Translational Thyroid Cancer Informatics
Survival prediction is important both to clinicians and patients; ensuring the best course of treatment is selected to manage the thyroid cancer. In 2018 there will be an estimated half a million new thyroid cancer diagnoses and 41,071 deaths. Unlike other tumors whose mortality has decreased over the last two decades, thyroid cancer mortality rates have not decreased, the have increased. Existing risk stratification systems fail to account for microcarcinomas, which accounted for 28.6 percent of thyroid cancers and 32.5 percent of papillary thyroid cancer. They are also based upon a varying combination of 10 variables and have not considered…
Using Deep Convolutional Neural Networks To Detect And Classify Indicators Of Leukemia In Blood Samples
The successful detection of leukemia depends on the correct interpretation of the lineage and morphology of monocytes — a type of white blood cells. The monocytes have been classified into four primary stages of differentiation. However, the stages cannot be distinguished unambiguously even by panels of trained experts. A number of attempts have been made to create tissue classifiers using deep learning that did not specifically address monocyte morphology. This research attempts to leverage whole-slide imaging and deep learning tools to create an automated high-accuracy method for cancerous monocytic cell detection.
Study of A Visualization Tool Development in Health Informatics
The volume and complexity of data continue to increase in the world around us, including science, business, medicine and everyday human activity. Handling these diverse data to simple and intuitive representation, using simple design and intuitive interaction for non-informatics or non-statistics expert is a pursuance for informatics researchers. Nowadays, the data visualization technology and the internet can bring meaningful information to meet the specific user needs due to it not only presents a visual data interpretation but also improves comprehension and communication with users. As an example, autism (ASD, Autism Spectrum Disorder) is a disease considered to be a neurodevelopment disorder…
Promoting Healthy Coping in seniors 72 years or older with Type 2 Diabetes: A feasibility study of a mobile diabetes self-management and support application on functionality, readability, and usability
One out of four Americans older than 65 years old has diabetes. Type 2 diabetes accounts for about 90% to 95% of all diagnosed cases of diabetes. Mobile health technology provides possible solutions for seniors with type 2 diabetes to manage their daily lives. However, our preliminary research shows that only 10% of diabetes apps provided features related to Healthy Coping, which is one principle from the American Association of Diabetes Educators Self-Care Behaviors™, enables people with diabetes to find healthy ways to cope with stress. To alleviate this problem, we have designed a prototype of Healthy Coping mobile app…
Integrated analysis of genomics, longitudinal metabolomics, and Alzheimer’s risk factors among 1,111 individuals
Although Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is highly heritable, genetic variants known to be associated with AD only explain a small proportion of its heritability. It is possible that some genetic factors only convey disease risk in individuals with certain environmental exposures, suggesting that a multi-omics approach could reveal the underlying mechanisms contributing to complex traits, such as AD. We investigated such complex inter-omics relationships by developing an integrated network using genomics, longitudinal metabolomics, and longitudinal AD risk factors from participants in the Wisconsin Registry for Alzheimer’s Prevention. This network revealed many instances of genes being indirectly linked to AD risk factors…
Using Social Network Analysis to Describe Communication Practices in Healthcare
The Electronic Medical Record (EMR) serves different purposes including documentation of care and billing. The EMR is used to document care delivery, monitor ongoing clinical conditions, and it is also the repository of the patients’ healthcare story. Many people, including healthcare providers, nurses, social workers, therapists, office staff, and nurse care managers (known as the interdisciplinary team, or IDT) work together to deliver healthcare. Members of the IDT use the secure messaging application “Message Center” via the EMR to communicate with, and receive communication from, patients via eHealth (patient portal). An essential part of care coordination is communication, and an…
Challenges for the analysis of healthcare reports using natural language processing
Healthcare professionals generate, transmit, and store healthcare records as free-text documents these are the traditional“physician’s reports” or “physician’s notes”. These reports contain complex biomedical data, demographic information, location data, etc. However, free text data are a poor starting point for complex data management, aggregation and processing tasks with computational models. For data-based applications, information from healthcare reports, biomedical tests, radiology impressions and the like should be available in discrete and machine-processable form. Natural language processing (NLP), a subfield of artificial intelligence, includes techniques for manipulating and interpreting free text data for analyses with computers. Here, we briefly discuss free-textpreprocessing, an…
Applying Blockchain Technology for Health Information Exchange and Persistent Monitoring for Clinical Trials
“Blockchain” is a distributed ledger technology originally applied in the financial sector. This technology ensures the integrity of transactions without third-party validation. Its functions of decentralized transaction validation, data provenance, data sharing, and data integration are a good fit for the needs of health information exchange and clinical trials. We investigated the current workflow of Health Information Exchange and clinical trials; conducted design thinking processes with clinicians, trial managers, informaticians, and blockchain professionals; and implemented a blockchain model to tackle known issues. We used coded Smart Contract regulations to simulate several scenarios in healthcare processes. This proof-of-concept work provides a…
The promise of precision medicine: A focus on genomics and bioinformatics
Chromosomal rearrangements leading to the generation of gene fusions are more common in pediatric malignancies compared to adults and possess diagnostic and prognostic value. Identification of novel gene fusions provides a means for patient stratification and the foundation for the development of targeted therapeutics. The innovations discussed will include: the development of custom Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) gene panels for pediatric leukemias, and a newborn screening assay that detects germline events in high-risk populations.