Yung-Ching Weng

Middleware based Inpatient Healthcare Information System

The paper presents a multi-tier, integrated, distributed, inpatient healthcare information system based on service oriented architecture (SOA) .NET environment in National Taiwan University Hospital (NTUH). The architecture and outcomes of the newly developed inpatient information system (IIS) platform are discussed in details. We also present mechanisms of integration as well as interoperability among the components and multi-database in IIS via health level seven (HL7) Middleware layer. The preliminary performance of the current operating IIS is evaluated and analyzed to verify the efficiency and effectiveness of the architecture we designed.

An Integrated Healthcare Enterprise Information Portal and Healthcare Information System Framework

The paper presents an integrated, distributed healthcare enterprise information portal (HEIP) and hospital information systems (HIS) framework over wireless/wired infrastructure at National Taiwan University Hospital (NTUH). A single sign-on solution for the hospital customer relationship management (CRM) in HEIP has been established. The outcomes of the newly developed outpatient information systems (OIS) in HIS are discussed. The future HEIP blueprints with CRM oriented features: e-learning, remote consultation and diagnosis (RCD), as well as on-line vaccination services are addressed. Finally, the integrated HEIP and HIS architectures based on the middleware technologies are proposed along with the feasible approaches. The preliminary performance of multi-media, time-based data exchanges over the wireless HEIP side is collected to evaluate the efficiency of the architecture

An Information Technology Framework for Strengthening Telehealthcare Service Delivery

OBJECTIVE Telehealthcare has been used to provide healthcare service, and information technology infrastructure appears to be essential while providing telehealthcare service. Insufficiencies have been identified, such as lack of integration, need of accommodation of diverse biometric sensors, and accessing diverse networks as different houses have varying facilities, which challenge the promotion of telehealthcare. This study designs an information technology framework to strengthen telehealthcare delivery. MATERIALS AND METHODS The proposed framework consists of a system architecture design and a network transmission design. The aim of the framework is to integrate data from existing information systems, to adopt medical informatics standards, to integrate diverse biometric sensors, and to provide different data transmission networks to support a patients house network despite the facilities. The proposed framework has been evaluated with a case study of two telehealthcare programs, with and without the adoption of the framework. RESULTS The proposed framework facilitates the functionality of the program and enables steady patient enrollments. The overall patient participations are increased, and the patient outcomes appear positive. The attitudes toward the service and self-improvement also are positive. CONCLUSIONS The findings of this study add up to the construction of a telehealthcare system. Implementing the proposed framework further assists the functionality of the service and enhances the availability of the service and patient acceptances.

Newborn Screening Healthcare Information System Based on Service-Oriented Architecture

In this paper, we established a newborn screening system under the HL7/Web Services frameworks. We rebuilt the NTUH Newborn Screening Laboratory’s original standalone architecture, having various heterogeneous systems operating individually, and restructured it into a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), distributed platform for further integrity and enhancements of sample collections, testing, diagnoses, evaluations, treatments or follow-up services, screening database management, as well as collaboration, communication among hospitals; decision supports and improving screening accuracy over the Taiwan neonatal systems are also addressed. In addition, the new system not only integrates the newborn screening procedures among phlebotomy clinics, referral hospitals, as well as the newborn screening center in Taiwan, but also introduces new models of screening procedures for the associated, medical practitioners. Furthermore, it reduces the burden of manual operations, especially the reporting services, those were heavily dependent upon previously. The new system can accelerate the whole procedures effectively and efficiently. It improves the accuracy and the reliability of the screening by ensuring the quality control during the processing as well.

Semantic similarity measure in biomedical domain leverage Web Search Engine

Semantic similarity measure plays an essential role in Information Retrieval and Natural Language Processing. In this paper we propose a page-count-based semantic similarity measure and apply it in biomedical domains. Previous researches in semantic web related applications have deployed various semantic similarity measures. Despite the usefulness of the measurements in those applications, measuring semantic similarity between two terms remains a challenge task. The proposed method exploits page counts returned by the Web Search Engine. We define various similarity scores for two given terms P and Q, using the page counts for querying P, Q and P AND Q. Moreover, we propose a novel approach to compute semantic similarity using lexico-syntactic patterns with page counts. These different similarity scores are integrated adapting support vector machines, to leverage the robustness of semantic similarity measures. Experimental results on two datasets achieve correlation coefficients of 0.798 on the dataset provided by A. Hliaoutakis, 0.705 on the dataset provide by T. Pedersen with physician scores and 0.496 on the dataset provided by T. Pedersen et al. with expert scores.

A Multi-Voting Enhancement for Newborn Screening Healthcare Information System

The clinical symptoms of metabolic disorders during neonatal period are often not apparent. If not treated early, irreversible damages such as mental retardation may occur, even death. Therefore, practicing newborn screening is essential, imperative to prevent neonatal from these damages. In the paper, we establish a newborn screening model that utilizes Support Vector Machines (SVM) techniques and enhancements to evaluate, interpret the Methylmalonic Acidemia (MMA) metabolic disorders. The model encompasses the Feature Selections, Grid Search, Cross Validations as well as multi model Voting Mechanism. In the model, the predicting accuracy, sensitivity and specificity of MMA can be improved dramatically. The model will be able to apply to other metabolic diseases as well.

A Newborn Screening System Based on Service-Oriented Architecture Embedded Support Vector Machine

The clinical symptoms of metabolic disorders are rarely apparent during the neonatal period, and if they are not treated earlier, irreversible damages, such as mental retardation or even death, may occur. Therefore, the practice of newborn screening is essential to prevent permanent disabilities in newborns. In the paper, we design, implement a newborn screening system using Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifications. By evaluating metabolic substances data collected from tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS), we can interpret and determine whether a newborn has a metabolic disorder. In addition, National Taiwan University Hospital Information System (NTUHIS) has been developed and implemented to integrate heterogeneous platforms, protocols, databases as well as applications. To expedite adapting the diversities, we deploy Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) concepts to the newborn screening system based on web services. The system can be embedded seamlessly into NTUHIS.

Wireless/Wired Collaborative Remote Consultation Emergency Healthcare Information Systems Framework

The paper presents an integrated, collaborative, distributed emergency healthcare information systems (HIS) framework over wireless, wired infrastructure in Taiwan. The framework can be extended and adapted to other regions as well. The Remote Consultation for Emergency Services (RCES) prototype based on the middleware technologies are proposed along with the feasible approaches. The prototype enhances the communication possibilities not only to simplify the understanding of an accident situation at an emergency center, but to deliver first-aid instructions via multimedia, time-based data to the accident site. The underneath technologies, including: SIP (session initiation protocol), SDP (session description protocol), JMF (Java Media Framework), RTP (real-time transport protocol), JDBC (Java Database Connectivity) as well as Java implementations are deployed. The preliminary performance evaluations regarding Time Based streaming media exchanges in RCES over WLAN are collected and evaluated

Web-based healthcare Hand Drawing Management System

The paper addresses Medical Hand Drawing Management System architecture and implementation. In the system, we developed four modules: hand drawing management module; patient medical records query module; hand drawing editing and upload module; hand drawing query module. The system adapts windows-based applications and encompasses web pages by ASP.NET hosting mechanism under web services platforms. The hand drawings implemented as files are stored in a FTP server. The file names with associated data, e.g. patient identification, drawing physician, access rights, etc. are reposited in a database. The modules can be conveniently embedded, integrated into any system. Therefore, the system possesses the hand drawing features to support daily medical operations, effectively improve healthcare qualities as well. Moreover, the system includes the printing capability to achieve a complete, computerized medical document process. In summary, the system allows web-based applications to facilitate the graphic processes for healthcare operations.

Enhanced object management for high performance web proxies

The dramatic increase of WWW traffic on the Internet has led to the wide use of web proxy. The web proxies can be used to improve security, save network bandwidth and reduce network latency. However, as the network bandwidth increased, the general-purpose file system is rapidly becoming the performance bottleneck of web proxies. In this paper, we propose an enhanced object management, called UNIFIED, which is a user-level technique for improving the performance of web proxy. In UNIFIED method, several techniques are developed to improve the disk I/O performance. Instead of the traditional trace-driven simulation, we employ Polygraph 2.5.4 with Polymix-3 workload to evaluate our system realistically. To investigate how the proxy performance depends on the equipped disk, we offer two sets of test machines. One is equipped with one IDE disk and the other is equipped with five SCSI disks. Experimental results show that, in both tests, our method can improve the proxy performance dramatically by reducing the overhead associated with disk I/O.