A brief re-cap on previous weeks topic (Decision Support). Also i learned the differences between the 2 different concepts of learning (Supervised & Unsupervised). We covered the 2 step process to supervised learning before moving onto the different algorithms for unsupervised learning.

Practical

This weeks practical involved downloading a dataset “iris” and opening using excel. Firstly i had to change the iris labels to integer numbers before saving as a txt file. After performing actions on this file i had to download files into the matlab program and run commands to see what each one does. I found this practical very useful in understanding the materials covered in lecture.

Tutorial

N/A

Assignment Progress

This week, Assignment 2b was still in progress. The MySQL database was created for the system and the group are well on track to meet the submission deadline

This weeks lecture was based on Medical Decison Making & Probabalistic Medical Reading. I learned about a Clinical decision support system which is a system designed to help medical professionals make decisions. We then covered a few case studies which explained more about the Clinical Decision Making process. I learned about diagnostic tests and how the results are analysed. The final case study was to do with a decision tree on a patient with a fatal illness. The decision tree takes in factors such as the age of the patient and calculates the probability they will survive the clinical process

Practical

The first section of the practical was to use a decision tree & its results to create a 2×2 contingency table displaying the results. Part 2 was to do further research on clinical decision support systems & summarise the results. As well as the recommended website, i also found http://www.coiera.com/aimd.htm to be useful.

Tutorial

This weeks tutorial was a case study on Fold Telecare. They are an organisation funded by the PSNI which helps those in care. Its services include a free bogus caller helpline (to assist those wary about callers to the house) & various healthcare equipment such as fall sensors, etc.

Assignment progress

Assignment 2b – the group had begun creation of the html website

This weeks lecture began with a feedback summary of the previous weeks practical as there was some confusion as to what actually had to be done. The main topic to be covered was “telemedicine, telecare and patient monitoring system”. Telemedicine is the use of electronic information and communications technologies to provide and support healthcare when distance separates the participants. We learned of the benefits to patients, physicians & hospitals before moving onto patient monitoring systems. We looked at monitoring systems in Intensive Care Units (ICU) and the components of this system.

Tutorial

Week 8 tutorial was based on biometrics.Biometrics are automated methods of recognizing a person based on the acquired physiological or behavioral characteristics. They include face recognition, finger scan, voice scan, hand scan, etc.

Practical

This weeks practical involved researching five telemedicine/telecare research projects and summarising the information into 5 designated bullet points. Information involved the aims/objectives of the system, users, technology used and an introduction.

Assignment Progress

I found out who was in my group and will contact them before Monday to arrange tasks.

This weeks lecture covered Communication in healthcare. Firstly we learned the methods available (including face to face, telephone, letter, etc) and the hardware & software associated with the communication system. The system architectures we learned about were Mainframe, three-tier and server/client. We then covered the security & privacy issues involved and these include confidentiality, authentication & encryption of data so as to make it unrecognisable if intercepted. We moved on after this to look at healthcare standards in both the US & UK along with Data Interchange standards. The final topic to be discussed before examples was the HL7 model which “refers to the seventh level of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) seven-layer communications model for Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) – the application level.”

Tutorial

This weeks tutorial was in DICOM (Digital Imaging & Communications in Medicine). This is the standard used in healthcare and is useful when producing images of x-rays ,etc. Unlike older x-ray images produced on cards, these are computerised and can be accessed from anywhere (a specialist in a hospital in Glasgow can view images taken from a patient in London without leaving his computer). The various features of DICOM were discussed before we move d onto WADO (Web Access to DIOCOM Persistent Objects). This allows for images to be retrieved using protocols on the web such as HTTP & HTTPS. We were shown typical scenarios for web access then given commands for using DICOM with the Matlab program.

Practical

The practical for this week covered PHP scripts. We re-capped on materials learned in the previous years Web Programming module. We had to open up Matlab and download/import a file called CR-MONO1-10-chest.dcm which was a medical image of a chest. Then, using the three-tier architecture we were required to create a basic healthcare web-page to display the information stored in the database we created in week 6 (using PHP scripts – or Visual Basic )

Assignment Progress

I handed in my individual assignment this week and begun to look at my group assignment.

This week’s lecture was an Introduction to electronic Health Records. The beginning of the lecture dealt with the evolution of the patient record and its common uses. The slides then discussed the disadvantages of paper based records before moving on to describe EHR (Electronic Health Records) & their components. We learned about the advantages & disadvantages of EHR’s before moving onto a case study of the Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VistA)

Practical

This week’s practical was a re-cap on using Microsoft Access in preparation for the following weeks practical. During this session, I created a database with tables, forms & queries according to the data given to me. I found this to be a useful exercise as I had not used Access in a long time and I was able to familiarise myself with its features again.

Tutorial

This week’s tutorial was based on a case study of the NHS and we learned that the government were planning to create a new IT based system for the NHS which would be built by a selected few companies running on a 8/9 year contract. It was known as the National Programme for IT (NPfIT)

Assignment progress

Continued research for Assignment 2.a and began to write up an initial draft so as I could read over it and correct points as needed.

There were no lectures on this week so I read over my notes from previous weeks during class time.

Practical

Practicals were not on this week

Tutorial

We had no tutorial this week

Assignment progress

I continued to work on Assignment 2.a…I done research into online health information sites and picked out points I thought to be relevant.

This weeks lecture covered medical data, processing, e-prescribing and PACS. We learned about the different types of data that can be gathered (i.e. narrative, discreet numerical, analogue & visual) and also the techniques for recording this data. The next component in the lecture was PACS (Picture Archiving and Communication Systems). This allows consultants/specialists to view or archive images. This was useful in the likes of X-Ray machines as it cut out the cost of the film to display the image and also specialists could annotate over it without destroying the original. The 2nd part of the lecture covered Security & Confidentiality i.e. Sensitive Personal Data, confidential information, etc. This is a very serious issue amongst healthcare and it addresses areas such as patient identifiable information, anonymisation & consent.

Tutorial

In this weeks tutorial we were able to experiment with the various pieces of equipment learned about in the first couple of weeks such as sensors, blood pressure monitors, etc. This gave me a useful insight as to the operation of such equipment and was a great chance to familiarise myself with it.

Practical

The practical this week was to do with sound editing. We firstly had to download a program called “GoldWave” and then worked our way through the practical sheet. We had 3 different sounds to start off with and had to perform various tasks on each.

Assignment Progress

Continuted working with Assignment 2.a

In this weeks lecture we learned about medical imaging and bio-signal acquisition. This covered x-rays (on which we were shown a brief video describing how they work), ct scans, MRI scans, Ultrasound, ECG & EEG. We learned that specialists can monitor various signals from the body and use changes to make a diagnosis. I found these slides interesting and useful in developing further my understanding of these methods. I had heard of them before used in practices but never really understood the goings on.

Practical

In the week 3 practical we started working through a matlab tutorial set out in different exercises. The first couple of exerises were based on carrying out basic MatLab instructions and storing variables. Also in the later exercises, i was able to enter readings taken from a persons fingers and plot this data on graph. Once the data was plotted we were able to change the formatting and colour to produce a medial image.

Assignment Progress

Continued working through with Assignment 2.a which is due for Week 7

In the lecture, we moved from the introduction to teleheath/telecare to actually looking at different methods & products that can be used to help those in care. We learned about the role of the internet in health-care and how it can assist such things as “virtual-visits” (where the patient can have an appointment with a care nurse/doctor from home via a webcam). Also in the lecture slides were descriptions of useful web-pages relating to the subject (mainly in the USA, however in our practical on friday we will research UK & Ireland sites for our own benefit).

Tutorial

Week 2′s tutorial carried over from week 1 with a further demonstration of MatLab. We were shown how to plot medical data and interpret that into a graph using MatLab. Also we learned about plotting sequences into graphs i.e. using loops to create the data/plots.

Practical

This weeks practical was to research online for UK & Ireland websites relating to Telecare and Telehealth. I found this practical very interesting and constructive as i was able to spend time reading about different health care products/services and also i could relate this to materials we covered in the previous lecture(s). I compiled a Word Document with my findings including pictures, informative text, etc and have saved this as it will be required for next weeks MatLab Practical.

Assignment Progress

As of now i have completed Weeks 1&2 Learning Logs and have joined a group of 4 people for the group assignment. I have also had a quick look at the individual assignment we have been assigned and i hope to start this over the weekend or beginning of next week at the latest to ensure i have it completed to the best of my ability and on-time.

In the lecture we received an introduction to the module.  This focused mainly on the aims of the course and what sort of level of understanding would be required.  There was an introduction to what Health Informatics was and also the need for this. There was a section which dealt with the changing demographics of the UK and also how patient care has been improved due to the ever rising health budgets given by the government. An interesting fact which i learned from this lecture was that spending on healthcare in the UK has risen from £57.5 Billion in 1996 to almost £112.5 Billion in 2008.  We were informed of how the module will be assessed and what is required to pass both the assignments & end of semester exam.

Tutorial

This weeks tutorial provided us with a first look at a program widely used in medicine called “MatLab”. We were shown the basic functions of this program in preparation for our practicals in week3 where we would be using the software ourselves. We learned how to display vectors & matrices and also to store them as a variable i.e.  a = [1 2 3 4] – The valuses inside the brackets will be displayed/used each time the variable a is called.

Practical

There were no practicals in week 1, but when i had some free time on my hands i took a brief look at the MatLab program in the labs to familiarise myself with the environment

Assignment Progress

The assignment had not yet been assigned in week 1. We had only this learning log to produce as part of Assignment 1