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An intranet is a computer network for sharing information, easier communication, collaboration tools, operational systems, and other computing services within an organization, usually to the exclusion of access by outsiders. The term is used in contrast to public networks, such as the Internet, but uses the same technology based on the Internet protocol suite.
Epidemiology is the study and analysis of the distribution, patterns and determinants of health and disease conditions in a defined population.
New media are communication technologies that enable or enhance interaction between users as well as interaction between users and content. In the middle of the 1990s, the phrase "new media" became widely used as part of a sales pitch for the influx of interactive CD-ROMs for entertainment and education. The new media technologies, sometimes known as Web 2.0, include a wide range of web-related communication tools such as blogs, wikis, online social networking, virtual worlds, and other social media platforms.
A cohort study is a particular form of longitudinal study that samples a cohort, performing a cross-section at intervals through time. It is a type of panel study where the individuals in the panel share a common characteristic.
UK Biobank is a large long-term biobank study in the United Kingdom (UK) which is investigating the respective contributions of genetic predisposition and environmental exposure to the development of disease. It began in 2006. UK Biobank has been cited as an important resource for cancer research.
eHealth describes healthcare services which are supported by digital processes, communication or technology such as electronic prescribing, Telehealth, or Electronic Health Records (EHRs). The use of electronic processes in healthcare dated back to at least the 1990s. Usage of the term varies as it covers not just "Internet medicine" as it was conceived during that time, but also "virtually everything related to computers and medicine". A study in 2005 found 51 unique definitions. Some argue that it is interchangeable with health informatics with a broad definition covering electronic/digital processes in health while others use it in the narrower sense of healthcare practice using the Internet. It can also include health applications and links on mobile phones, referred to as mHealth or m-Health. Key components of eHealth include electronic health records (EHRs), telemedicine, health information exchange, mobile health applications, wearable devices, and online health information. These technologies enable healthcare providers, patients, and other stakeholders to access, manage, and exchange health information more effectively, leading to improved communication, decision-making, and overall healthcare outcomes.
Health technology is defined by the World Health Organization as the "application of organized knowledge and skills in the form of devices, medicines, vaccines, procedures, and systems developed to solve a health problem and improve quality of lives". This includes pharmaceuticals, devices, procedures, and organizational systems used in the healthcare industry, as well as computer-supported information systems. In the United States, these technologies involve standardized physical objects, as well as traditional and designed social means and methods to treat or care for patients.
Spatial epidemiology is a subfield of epidemiology focused on the study of the spatial distribution of health outcomes; it is closely related to health geography.
Molecular epidemiology is a branch of epidemiology and medical science that focuses on the contribution of potential genetic and environmental risk factors, identified at the molecular level, to the etiology, distribution and prevention of disease within families and across populations. This field has emerged from the integration of molecular biology into traditional epidemiological research. Molecular epidemiology improves our understanding of the pathogenesis of disease by identifying specific pathways, molecules and genes that influence the risk of developing disease. More broadly, it seeks to establish understanding of how the interactions between genetic traits and environmental exposures result in disease.
Tele-epidemiology is the application of telecommunications to epidemiological research and application, including space-based and internet-based systems.
"Health 2.0" is a term introduced in the mid-2000s, as the subset of health care technologies mirroring the wider Web 2.0 movement. It has been defined variously as including social media, user-generated content, and cloud-based and mobile technologies. Some Health 2.0 proponents see these technologies as empowering patients to have greater control over their own health care and diminishing medical paternalism. Critics of the technologies have expressed concerns about possible misinformation and violations of patient privacy.
mHealth is an abbreviation for mobile health, a term used for the practice of medicine and public health supported by mobile devices. The term is most commonly used in reference to using mobile communication devices, such as mobile phones, tablet computers and personal digital assistants (PDAs), and wearable devices such as smart watches, for health services, information, and data collection. The mHealth field has emerged as a sub-segment of eHealth, the use of information and communication technology (ICT), such as computers, mobile phones, communications satellite, patient monitors, etc., for health services and information. mHealth applications include the use of mobile devices in collecting community and clinical health data, delivery/sharing of healthcare information for practitioners, researchers and patients, real-time monitoring of patient vital signs, the direct provision of care as well as training and collaboration of health workers.
Mobile technology is the technology used for cellular communication. Mobile technology has evolved rapidly over the past few years. Since the start of this millennium, a standard mobile device has gone from being no more than a simple two-way pager to being a mobile phone, GPS navigation device, an embedded web browser and instant messaging client, and a handheld gaming console. Many experts believe that the future of computer technology rests in mobile computing with wireless networking. Mobile computing by way of tablet computers is becoming more popular. Tablets are available on the 3G and 4G networks.
Surgical scheduling software is computer software related to scheduling of tasks for a sequence of surgical cases in one surgery theatre and with one surgery staff using an operational model, a computer and a network. Another vital part of the surgery scheduling process is the communication between the Facility and the Vendor.
Nutritional epidemiology examines dietary and nutritional factors in relation to disease occurrence at a population level. Nutritional epidemiology is a relatively new field of medical research that studies the relationship between nutrition and health. It is a young discipline in epidemiology that is continuing to grow in relevance to present-day health concerns. Diet and physical activity are difficult to measure accurately, which may partly explain why nutrition has received less attention than other risk factors for disease in epidemiology. Nutritional epidemiology uses knowledge from nutritional science to aid in the understanding of human nutrition and the explanation of basic underlying mechanisms. Nutritional science information is also used in the development of nutritional epidemiological studies and interventions including clinical, case-control and cohort studies. Nutritional epidemiological methods have been developed to study the relationship between diet and disease. Findings from these studies impact public health as they guide the development of dietary recommendations including those tailored specifically for the prevention of certain diseases, conditions and cancers. It is argued by western researchers that nutritional epidemiology should be a core component in the training of all health and social service professions because of its increasing relevance and past successes in improving the health of the public worldwide. However, it is also argued that nutritional epidemiological studies yield unreliable findings as they rely on the role of diet in health and disease, which is known as an exposure that is susceptible to considerable measurement error.
The Trøndelag Health Study is a cohort health study performed in the Norwegian county of Trøndelag. HUNT is considered one of the most extensive cohort studies ever conducted in any country. The HUNT Research Centre, which is responsible for collecting and providing access to the data and samples from the study, is part of the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU).
The Africa/Harvard School of Public Health Partnership for Cohort Research and Training launched in 2008, is a collaborative research project led by Principal Investigators, Dr. Hans-Olov Adami and Dr. Michelle D. Holmes. Together with research scientists, Dr. Shona Dalal and Dr. Todd G. Reid, this team represents the Harvard Coordinating Site of the Partnership with colleagues from five institutions in Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda. The Africa/HSPH PaCT project plans on investigating the association of lifestyle factors and chronic disease risk in sub- Saharan Africa, through a large epidemiological cohort study that will include approximately 500,000 participants. Africa/HSPH PaCT is the first and largest cohort study conducted in sub-saharan Africa to employ mobile phone technology to follow participants and collect data. Africa/HSPH PaCT will also provide the infrastructure for capacity-building and for training a new generation of health professionals.
CARTaGENE is a population-based cohort based on an ongoing and long-term health study of 40,000 men and women in Québec. It is a regional cohort member of the Canadian Partnership for Tomorrow's Health (CanPath). The project's core mandate is to identify the genetic and environmental causes of common chronic diseases affecting the Québec population, and to develop personalized medicine and public policy initiatives targeting high-risk groups for the public.
Dynamic consent is an approach to informed consent that enables on-going engagement and communication between individuals and the users and custodians of their data. It is designed to address the many issues that are raised by the use of digital technologies in research and clinical care that enable the wide-scale use, linkage, analysis and integration of diverse datasets and the use of AI and big data analyses. These issues include how to obtain informed consent in a rapidly-changing environment; growing expectations that people should know how their data is being used; increased legal and regulatory requirements for the management of secondary use of data in biobanks and other medical research infrastructure. The approach started to be implemented in 2007 by an Italian group who introduced the ways to have an ongoing process of interaction between researcher and participant where "technology now allows the establishment of dynamic participant–researcher partnerships." The use of digital interfaces in this way was first described as 'Dynamic Consent' in the EnCoRe project. Dynamic Consent therefore describes a personalised, digital interface that enables two-way communication between participants and researchers and is a practical example of how software can be developed to give research participants greater understanding and control over how their data is used. It also enables clinical trial managers, researchers and clinicians to know what type of consent is attached to the use of data they hold and to have an easy way to seek a new consent if the use of the data changes. It is able to support greater accountability and transparency, streamlining consent processes to enable compliance with regulatory requirements.
References
- ↑ Brownstein, John S.; Freifeld, Clark C.; Madoff, Lawrence C. (2009). "Digital Disease Detection — Harnessing the Web for Public Health Surveillance". New England Journal of Medicine. 360 (21): 2153–2157. doi:10.1056/NEJMp0900702. ISSN 0028-4793. PMC 2917042 . PMID 19423867.
- ↑ Kamel Boulos MN; Cai Q; Padget JA; Rushton G (April 2006). "Using software agents to preserve individual health data confidentiality in micro-scale geographical analyses". J Biomed Inform. 39 (2): 160–70. doi:10.1016/j.jbi.2005.06.003. PMID 16098819.
- ↑ Miquel Porta (2014) A dictionary of epidemiology , 6th edn, New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199976737.