Development of a Healthcare Information System for Community Care of Older Adults and Evaluation of Its Acceptance and Usability.

Objective: The need for health and social care for community-dwelling elderly is on the rise as the population ages. Through the provision of comprehensive services by multiple professionals in local communities, elderly people can receive continual care in a non-medical setting, which is favorable for early detection and intervention of potential problems. However, the lack of digitalization in primary care affects the effectiveness of the services and precludes full exploitation of the data. This study proposed an information system dedicated to caring for community-dwelling elderly people and investigated its acceptance and usability. Methods: An information system was designed for elderly care centers in the community, where data generated during care delivery, involving socio-demographic data, bio-measurements and health assessments and questionnaires, were digitized and stored for information management and exchange. A study was conducted to evaluate the acceptance and usability of the system after routine use of 6 months. The users of the system at an elderly care center were recruited to respond to a technology acceptance questionnaire and a system usability questionnaire. Results: The mean scores of the acceptance and usability questionnaires reached 5.1 out of the highest possible score of 7. The constructs of the acceptance questionnaire had good reliability. The social influence and facilitating conditions constructs had a significant correlation with the behavioral intention construct. Conclusions: The proposed information system demonstrated good acceptance and usability, which supported the feasibility of implementing it in community care centers for older adults. Further research will be conducted to address the limitation of sample size by extending the system to other elderly care centers, forming a large user base for a more in-depth and comprehensive performance evaluation.

Adair-based hemoglobin equilibrium with oxygen, carbon dioxide and hydrogen ion activity.

As has been known for over a century, oxygen binding onto hemoglobin is influenced by the activity of hydrogen ions (H⁺), as well as the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2). As is also known, the binding of both CO2and H⁺ on terminal valine-1 residues is competitive. One-parametric situations of these hemoglobin equilibria at specific levels of H⁺, O2or CO2are also well described. However, we think interpolating or extrapolating this knowledge into an 'empirical' function of three independent variables has not yet been completely satisfactory. We present a model that integrates three orthogonal views of hemoglobin oxygenation, titration, and carbamination at different temperatures. The model is based only on chemical principles, Adair's oxygenation steps and Van't Hoff equation of temperature dependences. Our model fits the measurements of the Haldane coefficient and CO2hemoglobin saturation. It also fits the oxygen dissociation curve influenced by simultaneous changes in H⁺, CO2and O2, which makes it a strong candidate for integration into more complex models of blood acid-base with gas transport, where any combination of mentioned substances can appear.

Surviving sepsis--a 3D integrative educational simulator.

Computer technology offers greater educational possibilities, notably simulation and virtual reality. This paper presents a technology which serves to integrate multiple modalities, namely 3D virtual reality, node-based simulator, Physiomodel explorer and explanatory physiological simulators employing Modelica language and Unity3D platform. This emerging tool chain should allow the authors to concentrate more on educational content instead of application development. The technology is demonstrated through Surviving sepsis educational scenario, targeted on Microsoft Windows Store platform.

Experiences in teaching of modeling and simulation with emphasize on equation-based and acausal modeling techniques.

This work introduces experiences of teaching modeling and simulation for graduate students in the field of biomedical engineering. We emphasize the acausal and object-oriented modeling technique and we have moved from teaching block-oriented tool MATLAB Simulink to acausal and object oriented Modelica language, which can express the structure of the system rather than a process of computation. However, block-oriented approach is allowed in Modelica language too and students have tendency to express the process of computation. Usage of the exemplar acausal domains and approach allows students to understand the modeled problems much deeper. The causality of the computation is derived automatically by the simulation tool.

Physiomodel - an integrative physiology in Modelica.

Physiomodel (http://www.physiomodel.org) is our reimplementation and extension of an integrative physiological model called HumMod 1.6 (http://www.hummod.org) using our Physiolibrary (http://www.physiolibrary.org). The computer language Modelica is well-suited to exactly formalize integrative physiology. Modelica is an equation-based, and object-oriented language for hybrid ordinary differential equations (http:// www.modelica.org). Almost every physiological term can be defined as a class in this language and can be instantiated as many times as it occurs in the body. Each class has a graphical icon for use in diagrams. These diagrams are self-describing; the Modelica code generated from them is the full representation of the underlying mathematical model. Special Modelica constructs of physical connectors from Physiolibrary allow us to create diagrams that are analogies of electrical circuits with Kirchhoff's laws. As electric currents and electric potentials are connected in electrical domain, so are molar flows and concentrations in the chemical domain; volumetric flows and pressures in the hydraulic domain; flows of heat energy and temperatures in the thermal domain; and changes and amounts of members in the population domain.

Modeling of short-term mechanism of arterial pressure control in the cardiovascular system: object-oriented and acausal approach.

This letter introduces an alternative approach to modeling the cardiovascular system with a short-term control mechanism published in Computers in Biology and Medicine, Vol. 47 (2014), pp. 104-112. We recommend using abstract components on a distinct physical level, separating the model into hydraulic components, subsystems of the cardiovascular system and individual subsystems of the control mechanism and scenario. We recommend utilizing an acausal modeling feature of Modelica language, which allows model variables to be expressed declaratively. Furthermore, the Modelica tool identifies which are the dependent and independent variables upon compilation. An example of our approach is introduced on several elementary components representing the hydraulic resistance to fluid flow and the elastic response of the vessel, among others. The introduced model implementation can be more reusable and understandable for the general scientific community.

The Atlas of Physiology and Pathophysiology: Web-based multimedia enabled interactive simulations.

The paper is a presentation of the current state of development for the Atlas of Physiology and Pathophysiology (Atlas). Our main aim is to provide a novel interactive multimedia application that can be used for biomedical education where (a) simulations are combined with tutorials and (b) the presentation layer is simplified while the underlying complexity of the model is retained. The development of the Atlas required the cooperation of many professionals including teachers, system analysts, artists, and programmers. During the design of the Atlas, tools were developed that allow for component-based creation of simulation models, creation of interactive multimedia and their final coordination into a compact unit based on the given design. The Atlas is a freely available online application, which can help to explain the function of individual physiological systems and the causes and symptoms of their disorders.