George-Peter K. Economou

OTE-TS - a new value-added telematics service for telemedicine applications

A new telemedicine service, called the Hellenic Telecommunication Organization Telemedicine Service (OTE-TS), which addresses an open multidisciplinary group of medical care providers (users), is presented in this paper. OTE-TS is supported by the Hellenic Telecommunication Organization (OTE) and is the result of the close collaboration of engineers, medical doctors and market analysts. Its architecture provides the user with an integrated electronic working domain handling diverse types of conversational audiovisual information and medical records. It includes a stack of functions, protocols and interfaces for data acquisition, processing and display, and for the composition of dial-up multi-party cooperation schemes (synchronous or asynchronous) that are suitable for the coordination and management of high-level consulting, reporting and reviewing activities. The service provider (i.e. OTE) performs the central administration and maintenance of the service, as well as the management of medical cases and reports that are exchanged among the users. The service has been extensively tested in real-world conditions.

Medical Decision Making via Artificial Neural Networks: A Smart Phone-Embedded Application Addressing Pulmonary Diseases’ Diagnosis

A prototype Medical Decision Making System (MDMS) based on feed forward Artificial Neural Networks (fANNs) and its software implementation as an application of ‘smart phone’ devices, is the topic of this article. An MDMS, generally structured to cover categories of distressed body organs, is presented, focusing on the full spectrum of Pulmonary Diseases (PDs). The fANNs that compose this MDMS have been taught by using real world patients’ clinical data. The fANNS have been taught on a powerful PC and their weights ported to be used as a part of a wide range ‘smart phone’ devices’ applications software.

A robust smart device app assisting medical diagnosis

A Medical Decision Making System (MDMS) has recently been implemented as an app (lication) for Android-based Mobile “Smart” Devices (AMSDs). Feed Forward Artificial Neural Networks (fANNs) is a major element of this MDMS that has been extensively tested in the field of Pulmonary Diseases (PDs). This MDMS fANNs have been taught by using real world patients’ clinical data on a powerful Personal Computer; the MDMS modular structure and its fANNs’ weights were then ported to AMSDs to be used as a part of wide-range applications software. The Android was chosen as the devices’ Operating System (OS), due to its Linux kernel, touchscreen features, and open standards architecture.

Experiences accumulated working towards medical decision support systems

This pioneer work aims to emphasize the milestones that need to be set for a proper cooperation to be met between teams of different expertise. Its archetype has sources on the collaboration of a team of Medical Doctors (MDs) and a team of Systems Engineers that fruited and was presented recently. On the other hand, it stretches out to every domain of interest where the correct Knowledge Transfer and the building either of Medical Decision Support Systems (Medical DSS) or more universal systems dealing with human experience, is sought. Apart from being only a general survey, precise guidelines based on real facts are determined.

Exploiting expert systems in cardiology: a comparative study.

An improved Adaptive Neuro-Fuzzy Inference System (ANFIS) in the field of critical cardiovascular diseases is presented. The system stems from an earlier application based only on a Sugeno-type Fuzzy Expert System (FES) with the addition of an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) computational structure. Thus, inherent characteristics of ANNs, along with the human-like knowledge representation of fuzzy systems are integrated. The ANFIS has been utilized into building five different sub-systems, distinctly covering Coronary Disease, Hypertension, Atrial Fibrillation, Heart Failure, and Diabetes, hence aiding doctors of medicine (MDs), guide trainees, and encourage medical experts in their diagnoses centering a wide range of Cardiology. The Fuzzy Rules have been trimmed down and the ANNs have been optimized in order to focus into each particular disease and produce results ready-to-be applied to real-world patients.

Premises and application of a commercial tele-working platform

The explosive growth of tele-communication markets make clear to PTT (post telephone telegraph) enterprises the need to provide for novel value-added integrated services, in order to supply their customers with enough means to reap the full advantages of new technology and survive (Kurland and Bailey (2000), IEEE Eng. Man. Rev., 28 (2), 49-60). The market trends that favored the birth of many dot com companies, asked for Service Providers (SPs) that lead PTTs to gradually extend their services and become x-Service Providers (x-SPs), among others they consist of Application SPs (ASPs), e-MAIL/Messaging SPs (eMSPs), Network SPs (NSPs), Management SPs (MSPs), Storage SPs (SSPs), Data Center SPs (DCSPs), Hosting SPs (HSPs), e-Commerce SPs (eCSPs). This paper presents the premises, the implementation, and the evaluation performance of a Tele-Working Platform (TWP) that supplied those services to the citizens of the Public Bureaus of Thessalys rural county (Hellas). This platform complies with the ITU specifications for providing x-SPs and is built on a distributed computing system basis.