Mihoko Okada

Prolog-based system for nursing staff scheduling implemented on a personal computer

An approach to the problem of nursing staff scheduling in a hospital is presented. For scheduling nurses, a variety of requirements with varied levels of significance has to be taken into account simultaneously. Because of the nature of the problem, where it is difficult to define what is the optimal solution in a strict sense, we aimed at automating scheduling by following the manual method in a faithful manner. A system for nurse scheduling has been implemented on a personal computer using Prolog. It determines favorable shift assignments on a day-to-day basis, referring to the information accumulated in the data base. In Prolog, various requirements can be expressed with relative ease, and the process of the manual method can be incorporated into the system in a natural way. The computer simulation has been conducted to test the system performance, and the obtained results demonstrated the validity of the approach.

Estimation of arterial pulse wave velocities in the frequency domain: method and clinical considerations

Pulse wave patterns at a finger and a toe are obtained using photoplethysmography. The data recorded at two recording sites are transformed by digital filters into six waveforms and the transmission time of each wave is estimated by the crosscorrelation function. Relationships between the transmission times, age, and parameters obtained from several laboratory tests are examined using multiple regression analysis. The results may be summarised as follows: the power of photoplethysmograms of a finger and a toe is concentrated in the range below 6 or 8 Hz; age correlates highly with the transmission time of a pulse wave rather than with velocity; the multiple correlation coefficients between age and the transmission times is 0·853 in male and 0·866 in female; there are no differences of transmission time among disease types; the correlations between age and other parameters measured by laboratory tests, that is, total cholesterol, phospholipid, triglyceride, β-lipoprotein, are very small.

An approach to the generalized nurse scheduling problem: generation of a declarative program to represent institution-specific knowledge

An approach to the nurse scheduling problem is presented. The critical problem in nurse scheduling in a hospital is how to determine the day-to-day shift assignments of each nurse for a specified period in a way that satisfies the given requirements as much as possible, where the requirements differ greatly depending on the hospital. We present a method for constructing an agency-independent core procedure which can be tailored to the peculiar requirements of an individual hospital. As a basis, a formal analysis of the problem was performed, and a general scheduling procedure was established. Based on the method, a software system which produces a scheduling program for a given institution was developed. A declarative program that represents institution-specific information is generated through an interview with the user and incorporated into the general procedure. Some of the programming technicalities and an application of the system are also presented.

Conversational file processing system FLXFL (FLeXible FiLe) for nonprogrammers

Abstract The system FLXFL (FLeXible File) is a general purpose file processing system developed to support the function of conversational data handling for nonprogrammers. The operations provided, including the definition of (or modification of) the record format and statistical computations as well as data retrieval, are all carried out in a simple question-and-answer manner throughout the system. FLXFL allows even a user with no computer background to have the complete control over the computerized management and analysis of the varied types of data. At present, FLXFL runs on minicomputer PDP 11 40 with 32K words of memory. The system is designed for general purpose, but is particularly suitable for research works.

Portable file management system in FORTRAN

It has been generally considered that FORTRAN is inferior to MUMPS and other computer languages in its facility to manipulate files and that it is not satisfactorily competent to handle databases. However, it is our finding that FORTRAN is the most widely used language in patient data management systems discussed in recently published papers. Therefore, it now seems appropriate to review and evaluate the validity of this general belief. The objective of this study is to establish a file management system in FORTRAN 77 for use in the construction of a clinical database. Comparative study is conducted on several problems associated with file manipulation, that is, time requirement for file access and access methods for data retrieval.

A new approach to the nurse scheduling problem

For nursing-staff scheduling in a hospital, the authors present a method for constructing an agency-independent core upon which particular requirements can be tailored. The approach is to separate the institution-specific knowledge from the general scheduling procedure. A scheduling system tailored to a given institution is provided by incorporating the institution-dependent declarative program into the general procedure. A software system was developed in Prolog using this approach.<<ETX>>

An algorithm to manage variable-length records for highly portable clinical data base systems.

An algorithm to archive patient data at free size in disk storage is presented. A record, assumed to be a character string such as an ASCII-coded text, is compressed and divided into fixed-length blocks. One block consists of a data field and a pointer field, and the blocks comprising a record are chained with pointers forwardly. A head pointer of each record is sequentially saved on a separate file. The data compression is performed as follows: if the same character code appears more than twice in succession, we count the number of the repetitions and save it with initial two characters. The algorithms for fetching, re-saving, and purging a record are also presented. These were implemented in FORTRAN77 and tested for performance using a practical patient data file. As the algorithm allows highly flexible record manipulation and can easily be implemented in conventional programming languages, it will make a useful tool for constructing a portable data base management system.

A new intelligent terminal for clinical computer network

An intelligent terminal has been developed to provide the clinical staffs with a means of utmost simplicity to communicate with the computer. Only 16 keys and a single switch are all which are involved in any terminal operation. The members of the operating system are the interpreter of TEXTOR (a language developed in this study), editor, monitor, and data-communication handler. This system configuration greatly reduces the cost for data communication compared with the conventional communication systems.

Information Management of Drug Drug Interactions Based on a Formal Representation

Hierarchical organization of information on drug-drug interactions is presented. The drug categories and drugs known to be involved in interactions are represented as nodes, and they are partly ordered according to inclusive relationships. Interactions among them are represented by a relation called the interacting relation. A partial ordering is defined on the solution set of the interacting relation based on the inclusive relationships among the nodes, and the set of the maximal elements is defined as the maximal interacting relation. These maximal elements are stored in a computer as explicit links joining the nodes, and during the process of interaction checking, they are superimposed on all the subordinate nodes. Thus possible interactions between given drugs can be found by applying the general rules of interactions. An experimental system is implemented based on this representational scheme, and the efficiency of the scheme as a basis of an advanced information management system for drug-drug interactions is discussed.

Portable file management system in FORTRAN. II. The input/output routine for free-formal text

A software tool for inputing and outputing patient data (1/O routine) has been developed. Since this I/O routine is programmed exclusively in FORTRAN77, it will make a powerful tool for constructing a portable database system. Basically the routine manipulates an ASCII-coded text string that consists of lines demarcated by the CR code (13) and is terminated by the null code (0). The editing commands are preceded by one of the following ASCII characters: @, !, ], [, *, and _, and all the strings with an initial character other than these are interpreted as data to be inserted into the text. Since the routine uses two FORTRAN tools already reported, i.e. the subroutines to manipulate key files and the subroutines to manage variable length records, character strings can be stored without any restrictions in format or in size, and can be retrieved either sequentially or in an indexed manner.