Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
TABLE 15.1
Relevance of Information for Selected Fields
Last
Name
First
Name
Maiden
Name
Postal
Code
Sex
Birth
Address
Region
City
Physician
Type
String
String
Digit
String
Date
String
Digit
Digit
String
String
Accuracy
• • •
• • •
• • •
•
• • •
•
•
• •
•
•
Blocking
X
X
X
Weight
• • •
• • •
a
• •
a
•
• • •
• •
•
• •
• •
• •
Weight
• • •
•
a
• •
• •
• •
•
• •
•
•
•
a
Only if previous fi elds match.
A global score is attributed for each
n
- to -
n
comparison and is submitted as
input for the matching process
By using a distributed identifi cation mechanism in combination with data
linkage techniques, patient matching is quite easily fi xed.
15.5
GRIDS TO CREATE VIRTUAL RESEARCH COMMUNITIES
15.5.1
Introduction
More and more discoveries are going to come out of collective scientifi c
efforts. Building collaboration between research groups that are remote from
a geographical point of view requires sharing common scientifi c tools. Grid
infrastructures are designed for hosting virtual organizations which gather
scientists across national and administrative borders. We are going to illustrate
the collaborative power of the grid on the example of a surveillance network
for emerging diseases.
15.5.2
Surveillance Network for Emerging Diseases
We live in a small world. Air travel and the Internet have considerably reduced
perceived distances and increased communication. There is also a growing
awareness that the whole of humanity is confronted by challenges that it has
to address together in order to achieve success. Viruses are not stopped by
frontiers and recent pandemics like H1N1 or AIDS have highlighted the need
for good practices in the sharing of data for improved health care monitoring
[23]. There is also a growing need to provide services to the scientists who are
on the front line of emerging diseases to enable the public health authorities
to take the most accurate decisions at the earliest stages.
A concrete example of a present-day concern is avian fl u. While the world
was anxiously going through the H1N1 pandemic, interest in the media for
H5N1 disappeared. However, the capacity of the H5N1 to mutate into a strain
with human-to-human transmission remains a very signifi cant threat to public
health [24]. The H5N1 keeps mutating, as can be observed in the regular out-
breaks taking place in Southeast Asia [25].
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