DISCUSSION LIST ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN MEDICINE ====================================================== The list currently has 600 members in more than 25 countries. ADDRESSES: ---------- send all administrative requests (subscription, etc.) to: ai-medicine-REQUEST@med.stanford.edu send messages for distribution to the list to: ai-medicine@med.stanford.edu Archives of the digest are available via anonymous ftp from lhc.nlm.nih.gov (130.14.1.128). Login as 'ftp', use your username as password, cd to pub/ai-medicine. Use 'get filename' to copy files to your system. A list of all current members is also available in the same directory. NOTE: ----- * Please keep in mind that this is an UNMODERATED list. Everything you send to the list address (ai-medicine) may be dispatched to ALL recipients. Although I usually screen ai-medicine mail in order to filter out misdirected and unrelated messages, do not rely on this mechanism. DO NOT send administrative requests or personal communication with list members to the list address. * A moderated version of the list, in digest format, is also available. The digest is sent out once or twice each month, depending on the density of traffic on the mailing list. Send mail to the administrative address if you would rather receive the digest, or to receive both formats. SCOPE: ------ * The consensus of the body of subscribers is that the scope of this mailing list should be limited to "AI in Medicine," which may be defined as "computed-based medical decision support" (or "computer- assisted medical decision making"). This definition may be expanded to include AI-based approaches to computer-assisted medical instruction. According to this definition, topics such as billing systems and hospital/medical office information retrieval systems clearly remain outside the scope of this forum. * There are some borderline topics which cannot readily be classified under AI in Medicine, yet have clear connections to both artificial intelligence and medical practice. Processing and interpretation of medical images and signals are among those subject areas, and the current readership of this list contains a substantial number of researchers working in these fields. My personal opinion is that these borderline subject areas should remain within the scope of the list, as long as the focus lies on the artificial intelligence aspects, and not the detailed engineering principles. Best regards, Serdar Uckun, MD, PhD (list coordinator) Knowledge Systems Laboratory Stanford University =================================================================== European Information Services ** EC MEDICAL INFORMATICS PROJECTS ** Donald Parsons MD Integrated European Community medical informatics projects aims.asc "RESEARCH and TECHNOLOGY DEVELOPMENT on TELEMATIC SYSTEMS in HEALTH CARE: Advanced Informatics in Medicine (AIM) 1992 I obtained a free copy from Niels Rossing, Commission of the European Communities, DG XIII/F-6, AIM Central Office, Rue de la Loi 200, B-1049 BRUSSELS. aico@postman.dg13.cec.be AIM is the platform for establishing and integrating conceptual models, developing workstations, a common medical terminology, coding, and testing of decision support systems. The mission of AIM is: To promote effective collaboration of all Health care sectors. To develop tools, techniques and practices that support a common European approach to Health Care informatics and telecommunications. To promote their acceptance in the community and by the market. 42 R&D projects were completed by 1990. A network of over 3000 European health professionals was completed (including industry and service providers). CEN TC251 controls a directory of medical informatics (MI) standards. 37 grants were awarded for projects in MI in the following areas: Telemedicine, Computer Assisted decision making, image analysis and communications, structure of a common medical record, integration of telematics between centers, and quality assessment. There are summaries of the following projects: BEAM - biomedical technology assessment and management CAMARC II - computer aided movement analysis in rehabilitation COVIRA - computer vision in radiology DIABCARD - communication in diabetes using chip cards DILEMMA - Logic engineering in general practice, oncology and shared care EMDIS - Marrow donor information system EPIC - European prototype for integrated care ESPIS - EEG signal processing and interpretation during sleep ESTEEM - tool to evaluate electromyelograph methods EurpIPACS - European integrated hospital PACS system FEST - framewqork for European services in medicine GALEN - generalized architecture for languages encyclopedias and medical nomenclature GAMES II - generalized architecture for knowledge-based systems GEHR - good European health record HELIOS II - Hospital object software tools IDMR - intelligent decision mapping record IMPACT - integrated microscopy for pathology IREP - integrated rehabilitation program ISAAC - integrated system architecture in advanced primary care KAVAS 2 - Knowledge acquisition, visualization and assessment system MAGNOBRAIN - Biomagnetic methodology for non-invasive invgn of the human brain MARGOT - medical archive generation with object-orientated methods MEMPHIS - measurement and modeling of health care systems MENELAS - access to medical records using natural language MILORD - multimedia interaction with large object-orientated radiology and clinical databases NUCLEUS - customized environment for multimedia integrated patient dossiers OEDIPE - open European data interchange and processing for electrocardiography OPADE - optimization of drug prescriptions OPENLABS - optimization of clinical lab services ORATEL - Oral health telematic system PROCAS - care profiles system QUICHE - qwuality assurance of informatics for child health SAMMIE - software for multimodal images and education SEISMED - secure environment for medical information systems SHINE - strategic health informatics networks in Europe TANIT - Telematics for anaesthesia anf intensive therapy TELEGASTRO - quality assessment through relevant knowledge =================================================================== CALENDAR OF EVENTS RELATED TO AI IN MEDICINE ============================================ * The calendar is distributed automatically at midnight on the first day of each month. If you receive it late, or if you do not receive it at all in the upcoming months, please contact: * In future monthly postings, I will be glad to list special issue announcements and current contents of other journals in the field if the editors provide me with the necessary information. * Sorry for the blank message that was distributed last night; the problem is fixed if you are reading this notice. (note: if a full announcement of a conference has appeared on the mailing list, a digest reference is given.) * Tenth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-92): (San Jose, CA, July 12-17, 1992) [n/a] * The Eighth Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence: (Stanford, CA, July 17-19, 1992 (following AAAI-92)) [n/a] * Tenth European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI 92): (Vienna, Austria, August 3-7, 1992) [v3n7] * Open Joint Conference on Health Evaluation, Personal Preventive Medicine, Informatics (IHEA 92): (Geneva, Switzerland, September 3-5, 1992) [v3n8] * MEDINFO 1992: (Geneva, Switzerland, September 6-10, 1992) [v1n2] * 3rd International Workshop on Principles of Diagnosis (DX-92): (Eastsound, WA, USA, October 11-14, 1992) [n/a] * IEEE EMBS 1992: (Paris, France, October 29-November 1, 1992) [n/a] * SCAMC 1992: (Baltimore, MD, Nov. 8-11, 1992) [v3n5] * Biomedical Image Processing IV and Biomedical Visualization: (San Jose, CA, January 31 - February 5, 1993) [v3n10] --> 1000-word summaries due by July 5, 1992 * III IMACS International Workshop on Qualitative Reasoning and Decision Technologies (QUARDET 92): (Barcelona, Spain, June 16-18, 1993) [v3n8] --> extended abstracts due by October 30, 1992 Current Contents of the Journal ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN MEDICINE =================================================================== Vol. 4 No. 3 Special Issue on Therapy Planning and Monitoring (Mario Stefanelli, Univ. di Pavia, guest editor) -- Guest editorial (Stefanelli M) -- Patient-specific explanation in models of chronic disease (Jimison HE, Fagan LM, Schachter RD, Shortliffe EH) -- Hybrid knowledge-based systems for therapy planning (Quaglini S, Bellazzi R, Berzunin C, Stefanelli M, Barosi G) -- Planning of therapy and tests in causal probabilistic networks (Andreassen S) -- Bayesian networks for therapy planning (Berzuini C, Bellazzi R, Quaglini S, Spiegelhalter DJ) Upcoming Special Issues of the Journal ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN MEDICINE ========================================================================== Vol. 4, No. 5, October 1992 Knowledge representation in medical decision support systems Guest Editor: Cindy Sarmiento, Univ. of Southern Florida Vol. 4, No. 6, December 1992 Intelligent monitoring and control of dynamic physiological systems Guest Editor: Enrico Coiera, Hewlett-Packard Labs, Bristol Vol. 5, No. 2, April 1993 Current state-of-the-art and future directions in AI in Medicine Guest Editor: Serdar Uckun, Stanford University Vol. 5, No. 3, June 1993 Medical expert systems: Knowledge acquisition Guest Editor: K.-P. Adlassnig, University of Vienna Contact: adlape1@awiimc12.bitnet Vol. 5, No. 4, August 1993 Probabilistic and decision-theoretic systems in medicine Guest Editor: Greg Cooper, University of Pittsburgh Contact: gfc@med.pitt.edu Vol. 5, No. 5, October 1993 Logic programming in medicine Guest Editor: Peter Lucas, University of Amsterdam Deadline: August 1, 1992 Contact: lucas@amc.uva.nl Vol. 5, No. 6, December 1993 Medical expert systems: Evaluation Guest Editor: K.-P. Adlassnig, University of Vienna Contact: adlape1@awiimc12.bitnet Vol. 6, No. 3, June 1994 Virtual Realities in Medicine Guest Editor: Suzanne Weghorst,University of Washington Contact: weghorst@u.washington.edu Vol. 6, No. 4, August 1994 Knowledge Modeling for Medical KBS Guest Editor: Peter Hucklenbroich, GSF Munich Contact: huck@gsf.de K. S. Zadeh, Editor S. Uckun, Assistant Editor (U.S.) ========================================================================== AI-MEDICINE MAILING LIST ======================== From: IN%"uckun@MED.Stanford.EDU" To: IN%"ai-medicine@MED.Stanford.EDU" Subj: intelligent monitoring survey Here's a repost of my request for contributions to a survey of intelligent patient monitoring projects. I have already received around 15 responses, but I believe there are several other current projects. If you are working on AI methods for patient monitoring, please fill out the appended questionnaire and e-mail it to as soon as possible. Please disregard if you have already responded. The results of the survey will be distributed at the intelligent monitoring workshop at Medinfo'92, and will be sent separately to those who have contributed but will not be attending the workshop. Regards, Serdar Uckun, MD, PhD Knowledge Systems Laboratory, Stanford University QUESTIONNAIRE -- PLEASE FILL ONE FORM PER PROJECT ------------------------------------------------- * Project name, if any: * Organization: * Department: * Project period: * Project members and e-mail addresses (specify former members): * Contact name, phone, and postal address: * Fax no.: * Brief description of project: * Major publications: ========================================================================== From: IN%"LISTSERV@ALBNYDH2.BITNET" "Revised List Processor" To: IN%"SABBATINI@CCVAX.UNICAMP.BR" "RENATO SABBATINI" Subj: File: "HSPNET-L 92-00516" being sent to you Dear Colleages, I am a theme coodinator for a special issue on Artificial Intelligence in Medicine for the AISB quarterly, to come out in Winter 92. The AISB quarterly is a magazine of the Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behaviour, published in Great Britain and with a worldwide distribution. I would like to receive your contribution for this special issue (around 1500 words for short papers and up to 3000 for longer ones), via email. The deadline is end of August 1992. Topics of interest are all aspects of medical AI including but not limited to: - clinical applications - architectures for medical knowledge based systems - methodologies for building medical AI systems - uncertainty - knowledge elicitation and knowledge acquisition - modelling medical diagnostic processes - natural language processing - expert systems - intelligent tutoring systems I look forward to hearing from you, and do not hesitate to contact me if you need further information. If you intend to send a contribution could me please let me know as soon as possible. Dr Laurence Alpay C.I.H Hopital Cantonal de Geneve 24 Rue Micheli du Crest 1211 Geneve 14 Switzerland tel: (22) 37-26-150 email: alpay@cih.hcuge.ch ========================================================================== From: IN%"SCCS6082%IRUCCVAX.UCC.IE@forsythe.stanford.edu" To: IN%"ai-medicine@med.stanford.edu" Subj: ========================= Request for information ========================= hi, im looking for any of the following for help in developing a expert system involved in analysing vaginal bleeding: 1. The incidence of symptoms and signs of bleeding in early/late pregnancy. 2. The dataset used by K. Leung,Felix Wong and W.Lam (Chinese University of Hong Kong) in their ABVAB system, alternatively if anyone knows their e-mail addresses I would be most grateful to recieve them. 3. Any database of case histories of vaginal bleeding or the location of one. Thank You in advance. C. McCormack , Dept of Computer Science, University College Cork, Irleand. & J.P. Murphy , Cork Regional Hospital, Cork, Ireland. ========================================================================== Date: Thu, 9 Jul 92 09:43:30 PDT From: uckun@MED.Stanford.EDU (Serdar Uckun) Message-ID: <9207091643.AA25858@HPP.Stanford.EDU> Call for Abstracts Medinfo'92 Workshop on INTELLIGENT SYSTEMS IN PATIENT MONITORING AND THERAPY MANAGEMENT (Tuesday Sept. 8, 1992, 6:00 pm -- 10:00 pm), Geneva, Switzerland Please note: A 4 hour slot is allocated for this workshop, which is longer than the originally suggested duration. Therefore, we would like to invite workshop participants to submit abstracts for presentation during the workshop. Material which will also be presented in the Medinfo scientific programme is acceptable for workshop presentation. Please submit a short abstract (up to 500 words) by August 1, 1992, to is you would like to present your work. Contributors will be notified during the first week in August. We apologize for the late announcement and change in plans. Scope: The increase in diagnostic and therapeutic information available to health care personnel brings along problems of information management. During the past decade, several knowledge-based systems were introduced to help clinicians with the monitoring of critical care patients and to assist them with therapy planning. These systems range from simple intelligent alarms to sophisticated systems for anesthesia monitoring or ventilator management. Intelligent monitoring research typically spans a wide variety of disciplines, making it difficult to keep up with the developments in the field. The goal of this workshop is to provide a forum where researchers from various disciplines attending Medinfo'92 can get together and discuss recent developments in intelligent monitoring. Organizing Committee: Serdar Uckun Mario Stefanelli Stanford University Univ. di Pavia Palo Alto, CA, U.S.A. Pavia, Italy serdar@hpp.stanford.edu mstefa@ipvstefa.unipv.it Enrico Coiera Larry Widman Hewlett-Packard Labs Univ. of New Mexico Bristol, England Albuquerque, NM, U.S.A. ewc@hplb.hpl.hp.com widman@camis.stanford.edu =================================================================== From: IN%"musen@camis.stanford.edu" "Mark Musen" To: IN%"ai-medicine@camis.stanford.edu" Subj: Minutes of AAAI-M meeting The AAAI AI in Medicine subgroup meeting was held on July 13th, 1992, during AAAI-92 in San Jose, California. The meeting was chaired by Mark Musen, who called the meeting to order at 12:30 p.m. A major topic of discussion was the role of the AIM subgroup within AAAI. Serdar Uckun pointed out that the number of AAAI members who expressed an interest in AIM activities (~3500) was much larger than the number of subscribers for the ai-medicine mailing list (~630), and that both numbers were substantially larger than the number of researchers actively participating in the area. Each of these constituencies undoubtedly has different expectations regarding AAAI-M. The concensus was that the primary purpose of AAAI-M is the dissemination of information, such as dissertation abstracts, book and journal reports, conference announcements, and so on. Although the traditional mechanism for this purpose has been a semi-annual AIM newsletter distributed to all AAAI-M members, Ramesh Patil pointed out that AAAI was not in favor of a hardcopy newsletter due to the high costs of printing and mailing it. Tom Rindfleisch suggested that the standard medium for the dissemination of AIM-related information be e-mail, and that the ai-medicine mailing list has already been performing this task to a large extent. Serdar Uckun reported about the ai- medicine mailing list and the FTP archives. A suggestion was made to augment the archives with listings of technical reports available from universities and other research labs. Another suggestion was to maintain a database of research interests of the mailing list subscribers in order to promote off- line correspondence. SCAMC-92 and Medinfo-92 were mentioned as upcoming conferences that are of interest to the AIM community. Mark Musen briefly discussed the 1992 AIM Spring Symposium. The next AIM symposium is scheduled to take place in 1994. Petra van der Meer of Elsevier introduced the "Artificial Intelligence in Medicine" journal. She relayed the publisher's enthusiasm for the new journal and stressed that Elsevier believes that this journal should be competing for papers earmarked more for an audience of computer scientists than for one of workers in medical informatics. The AAAI Publications Committee recently voted to approve "Artificial Intelligence in Medicine" as an official AAAI- supported publication. Consequently, AAAI members will now be able to order individual subscriptions for this journal at a cost much less than the "newsstand" price. The group discussed the diversity of the conferences and journals in which AIM research is published. The compilation and dissemination of information was again raised as a critical issue. Peter Szolovits nominated Serdar Uckun to be the next AAAI-M liaison to AAAI. Serdar was elected by acclamation. Serdar plans to distribute a bulletin to AAAI-M members via the ai-medicine distribution list at regular intervals. The meeting was adjourned at 1:30 p.m. ========================================================================== From: IN%"LISTSERV@ALBNYDH2.BITNET" To: IN%"SABBATINI@CCVAX.UNICAMP.BR" "RENATO SABBATINI" Subj: File: "NTWSSYST BBS" being sent to you [REVIEW BBS] January 8, 1991 Bulletin Board Services. Local BBS: USA. There are more than 250 local medical BBS in N.America with conferences on diabetes, AIDS, psychiatry, medical ethics, spinal injury, etc, and some are gatewayed to the international networks (such as USENET). John Beasley, Family Medicine, Univ. Wisconsin, has linked primary care physicians with consultants (modem (608)263-0494). The latter BBS also provides a complete listing of US meidical BBS (-for a list that is updated monthly call "Blackbag" at modem number (302)731- 1998). UK: There are several in UK, e.g., Healthlink in Wigan (modem 0942-722948, 8 bit, no parity, 1 stopbit). (McKendrick, 1989). A clinical chemistry BBS at Oxford is considering joining the international and highly successful FidoNet system (Kay, 1989). National BBS: USA. Compuserve has a professional SIG (special interest group) - MEDSIG. For info call Compuserve. The National Library of Medicine (National Institutes of Health, Washington, DC) runs E.T. Net (Educational Technology Net). The conferences include digital_images (computing in radiology); clinical_net (medical networks); computer assisted instruction; and general computer topics. For info: E.T.Net, The Learning Center for for Interactive Technology, Lister Hill national Center for Biomedical Communications, National Library of Medicine, 8600 Rockville Pike, Bethesda, MD 20894. Voice: (301)496-0508; Fax: (301)480-3035. E-mail: sandro@1hc.nlm.nih.gov. Modem access is through local Telenet numbers. References: Kay JDS. 1989. Computer networks in medicine. Lancet, Dec 16,p.1456. McKendrick D. 1989. Computer networks in medicine. Lancet, Dec 16, p.1456. =================================================================== 1st REGIONAL CONGRESS ON HEALTH SCIENCES INFORMATION OCTOBER 14-16, 1992 Sao Paulo, SP. BRAZIL Organizer: Latin American and Caribbean Health Center on Health Science - BIREME. Pan American Health Organization, Regional Office of the World Health Organization. PROGRAMMEE: The Congress activities are: Conferences, Round Tables, Courses and Equipment fair with Open house of BIREME services. The 3rd. Meeting of the Latin American and Caribbean Health Sciences Network representatives will be held after the Congress on the 17th, under the coordination of Dr. Jose Romero Teruel, Health Systems Infrastructure, PAHO/WHO. Simultaneous interpretation will be provided (Portuguese, Spanish, English ) for Conferences and Round Tables. I. CONFERENCES Themes and speakers. * Health for all and scientific and technological Information. Dr. Carlyle Guerra de Macedo. Director PAHO/WHO. * Information systems and new technologies. Dr. P.K. Abeytunga, Director, Canadian Centre of Occupational Health Safety. Canada * Medical Informatics. Dr. Daniel Sigulem. President of the Brazilian Association of Medical Informatics. Escola Paulista de Medicina. Sao Paulo, Brazil. * Document Image Delivery System. Dr. George Thoma. Chief, Communications and Image Engineering. US National Library of Medicine. * Data base searching: history, current and future developments. Dr. Andrew Buxton. Institute of Development Studies. University of Sussex. UK * Academic Networks in the Region. Dr. Tadao Takahashi, Chief, Research Network. CNPq/Brazilian Research Council. * Development of Health Sciences Information. Dr. Celia Zaher, Director BIREME; Abel Packer, Data Processing and Systems/BIREME. II. ROUND TABLES * Latin American and Caribbean health Sciences Information: Its expansion and the challenge of the future. Coordinator: Dr. Celia R. Zaher, BIREME Speakers: Mrs. Alecia Freitas de Acosta, Venezuela; Dra. Gladys Faba, Mexico; Mrs. Laxmi Mansingh, Jamaica; Mrs. Sylvia Anabalon, Chile. * New Technologies and its impact in developing countries. Coordinator: Dr. Martha B. Stone, IDRC/Canada. Speakers: Dr. Andrew Buxton. UK; Dr. Antonio Lisboa C. Miranda, IBICT/Brazil; Dr. Carlos A. Gamboa, PAHO/WHO; Dr. P.K. Abeytunga, Canada. * A multidisciplinary approach to health information: the view-points of Health Sciences specialists and information professionals. Coordinator: Mrs. Lois Ann Colaianni. US NLM. Speakers: Dr. Derek Law, IFLA/UK; Dr. Flair Carrilho, Faculty of Medicine USP/Brazil; Dr. J. Felix Patino, FEPAFEM/Colombia; Mrs Rosaly F. Krzyzanowski Odontologia/USP. III. Courses offered before, during and after the Congress. COURSES BEFORE AND AFTER THE CONGRESS @ Access to BIREME's Data Bases (2 days, 16 hours) Portuguese Date: 12-13/10 COST: US$ 75.00 + DeCS structure + Bibliographic research strategy. + Access to BIREME's Data bases: LILACS, MEDLINE, HEALTH, DeCS, SeCS + On-line commuting. @ Methodology LILACS ( 2 weeks, 80 hours) Portuguese Date: 19-30/10 COST: US$ 200.00 + Operating and managing data bases + Bibliographic description + Indexing. The Number of participants is limited by the availability of microcomputers; 2 participant/equipment. -It is necessary to reserve - Payment to be made at BIREME. COURSES DURING THE CONGRESS 1. Introduction to databases access: online and CD-ROM; online delivery service, BITNIS, BIREME ( Portuguese ). 2. Softwares developed by BIREME: bibliographic description, indexing union catalog of serials, loan services, BIREME ( Portuguese) 3. Management of Information Systems: a) Costs; b) Evaluation methodology, Dr. Francisco Tancredi, Kellogg Foundation. ( Portuguese); c) Project building, Mrs Fay Durrant, IDRC, Canada ( Spanish ). 4. Modern development in information retrieval; gateways, hipertext, etc. Dr. Andrew Buxton. UK ( English ) 5. Marketing of Information systems, Prof Amelia Silveira, UFSC/Brazil (Portuguese). 6. New technologies and information supply. Dr. P.K. Abeytunga, CCOHS, Canada (English). 7. The medical librarian: today and tomorrow. Mrs. Lois Ann Colaianni. US NLM (English) 8. Health Legislation. Mrs Monica Bolis, PAHO and Rubens Medina US Library of Congress. (Spanish) REGISTRATION FEE US DOLLARS Until 30/7 After 30/7 During Congress Participants 80.00 90.00 100.00 Official Representatives 70.00 80.00 90.00 Students 40.00 45.00 50.00 Courses during Congress 25.00 35.00 45.00 PAYMENT Please send the registration form and receipt or check to: BIREME/CONGRESO Rua Botucatu 862 Vila Clementino CEP 04023 Sao Paulo, SP BRASIL ********* REGISTRATION FORM ********* Name: .............................................. Address: .......................................... City: ............................................. State: ........... Zip Code ............................ Country: ............................................... Phone: .............. Fax: .............E-mail:............ Profession:................. Institution: ................... Official Representative: .................................... PAYMENT BY Check enclosed /_/ Check Number:........................... Bank: .................................. Agency: ................................ The payment covers: Registration fee $____ Courses $____ Total $____ **************** HOTEL RESERVATION FORM **************** Name: .............................................. Accompanied by: ..................................... Address: .......................................... City: .................... State:........Zip:....... Country: ........................................... Phone:............... FAX: ........................ E-Mail:............................................. Profession:............... Institution:............. Position: ....................... ***************** HOTELS US$ *************** SINGLE DOUBLE WALDORF 41.00 50.00 STAGIUM 41.00 50.00 SOUEN 41.00 50.00 MONT HERMON 60.00 70.00 POETA DRUMMOND 65.00 78.00 CONTEMPORANEO 84.00 84.00 IBIRAPUERA PARK 84.00 90.00 Book a room at: ...................................... Single:.............. Double: ............... Date of Arrival: ........................... Departure Date: ............................ FOR EACH APARTMENT SEND A CHECK OF US$ 100.00 PAYABLE TO: MARINGA PASSAGENS E TURISMO LTDA. ADDRESS: Maringa Passagens e Turismo LTDA. Al. Gabriel Monteiro da silva, 1844 CEP 01442 Sao Paulo SP- BRASIL Phone: 881-2688 FAX 649140 N.B. The value of the check will be deducted from the total amount of your account. BIREME LATIN AMERICAN AND CARIBBEAN CENTER ON HEALTH SCIENCES INFORMATION Rua Botucatu 862 Caixa Postal 20382 V. Clementino 04023 Sao Paulo, SP. BRASIL TEL: (011) 549-2611 TELEX (11) 22143 FAX (011)571-1919 E-MAIL BIREME@BRFAPESP.BITNET =================================================================== Computer-Aided Instruction and Decision Making From: fam-med@gac.edu Paul Kleeberg This listing appeared of MedLib-L. It is a non exhaustive list of Medical Computer Aided Instruction Resources. Some items are libraries, Some are listings of software vendors and some are network resources. I am posting this because it is one of the best compendium of resources I've seen on the net. PK From: Cindy Goldstein The following is a list of software resources compiled by Mary Holt, Monographs Librarian, at Tulane University Medical Center Library in asnwer to a request from the Dean of the Medical School to try to find out what is available in terms of medical CAI. This is by no means a comprehensive listing of sources. Please contact the individuals or organizations responsible for the various items on the list. Cindy Goldstein Tulane University Medical Center Library (504) 587-7317 LB04iLF@TCSMUSA (BITNET) LB04iLF@MUSIC.TCS.TULANE.EDU (INTERNET) RESOURCES FOR COMPUTER-ASSISTED INSTRUCTION AND INTERACTIVE VIDEO PROGRAMS Organizations American Medical Informatics Association . (AMIA) Formerly American Association for Medical Systems and Informatics (official journal: M.D. Computing) E.T. Net (Educational Technology Network. Online computer conference network to link developers and users of interactive technology in health care education. Sponsored by the Educational Technology Branch of the Lister Hill National Center for Biomedical Communications. National Library of Medicine. Phone: (301)496-0508 Fax: (301)480-3035 E-mail: TLC@1hc.nlm.nih.gov EDUCOM Software Initiative National Center for Research to Improve Postsecondary Teaching and Learning.; Ann Arbor, MI Healthcare Interactive Videodisc Consortium (HCIVC) [article from Academic Medicine, HSC publishes programs] Health Sciences Consortium (HSC) [nonprofit publishing cooperative with over 1,000 individual schools, hospitals...ect. Contact Membership Services, 201 Silver Cedar Court, Chapel Hill, NC 27514-1517, Telephone : (919)942-8731], 1990-1991 Catalog available. ISAAC, Information Systems for Advanced Academic Computing m/s FC-06; University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195 (206)543-5604 E-mail: isaac@isaac.engr.washington.edu On-line registration 1-800-237-5551, At access code prompt enter register and follow on-screen instruction. On-line registration also via Internet. Overview Stewart, Scott Alan. Interactive video primer: medical education, Alexandria, VA: Stewart Publishing, 1990. [W 26.5 In61s 1990] Information on hardware, consortium, university software development, commercial publishers, associations & organizations and resources. Directories Stewart Publishing (703)354-8155 publishes annual directories for videodisc, CD-ROM and CAI. These directories contain programs available for purchase. The Interactive Healthcare Consortium (IHC) was organized by Stewart Publishing. 1991 Interactive Healthcare Directory: Videodisc. Edited by Scott Alan Stewart. 1991. [W 26.5 H439v 1991] 1991 Interactive Health Care Directory: Computer Assisted Instruction. Edited by Scott Alan Stewart. 1991. [W 26.5 H439c 1991] U.S. Government Software & Datafiles for Microcomputers.. National Technical Information Service. [Request free catalog (703)487-4650] PR-815/827 for software. PR-771/827 for datafiles. Directory of Software sources for Higher Education: a resource gouide for instructional applications. Compiled by the Educational Software Library of Carnegie Mellon University for the EDUCOM software Initiative; editor Peggy Seiden. -- Princeton, N.J.: Peterson's Guides, c1987. M.D. Computing. Annual buyer's guide. Springer-Verlag, New York Lists and Newsletters from Microcomputer Labs or Medical Libraries Computer-Aided-Instruction. University of Texas, Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas. Library, Microcomputer Lab, CAI. Computer Assisted Instruction Software. Houston Academy of Medicine. Texas Medical Center Library. Computer-Assisted Instruction Software. University of California, San Diego. Biomedical Library. Core List of Computer-Assisted Instructional Software. Educational Media & Technologies Section/Medical Library Association. Computer Software Holdings. Intercolliegiate Center for Nursing Education. Learning Resources Unit. Spokane, Washington. Instructional Computing Resources. University of California, Davis. Carlson Health Sciences Library. Learning Resources Center - Computer-Assisted Instruction Programs. Northwestern University. Galter Health Sciences Library. Macintosh Medical Software & Resource List. Stanford University Medical Center. Fleishmann Learning Resource Center/Medical Informatics Training Lab. Medical Informatics Training Lab Software List. Stanford Medical School. Fleishmann Learning Resource Center/Medical Informatics Training Lab. Lane Medical Library. (rev. 12/91) Moore Library Microcomputer Center Software List, January 6, 1992. Medical College of Pennsylvania. Florence A. Moore Library of Medicine. Software Listing Himmelfarb Library 1992. George Washington University Medical Center, Washington, DC. Catalogs from Publishers of Software [Selected listing , Consult directories for more complete information.] American Medical Association. A Catalog of Publications, Products and Services. (Winter 1992) Example of software: RxDx: Training by Computer and Advanced clinical Problems on Disk. *Artsavant, Los Angeles, CA Example of software: The Aids Stack. for Macintosh; Hypercard. Educational Images, Elmira, NY [(1-(800)-527-4264.] Example of programs: College level for biology, anatomy,physiology, genetics...Apple machines. Elsevier, (212)989-5800 Keyboard Publishing. Fall 1991 catalog. [medical education software for the Apple Macintosh] 1-(800)-945-4551. N-Squared Computing, Silverton, OR [(503) 364-9118] Example of software: Internist and Internist Plus. Scientific American Medicine, New York, NY Example of software: Discotest. IBM..DOS. *Williams & Wilkins Electronic Media (301)528-4000, Contact person: Elizabeth Haigh Reviews of Software [Selected listing] Chronicle of Higher Education Academic Medicine JAMA Journals Academic Medicine Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine M.D. Computing Computer searches AVLINE, National Library of Medicine. (264 citations) ( 254 of the listed programs were for IBM/DOS ) ERIC - Educational Literature Index (useful to locate articles and documents published in the field of Education.) OCLC - May search individual titles for software information as well as holdings information. =============== =================================================================== +----------------------------------------------+ | NATIONAL INSTITUTE | | C A N C E R | | INTERNATIONAL INFORMATION | | C E N T E R | +----------------------------------------------+ | CancerNet@icicb.nci.nih.gov | +-------------------------------+ CancerNet is a quick and easy way to obtain, through electronic mail, recommended treatment guidelines from the National Cancer Institute's Physician Data Query (PDQ) system. CancerNet also lets you request information about PDQ, PDQ distributors, and other products and services from the NCI, including a list of patient publications available from the Office of Cancer Communications. You can access CancerNet through a number of different networks including BITNET and Internet. 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CancerNet Contents List PDQ Diagnosis List, which includes: PDQ State-of-the-Art Treatment Statements (For Physicians) PDQ Patient Information Statements PDQ Rare Tumor Statements PDQ Supportive Care Statements News and General Information PDQ Diagnosis List The following list gives all the PDQ statements available on CancerNet. For most diseases, two statements are available for each diagnosis: one for physicians and another for patients. The PDQ information in CancerNet is updated monthly, and many statements change from one month to the next. See the file "monthly PDQ statement changes" (cn-305001) for the list of changes made with the last update. DIAGNOSIS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .PHYSICIANS . .PATIENTS Adrenocortical Carcinoma . . . . . . . . . . .cn-101198 . . cn-201198 AIDS-Related Lymphoma. . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-103779 . . cn-203779 Anal Cancer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-100022 . . cn-200022 Basal Cell Carcinoma - See Skin Cancer Bile Duct Cancer - see Extrahepatic Bile Duct Cancer Bladder Cancer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-101206 . . cn-201206 Brain Cancer Adult . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-101143 . . cn-201143 Childhood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-100047 . . cn-200047 Breast Cancer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . cn-100013 . . cn-200013 Carcinoid Tumor - see Gastrointestinal Carcinoid Tumor Carcinoma of Unknown Primary . . . . . . . .. cn-103331 . . . .N/A Cervical Cancer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. cn-100103 . . cn-200103 Choriocarcinoma - See Gestational Trophoblastic Tumor Colon Cancer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. cn-100008 . . cn-200008 Endometrial Cancer . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-101176 . . cn-201176 Esophageal Cancer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-100089 . . cn-200089 Extrahepatic Bile Duct Cancer. . . . . . . . .cn-101191 . . cn-201191 Eye Intraocular Melanoma. . . . . . . . . . .cn-101279 . . cn-201279 Retinoblastoma. . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-100993 . . cn-200993 Gallbladder Cancer . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-101186 . . cn-201186 Gastric Cancer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-100025 . . cn-200025 Gastrointestinal Carcinoid Tumor . . . . . . .cn-101064 . . cn-201064 Gestational Trophoblastic Tumor. . . . . . . .cn-101163 . . cn-201163 Head and Neck Cancer Hypopharyngeal Cancer . . . . . . . . . .cn-101500 . . cn-201500 Laryngeal Cancer. . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-101519 . . cn-201519 Lip and Oral Cavity Cancer. . . . . . . .cn-102840 . . cn-202840 Metastatic Squam. Neck CA w/Occult Prim .cn-101454 . . cn-201454 Nasopharyngeal Cancer . . . . . . . . .cn-101402 . . cn-201402 Oropharyngeal Cancer. . . . . . . . . .cn-101521 . . cn-201521 Paranasal Sinus and Nasal Cavity Caner .cn-102892 . . cn-202892 Salivary Gland Cancer . . . . . . . . .cn-101455 . . cn-201455 Hodgkin's Disease Adult . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-100003 . . cn-200003 Childhood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-103043 . . cn-203043 Hydatidiform Mole - See Gestational Trophoblastic Tumor Hypopharyngeal Cancer - See Head and Neck Intraocular Melanoma . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-101279 . . cn-201279 Islet Cell Cancer. . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-100790 . . cn-200790 Kaposi's Sarcoma - See Sarcoma Laryngeal - See Head and Neck Leukemia Adult Acute Lymphocytic . . . . . . . . .cn-101024 . . cn-201024 Adult Acute Myeloid . . . . . . . . . . .cn-101029 . . cn-201029 Childhood Acute Lymphocytic . . . . . . .cn-100026 . . cn-200026 Childhood Acute Myeloid . . . . . . . . .cn-101081 . . cn-201081 Chronic Lymphocytic . . . . . . . . . . .cn-101003 . . cn-201003 Chronic Myelogenous . . . . . . . . . . .cn-101031 . . cn-201031 Hairy Cell. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-101651 . . cn-201651 Lip and Oral Cavity - See Head and Neck Liver Cancer Adult . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-101195 . . cn-201195 Childhood . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-100963 . . cn-200963 Lung Cancer Nonsmall Cell . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-100039 . . cn-200039 Small Cell. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-100040 . . cn-200040 Lymphoma Adult Hodgkin's . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-100003 . . cn-200003 Adult Non-Hodgkin's . . . . . . . . . . .cn-100066 . . cn-200066 Childhood Hodgkin's . . . . . . . . . . .cn-103043 . . cn-203043 Childhood Non-Hodgkin's . . . . . . . . .cn-100915 . . cn-200915 Cutaneous T-cell. . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-100098 . . cn-200098 Macroglobulinemia - See Plasma Cell Neoplasm Melanoma (cutaneous) . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-101302 . . cn-201302 Mesothelioma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-101071 . . cn-201071 Metastatic Cancer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-100487 . . N/A Multiple Myeloma - See Plasma Cell Neoplasm Mycosis Fungoides - See Lymphoma, Cutaneous T-cell Myelodysplastic Syndromes. . . . . . . . . . .cn-102495 . . cn-202495 Myeloproliferative Disorders . . . . . . . . .cn-101983 . . cn-201983 Nasopharyngeal - See Head and Neck Neck Cancer, Metastatic Squamous with Occult Primary - See Head and Neck Neuroblastoma. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-100530 . . cn-200530 Neuroepithelioma (Peripheral Neuroepithelioma) - see Rare Tumors Oropharyngeal - See Head and Neck Osteosarcoma - See Sarcoma Ovarian Epithelial Cancer. . . . . . . . . . .cn-100950 . . cn-200950 Ovarian Germ Cell Tumor. . . . . . . . . . . .cn-103125 . . cn-203125 Ovarian Low Malignant Potential Tumor - See Rare Tumors Pancreatic Cancer (exocrine) . . . . . . . . .cn-100046 . . cn-200046 Pancreatic Cancer (endocrine) - see Islet Cell Cancer Paranasal Sinus and Nasal Cavity - See Head and Neck Parathyroid Cancer . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-100541 . . cn-200541 Penile Cancer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-101082 . . cn-201082 Pheochromocytoma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-102494 . . cn-202494 Pituitary Tumors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-101273 . . cn-201273 Plasma Cell Neoplasm . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-100281 . . cn-200281 Polycythemia Vera - See Myeloproliferative Disorders Prostate Cancer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-101229 . . cn-201229 Rectal Cancer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-100076 . . cn-200076 Renal Cell Cancer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-101070 . . cn-201070 Renal Pelvis - See Transitional Cell Cancer Retinoblastoma . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-100993 . . cn-200993 Salivary Gland - See Head and Neck Sarcoma Adult Soft Tissue . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-100921 . . cn-200921 Childhood Soft Tissue (Non-Rhabdo) . . . cn-103085 . . cn-203085 Ewing's . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-100021 . . cn-200021 Kaposi's. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-101271 . . cn-201271 Osteosarcoma. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-100049 . . cn-200049 Childhood Rhabdomyosarcoma. . . . . . . .cn-100759 . . cn-200759 Sezary Syndrome - see Lymphoma, Cutaneous T-cell Skin Melanoma. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-101302 . . cn-201302 Skin Cancer (Non-Melanoma). . . . . . . .cn-101228 . . cn-201228 Small Intestine. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-101175 . . cn-201175 Soft Tissue - See Sarcoma Squamous Cell Carcinoma of the Skin - See Skin Stomach cancer - see Gastric cancer Testicular Cancer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-101121 . . cn-201121 Thymoma. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-101248 . . cn-201248 Thyroid Cancer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-101252 . . cn-201252 Transitional Cell Cancer of the Renal Pelvis and Ureter . . . . . . . . . . cn-103364 . . cn-203364 Unknown Primary - See Carcinoma of Unknown Primary Ureter - See Transitional Cell Cancer Urethral Cancer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-101623 . . cn-201623 Uterine Cancer (Endometrial) - see Endometrial Cancer Uterine Sarcoma. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-103371 . . cn-203371 Vaginal Cancer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-101055 . . cn-201055 Vulvar Cancer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-101038 . . cn-201038 Wilms' Tumor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-100719 . . cn-200719 RARE TUMORS Ovarian Low Malignant Potential Tumor. . . . . cn-304155 Peripheral Neuroepithelioma. . . . . . . . . . cn-302891 Extragonadal Germ Cell Tumors. . . . . . . . . cn-303773 SUPPORTIVE CARE Constipation, Impaction, and Bowel Obstruction .cn-303510 Fatigue. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-302794 Fever, Chills, and Sweats. . . . . . . . . . . .cn-302327 Hypercalcemia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-304462 Lymphedema . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-300442 Nausea and Vomiting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-301578 Nutrition. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-301581 Oral Complications Secondary to Cancer Therapy .cn-302904 Pain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-301577 Pruritus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-300609 Radiation Enteritis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-304093 Skin Integrity Changes 2o to Cutaneous Mets . . cn-304277 Sleep Disorders. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-304282 Superior Vena Cava Syndrome. . . . . . . . . . .cn-304708 OTHER PDQ INFORMATION Design of Clinical Trials. . . . . . . . . . . .cn-303900 . . . .cn-393900 Early Detection Guidelines . . . . . . . . . . .cn-302092 . . . .cn-302092 Monthly PDQ Statement Changes. . . . . . . . . .cn-305001 N/A = Not currently available News and General Information BREAST CANCER PREVENTION TRIAL (BCPT) INFORMATION Breast Cancer Prevention Trial Press Release . . . . . . . .cn-400018 Q and A on the Breast Cancer Prevention Trial. . . . . . . .cn-400019 Referral Information for the BCPT (complete list). . . . . .cn-400020 BCPT Referral (partial list) - Alabama to Georgia . . . . .cn-400021 BCPT Referral (partial list) - Hawaii to Michigan . . . . .cn-400022 BCPT Referral (partial list) - Minn. to North Carolina. . .cn-400023 BCPT Referral (partial list) - North Dakota to Texas. . . .cn-400024 BCPT Referral (partial list) - Utah to Wisc. plus Canada. .cn-400025 PDQ Summary of Breast Cancer Prevention Trial. . . . . . . .cn-400026 PDQ DATABASE INFORMATION Information About PDQ. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-400001 Availability of NCI Databases: General Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-400005 PDQ Distributors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-400003 CANCERLIT Distributors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-400006 PDQ Voluntary Protocol Submission Information: General Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-400010 Institutional Protocol Submission Checklist . . . . . . .cn-400011* Pharmaceutical Company Protocol Submission Checklist. . .cn-400012* PDQ Literature Citations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-400013 OTHER NCI INFORMATION Patient Education Materials Available from the NCI . . . . .cn-400002 Publications for Health Professionals Available from NCI . .cn-400017 NCI High Priority Clinical Trials. . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-400007 NCI-Designated Cancer Centers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-400008 Group C Protocol Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-400014 NCI PUBLICATION ORDERING INFORMATION Journal of the NCI (subscription). . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-500001* CANCERGRAMS (subscription) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-500002* Oncology Overviews (single issue). . . . . . . . . . . . . .cn-500003* Journal of the NCI Monographs: Oral Complications of Cancer Therapies: Diagnosis, Prevention, and Treatment (1990) . .cn-500004* Journal of the NCI Monographs: Consensus Development Conference on the Treatment of Early-Stage Breast Cancer. . . . . . .cn-500017* *NOTE: Files that are marked with an ASTERISK (*) can only be obtained through CancerFax. Use the following instructions to access CancerFax. +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ | How do I use CancerFax? | | | | 1. Use only the 6 digits from the CancerNet code in the Contents | | List (drop the "cn-" in front of the code). | | | | 2. Pick up the telephone receiver on your fax machine and... | | | | DIAL 1-301-402-5874 | | | | 3. The CancerFax voice will prompt you to enter the code number for | | the information you want. Enter the full 6-digit number, then | | hit the # key. If you make a mistake, hit 0, then re-enter | | | | | | 4. The CancerFax voice will tell you which diagnosis or information | | you have selected, and the number of pages that will be faxed | | back to you. You can cancel the request at this point if you | | change your mind. | | | | 5. When the CancerFax voice prompts you, press the START/COPY or | | RECEIVE button on your fax machine (usually a green button), and | | hang up the telephone. | +-----------------------------------------------------------------------+ If you have any trouble using CancerFax, you may call 1-301-496-8880 for technical assistance. =================================================================== Noticias de Congressos em Informatica Medica ============================================ I SIMPOSIO PARANAENSE DE INFORMATICA EM SAUDE E BIOENGENHARIA Curitiba, PR - 29 e 30 de maio de 1992. Este evento foi promovido pela Universidade Estadual de Campinas, atraves do Nucleo de Informatica Biomedica, com o apoio do Centro de Engenharia Biomedica, e foi patrocinado pela Associacao Medica do Parana, SUCESU, ASSESPRO, Conselho Regional de Odontologia, en- tre outras significativas entidades do Parana. Participaram do evento cerca de 120 inscritos. Houve, em paralelo, uma feira tecnica, com a presenca de cerca de 10 empresas, entre as quais a ABC-Bull, a Sigma DataServ e a Kernel, de reconhecida atua- cao na area de saude. A empresa TechTron realizou tambem um curso introdutorio pratico a microinformatica em Saude, que contou com cerca de 30 participantes, a maioria medicos. As conferencias inaugural e final foram dadas pelo Prof. Riccardo Maceratini, diretor do Laboratorio de Informatica da Faculdade de Medicina da Universidade "La Sapienza" de Roma. que falou sobre aplicacoes da telemedicina, e sobre o estado atual de desenvolvi- mento da Informatica Medica na Europa. A conferencia nacional foi ministrada por Renato M.E. Sabbatini, que falou sobre o presente e o futuro da Informatica Medica. A SBIS e a SBEB participaram atraves de varios de seus associados, convidados para proferirem palestras nas secoes tecnicas do evento: Saide Calil (UNICAMP) - Engenharia hospitalar e clinica Lincoln A. Moura Jr. (INCOR) - Processamento de imagens medicas Eduardo T. Costa (UNICAMP) - Instrumentacao digital biomedica Jose A. Martinez (HCUFRGS) - Informatica na saude: visao administr. Mariza K. Stumpf (FMUFRGS) - Informatica nos curriculos de saude Amaury Bartoszeck (UFPr) - Simulacoes no ensino basico de saude Beatriz F. Leao (FICRGS) - Inteligencia Artificial em Medicina Daniel Sigulem (EPM) - Bancos de dados em saude As secoes (paineis), foram: - Engenharia Biomedica no Parana - Topicos de Bioengenharia em Cirurgia - Informatizacao em consultorios, clinicas e hospitais - Progressos cientificos em tecnologias avancadas em saude - Informatica no ensino e pesquisa em saude Participaram dos tres primeiros paineis, 10 especialistas paranaen- ses, do CEFET (Centro Federal de Educacao Tecnica), HC/UFPr, e outros centros, que apresentaram suas consideraveis experiencias. Alias, tanto em engenharia biomedica (atraves do CEFET) quanto em biomateriais (HCUFPr) e em software comercial medico-hospitalar (Kernel e Sigma DataServ), Curitiba e' considerada um centro de excelencia. Ficamos agradavelmente surpresos com o excelente nivel dos paranaenses nesta area. Infelizmente, as faculdades da area de saude do estado ainda nao contam com a Informatica institucionaliza- da em nivel de ensino e pesquisa. Os membros da SBIS e SBEB ofere- ceram seus prestimos para que isso venha a ocorrer o mais breve possivel. O evento foi muito positivo, e a organizacao geral, excelente, como seria de se esperar dos eficientes e competentes curitibanos. Fomos muito bem tratados, inclusive com direito a um jantar italiano no famoso bairro de Santa Felicidade. Paralelamente, a cidade de Curi- tiba, atraves do Jaime Lerner, manifestou o interesse de fundar na cidade um polo industrial de tecnologia biomedica (ja existe um em software, com mais de 120 empresas). Nesse sentido, foi assinado um protocolo de intencoes com os Profs. Sabbatini e Maceratini, visando atrair empresas italianas da area para o Brasil, e dar assessoria das duas universidades (Roma e Campinas) para o projeto. Outra coisa boa foi uma reuniao conjunta entre as diretorias da SBIS e SBEB, ambas presentes no evento, que serviu para aparar algumas arestas, e acertar colaboracoes futuras entre as duas sociedades, seja nos proximos Congressos Mundiais, seja na participacao extra- oficial da SBIS no I Forum de Ciencia e Tecnologia em Saude, em novembro, em Caxambu, MG. II CONGRESSO BRASILEIRO DE INFORMATICA HOSPITALAR Sao Paulo, SP - 18 e 19 de junho de 1992. Promovido pelo Colegio Brasileiro de Administradores Hospitalares e pelo CEDAS (Faculdades Sao Camilo), este Congresso aconteceu no bojo do Congresso Brasileiro de Administracao Hospitalar, que teve este ano mais de 2.000 participantes, lotando todas as dependencias do Anhembi, e que foi extremamente bem organizado. O Congresso de Informatica Hospitalar foi organizado pelos Drs. Fabio Gandour, com o apoio da IBM, e Noracyl Carvalho Silva (consul- tor de Informatica da Sao Camilo), e contou com cerca de 100 assis- tentes, a maioria administradores hospitalares e de clinicas, bem como pessoal tecnico dos CPD's dessas organizacoes. O apoio financei- ro foi dado principalmente pela IBM e pela empresa Neo Data, de soft- ware medico-hospitalar. Paralelamente, foi realizada uma feira, que contou com seis exposito- res na area de software em saude: IBM, Cotas, Neo Data e Kernel foram as mais importantes. O estande da IBM estava muito interessante, pois estava demonstrando aplicativos desenvolvidos por instituicoes publicas (como os hospitais universitarios da UFU e da UFPr) e empre- sas de software (MedSystems, QI, Kernel, e seis outras). De diferente tinha um sistema de transmissao de imagens radiograficas (teleradio- logia) desenvolvido pela Sigma DataServ de Curitiba em cima de uma estacao RISC IBM, e um sistema de multimidia para educacao de pacien- tes cardiacos, muito bem feito (inclusive com imagens filmadas/som), pela QI Informatica. Na programacao do congresso estiveram presentes dois palestrantes internacionais, da area de saude da IBM, Radne Bryant e Barbara Happ (esta, enfermeira e professora das Universidades de Georgetown e Maryland), que falaram sobre novas aplicacoes tecnologias em informa- tica hospitalar, metodos de apoio a decisao em sistemas de informacao e impacto da informatica no servico de enfermagem. As apresentacoes foram boas, mas, como era de se esperar, com bastante propaganda da IBM. Na programacao nacional foram palestrantes: - Noracyl Carvalho Silva (Planejamento da informatizacao hospitalar) - Renato M.E. Sabbatini (Telematica e redes locais nos hospitais) - Daniel Sigulem (Sistemas especializados de apoio ao diagnostico) - Lincoln de A. Moura Jr. (Processamento de imagens em saude) - Isaias Custodio (Qualidade de servicos e gestao da informacao) Foram realizadas tambem tres mesas redondas: - Sistemas hospitalares: desenvolvimento proprio x sistemas padronizados (participaram, da SBIS, Peter Rosemberg e Candido P. Melo) - Recursos humanos na informatizacao hospitalar: capacitacao x contratacao Administracao do servico de enfermagem e a informatica (pela SBIS participou Heimar Marin, da EPM) De uma maneira geral, o congresso foi interessante e razoavelmente concorrido, apesar do preco de inscricao (cerca de US$ 120). A SBIS nao participou como entidade de apoio (nao foi convidada ?), o que levou a uma ausencia de nossos associados. Infelizmente, o aspecto negativo foi a excessiva propaganda das empresas financiadoras, nem um pouco sutil. O Dr. Noracyl, da organizacao, reconheceu o fato e promete envolver a SBIS e fazer algo mais desinteressado no proximo congresso, o ano que vem. Renato M.E. Sabbatini UNICAMP P.S.: Durante o congresso, Rosemberg, Sigulem e eu tivemos a oportu- nidade de promover a SBIS e seus eventos, inclusive o proximo Simpo- sio de Informatica Hospitalar, em SP; pelo que agradecemos os organi- zadores. CURSOS DE POS-GRADUACAO NA UNICAMP ================================== A UNICAMP tem a politica de dar acesso gratuito a todos os seus cursos de graduacao e pos-graduacao (mais de 2.000 disciplinas oferecidas anualmente) a toda e qualquer pessoa que seja graduada em alguma area do ensino superior. Para isso, existe a figura do Aluno Especial, que pode se inscrever na Universidade e frequentar qualquer curso para o qual nao haja pre-requisito (e para o qual haja vaga disponivel, a criterio do professor responsavel). Os creditos obtidos podem depois ser computados se o aluno ingressar em pos-graduacao como Aluno Regular, ou abonados por outras instituicoes (USP, UNESP, federais, etc.). Para realizar a inscricao, basta comparecer ao SERCA (Ser- vico de Registro Academico), no campus de Barao Geraldo, em Campinas, munido de um xerox do diploma de curso superior e de uma fotografia 3 x 4. E' possivel tambem realizar esta inscricao atraves de uma simples procuracao a outra pessoa. Disciplinas de interesse em Informatica em Saude A Disciplina de Informatica Biomedica da Faculdade de Ciencias Medicas da Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP) estara' oferecendo as seguintes disciplinas no segundo semestre de 1992: FM-992 - Aplicacoes do Computador no Ensino Medico Docente: Renato M.E. Sabbatini 2a. feira, 9-12 h FM-991 - Introducao a Microinformatica em Saude Docente: Renato M.E. Sabbatini 3a. feira, 9-12 h. O Departamento de Engenharia Biomedica da Faculdade de Engenharia Eletrica estara' oferecendo as seguintes dis- ciplinas no segundo semestre de 1992: IA-749 - Informatica Biomedica Docente: Renato M.E. Sabbatini 2a. feira, 14-17 h IA-748 - Introducao a Engenharia Hospitalar Docente: Saide Calil 4a. feira, 9-12 h IA-750 - Engenharia de Reabilitacao Docente: Alberto Cliquet Jr. 4a. feira, 14-17 h IA-748 - Instrumentacao Biomedica Docente: Wang Binseng 6a. feira, 9-12 h IA-341 - Processamento de Imagens em Medicina Nuclear (Topicos em Engenharia Biomedica II) Docente: Lincoln de Assis Moura Jr. 6a. feira, 14-17 h Todos os cursos acima dao 3 creditos. Contatos: FCM/UNICAMP: Renato M.E. Sabbatini (NIB) Tel. (0192) 397130 FAX (0192) 394717 FEE/UNICAMP: Sergio Muhlen (CEB) Tel. (0192) FAX (0192) =================================================================== De: Centro de Documenta‡ao em Inform tica Biom‚dica N£cleo de Inform tica Biom‚dica/UNICAMP Para: Assinantes da lista SBIS-L Data: 13 de julho de 1992 CONGRESSOS DE INTERESSE * Tenth European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI 92): (Vienna, Austria, August 3-7, 1992) * Open Joint Conference on Health Evaluation, Personal Preventive Medicine, Informatics (IHEA 92): (Geneva, Switzerland, September 3-5, 1992) * 3rd International Workshop on Principles of Diagnosis (DX-92): (Eastsound, WA, USA, October 11-14, 1992) * IEEE EMBS 1992: (Paris, France, October 29-November 1, 1992) * Biomedical Image Processing IV and Biomedical Visualization: (San Jose, CA, January 31 - February 5, 1993) --> 1000-word summaries due by July 5, 1992 * III IMACS International Workshop on Qualitative Reasoning and Decision Technologies (QUARDET 92): (Barcelona, Spain, June 16-18, 1993) --> extended abstracts due by October 30, 1992 * International Conference on Information Technology in Community Health, Victoria, B.C. Canada, Oct. 18-21, 1992 contact: LSCOTT@UVVM.BITNET =================================================================== From: IN%"HSPNET-L@ALBNYDH2.BITNET" "Hospital Computer Network Discussion Group and Data Base" To: IN%"SABBATINI@CCVAX.UNICAMP.BR" "RENATO SABBATINI" Subj: The The FDA and Internet Jul 5 17:02:42 EDT 1992 Article: 20597 of sci.med A repost from alt.internet.services: Date: 3 Jul 92 16:42:42 GMT Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA The Federal Food and Drug Administration, which last year set up a toll-free BBS to disseminate its reports (dropping a contract with a private company -- hooray for this federal agency!), now has an Internet link to its databases. Telnet to 150.148.8.48 and log on as BBS You'll then be asked to register. You'll find reports and press releases on pretty much everything the FDA oversees, from new drugs to breast implants to food issues. The system is not particuarly difficult to navigate, but it does use a system that takes a little bit to get used to, so probably the first thing you should do is grab the user manual. To do that, type MANUAL at the prompt and hit ENTER. Then type a 1. The manual will start to scroll down the screen as soon as you hit enter. My thanks, btw, to Lee Ratzan, who periodically bugged me for several months to find the Internet address, and when I didn't just went out and got it. Adam Gaffin Middlesex News, Framingham, Mass. adamg@world.std.com Voice: (508) 626-3968. Fred the Middlesex News Computer: (508) 872-8461. =================================================================== CALL FOR PAPERS SECOND IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON FUZZY SYSTEMS FUZZ-IEEE'93 San Francisco, California March 28 - April 1, 1993 In recent years, increasing attention has been devoted to fuzzy-logic approaches and to their application to the solution of real-world problems. The Second IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems (FUZZ-IEEE '93) will be dedicated to the discussion of advances in: * Basic Principles and Foundations of Fuzzy Logic * Relations between Fuzzy Logic and other Approximate Reasoning Methods * Qualitative and Approximate-Reasoning Modeling * Hardware Implementations of Fuzzy-Logic Algorithms * Learning and Acquisition of Approximate Models * Relations between Fuzzy Logic and Neural Networks * Applications to * System Control * Intelligent Information Systems * Case-Based Reasoning * Decision Analysis * Signal Processing * Image Understanding * Pattern Recognition * Robotics and Automation * Intelligent Vehicle and Highway Systems This conference will be held concurrently with the 1993 IEEE International Conference on Neural Networks. Participants will be able to attend the technical events of both meetings. The conference includes tutorials, exhibits, plenary sessions, and social events. TUTORIAL INFORMATION The following tutorials have been scheduled: Introduction to Fuzzy-Set Theory, Uncertainty, and Fuzzy Logic Prof. George J. Klir, SUNY Fuzzy Logic in Databases and Information Retrieval Prof. Maria Zemankova, NSF Fuzzy Logic and Neural Networks for Pattern Recognition Prof. James C. Bezdek, Univ. of West Florida Hardware Approaches to Fuzzy-Logic Applications Prof. Hiroyuki Watanabe, Univ. North Carolina Fuzzy Logic and Neural Networks for Control Systems Dr. Hamid R. Berenji, NASA Ames Research Center Fuzzy Logic and Neural Networks for Computer Vision Prof. James Keller, Univ. of Missouri EXHIBITS: ICNN '93 will be held concurrently with the Second IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems (FUZZ-IEEE '93). ICNN '93 and FUZZ-IEEE '93 are the largest conferences and trade shows in their fields. Participants to either conference will be able to attend the combined exhibit program. We anticipate an extraordinary trade show offering a unique opportunity to become acquainted with the latest developments in products based on neural-networks and fuzzy-systems techniques. Interested exhibitors are requested to contact the Chairman, Exhibits, ICNN '93 and FUZZ-IEEE '93, Wei Xu at Telephone (408) 428-1888, FAX (408) 428-1884. 1993 IEEE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON NEURAL NETWORKS San Francisco, California, March 28 - April 1, 1993 The IEEE Neural Networks Council is pleased to announce its 1993 International Conference on Neural Networks (ICNN'93) to be held in San Francisco, California from March 28 to April 1, 1993. ICNN'93 will be held concurrently with the Second IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems (FUZZ-IEEE'93). Participants will be able to attend the technical events of both meetings. ICNN '93 will be devoted to the discussion of basic advances and applications of neurobiological systems, neural networks, and neural computers. Topics of interest include: * Neurodynamics * Associative Memories * Intelligent Neural Networks * Invertebrate Neural Networks * Neural Fuzzy Systems * Evolutionary Programming * Optical Neurocomputers * Supervised Learning * Unsupervised Learning * Sensation and Perception * Genetic Algorithms * Virtual Reality & Neural Networks * Applications to: - Image Processing and Understanding - Optimization - Control - Robotics and Automation - Signal Processing TUTORIALS: The Computational Brain: Biological Neural Networks Terrence J. Sejnowski The Salk Institute Evolutionary Programming David Fogel Orincon Corporation Expert Systems and Neural Networks George Lendaris Portland State University Genetic Algorithms and Neural Networks Darrell Whitley Colorado State University Introduction to Biological and Artificial Neural Networks Steven Rogers Air Force Institute of Technology Suggestions from Cognitive Science for Neural Network Applications James A. Anderson Department of Cognitive and Linguistic Sciences Brown University FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION, CONTACT Meeting Management 5665 Oberlin Drive Suite 110 San Diego, CA 92121 Tel. (619) 453-6222 FAX (619) 535-3880 =================================================================== MAIL> send To: IN%"SBIS-L@VORTEX.UFRGS.BR" Subj: Listas internacionais sobre Informatica Biomedica A mensagem seguinte contem uma lista de diversas listas internacionais disponiveis no BITMET e INTERNET sobre o assunto de computacao aplicada a biologia e medicina. Assinei quase todas recentemente pra ver como e'. Posteriormente darei minha opiniao sobre as mais interessantes. Renato M.E. Sabbatini Nucleo de Informatica Biomedica/Unicamp ------------------------ INTERNET/BITNET ONLINE HEALTH SCIENCES RESOURCE LIST ver. 3.0.1 (06-12-92) Compiled by: Special thanks for contributions: Lee Hancock Paul Kleeberg M.D. - Paul@gacvax1 Educational Technologist Paul@gac.edu Educational Technology Owner Fam-Med - Fam-Med@gacvax1 A Division of Dykes Library Fam-Med@gac.edu University of Kansas Medical Center Please send any comments, suggestions, corrections, additions, deletions to Le07144@Ukanvm. Thank you. _______________________________________________________________________ BITNET LISTSERV LISTS: USEFUL COMMANDS IN THE BODY OF A MAIL MESSAGE Subscribe List_Name Your_Name - puts you on the mailing list Review list_name (short - returns a description and purpose of the list Review list_name - returns a list of subscribers, including the owner Index List_name returns a list of files associated with the list _______________________________________________________________________ REMEMBER: ALWAYS SEND THESE COMMANDS TO THE SERVER: Listserv@node BIO-SOFT IRLEARN BIOSCI Software Bulletin Board BIONEWS IRLEARN BIOSCI BioNews Bulletin Board BLIND-L UAFSYSB Computer Use by and for the Blind C+HEALTH IUBVM Computing and Health or IUBVM.UCS.INDIANA.EDU C+Health is intended to promote sharing of information, experiences, concerns, and advice about computers and health. COCAMED UTORONTO Computers in Canadian Medical Education EBCBBUL HDETUD1 Computers in Biotechnology, Research and Education. EBCBCAT HDETUD1 Catalogue of 'Biotechnological'software EMBL-DB IRLEARN BIOSCI EMBL Databank Bulletin Board HSPNET-D ALBNYDH2 Hospital Computer Network Discussion Group HSPNET-L ALBNYDH2 Hospital Computer Network Discussion Group HYPERMED UMAB Biomedical Hypermedia Instructional Design INCLEN-L UTORONTO INFO-GCG: GCG Genetics Software Discussion INFO-GCG UTORONTO INFO-GCG: GCG Genetics Software Discussion MEDIMAGE POLYGRAF Medical Imaging Discussion List MEDINF-L DEARN YALEVM Biomedical Informatics Discussion Group MEDNETS NDSUVM1 Medical Telecommunications Networks MIND-L YORKVM1. Mind Machine Digest is a list devoted to discussions on the use, construction, and future potential of mind machines. MUMPS-L UGA (Peered) MUMPS List VTVM2 (Peered) MUMPS List NRSING-L UMSSMDVM Nursing Informatics List PANET-L YALEVM Medical Education and Health Information Disc SMDM-L DARTCMS1 or DARTCMS1.DARTMOUTH.EDU An electronic bulletin board service for members of The Society for Medical Decision Making and others interested in the theory and practice of decision making. ARCHIVE OF BIOLOGY SOFTWARE AND DATA: Indiana University. The main area of concentration of this archive is molecular biology. The archive contains software for the Macintosh, VAX- VMS, Unix, MS-DOS and other important operating systems. For further information on this archive, email archive@bio.indiana.edu Access: ftp.bio.indiana.edu It is recommended that you transfer and read the file Archive.doc first. This file gives considerable information about, and instructions for using the archive. BIOCOMPUTING, BIOZENTRUM, UNIVERSITY OF BASEL. ARCHIVE OF BIOLOGICAL DATABASES. Access: 131.152.1.2 or modl.unibas.ch Directory: first access directory biology/database and check the file DATABASES.TXT for a listing and description of the databases available. CHAT Conversational Hypertext Access Technology, Govt. of Canada, Dept. of Communications CHAT is a natural language information system. Options include 3 databases to choose from: AIDS, UNIX C Shell, and Canadian Dept. of Communications. CHAT allows for the user to query each database in normal English sentences. Although this database is still in its developmental stages, the information in the AIDS database is thorough and complete. Access: telnet debra.doc.ca (192.16.212.15) login: chat MEDICAL RESOURCES ON BITNET/INTERNET Lee Hancock, University of Kansas Medical Center A list comprehensive index of medical resources available on the Internet. The list includes Listserv groups, Usenet groups, Freenets, Data Archives, and medical databases. Access: ftp.sura.net Directory: pub/nic file: medical.resources =================================================================== From: IN%"LISTSERV@ALBNYDH2.BITNET" "Revised List Processor" To: IN%"SABBATINI@CCVAX.UNICAMP.BR" "RENATO SABBATINI" Subj: File: "HSPNET-L 92-00485" being sent to you Date: Mon, 13 Apr 1992 18:39:47 -0400 Employment Opportunities Intelligent Multimedia Information Systems at Shadyside Hospital Shadyside Hospital is a 585-bed multidisciplinary private teaching hospital located in the heart of the Pittsburgh academic community. As part of our commitment to providing the highest quality patient care and teaching at a reasonable price we are embarking on a new project to design and implement an automated multimedia patient care system to support patient care and clinical decision-making. This system will be built upon state of the art technologies in distributed information management with a strong emphasis on existing and developing standards for information interchange and end-user application portability. We invite interested qualified parties to explore opportunities for employment in our Medical Information Systems Division. Candidates with a Bachelor's or advanced degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or with equiv- alent research experience are invited to submit a CV or resume to the address, below. In particular, we are emphasizing experience in: Object-Oriented Design, Modeling, and Programming Application or systems level programming in C , C++, Lisp Application or systems level programming experience in Unix (or Unix variants such as Mach), Macintosh System 7.0 Advanced networking or telecommunications experience with TCP/IP, AppleTalk, OSI, and broadband delivery over fast-packet ATM switches Intelligent systems development with a focus on clinical decision support, information retrieval, or natural language processing Multimedia applications, X windows For information please contact: Sean McLinden, M.D. Vice President, MIS Shadyside Hospital 5230 Centre Avenue From: IN%"LISTSERV@ALBNYDH2.BITNET" "Revised List Processor" To: IN%"SABBATINI@CCVAX.UNICAMP.BR" "RENATO SABBATINI" Subj: File: "HSPNET-L 92-00473" being sent to you Date: Wed, 1 Apr 1992 17:01:45 EST ************************************************ * MEDICAL INFORMATICS FACULTY POSITION AVAILABLE * ************************************************ The Michigan State University/Kalamazoo Center for Medical Studies (MSU/KCMS) would like to announce the availability of a new faculty position for individuals skilled in the field of medical informatics. The MSU/KCMS is a part of the MSU College of Human Medicine--its mission is to foster innovative approaches to primary care medicine through community- based medical education and research. The primary focus of the Medical Informatics group will be issues surrounding the application of information technology to the delivery of health care and the training of physicians. Potential areas of work may include, but are not limited to: the impact of IS change on organizations, the diffusion of innovations, system evaluation, and implementation strategies. Our group will not limit itself to any one technology, but will investigate the use of many existing information tools and techniques- -such as database systems, simulations, multi-media, decision analysis, neural nets, outcomes research, and others--to solve current, real-world problems in the practice of primary care medicine and in medical education. Major areas of engagement for the new faculty will include project management, research, and teaching. A medical background is helpful, but not required. It is expected that the new faculty will start ca. 7/1/92. For further information, please contact us at the addresses below. Our apologies for multiple receipt of this announcement due to cross- posting. Charles Barr, M.D., M.P.H. Richard Stahlhut, M.D., M.S. Director, Medical Informatics Assoc. Director, Medical Informatics barrc@cps.msu.edu stahlhut@cps.msu.edu Michigan State University/Kalamazoo Center for Medical Studies 1535 Gull Road, Suite 230 Kalamazoo, Michigan 49001 Phone: (616) 383-7363 Fax: (616) 383-7180 From: IN%"LISTSERV@ALBNYDH2.BITNET" "Revised List Processor" To: IN%"SABBATINI@CCVAX.UNICAMP.BR" "RENATO SABBATINI" Subj: File: "HSPNET-L 92-00517" being sent to you Scientific Programmer III/IV Section on Medical Informatics Stanford University School of Medicine Stanford, California USA We are seeking an experienced programmer (1) to develop intelligent graphical interfaces and (2) to explore the definition of problem-solving methods and domain ontologies for knowledge-based systems that plan medical therapy. This work will take place in the context of the PROTEGE project at Stanford University Medical Center, in which researchers are investigating the automated generation of tools that aid in construction of large knowledge bases from reusable components. The position requires program design, implementation, and documentation; close collaboration with other programmers; supervision of students; preparation of technical reports and other documents. The position requires compliance with governmental regulations and University policies regarding health and safety and observance and support of good health and safety practices. Significant experience with artificial-intelligence techniques, object- oriented programming, programming in Common Lisp and C, and knowledge of UNIX and relational databases are required. Master's level training in computer science or medical informatics, and previous work on NeXT workstations are extremely desirable. Excellent skills in oral and written communication are essential. Interested person should send a resume and the names of three references (preferably by e-mail) to: Angel R. Puerta, Ph.D. Section on Medical Informatics Medical School Office Building, Suite 215 Stanford University School of Medicine Stanford, CA 94305-5479 USA Internet: puerta@camis.stanford.edu FAX: (415) 725-7944 Stanford University is an equal-opportunity employer through affirmative action. From: IN%"LISTSERV@ALBNYDH2.BITNET" "Revised List Processor" To: IN%"SABBATINI@CCVAX.UNICAMP.BR" "RENATO SABBATINI" Subj: File: "HSPNET-L 92-00518" being sent to you Date: Wed, 13 May 1992 10:56:10 EDT Internet: craig@cni.org JOB ANNOUNCEMENT POSITION: Director, Scientific Information and Communications Program Epidemiology Program Office (EPO) Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Public Health Service Department of Health and Human Services Atlanta, GA 30333 POSITION The Scientific Information and Communications DESCRIPTION: Program (SICP), located within the Office of the Director, EPO, is seeking a Director to provide strong leadership and direction for a program consisting of approximately 20 employees which serves as a CDC-wide focal point for publishing and disseminating public health information and for developing scientific communications methods based on recently available computer technologies. SICP is responsible for publishing CDC's widely read Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) series and, in addition, provides informatic support for other scientific activities of EPO through the creative application of informatic innovations. Annual salary range is between $52,400 to $80,138. Benefits include paid sick and annual leave, health and life insurance, and retirement pension. QUALIFICATIONS: The incumbent should have demonstrated skill in public communication, management, organizational, and interpersonal communication principles, and should have a comprehensive knowledge of broad concepts, methods, and techniques concerning informatics, health science, computer applications, and public technical information programs. The incumbent should also have demonstrated skill in developing written and/or electronic materials to convey information both in scientific and "lay" language. HOW TO APPLY: Send resume or curriculum vitae, along with a letter of interest, by June 30, 1992, to: Janis Videtto, Assistant Director for Program Operations Epidemiology Program Office Centers for Disease Control 1600 Clifton Road, N.E., Mailstop C08 Atlanta, GA 30333 CDC is an Equal Opportunity Employer and provides a smoke-free environment. U.S. citizenship is required. From: IN%"song@ime.usp.br" "Siang Wun Song" To: IN%"COMP-NET-LIST@fpsp.FAPESP.BR" Subj: Contratacao de docente no IME/USP ************************************************************* Processo seletivo de docente em turno completo Departamento de Ciencia da Computacao do IME-USP. ************************************************************* O Departamento de Ciencia da Computacao do IME (Instituto de Matematica e Estatistica) da USP (Universidade de Sao Paulo) esta' interessado em CONTRATAR um DOCENTE em regime de turno completo (24 horas semanais), para inicio em agosto de 1992. Os detalhes encontram-se no edital abaixo reproduzido. As inscricoes se encerram as 17 horas do dia 13 de julho de 1992. Nosso Departamento e' responsavel pelo curso de Ciencia da Computacao (Bacharelado) da USP, que formou sua primeira tur- ma em 1974 e atualmente admite 50 novos alunos por ano. Ha' um programa de mestrado com cerca de 10 novos alunos por ano e um inicio de programa de doutorado. O Departamento tem 39 docentes, 13 com grau de doutor (doutorados de Waterloo, Carnegie Mellon, Berkeley, Augsburg, Wisconsin, Cambridge, Grenoble, Cornell, Edinburg, USP). Seis dos docentes estao afastados para doutorado no exterior. As inscricoes devem ser feitas junto a Secao do Pessoal do IME/USP. Para outros esclarecimentos favor contactar: Siang Wun Song Vice-Chefe do Departamento fone 011-813-9499, r.235 01498 - Sao Paulo, SP FAX 011-814-4135 Brasil ************************************************************* Teor do edital publicado no diario oficial (DOE) em 7/julho/92: "O Instituto de Matematica e Estatistica da Universidade de Sao Paulo torna publica a abertura de inscricao ao processo seletivo para preenchimento de 1 (uma) vaga de Docente junto ao Departamento de Ciencia da Computacao (MAC). As inscricoes serao realizadas no periodo de 08/07/92 a 13/07/92 das 9:00 as 17:00 horas, na Secao de Pessoal do IME, a rua do Matao, 1010, terreo. 1. A funcao sera preenchida sob o Regime de Turno Completo (RTC), em jornada de 24 horas semanais. 2. O salario inicial e' o referente a categoria do candidato selecionado tendo como valores, para o mes de junho de 1992, a seguinte tabela: Categoria REF REFERENCIA MERITO TOTAL Aux de ensino MS-1 1.154.584,19 1.154.584,19 Assistente MS-2 1.345.365,05 269.073,01 1.614.438,06 Prof. Doutor MS-3 1.486.650,89 668.992,90 2.155.643,79 Prof. Assoc. MS-5 1.635.136,00 899.324,80 2.534.460,80 Prof. Titular MS-6 1.897.909,64 1.138.745,78 3.036.655,42 3. Sao algumas atribuicoes da funcao: - ministrar aulas de Ciencia da Computacao; - desenvolver atividades de pesquisa referente ao campo de sua especialidade; - participar dos eventos promovidos pelo departamento; - executar as tarefas administrativas determinadas pelo Instituto ou decorrentes de mandatos de representacao de sua categoria; 4. Sao condicoes para a inscricao: - Possuir no minimo o grau de curso superior; - dar-se-a preferencia a quem possua experiencia em ensino e pesquisa nas areas de interesse do Departamento de Ciencia da Computacao. 5. No ato da inscricao os candidatos deverao apresentar: - Cedula de identidade; - Carteira profissional; - Titulo de eleitor; - Certificado militar, quando do sexo masculino; - CPF (CIC); - Comprovante de escolaridade; - Curriculum Vitae; - Cartas de referencia. 5.1 Os candidatos estrangeiros deverao comprovar regularidade com sua autorizacao de permanencia e trabalho no Pais. 6. Das provas O processo seletivo constara das seguintes etapas: 6.1 Avaliacao curricular 6.2 Entrevista 7. Da convocacao para as Avaliacoes: Os candidatos inscritos neste processo seletivo ficam desde ja convocados para entrevista no dia 14/07/92 as 10 horas na secretaria do MAC. 8. Dos resultados A lista de resultado final e classificacao sera afixada no quadro de avisos da Secao de Pessoal e publicada no DOE. 9. O processo seletivo sera validade imediata, respeitados os prazos legais referentes a posse. 10. Sao condicoes de admissao: - Apresentar documentacao pessoal completa, por ocasiao da convocacao - Estar apto no Exame Medico pre-admissional realizado pela USP 11. Maiores informacoes poderao ser obtidas junto a Secao de Pessoal ou na Secretaria do MAC do Instituto. " (fim do edital) ****************************************************************************** FORMULARIO DE INSCRICAO PARA C A N D I D A T O A D O C E N T E NO INSTITUTO de MATEMATICA e ESTATISTICA da USP Nome --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Endereco para correspondencia -------------------------------------------------- CEP Cidade Estado Telefone ------------- --------------- ----------- ----------------- Data e local de nascimento Estado civil -------------------------- --------------- Areas de interesse cientifico: Algebra [ ] Analise [ ] Geometria [ ] Logica [ ] Probabilidade [ ] Estatistica [ ] Matematica Aplicada [ ] Computacao [ ] outra [ ] ------------------------- Cargos que exerce ou exerceu (enumere cargo, instituicao e periodo a partir do mais recente): ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Titulos academicos(enumere titulo, instituicao e data a partir do mais recente): ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Estou inscrito no programa de Mestrado [ ] Doutorado [ ] na Instituicao ----------------------------------------------------------------- sob orientacao de -------------------------------------------------------------- Data de inicio do programa data prevista de conclusao --------------- ----------- Estou interessado em contrato por um ano [ ] dois anos [ ] a partir de ---------------------- em regime de Dedicacao Integral a Docencia e Pesquisa [ ] Turno Completo (24 horas por semana) [ ] Turno Parcial (12 horas por semana) [ ] Solicitei cartas de recomendacao as seguintes pessoas (d^e nome e endereco para correspondencia): I --------------------------------------------------------------------------- II --------------------------------------------------------------------------- III --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Anexe Curriculum Vitae e Historicos Escolares de Graduacao e Pos-graduacao. Anexe tambem copias dos trabalhos mais relevantes e cartas de recomendacao. Data Assinatura --------------- ------------------------------------------------ ====================================================================== MEDICAL INFORMATICS AT THE MEDICAL SCHOOL OF THE UN. LIVERPOOL, UK Note from Peter Bundred MD, Senior Lecturer, Un. Liverpool Starting in Autumn, 1988, Medical Informatics is taught to all medical students in the first year of their course at Liverpool. It forms one module of the course "Biostatistics and Medical Informatics" directed by Prof. Pharoah, Community Health Dept. Each student receives 24 hours (16 practical, 8 lecture), with inputfrom various departments across the Faculty of Medicine, departments outside the faculty, and from industry. The module has two main components: 1. The informatics 'toolkit' Easily obtainable, general-purpose packages such as word-processor, database, and spreadsheet, form a potent 'toolkit'. Such a kit enables the production of documents, the storage and retrieval of information, and the processing of numerical data, in a variety of undergraduate and postgraduate medical contexts. Much of the practical work 'hands-on' will be based on such a toolkit. 2. Systems Where the toolkit is inappropiate, more specific technology is required. Three topics form the core of this component: applications, networks and decision-support systems. 2.1 Applications An application may require only storage and retrieval, and yet not be amenable to a toolkit aproach by virtue of information size or structure. "Case studies" of systems provide the insight to recognize such boundaries and avoid unnecessary duplication of effort. Knowledge of generic techniques for development, specification, purchase and maintenance can prevent the squandering of large amounts of money. 2.2 Networks Electronic exchange of information over computer networks is well established but their use in medicine requires clinicians to define informational standards. Medical students therefore need at least some insight into the nature of networks and informational standards. 2.3 Decision Support Systems Clinicians in the future will be offered advice by 'intelligent' systems (diagnostic systems for example). Knowing the nature of such systems, their possible roles, and the status of the advice they offer, will enable graduates to make sensibly informed choices about their use. (From Alan McWilliams, Lecturer in Clinical Information Science, GP Dept, Faculty of Medicine. 050-709-6022 x2695/2340). Schedule for Autumn Term For each individual student, the course will consist of eight 3-hour classes each containing a 1-hour lecture, followed by a 2-hour practical: Session Lecture Practical Oct 6,7 Introduction Intro to Pc labs Oct 13,14 Word Processors Word-processing I Oct 20,21 Database Database I Oct 27, 28 Spreadsheet Spreadsheet I Nov 3,4 Toolkit limitations Word-processor II Nov 10,11 Record Systems Database II Nov 17,18 Networks Spreadsheet II Nov 24, 25 Decision Support systems DSS ====================================================================== From: IN%"PANET-L@YALEVM.BITNET" "Medical Education and Health Information Discussion Group" To: IN%"PANET-L@YALEVM.BITNET" "Multiple recipients of list PANET-L" Subj: Medical imaging using computer graphics in Latin America Could someone please send me a synopsis of how computer graphics are being used in Medicine in Latin America? I am networking with people from many different Universities and hospitals in the US and Canada and I would like to connect with similar researchers/clinicians down South. Thank you very much for your response. John Campbell (415)390-3699 Silicon Graphics, Inc MS 2L-405 2011 N. Shoreline Blvd Mountain View, CA 94039-7311 email: campbell@sgi.com To: in%"campbell@sgi.com" Subj: RE: Your enquiry about computer graphics Dear Dr. Campbell: I've read your request for information about computer graphics in Medicine in South America. I will be able to send you some information about Brazil. In fact, Silicon Graphics people were visiting us a few weeks ago, demonstrating your excellent systems. Please wait a few days until I gather all information for you. Meanwhile, please give a look into some information about our activities down here. Best wishes Renato M.E. Sabbatini, PhD Director, Center for Biomedical Informatics State University of Campinas Campinas, Sao Paulo, Brazil MAIL> send nibnew01.doc To: in%"campbell@sgi.com" Subj: Newsletter of Medical Informatics MAIL> send md003i.doc To: in%"Campbell@sgi.com" Subj: Teaching Medical Informatics MAIL> send nib.txt To: in%"campbell@sgi.com" Subj: The Center for Biomedical Informatics File: MEDIMAG.TXT COMPUTER GRAPHICS IN LATIN AMERICA ================================== In request to the following enquiry: >Could someone please send me a synopsis of how computer graphics are >being used in Medicine in Latin America? I am networking with >people from many different Universities and >hospitals in the US and Canada and I would like to connect >with similar researchers/clinicians down South. >Thank you very much for your response. > > John Campbell (415)390-3699 > Silicon Graphics, Inc > email: campbell@sgi.com I am able to provide some information on what's going on in Brazil in this area: 1. Computer graphics in its strictest sense, i.e., image synthesis, has found few applications here, such as in 2D/3D reference systems in: a) stereotactic functional neurosurgery and radiosurgery, b) in cephalometry and c) in functional topographic mapping. 2. Medical image processing, on the other hand, is finding an increasing number of applications, such as in: a. 3D pixel/voxel reconstruction of tomographic slices, in cardiology and neurology and plastic surgery b. numerical models for filtering, noise reduction, etc. c. artificial neural network models in image segmentation d. mini-PACS systems in radiology and nuclear medicine using graphical workstations e. Processing of histological images The following groups are active: * State University of Campinas, Campinas, Sao Paulo: - Center for Biomedical Informatics Areas 1a and 2c. Principal researcher: Renato M.E. Sabbatini, PhD SABBATINI@CCVAX.UNICAMP.BR - Center for Biomedical Engineering Area 1b Principal researcher: Eduardo Tavares Costa, EE, PhD EDUCOSTA@DEB.FEE.UNICAMP.BR - Department of Computer Sciences and Automation, School of Electrical Engineering Areas 2a (in plastic surgery), and 2b Principal researcher: Roberto A. Lotufo, EE, PhD LOTUFO@DCA.FEE.UNICAMP.BR * State University of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo. - Heart Institute, Division of Medical Informatics Areas 1c, 2a, 2b (in cardiology), 2d (in nuclear medicine) Principal researchers: Lincoln A. Moura Jr., EE, PhD LINCOLN@INCOR.HC.USP.BR Sergio Furuie, EE, PhD FURUIE@INCOR.HC.USP.BR - Institute of Physics, Department of Medical Physics Area 2b (in nuclear medicine) Principal researcher: Cecil Chow Robilotta, PhD - Department of Electrical Engineering, Polytechnical Areas 2a and 2d Principal researcher: Joao A. Zuffo, EE, PhD (in collaboration with Dept.Radiology, Medical School) - School of Dentistry, Center of Informatics Area 2e. Principal researcher: Moacyr Novelli, PhD * Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro - Graduate Program in Biomedical Engineering (COPPE/PEB) Areas 1c (in EEG and cardiology) and 2b Principal researcher: Fernando Catelli Infantosi, PhD * National Institute of Space Research, Sao Jose dos Campos, SP - Department of Image Processing Area 2e. Principal researcher: Nelson A. Mascarenhas INPEDPI@BRFAPESP.BITNET There are other research groups I may have omitted. The Brazilian Society of Health Informatics and the Brazilian Society of Biomedical Engineering have promoted in 1991 the First Symposium on Medical Image Processing, in Sao Paulo. The Brazilian Congresses of Health Informatics, of Biomedical Engineering, of Medical Physics, of Radiology, and of Nuclear Medicine always include activities in the area of medical image processing. The first joint meeting of these societies will take place next November. In 1994, Rio de Janeiro will host the World Congress of Biomedical Engineering and Medical Physics; and in 1995, Sao Paulo will host the World Congress of Medical Informatics. Both events will dedicate an extensive space to this area, too. The Brazilian Computer Society promotes every two years the Brazilian Congress of Computer Graphics and Image Processing with an area dedicated to medical applications. Last year, the local chapter of IEEE promoted a Symposium on Medical Image Processing in the University of Sao Paulo. About the joint meeting: contact SMUHLEN@DEB.FEE.UNICAMP.BR About World Congresses: BME - contact Dr. Gianella FAX +55 21 290-6626 MI - contact Daniel Sigulem, MD EPM@BRFAPESP.BITNET Copies of papers published in all these congresses may be obtained directly from the authors. By the way: Computer graphics companies, such as Silicon Graphics, Intergraph and others, are intensively involved in Brazil and have sold many systems. However, the majority of platforms are SUN's. Please contact the firm's Brazilian branches. **** These and other information about applications of **** **** computer applications in health in Brazil, are **** **** discussed regularly in: **** 1. List SBIS-L: subscribe with SUBSCRIBE SBIS-L to Internet network server MAILSERV@VORTEX.UFRGS.BR 2. Brazilian Journal of Health Informatics (BJHI) 3. BITNews, an Electronic Newsletter about Medical Informatics (monthly). Items 1 and 2 are in the Portuguese language only. Item 3 is in English, is free, and can be obtained by sending an e-mailing to me with your name, position and address. I am the editor-in-chief of the BJHI, too. Renato M.E. Sabbatini, PhD From: IN%"campbell@atom.corp.sgi.com" To: IN%"SABBATINI%ccvax.unicamp.br@UICVM.UIC.EDU" Subj: RE: Medical image processing in Brazil Dear Renato, Thank you very much for all the material you've sent. I am still processing it and find it very interesting. I am most impressed by the variety and technical expertise described in this information. >By the way: Computer graphics companies, such as Silicon > Graphics, Intergraph and others, are intensively > involved in Brazil and have sold many systems. > However, the majority of platforms are SUN's. > Please contact the firm's Brazilian branches. Is there any way to find out what people are doing in medical with our systems? The reason I ask is that I would like to raise the priority of medical imaging within SGI and the best way to do this is to be able to point to revenue. Would you happen to have an email address for Dr. Zuffo? I heard that he would be a good person to talk to in regard to 3D medical imaging. >1. Computer graphics in its strictest sense, i.e., image > synthesis, has found few applications here, such as > in 2D/3D reference systems in: a) stereotactic > functional neurosurgery and radiosurgery, b) in > cephalometry and c) in functional topographic mapping. If you are interested I can get you in touch with the researchers in this country who are doing such things. >2. Medical image processing, on the other hand, is finding > an increasing number of applications, such as in: > > a. 3D pixel/voxel reconstruction of tomographic slices, > in cardiology and neurology and plastic surgery Is there anything going on in animation ie showing the heart beating or fluid pulsing through the arteries as in Norbert Pelcs phase contrast rapid cine MRI? Norbert is a Professor of Radiology at Stanford and uses the magnetic gradient information to somehow get 3D velocimetric information off of MRI slices. > b. numerical models for filtering, noise reduction, etc. > c. artificial neural network models in image segmentation > d. mini-PACS systems in radiology and nuclear medicine > using graphical workstations I've recently had a couple of communications from researchers at Wake Forest and at the Einstein College of Medicine, Bronx, NY in regard to how medical images get transmitted. > e. Processing of histological images Is there any way I can help bridge the gap between the US and Latin America in regard to medical imaging? I have a PhD in fluid mechanics and 12 years experience at Los Alamos National Lab using computers for modelling fluids, magnetoencephalography using superconducting quantum interference devices or SQUIDs, as well as a variety of other engineering tasks. Most recently I have consulted with the NASA Ames Research Center on nonuniform grid generation using distributed processing between workstations and their Cray supercomputers. My goal is to help radiologists and Doctors raise the level of technical expertise used in diagnosing and treating patients. In this I have written an Explorer module that reads in a series of CT slices and puts out a 3 dimensional lattice for manipulation by the other modules in Explorer. Explorer is SGI's visualization system for interacting with 3 dimensional scientific and engineering data with a minimal amount of programming. If I can be of help please let me know. Best regards and please stay in touch. John Campbell ====================================================================== From: IN%"MARIZA@VORTEX.UFRGS.BR" To: IN%"SBIS-L@VORTEX.UFRGS.BR" Subj: MEDINFO 92 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- ANALISE PRELIMINAR DA PARTICIPACAO BRASILEIRA NO MEDINFO 92 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- De acordo com o programa preliminar do MEDINFO 92 ( VII Congresso Mundial de Informatica Medica, Genebra, setembro 1992), informo a seguir um resumo da programacao cientifica e da participacao dos grupos brasileiros: __________________________________________________________________________ TIPO DE ATIVIDADE N. TOTAL Brasileiros OBS -------------------------------------------------------------------------- CONFERENCIAS Plenaria 3 - CONF. Semi-plenarias 12 1 Dr. Renato Sabbatini "Neural Networks" PAPERS 242 4 SP=3, RS=1 DEMOS 37 4 SP=3 , RJ=1 POSTERS 106 7 SP=5, RS=2 WORKSHOPS 33 1 Dr. Sabbatini (CHAIR) "Connectionist systems" TUTORIAIS 18 - ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Por esta avaliacao, podemos verificar que, embora ainda nao represente uma participacao macica, o Brasil estara bem representado na programacao cientifica do MEDINFO. Maiores informacoes a respeito da programacao completa podem ser obtidas diretamente no meu E-MAIL: MARIZA@VORTEX.UFRGS.BR Mariza Kluck Stumpf Nucleo de Informatica em Saude Faculdade de Medicina / UFRGS From: IN%"MARIZA@VORTEX.UFRGS.BR" To: IN%"SBIS-L@VORTEX.UFRGS.BR" Subj: Conferencia sobre Ensino de Informatica Medica Caros assinantes: Sera realizada em setembro, logo apos o MEDINFO, na cidade de Heidelberg (Alemanha) uma conferencia promovida pelo Working Group 1 da IMIA (Educacao). Esta conferencia sera fechada, isto e', apenas para os membros do WG-1 e alguns convidados (cerca de 40 pessoas no total) e discutira todos os aspectos relacionados ao ensino de Informatica nas escolas medicas, nos diversos niveis. Esta Conferencia certamente sera de grande importancia para todos nos e oportunamente divulgarei os seus resultados e conclusoes principais, pois estarei participando da mesma na qualidade de representante da SBIS neste WG. Recebi hoje correspondencia do Dr. Dennis Protti, Chair do WG-1, solicitando que eu envie com brevidade, a relacao de programas de ensino de informatica medica por ventura existentes no Brasil. Interessa sabertt que instituicoes oferecem cursos formais de Informatica Medica ou Informatica na Saude que fornecam creditos ou certificados aos alunos. Se estes programas sao isolados ou fazem parte de outro curso (por exemplo, disciplinas oferecidas dentro de outros cursos). Estas informacoes irao alimentar um Banco de dados que esta sendo organizado pela Dra. Marion Ball e estara acessivel via Internet/Bitnet. E' importante que as informacoes sejam enviadas da forma mais completa possivel, porisso peco que estas sejam enviadas para meu E-mail o mais rapido possivel: MARIZA@VORTEX.UFGRS.BR Aguardo respostas e estou a disposicao para maiores informacoes sobre este evento. Mariza Kluck Stumpf Nucleo de Informatica em Saude FAMED/UFRGS ====================================================================== SURVEY ON NEURAL NETWORKS IN MEDICINE AND BIOLOGY ------------------------------------------------------------ Request for Information A workshop on "Applications of Connectionist Systems in Biomedicine" will take place in September 8, 1992, during the Seventh World Congress of Medical Informatics, promoted by IMIA in Geneva, Switzerland. As chairman of this meeting, I intend to distribute to all participants an extensive information package containing: - A list of publications on the subject (papers, review, books, technical reports, government studies, etc.), with abstracts; - Info on available hardware and software resources (neural network (NN) simulation environments, neurochips and neuroboards, specific medical NN application software, biomedical instruments embedding NNs, etc., either commercial or non-commercial); - A list of research groups, laboratories and individuals involved in the area of ANN applications in Biological and Health Sciences; with addresses and research areas. The participants will have the opportunity to make a hands- on sampling of some of the microcomputer/workstation software currently available from several groups. As part of this event, a review paper authored by me, with the same title of the workshop, will be published in the Congress Proceedings, by North Holland Publ. This paper will be presented in a semi-plenary lecture during the Congress. I am writing a more extensive review, targeted to a wider audience, to be published in one of the leading journals of the field. Ca. 200 references related to the area were already collected for this purpose. I would like to request to people doing research and/or education and/or development in this area, to kindly send me email, faxes, or plain mail containing information on the above, so that I may include it on time in the package I am building. I would appreciate very much receiving copies of abstracts, papers, reviews, folders, technical specifications, manuals, software demos, etc. (please send them to the address below, as soon as possible). Brief descriptions of ongoing projects, not yet published, are gladly accepted, too. In case you don't work in this area, but knows about someone who does, I would be grateful if you could send me his/her address, so that I can make a personal contact. I will be happy to provide information concerning the acquisition of the above mentioned information package, as soon as it becomes available, to all interested colleagues. Of course, those contributing to this survey will get the package free. July 4th, 1992 ***************************************************************************** * Renato M.E. Sabbatini, PhD * INTERNET: SABBATINI@CCVAX.UNICAMP.BR * * Director * BITNET : SABBATINI@BRUC.BITNET * * Center for Biomedical Informatics * Tel.: +55 192 39-7130 (office) * * State University of Campinas * 39-4168 (home) * * * Fax.: +55 192 39-4717 (office) * * P.O. Box 6005 * Telex: +55 19 1150 * * Campinas, SP 13081 - BRAZIL * * ***************************************************************************** ====================================================================== SYNAPSE HEALTH RESOURCES LIST ----------------------------- I. Background A. The University of Nebraska Medical Center, a major unit of the University of Nebraska, serves Nebraska through its programs in health professions education, research, patient care and community service. To provide health education and patient care information to isolated rural regions of the state, a comprehensive health information network was developed (Synapse Health Resources Online). The network is in it's third year of operation. B. Synapse's main objective is to provide health care information and communication in a timely and efficient manner to regional physicians, especially those rural physicians in Nebraska and eastern Iowa. It is expected that improved access to health care information and communication will translate to improved quality of care for health care recipients in Nebraska and the surrounding region. In addition, this type of data infrastructure is crucial to the concept of providing distance learning opportunities in a multi-disciplinary curriculum. II. Computing Environment A. UNMC's set of health information data are housed on a variety of assorted IBM and other mainframe systems. Synapse utilizes the Crosstalk Mk. 4, version 2.0, communication software package to facilitate connection to the different mainframe systems. Special scripts have been developed with Crosstalk to provide menu-driven navigation through a front-end AT&T data switch (ISN) to various computer systems on campus. In addition, Synapse is also available utilizing the Microphone II product for use with the Macintosh. III. Synapse Health Resources Online A. University of Nebraska Medical Center resources available online via the Synapse network include: - Statewide electronic mail (IBM PROFS). Synapse participants have e-mail capabilities with each other and faculty and staff at UNMC. In addition, since UNMC is part of the Nebraska state government system, Synapse participants can also use e-mail to contact state and local Departments of Health, the Nebraska Department of Social Services, state legislators, and the Nebraska Governor's Office. Over 4500 individuals have addresses on the statewide system. The PROFS system is also interfaced to BITNET and Internet. - Multi-specialty bulletin boards. UNMC has developed a series on bulletin boards for Synapse users that allow users to share ideas and participate in ongoing dialogue with other members of their profession or specialty. In addition, access to Bitnet's discussion groups is facilitated through Synapse. - File transfer services. Synapse allows both binary and text file transfers. - UNMC News and Information. Most campus activity rosters and newsletters are made available online to Synapse users. In addition, the campus activity and academic calendar are kept online to allow for more efficient scheduling of activities. - Health Information Databases. Synapse allows access to the following health-related databases: 1. Community Physician Opening database (CPO). The CPO database was developed jointly by UNMC and the Nebraska Office of Rural Health. The database provides information on communities currently recruiting physicians, what specialties are being recruited, and the appropriate contact information within each community. 2. Online ordering from the McGoogan Library of Medicine. Most library materials can be ordered online. In addition, general reference questions and computer search requests can be facilitated and sent to library personnel. 3. Drug Information Service. Synapse has developed an online drug information service for network participants. Questions concerning drug identification, adverse effects, dosage and other topics can be facilitated via Synapse. A user composes and categorizes his or her question and sends the request to a series of sites where pharmacy faculty members retrieve, research and answer the questions. Answers are returned electronically or phoned immediately if the answer is needed for immediate patient care. 4. Nebraska Organ Retrieval Information System. This database walks physicians through the process of organ retrieval. Clinical and legal issues are discussed. In addition, a general inquiry option is facilitated between the Synapse user and the Nebraska Organ Retrieval System headquarters. 5. Patient Education Materials database. This database allows the user to browse through a listing of patient education materials available from UNMC and then order appropriate materials online. 6. Physicians with an interest can also access UNMC's patient information system to continue to track the care of a patient referred to UNMC. Information such as radiology and laboratory reports and discharge summaries are provided the Synapse network. B. McGoogan Library of Medicine. - Synapse also provides access to the online card catalog of the University of Nebraska Medical Center McGoogan Library of Medicine. In addition, affiliated health care professionals can also access Mini-Medline's medical journal abstract database. UNMC's participation in Interned also facilitates connection to other library systems accessible via Internet. UNMC is currently installing a 21-deck CD-ROM system that will run off the campus network and be accessible to all Synapse users. C. Medicaid Eligibility Database. - Synapse participants have access to the Medicaid Eligibility Database developed and maintained by the Nebraska Department of Social Services. This databases lists monthly Medicaid eligibility information in addition to possible lock-in situations or third-party liability issues. - UNMC's connection to the state mainframe system also allows Synapse users to access the Nebraska Resource Referral System. This database is produced by the Nebraska Department of Social Services and shows resources (financial, counseling, etc.) available to state - Access to the Nebraska Department of Health's internal information network, Nebraska HealthNetwork, is also provided. This network contains a health news clipping service, rosters of licensed health care providers and facilities, and a database monitoring the Nebraska's Certificate of Need process. - A connection to the UNMC Bookstore local area network is also provided to Synapse users. Users can browse the titles of bookstore holding and order textbooks online. D. QMR and Scientific American Medicine's Discotest Programs. - Synapse participants are also provided with a copy of the Quick Medical Reference (QMR) diagnostic-aid database developed by the University of Pittsburgh. In addition, eight case simulations per year are provided to participants via Scientific American Medicine's Discotest program. Participating physicians can earn up to 32 credit hours per year of category one credits from the American Medical Association. The package is also beneficial for ongoing training of physician assistants, nurses, and students of most health disciplines. IV. Rural Health Education Network Recently, a major effort was undertaken at UNMC to develop the Rural Health Education Network (RHEN), which is a comprehensive, interdisciplinary program aimed at addressing the specific health care problems of rural Nebraskans including the critical shortage of health care professionals. UNMC has realigned and updated its curriculum in each of its colleges to facilitate an extended period of rural health training. It is anticipated that a period of one year will be spent in one of seven "hubs" across Nebraska. Students from each discipline will rotate out of the hub to different smaller "spoke" communities surrounding each hub during this rural training track. Synapse has been identified as the communication backbone for this statewide educational effort. Programs are being discussed with the Colleges of Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, Allied Health and Dentistry to facilitate each college's needs. V. State Drug Information Network The Synapse network is about to embark on a joint effort with the UNMC College of Pharmacy to develop the State Drug Information Network. This effort would include adding personal computers in rural pharmacies across Nebraska and training local pharmacists to work with local consumers in retrieving health information from the Synapse network. The SDIN is being implemented with the help of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. VI. Use of Synapse According to feedback from the rural users of Synapse, the information provided via the network is useful and timely. One physician in a remote area has remarked that the new access to CME provided by Synapse has made him feel that he is no longer a "Lone Ranger". Another physician has provided feedback on the usefulness of decision-support tools on the network. "I'm very confident in dealing with 90% of my patients' systems when they are in the office. It's that other 10% that I need help on and QMR helps me get a handle on the proper channel of diagnosis for these patients", says a Family Practitioner from rural Nebraska. From the feedback gleaned from Synapse users, the most popular databases include the journal article database, QMR decision-support, and Scientific American Medicine's Discotest program. The Medicaid Eligibility System is also very popular with rural clinic administrators. The only two drawbacks mentioned by users pertaining to their use of the system were long distance telephone charges, when applicable, and the fact that time is at a premium for rural physicians. Many physicians simply do not have the time they desire to access the system. Currently, the Synapse program includes over 350 health professionals from approximately 126 sites in 60 communities across Nebraska and Iowa. In addition, many campus faculty and staff members have access to Synapse. ====================================================================== ============================================================== PROGRAMS IN RESEARCH TRAINING IN EDUCATION IN MEDICAL INFORMATICS USA ============================================================== HARVARD, MIT, and TUFTS/NEW ENGLAND MEDICAL CENTER RESEARCH TRAINING PROGRAM IN MEDICAL INFORMATICS We are pleased to announce that Harvard Medical School, MIT, and Tufts/New England Medical Center have combined our previous training programs in medical informatics, and are now actively recruiting qualified applicants for this program, for July, 1992. A number of different training options are offered, including: Formal doctoral degree training (for both predoctoral and predoctoral trainees) in: -- Medical Computer Science at MIT (under the direction of Prof. Peter Szolovits), emphasizing medical knowledge representation and decision making -- Health Decision Science at Harvard School of Public Health (under the direction of Prof. Milton Weinstein), emphasizing decision analysis, cost-effectiveness analysis, and outcome modeling Research fellowship training (postdoctoral only): -- Decision Systems Group, Brigham and Women's Hospital (under the direction of Robert A. Greenes, M.D., Ph.D.), emphasizing clinical decision making, medical educational strategies, clinical guidelines, clinical record keeping, medical knowledge representation and query (UMLS), radiologic image management, and object oriented software architectures for network-based application development -- Laboratory of Computer Science, Massachusetts General Hospital (under the direction of G. Octo Barnett, M.D.), emphasizing clinical decision making, medical student education, student/physician workstation design, problem-based knowledge access, ambulatory computer-based medical record systems, and implementation/evaluation of guidelines -- Division of Clinical Decision Making, NEMC (under the direction of Stephan G. Pauker, M.D.), emphasizing clinical decision making, knowledge representation, and guidelines and outcome evaluation -- Other special opportunities are also available to qualified candidates in informatics subject areas focused on molecular biology, high performance computing, and radiology. Predoctoral fellowship applicants must concurrently apply for admission to the MIT or Harvard degree program. Postdoctoral applicants will usually have at least one year and preferably three years of residency prior to beginning of fellowship. The combined training program offers expanded opportunities for education, research, and collegial interaction among the training sites. A wide variety of course offerings at Harvard, MIT, and Tufts, many seminars, journal clubs, and other opportuities for exchange of information provide all trainees with opportunities to learn about the variety of work occuring at the various laboratories and in the affiliated institutions, as well as in the larger field of medical informatics. A large associated faculty also participate in the program through the research activities of each of the training sites. In addition to the research programs of the participating laboratories, we encourage the fellows to develop projects that may involve unique collaborative relationships. NLM-supported fellowships are available to U.S. citizens or permanent residents only. For more information, contact the training program office: Medical Informatics Training Program ATTN: Robert A. Greenes, MD, PhD Decision Systesm Group, Brigham and Women's Hospital 75 Francis Street, Boston, MA 02115 (617) 732-6281 FAX: (617) 732-6317 email: greenes@harvard.edu or the individual training program component directors via email at: Barnett: obarnett@hstbme.mit.edu Greenes: greenes@harvard.edu Pauker: sgp@medg.lcs.mit.edu Szolovits: psz@medg.lcs.mit.edu Weinstein: mcw@biostat.harvard.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------------- GRADUATE TRAINING PROGRAM IN MEDICAL INFORMATION SCIENCES STANFORD UNIVERSITY - USA Stanford's training program in medical information sciences is a degree granting program that trains many people who lack prior medical training. Our program, like the programs at Yale and Harvard recently announced to this mailing list, is supported by a training grant from the National Library of Medicine. We have 25 grad students at present, 8 of whom are NLM-supported post-docs and 6 of whom are NLM-supported pre-docs. The remaining trainees, many of whom are foreign students ineligible for NLM support, are largely funded by research grants or externally acquired fellowships. An MS generally takes 2 years; a PhD, 4-5 years. The Stanford program has been active since 1983, and we now have about 35 graduates. About 2/3 of our students are PhD candidates; the rest are working on an MS. We do not accept trainees who are not interested in a formal degree. About 2/3 of our trainees either are physicians when they enter the program or are medical students doing joint MD/PhD degrees. About 20% of our trainees are women, and we have trained nurses and a pharmacist in addition to several students who came to us without any medical backgrounds whatsoever. An article describing our program and its training philosophy and experience can be found in "Shortliffe, E.H. and Fagan, L.M. Research training in medical informatics: The Stanford experience. Academic Medicine 64(10):575-578, October 1989." Due date for applications is January 1st of each year, with matriculation for accepted students generally the following September. For physicians in training who need to make training plans farther in advance, we will also consider training applications 18 months prior to the anticipated date of matriculation. We generally receive 30-40 applications for 4-6 openings annually. Accepted students are notified no later than April 15th, but usually know by the end of March. Requests for brochures and/or application materials should be sent to Ms. Darlene Vian Section on Medical Informatics Medical School Office Building X-215 Stanford University School of Medicine Stanford, California 94305-5479 415/723-6979 Fax: 415/725-7944 Email: vian@camis.stanford.edu Ted Shortliffe -------------------------------------------------------------------------- ALBERT EINSTEIN COLLEGE OF MEDICINE - NEW YORK, NY - USA Medical Informatics Fellowship The Bronx Municipal Hospital Center and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine are offering a 2 year fellowship in Medical Informatics. This program is under the supervision of Christopher Cimino, M.D., Director of Computer-Based Education. Candidates are expected to have an MD or OD degree, at least 2 years of clinical training and at least 2 years of computer programming experience. The program will provide opportunities for significant experience in medical information systems, rule-based expert systems, and computer aided instruction. The primary focus of the program will be the design, implementation, management, and evaluation of a medical information systems currently being installed at the Bronx Municipal Hospital Center. This system will be a full implementation of the patient care process including laboratory results, order entry, admission notes, progress notes, and discharge notes. The fellow will have an opportunity to develop care guidelines and implement these guidelines as part of the system's rule-based alert program. The fellow will learn about several aspects of implementing a hospital information system including hardware architecture, database design, controlled vocabularies, maintaining data integrity, and legal and ethical issues concerning the development of a computerized patient record. The fellow will also have an opportunity to develop computer aided instruction programs. The Albert Einstein College of Medicine has a strong focus on student self-teaching methods, including computer aided instruction. There is active on-going development of new programs that explore research issues in models of learning. The fellow will study methodologies used in existing teaching and diagnostic support programs. Interested candidates should contact Dr. Cimino by calling (212) 430-4121, or writing to Albert einstein College of Medicine, Belfer 1303, 1300 Morris Park Avenue, Bronx, NY 10461, or by Internet mail to cimino@aecom.yu.edu. -------------------------------------------------------------------------- TRAINING PROGRAM IN MEDICAL INFORMATICS COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY CENTER FOR MEDICAL INFORMATICS The Columbia University Center for Medical Informatics invites applications for fellowships in medical informatics starting in July, 1992 or July, 1993. The goal of our program is to train medical informatics scientists for careers as productive researchers and teachers. The fellowship is open to those with an M.D. or Ph.D. degree or other equivalent training. The Center is located at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City. Columbia University is an equal opportunity employer and takes affirmative action. Women and minorities are especially encouraged to apply. The Center for Medical Informatics has ten faculty members with diverse backgrounds and an active research program. Areas of special interest include clinical information system development, clinical decision support, database design, natural language processing, medical vocabulary, medical knowledge representation, information retrieval strategies, physician data entry, genome mapping, molecular modeling, and high performance computing and communication. The Center has particularly close ties with the Departments of Computer Science, Biochemistry, Medicine, Radiology, and Pathology. Opportunities also exist in the areas of computer applications in medical librarianship and computer aided learning. A particular strength of the Center is the ability to provide research opportunities in the context of working production systems. We are seeking to attract applicants who want a "hands on" experience. Notable features of our environment include the Integrated Academic Information Management System (IAIMS) Phase III implementation funded by the National Library of Medicine, the full partnership of the Columbia University Health Sciences Library in IAIMS and in the Center for Medical Informatics, and close collaborative relationships with basic and clinical science departments. Center faculty have joint appointments in a wide range of departments, including Computer Science, Medicine, Pathology, Radiology, and Public Health. Center faculty also have appointments in the Presbyterian Hospital's Clinical Information Systems Department, which is responsible for development and implementation of the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center Clinical Information System. The training program is expected to include tuition support for 34 credits of course work in medical informatics, computer science, evaluation study design, and biostatistics Educational programs will be individualized to address the needs and directions of each fellow. In addition, each fellow will be expected to develop, conduct, and report an original research project. Opportunities exist for a joint master's degree in Medical Informatics and Computer Science. Support for each fellow will be for three years in most cases. The stipend anticpated for 1992-1993 will be $26,900. In 1993-94 the stipend is anticipated to be $27,550. Fellows who wish to maintain their clinical skills will be helped to find opportunities to do so. Applicants should send a letter of not more than two pages describing their background, relevant experience, and motivation; transcripts from medical or graduate school and/or from college; MCAT or GRE scores; and a curriculum vita. Applicants should state whether they wish to start in 1992 or 1993. Letters of reference from three referees should be sent under separate cover. April 1, 1992, is the deadline for applications for fellowships starting in July, 1992, but applicants are encouraged to complete their applications as soon as possible. Application materials should be sent to Steven Shea, M.D., Atchley Pavilion 1310, 161 Fort Washington Avenue, New York, NY 10032. Additional information may be obtained by calling Dr. Shea at 212-305-5334. E-mail: sheaste@cucis.cis.columbia.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------------- UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI FELLOWSHIPS AND TRAINING IN MEDICAL INFORMATICS The training program at the University of Missouri - Columbia accomodates both predoctoral and postdoctoral level individuals who wish to pursue an academic career in medical informatics. The program is very open to medical novices, especially CIS graduates. We have a program of core courses which is very interdisciplinary, a research project in numerous areas including artificial intelligence and expert systems in medicine, and the opportunity to work for a degree which is tailored to the individual. Applications for fellowships beginning July 1, 1992 are due by March 1, 1992. Joyce Mitchell, Ph.D. Director, Medical Informatics 605 Lewis Hall University of Missouri Columbia, MO 65211 314-882-6966 fax: 314-884-4270 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- OREGON HEALTH SCIENCES UNIVERSITY Biomedical Information Fellowship Training at OHSU The Biomedical Information Communication Center (BICC) at Oregon Health Sciences University (OHSU) announces a new predoctoral and postdoctoral training program in medical informatics beginning in the summer or fall of 1992. With eight appointed and seven additional adjunct faculty, along with a new 74,263 sq. ft. state-of-the-art building, the BICC is one of the country's leading institutions in medical informatics research. OHSU has a major commitment to rural health education and outreach, and the BICC mission to connect electronically 5,000 Oregon health professionals on the nation's first statewide network by the year 2000 will provide unique opportunities for informatics fellows. The program will train physicians, librarians, computer scientists and others who are committed to a career in medical informatics. The program has as its focus "end-user informatics," with areas of concentration that include: % Design and delivery of information resources and knowledge bases % Organization and representation of health information % Information retrieval % Design and implementation of workstations for health professionals % Health outcomes research % Image analysis % Administrative informatics % Informatics training and education The primary focus of the program will be to provide a structured research experience in one or two of the above areas. Trainees will survey the field broadly during their two to three year fellowship. They will be expected to complete research projects, and upon completion of their training, be able to describe their results clearly in both oral and written form. The overall goal is to prepare trainees to direct their own medical informatics research efforts at medical centers that actively embrace the Integrated Academic Information Management Systems (IAIMS) agenda. The program will offer a graduate degree through its affiliated schools. Qualifications for postdoctoral applicants include an M.D. (residency training preferred) or a Ph.D. in biological science. Predoctoral applicants must also apply for admission to one of the graduate programs at OHSU, Portland State University, Oregon State University, or the University of Oregon. For more information, please contact: Kent Spackman, M.D., Ph.D. Director of Academic Programs BICC Oregon Health Sciences University 3181 SW Sam Jackson Park Rd. Portland, OR 97201-3098 503-494-4502 spackman@ohsu.edu -OR- William Hersh, M.D. Staff Scientist BICC Oregon Health Sciences University 3181 SW Sam Jackson Park Rd. Portland, OR 97201-3098 503-494-4563 hersh@ohsu.edu -------------------------------------------------------------------------- POSTDOCTORAL FELLOWSHIP IN MEDICAL INFORMATICS YALE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE The Postdoctoral Fellowship in Medical Informatics at Yale focuses on research into the creative use of computers in clinical medicine, molecular biology, biomedical research, and medical education. The research training program coordinates collaborative projects involving faculty at the School of Medicine, the Department of Computer Science, and other departments at Yale. The Medical Informatics Postdoctoral Fellowship is normally a 2-3 year research experience. A Postdoctoral Fellow with appropriate qualifications may enroll for a longer period of time to study for a Ph.D. in Computer Science. Applicants who have completed residency training are usually preferred. Postdoctoral applications are also encouraged from individuals with a Ph.D. in the biologic sciences. Applicants should have considerable computer programming experience and a desire to pursue a research career in biomedical computing. Fellows engage in ongoing research projects and attend a variety of courses, discussion groups, and seminars. Fellows may also participate in a variety of other activities, including computer-related aspects of the human genome project, helping teach Medical Informatics courses, helping with aspects of the implementation of a new hospital information system, and participating in academic medical computing activities at the medical center. Current Medical Informatics projects at Yale include projects in each of the following general areas. Computer-Based Clinical Decision Support: A number of research projects are developing computer-based consultation systems to assist the clinician with problems involving patient care. These projects include systems in anesthesiology, internal medicine, diagnostic radiology, psychiatry, pathology, and laboratory medicine. Using one of these systems, clinicians can get advice and case-specific feedback concerning how his/her practice fits in with the current thinking in the field. One current emphasis is on the integration of these systems within a large hospital information management system. Parallel Computation and Biomedicine: Research into parallel computation (where different parts of a program run on different computer processors simultaneously) is a particular strength of the Yale Computer Science Department. Several biomedical research projects at Yale are exploring applications of parallel computation, both in clinical medicine (e.g., an intelligent cardiovascular monitor) and in molecular biology (e.g., biologic sequence comparison, genetic linkage analysis, and molecular dynamics). Integration and Intelligent Retrieval for Biomedical Databases: There is currently an explosion in the number, size, and complexity of databases in biomedicine. Research questions include how best to allow smooth integrated access when a query requires data from multiple databases, and also how best to provide intelligently guided access. These issues are being explored in variety of projects involving both clinical databases and biologic databases. Perry L. Miller, M.D., Ph.D. Director, Yale Center for Medical Informatics Yale University School of Medicine New Haven, CT 06510 203-785-6753 pmiller@yalemed.bitnet Applicants must be U.S. citizens or permanent residents. Applications from women and minorities are strongly encouraged. ============================================================== UNIVERSITY OF UTAH MEDICAL INFORMATICS COURSE From: "David M. Sonntag, MSPH | Industrial Hygiene" The department of Medical Informatics at the University of Utah School of Medicine was established in 1972 as one of the basic science departments in the School fo Medicine. Medical Informatics is the discipline which uses computer technology to restructure, organize and manage information to support medical research, education, and patient care. The department offers MS and Ph.D degrees. Funded research assistantships are provided in the areas of: o Medical Decision Making o Medical Knowledge Engineering o Hospital Information Systems/Clinical Data Collection o Medical Statistics and Database o Genetic Epidemiology o Image and Biological Signal Processing o Mathematical Modeling of Physiological Systems Due to the broad nature of research interests in the department, students are required to take core courses in the following areas: o Hospital Information Systems (1 quarter) o Medical Decision Making (2 quarters) o Medicine for Scientists and Engineers (1 quarter) o Biomedical Experimental Design (2 quarters) Students then take elective credits from the department, as well as allied courses from the computer science and engineering departments, public health program, biostatistics. There are three main research groups at the U in which most students do their research: o University Hospital Group (Homer Warner) o LDS Hospital (Haug, Gardner, Pryor, Huff) o Research Park (Genetic Epi) Work at the U hospital is mainly concerened with the development of ILIAD, a Macintosh-based expert system used for teaching and consultation purposes. Work at the LDSH group is concentrated on R&D of the HELP system. The Genetic Epi group utilizes the unique local resources of the LDS Church's Genealogic databases to explore the relationship between genetic markers and diseases. FACULTY AND SPECIALTIES D. Timothy Bishop, PhD Medical genetics, biostatistics, epidemiology Justin S. Clark, Ph.D. Research biophysicist, infant care and instrumentation Reed M. Gardner, Ph.D. Automated medical decision making, medical imaging efficacy and utility analysis Peter J. Haug, M.D. Medical decision making Robert L. Lux, Ph.D. Cardiac electrophysiology, signal analysis Dennis L. Parker, Ph.D. Medical imaging, digital radiography, computed tomography, ultrasound, NMR T. Allan Pryor, Ph.D. Biostatistics, computer waveform processing, medical information systems Mark H. Skolnick, PhD Medical genetics, biostatistics, epidemiology Homer R. Warner, MD, PhD Physiology, biomedical models, automated decision making, patient monitoring. Departmental offices: AB193 Building 521 School of Medicine (801) 581-4080 Inquiries to Dennis Parker ====================================================================== ARTIFICIAL NEURAL NETWORKS IN MEDICINE AND BIOLOGY Center for Biomedical Informatics State University of Campinas, Campinas - Brazil Abstracts of published work by the Center Status of July 11, 1992 ----------------------------------------------------------- A HIGH-LEVEL LANGUAGE AND MICROCOMPUTER PROGRAM FOR THE DESCRIPTION AND SIMULATION OF NEURAL ARCHITECTURES Sabbatini, RME and Arruda-Botelho, AG Center of Biomedical Informatics, Neurosciences Applications Group, State University of Campinas, Campinas, SP, BRAZIL) The description, representation and simulation of complex neural network structures by means of computers is an essential step in the investigation of model systems and inventions in the growing field of biological information processing and neurocomputing. The handcrafting of neural net architectures, however, is a long, tedious, difficult and error-prone process, which can be substituted satisfactorily by the neural network analogue of a computer program or formal symbolic language. Several attempts have been made to develop and apply such languages: P3, Hecht- Nielsen's AXON, and Rochester's ISCON are some recent examples. We present here a new tool for the formal description and simulation of artificial neural tissues in microcomputers. It is a network editor and simulator, called NEUROED, as well as a compiler for NEUROL, a high-level symbolic, structured language which allows the definition of the following elements of a neural tissue: a) elementary neural architectonic units: each unit has the same number of cells and the same internal interconnecting pattern and cell functional parameters; b) elementary cell types: each cell can be defined in terms of its basic functional parameters; synoptic interconnections inside an architectonic unit (axonic delay, weights and signal can be defined for each); a cell can fan out to several others, with the same synoptic properties; c) synaptic interconnections among units; d) cell types and architectonic units can be replicated automatically across neural tissue and interconnected; e) cell types and architectonic units can be named and arranged in hierarchical frames (parameter inheritance). NEUROED's underlying model processing element (PE) is a simplified Hodgkin-Huxley neuron, with RC-model, temporal- summation, passive electrotonic potentials at dendritic level, and a step transfer function with threshold level, a fixed-size, fixed-duration, fixed-form spike, and an absolute refractory period. Inputs Iij (i=1...NI) synapses for j-th neuron are weighted with Wij (i=1...NI), where Wij 0 is defined for a inhibitory synapse, Wij = 0 for an inactive or non-existent synapse and Wij 0 for an ex- citatory synapse. Outputs Okj (k=1...NO) can have axonic propagation delays Dkj (a delay can be equal to zero). Firing of neurons in a network follows diffusion process, according to propagation delays; random fluctuations in several processes can be simulated. Several learning algorithms can be implemented explicitly with NEUROL; a Hebbian synapse-strength reinforcement rule has specific language support now. NEUROED's basic specifications are: a) written in Turbo BASIC 1.0 for IBM-PC compatible machines, with CGA monochrome graphics display and optional numerical coprocessor; b) capacity of 100 neurons and 10.000 synapses; c) three neural tissue layers: input, processing and output. d) real-time simulation of neural tissue dynamics, with three display modes: oscilloscope mode (displays membrane potentials along time for several cells simultaneously); map mode (displays bidimensional architecture with individual cells, showing when they fire) and Hinton diagram (displays interconnecting matrix with individual synapses, showing when they fire); e) Realtime, interactive modification of net parameters; and f) capability for building procedures, functions and model libraries, which reside as external disk files. NEUROED and NEUROL are easy to learn and to use, intuitive for neuroscientists, and lend themselves to modeling neural tissue dynamics for teaching purposes. We are currently developing a basic "library" of NEUROED models to teach basic neurophysiology to medical students. Implementations of NEUROED and for parallel hardware are also under way. (Presented at the Fourth Annual Meeting of the Brazilian Federation of Biological Societies, Caxambu, MG, July 1991) ----------------------------------------------------------- A CASCADED NEURAL NETWORK MODEL FOR PROCESSING 2D TOMOGRAPHIC BRAIN IMAGES Dourado SC and Sabbatini RME Center for Biomedical Informatics, State University of Campinas, P.O. Box 6005, 13081 Campinas, SÆo Paulo, Brazil. Artificial neural networks (ANN) have demonstrated many advantages and capabilities in applications involving the processing of biomedical images and signals. Particularly in the field of medical image processing, ANNs have been used in several ways, such as in image filtering, scatter correction, edge detection, segmentation, pattern and texture classification, image reconstruction and alignment, etc. The adaptive nature of ANNs (i.e., they are capable of learning) and the possibility of implementing its function using truly massive parallel processors and neural integrated circuits, in the future; are strong arguments in favor of investigating new architectures, algorithms and applications for ANNs in Medicine. In the present work, we are interested into designing a prototype ANN which could be capable of processing serial sections of the brain, obtained from CT or MRI tomographs. The segmented, outlined images, representing internal brain structures, both normal and abnormal, would then be used as an input to a three-dimensional stereotaxic radiosurgery planning software. The ANN-based algorithm we have devised was initially implemented as a software simulation in a microcomputer (PC 80386, with VGA color graphics and a 80387 mathematical coprocessor). It is structured as a compound ANN, comprised by three cascading sub-networks. The first one receives the original digitized image, and is a one-layer, fully interconnected ANN, with one processing element (PE) per image pixel. The brain image is obtained from a General Electric CT system, with 256 x 256 pixels and 256 gray levels. The first ANN implements a MHF lateral inhibition function, based on a convolution filter of variable dimension (3 x 3 up to 9 x 9 PE's), and it is used to iteratively enhance borders in the image. The PE interconnection (i.e. convolution) function can be defined by the user as a disk file containing a set of synaptic weights, which is read by the program; thus allowing for experimentation with different sets of coefficients and sizes of the convolution window. In this layer, PE's have synaptic weights varying from -1 to 1, and the step function as its transfer function. Usually after 2 to 3 iterations, the borders are completely formed and do not vary any more, but are too thick (i.e., the trace width spans several pixels). In order to thin out the borders, the output of the MHF ANN layer is subsequently fed into a three-layer perceptron, which was trained off-line using the backpropagation algorithm to perform thinning on smaller straight line segments. Finally, the thinned out image obtained pixel-wise at the this ANN's output is fed into a third network, also a three-layer perceptron trained off- line using the backpropagation algorithm to complete small gaps ocurring in the image contours. The final image, also 256 x 256 pixels with 2 levels of gray, is passed to the 3D slice reconstruction program, implemented with conventional, sequential algorithms. A fourth ANN perceptron previously trained by back-propagation to recognize the gray histogram signature of small groups of pixels in the original image (such as bone, liquor, gray and white matter, blood, dense tumor areas, etc.), is used to false-color the entire image according to the classified thematic regions. The cascaded, multilayer ANN thus implemented performs very well in the overall task of obtaining automatically outlined and segmented brain slices, for the purposes of 3D reconstruction and surgical planning. Due to the complexity of algorithms and to the size of the image, the time spent by the computer we use is inordinately large, preventing a practical application. We are now studying the implementation of this ANN paradigm in RISC-based and vector-processing CPUs, as well as the potential applications of neurochip prototyping kits already available in the market. (Presented at the I Latinoamerican Congress on Health Informatics, Habana, Cuba, February 1992) -------------------------------------------------------- COMPUTER SIMULATION OF A QUANTITATIVE MODEL FOR REFLEX EPILEPSY R.M.E. Sabbatini Center of Biomedical Informatics and School of Medicine of the State University of Campinas, Brazil. In the present study we propose a continuous, lumped- parameter, non-linear mathematical model for explaining the quantitatively observed characteristics of a class of experimental reflex epilepsy, namely audiogenic seizures in rodents, and simulate this model with a especially contrived microcomputer program. In a first phase of the study, we have individually stimulated 280 adult Wistar albino rats with a 112 dB white-noise sound source, and recorded the latency, duration and intensity values of the psychomotor components of the audiogenic reaction: after an initial delay one or more circular running phases usually occurs, followed or not by complete tonic-clonic seizures. In the second step, we performed several multivariate statistical analyses of these data, which have revealed many properties of the underlying neural system responsible for the crisis; such as the independence of the running and convulsive phases; and a scale of severity which is correlated to the value of latencies and intensities. Finally, a lumped- parameter model based on a set of differential equations which describes the macro behavior of the interaction of four different populations of excitatory and inhibitory neurons with different time constants and threshold elements has been simulated in a computer, In this model, running waves, which may occur several times before leading or not to the final convulsive phase, are explained by the oscillatory behavior of a controlling neural population, caused by mixed feedback: an early, internal positive feedback which results in the growing of excitation, and a late negative feedback elicited by motor components of the running itself, which causes the oscillation back to inhibition. A second, threshold-triggered population controls the convulsive phase and its subsequent refractory phase. The results of the simulation have been found to explain reasonably well the time course and structural characteristics of the several forms of rodent audiogenic epilepsy and correlates well with the existing knowledge about the neural bases of this phenomenon. (Presented at the Second IBRO/IMIA International Symposium on Mathematical Approaches to Brain Functioning Diagnostics, Prague, Czechoslovakia, September 1990). ====================================================================== The Scientific Program on NEURAL NETWORKS IN MEDICINE in the Seventh World Congress of Medical Informatics (MEDINFO 92) - Palexpo Geneva, 6-10 September 1992 The explosive growth of artificial neural network systems (also called connectionist or nuromorphic systems) in the last years has followed several convincing demonstrations of its usefulness in decision-making tasks, particularly in the classification and recognition of patterns. Not surprisingly, the medical and biological applications of such systems have followed suit and are growing at a relentless pace. Connectionist systems have been used successfully in computer-aided medical diagnosis, intelligent biomedical instrumentation, classification of images of cells and tissues, recognition of abnormal EKG and EEG features, development of prosthetic devices, prediction of protein structure, etc. Thus, this is an important area which will be increasingly considered as an alternative to implementation of intelligent systems in all areas of Medicine and Biology. This year's scientific program will include several activities and papers on the subject of neural networks applications. They are summarized below for the benefit of people interested in this area. POSTER SESSION Z-1.1, Sept. 7, 11:00-13:00 Diagnosis of children's ketonemia by neural network Artificial Intelligence. A. Garliausakas, A. Garliauskiene (Lithuania) Diagnosing functional disorders of the cervical spine using backpropagation networks. Preliminary results. W. Schoner, M. Berger, G. Holzmueller, A. Neiss, H. Ulmer (Austria) POSTER SESSION Z-1.1, Sept. 7, 14:00-16:00 The use of neural network in decision making of nursing diagnosis Y. Chen, X. Cai, L. Chen, R. Guo (China) SEMI-PLENARY SESSION 2-04 (Room PS-11) - Sept. 8, 9:30-10:30 Neural Networks and Their Applications in Biomedicine Applications of connectionist systems in Biomedicine Renato M.E. Sabbatini (Brazil) A neural network approach to assess myocardial infarction A. Palazos, V. Maojo, F. Martin, N. Ezquerra (Spain) DEMONSTRATION 3-09 (Room S81) - Sept. 9, 16:00-17:30 HYPERNET - A decision support system for arterial hypertension M. Ramos, M.T. Haashi, E. Czogala, O. Marson, H. Aszen, O. Kohlmann Jr., M.S. Ancao, D. Sigulem (Brazil) SESSION 9-01 (Room S-68) - Sept. 10, 10:30-11:00 Neural networks for classification of EEG Signals D.C. Reddy, D.R. Korrai (India) WORKSHOP 3-08 (Room W25) - Sept. 8, 18:00-22:00 Applications of connectionist systems in Biomedicine Chair: Renato M.E. Sabbatini (Campinas State University, Brazil) The workshop has the objective of reviewing and discussing the value, aims, classes and results of artificial neural network systems (ANS) applications in the biomedical area. Specific techniques and results will be demonstrated (in many instances using actual computers) in several important domains, such as (i) ANS simulation environments, languages and hardware specifically designed for biomedical applications, (ii) signal and image processing tasks; (iii) development of computerised decision-making systems in diagnosis, therapy, etc.; (iv) integration with other Artificial Intelligence approaches; (v) practical aspects in the evaluation, development and implementation of ANS systems in Biomedicine; (vi) current research and perspectives of advancement. The Workshop will be conducted by several renowned specialists in the growing field of ANS applications in Biomedicine. In addition, the participants will have the opportunity to try some hands-on demonstrations on interesting software products in this area. All participants will receive an information package containing a list of publications on the subject (papers, review, books, technical reports, government studies, etc.), with abstracts; available hardware and software resources (neural network simulation environments, neurochips and neuroboards, specific medical NN application software, biomedical instruments embedding NNs, etc., either commercial or non-commercial); a list of research groups, laboratories and individuals involved in the area of ANS applications in Biological and Health Sciences; with addresses and research areas. INVITATION I would like to invite all persons active in this area of research and development, to contribute with discussions, short presentations and software demonstrations, to the workshop. Those who are interested in participating, please send name, mail and e-mail/fax address to me, together with a short proposal about his/her potential intervention at the Workshop. Renato M.E. Sabbatini ***************************************************************************** * Renato M.E. Sabbatini, PhD * INTERNET: SABBATINI@CCVAX.UNICAMP.BR * * Director * BITNET : SABBATINI@BRUC.BITNET * * Center for Biomedical Informatics * Tel.: +55 192 39-7130 (office) * * State University of Campinas * 39-4168 (home) * * * Fax.: +55 192 39-4717 (office) * * P.O. Box 6005 * Telex: +55 19 1150 * * Campinas, SP 13081 - BRAZIL * * ***************************************************************************** ======================================================================== ************************** NIBNews ************************* Vol. 1 - No. 1 June 1992 ************************************************************ A Monthly Electronic Bulletin about Medical Informatics News from the Center for Biomedical Informatics State University of Campinas, Campinas SP - Brazil Editor: Renato M.E. Sabbatini, PhD ************************************************************ Tel. +55 192 397130 Fax. +55 192 394717 Tlx. +55 19 1150 E-mail: SABBATINI@BRUC.BITNET or SABBATINI@CCVAX.UNICAMP.BR Address: P.O. Box 6005, Campinas, SP 13081 - BRAZIL ************************************************************ ------------------------------------ SUMMER COURSE ON MEDICAL INFORMATICS ------------------------------------ The Center of Biomedical Informatics, in collaboration with the Chair of Medical Informatics of UNICAMP Medical School promotes every year an intensive Summer Course on Medical Informatics, during two weeks of January. The course has the aim of providing educators coming from health sciences faculties with the basic know-how needed to introduce Informatics into the undergraduate curricula of medicine, nursing, dentistry, etc. The typical participant is a healthcare professional, such as a physician, who has a good background as a computer user, and who is interested into teaching Medical Informatics as a undergraduate or continuing education discipline at his or her institution. Brazil has more than 80 medical schools, 100 dentistry schools, and 70 nursing schools. The majority of these schools do not offer courses on the subject (for example, only 7 or 8 medical schools have introduced Informatics into the undergraduate curriculum). However, most of the schools have at least one faculty member who is enthusiastic about computers and uses them as a power user. They usually desire to teach the subject but have no information and/or adequate teaching materials to start it. The Summer Course provides precisely this information. During two full weeks, the participants attend to practical classes in a microcomputer lab, and discussion seminars on the contents, strategies and tactical details necessary to "learn how to teach". The classes and seminars are oriented by highly experienced members of the UNICAMP Medical School faculty, who are responsible for teaching the subject at undergraduate, graduate and continuing education levels since 1983. The participants receive a full complement of high-quality and tested instructional materials, developed by Prof. Sabbatini, such as a handbook on medical applications of computers, a laboratory manual for teaching microcomputer fundamentals, a set of slides, and a suite of 25 medical software applications for IBM-PCs; besides extensive reference literature. The subjects discussed during the course include the teaching of computer literacy (DOS, word processing, spreadsheet and statistical packages, database managers, software for bibliographic search management, etc.); as well as the teaching of specific medical applications, such as medical records and automatic history taking, signal and image processing, hospital and medical office automation, applications in public health, epidemiology, medical education and research, etc. The participants learn how to use the application packages developed by UNICAMP especially for this purpose. The participants learn also how to plan and implement Medical Informatics curricula. The 1991 and 1992 installments of the Summer Course were highly successful. Altogether 21 educators from several medical, nursing and dentistry schools paticipated. As a consequence, six months later, 80 % of them had already started Medical Informatics courses at their institutions. Furthermore, they are in permanent contact with the UNICAMP group, which continues to provide them with advice, information and follow-up. Five participants, encouraged by the course results, enrolled as graduate students at the Medical Informatics graduate course offered by UNICAMP, towards a Master's degree. The Summer Course will be reapeated next January 1993. In the next installment, we intend to offer places to participants from the Latin American region, as well. Please contact the Editor to receive further information. ------------------------------------------------ A COMPUTERIZED HEALTH INFORMATICS RESOURCE GUIDE ------------------------------------------------ The Center for Biomedical Informatics has recently published the latest issue of "Resource Guide in Health Informatics", which is a computerized database containing up-to-date information on the following: - articles and abstracts published by Brazilian authors in the national and international literature, since 1970, with ca. 1.300 items; - a list of medical software products offered by public institutions and private enterprises (ca. 300 items). An auxiliary database lists the addresses and main products of Brazilian software-houses acting in this area; - an "address book" of ca. 200 Brazilians directly involved with, or specialized in Medical Informatics; - databases of all known professional and user's associations in medical informatics in the world; the more than 60 periodicals and magazines on medical informatics; and a list of basic and advanced books on the subject. - a list of medical bulletin boards and BITNET/INTERNET resources available internationally. All databases are available in dBASE III-compatible format, and are fully indexed. A search program is supplied for IBM- PC compatibles. ------------------- RECENT PUBLICATIONS ------------------- The following publications by NIB staff are available upon request (for previous lists please contact the Editor): Sabbatini, R.M.E. - An improved undergraduate curriculum for teaching Medical Informatics to medical and nursing students. In: Van Bemmel, J.H. & Zv rov , J. (Eds.) - Knowledge, Information and Medical Education. Amsterdam: North Holland, p. 67-78, 1991. Zepka, R.F.; Sabbatini, R.M.E. - Computer simulation of a quantitative model for reflex epilepsy. In: Dvor k, I.; Holden, A.V. (Eds.) - Mathematical Approaches to Brain Functioning Diagnostics. (Proceedings in Non-Linear Science). Manchester: Manchester University Press, p. 249- 256, 1991. Sabbatini, R.M.E. - Il mercato dell'Informatica Sanitaria in Brasile: attualit… e prospettive. Medicina e Informatica (Roma, It lia), 9(1): 9-17, 1992. (The market of Health Informatics in Brazil: present and potentialities) ------------------------------------ RECENT SOFTWARE AND SOFTWARE UPDATES ------------------------------------ The Center for Biomedical Informatics has released recently the following applications (for previous lists please contact the Editor): MiniPILOT 1.0 - An interpreter for the standard PILOT language, for development of courseware in IBM-PC compatibles. Comes with several examples of clinical simulations, tutorials and quizzes in medical education. October 1991. MEDTEST 1.9 - Latest update of authoring shell system for developing script-based medical courseware. Includes new features such as inbuilt full-screen editor, capability of running external programs from within the application, and much more. Revamped manual discloses fully the techniques of developing medical courseware. The software is available in Portuguese, Spanish and English, and comes with several examples of tutorials and patient simulations in Medicine and Nursing. For IBM-PCs. June 1992. Note: This software is in the public-domain list of UNICAMP. If you are interested in getting a diskette with a printed manual, please send US$ 20/each in UNESCO bonuses or a bank cheque to the address above. Please allow 15-20 days for delivery. -------------------------------------- FUTURE CONGRESSES AND CALLS FOR PAPERS -------------------------------------- First Brazilian Forum on Science and Technology in Health The joint scientific meeting of the Brazilian Societies of Biomedical Engineering, Physics in Medicine, Nuclear Medicine, Radioprotection and (extra-officially), Clinical Engineering and Health Informatics; will be held in Caxambu, Brazil, in November 1992. Full papers in Portuguese, Spanish or English will be accepted until July 15, in the following areas: biomedical instruments, signal and image processing, sensors and transductors, biomedical informatics and clinical software, rehabilitation engineering, clinical engineering, biomaterials and biomechanics, radiotherapy, nuclear medicine, diagnostic imaging, dosimetry and radioprotection, evaluation of technology in healthcare, education and training. A technical exhibit will show the latest developments in biomedical instrumentation, biomaterials, software and services related to health technology. Ca. 700 participants and 100 papers are expected. Information and author kits available from: Sergio S. Muhlen, CEB/UNICAMP, PO Box 6040, 13081 Campinas, SP. SMUHLEN@DEB.FEE.UNICAMP.BR ----------------------------------------- NEXT ISSUES of NIBnews will bring to you: ----------------------------------------- HIGH-PERFORMANCE MICROCOMPUTER SOFTWARE FOR DISTRIBUTED ANALYSIS OF MORTALITY DATABASES PUBLIC DOMAIN SOFTWARE FOR MEDICAL APPLICATIONS NEW RESEARCH LINE ON ADVANCED APPLICATIONS OF SUPERCOMPUTERS, NEUROCOMPUTERS AND WORKSTATIONS IN MEDICINE SYMPOSIUM ON COMPUTER APPLICATIONS IN MEDICAL EDUCATION GRADUATE COURSE ON KNOWLEDGE ENGINEERING BRAZILIAN PERIODICAL PUBLICATIONS FEATURING MEDICAL INFORMATICS NEW ELECTRONIC FORUM ON MEDICAL INFORMATICS NEXT WORLD MEDINFO CONGRESS WILL BE IN SAO PAULO ! ********************************************************** The newsletter has the objetive of disseminating information about Brazilian and Latin-american activities, people, information, events, publications, software, etc., in the area of computer applications in healthcare, medicine and biology. It is issued on a monthly basis to voluntary subscribers, only. There is a printed, longer, version, which is also available through common mail to anyone wishing to receive it. Submissions: The Editor accepts short comments, news, announcements of products, software, courses, events, etc. whenever they are related to the newsletter subject and geographical area. ********************************************************** To subscribe: send a message to the editor's E-Mail **********************************************************