generated the corresponding MDG-HDL models from ASM specifications.