Jose Garcia

JBHI Journal 2014 Journal Article

Designing an Architecture for Monitoring Patients at Home: Ontologies and Web Services for Clinical and Technical Management Integration

• Nelia Lasierra
• Alvaro Alesanco
• Jose Garcia

This paper presents the design and implementation of an architecture based on the combination of ontologies, rules, web services, and the autonomic computing paradigm to manage data in home-based telemonitoring scenarios. The architecture includes two layers: 1) a conceptual layer and 2) a data and communication layer. On the one hand, the conceptual layer based on ontologies is proposed to unify the management procedure and integrate incoming data from all the sources involved in the telemonitoring process. On the other hand, the data and communication layer based on REST web service (WS) technologies is proposed to provide practical backup to the use of the ontology, to provide a real implementation of the tasks it describes and thus to provide a means of exchanging data (support communication tasks). A case study regarding chronic obstructive pulmonary disease data management is presented in order to evaluate the efficiency of the architecture. This proposed ontology-based solution defines a flexible and scalable architecture in order to address main challenges presented in home-based telemonitoring scenarios and thus provide a means to integrate, unify, and transfer data supporting both clinical and technical management tasks.

JBHI Journal 2014 Journal Article

On the Seamless, Harmonized Use of ISO/IEEE11073 and OpenEHR

• Jesus D. Trigo
• Christian D. Kohl
• Aitor Eguzkiza
• Miguel Martinez-Espronceda
• Alvaro Alesanco
• Luis Serrano
• Jose Garcia
• Petra Knaup

Standardized exchange of clinical information is a key factor in the provision of high quality health care systems. In this context, the openEHR specification facilitates the management of health data in electronic health records (EHRs), while the ISO/IEEE11073 (also referred to as X73PHD) family of standards provides a reference framework for medical device interoperability. Hospitals and health care providers using openEHR require flawless integration of data coming from external sources, such as X73PHD. Hence, a harmonization process is crucial for achieving a seamless, coherent use of those specifications in real scenarios. Such harmonization is the aim of this paper. Thus, the classes and attributes of a representative number of X73PHD specializations for medical devices—weight, temperature, blood pressure, pulse and heart rate, oximetry, and electrocardiograph—along with the X73PHD core document—ISO/IEEE11073–20601—have been analyzed and mapped to openEHR archetypes. The proposed methodology reuses the existing archetypes when possible and suggests new ones—or appropriate modifications—otherwise. As a result, this paper analyzes the inconsistencies found and the implications thereof in the coordinated use of these two standards. The procedure has also shown how existing standards are able to influence the archetype development process, enhancing the existing archetype corpus.

JBHI Journal 2014 Journal Article

Real-Time Echocardiogram Transmission Protocol Based on Regions and Visualization Modes

• Eva Cavero
• Alvaro Alesanco
• Jose Garcia

This paper proposes an Echocardiogram Transmission Protocol (ETP) for real-time end-to-end transmission of echocardiograms over IP networks. The ETP has been designed taking into account the echocardiogram characteristics of each visualized region, encoding each region according to its data type, visualization characteristics and diagnostic importance in order to improve the coding and thus the transmission efficiency. Furthermore, each region is sent separately and different error protection techniques can be used for each region. This leads to an efficient use of resources and provides greater protection for those regions with more clinical information. Synchronization is implemented for regions that change over time. The echocardiogram composition is different for each device. The protocol is valid for all echocardiogram devices thanks to the incorporation of configuration information which includes the composition of the echocardiogram. The efficiency of the ETP has been proved in terms of the number of bits sent with the proposed protocol. The codec and transmission rates used for the regions of interest have been set according to previous recommendations. Although the saving in the codified bits depends on the video composition, a coding gain higher than 7% with respect to without using ETP has been achieved.

AAAI Conference 2007 System Paper

A Deployed Semantically-Enabled Interdisciplinary Virtual Observatory

• Deborah L. McGuinness
• Luca Cinquini
• Jose Garcia