OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to self-management asthma including symptom, medication, and to prevent the exacerbation of the condition using the Personal Asthma Management System(PAMS) which was developed based on Personal digital Assistant(PDA). METHODS: A development tool of the PAMS was EVC(Microsoft Embadded Visual C++). The system contents referred to workshop report of the Global Initiative for Asthma, on-line lecture of the Korean Society of allergology and Korea Asthma allergy Foundation, asthma-related web-sites. RESULTS: The PAMS was implemented with four main menus: personal information, symptom, medication management, and self care. The patients input their daily condition, and this data will be used in the successful prevention and management of asthma exacerbation. This real-time nature of PAMS is its primary advantage over other retrospective computing system for reducing the effects of forgetting, so this information will be useful in classifying of asthma severity. CONCLUSION: The PAMS can be contributed to aid self-management of asthma and effective treatment by attending physician.
Asthma* ; Education ; Humans ; Hypersensitivity ; Korea ; Retrospective Studies ; Self Care

A optical endoscope has disadvantages; giving pain and not applying to a postoperative patient. If it substitutes for a virtual endoscope, noninvasive observation can be gained. This paper describes a developed viewer, using Visual C++ 6.0 and Openlnventor2.5.2 (object-oriented 3D toolkit) library, for the manipulation of 3D anatomy object model. It is named Anatomy Viewer. The viewer is implemented under the PC environment. It can rotate, zoom in and out, and fly through anatomy models on 3D space and translate into a interested area, and then save as a TGA image file like a real endoscope. Also, as it is improved in the network, we exchange data and discuss with someone who is in the other place. This viewer is very useful to understand the anatomy structure, to diagnose, and to make a surgical plan in preoperative step. We verified its usefulness by observing a 3D bronchus model that is reconstructed with CT image slices.
Bronchi ; Diptera ; Endoscopes* ; Humans

We can assume a histogram of uterus neck cytoplasm image has three peaks which is consisted of nucleus, cytoplasm and background. We proposed a method for extraction of adaptive thresholding value that is suitable to each various intensity distribution. First, the adaptive thresholding is divided into thresholding of cytoplasm area and nucleus area. The thresholding of cytoplasm area, utilizing whole histogram, extracts thresholding value by using histogram standard deviation which of recognized as a background for each histogram distribution. The classification of nucleus is various in size and has difficulty in precise image extraction because of great difference in intensity in a cell image when using whole histogram distribution. So we suggests 'local thresholding' . In the first place, by using optimal thresholding, we can find nucleus seed area as a mask, and get adaptive thresholding value correct to each histogram distribution by obtaining histogram for each mask. Comparing to other methods that use the same thresholding value for one image, this can effectively extract nucleus and cyotoplasm. Because 'local thresholding' decides most suitable thresholding value for each distribution and characteristics.
Classification ; Cytoplasm ; Masks ; Neck ; Uterus

This study is to develop a system which offers the auto-response and the auto-call about the patient monitoring information of the heart rate, NIBP, SpO2 and overall status from a patient monitor to registered users. After detecting a dial tone by a developed ARS and confirming a registered user, this system offers the information of a required patient by ARS voice. If a user registered to an auto-calling service, this system can offer a patient monitoring information automatically and periodically for a user' s setting to a user' s hand-phone or beeper by the voice or the number. Additionally, when the patient' s emergency situation to happen, this system calls the emergency state to an registered user' s hand-phone or beeper by the voice or the number. All of the information of patient monitoring is managed by the SQL database system for easy to the data extraction and the service of the statistical information effectively.
Emergencies ; Heart Rate ; Humans ; Monitoring, Physiologic* ; Voice

In these days, computing environment turns to web environment and a lot of hospitals build information system. A medical services through the web provide patients and doctors with convenience and help experts to communicate with each other. Initially, web provided static text information, but nowadays needs of interactivity between client and server is increasing. In order to diagnose heart diseases, we use 12 channel ECG, stress ECG, holter ECG, etc. These data are a lot of correlation with each other but there are little system managed them with integration. To enhance management efficiency and share medical information, it is necessary to develop integrated ECG management system based the web. In this paper, we use common object request broker architecture(CQRBA) to implement the system. The CORBA is to apply object oriented concept to web. We can implement application easily and reduce costs to maintain and repay because server objects and client objects exist independently. We developed a System to integrate these data using network and to raise management efficiency. we focus on the performance of object web and the implementation of ECG management system based on the web.
Electrocardiography* ; Heart Diseases ; Humans ; Information Systems

In this study, we designed the expert system for the diagnosis of stroke. The causes of stroke in central nervous systems are very diverse, so a doctor who treats the patients with stroke must have the expert knowledge for the quick and correct diagnosis and for the adequate medical management. But the primary physician who engaged in the primary care of the patient with stroke does not have the expert knowledge for the stroke. So, we need to develop the expert system for assisting the diagnosis of stroke. Also the diagnosis system can be used as simulator for the medical students who study the neurology. In this study, we developed the diagnosis expert system that offer a pathological name provided by artificial neural networks. And we designed the inference engine and GUIs(graphical user interfaces). The artificial neural network is a system that provide a possible diagnosis of stroke. We implemented the system using Visual Basic 6.0 of Microsoft Co.
Central Nervous System ; Diagnosis* ; Expert Systems* ; Humans ; Neurology ; Primary Health Care ; Stroke* ; Students, Medical

Drug Information Centers are responsible for providing updated, relevant drug information on the efficacy, safety and quality of drugs as well as disease status to health-care practitioners and finally to patients. This study was designed to revise the drug information service based on the evaluation to meet the social requirement that is created by the recent "Drug Prescription and Dispensing Law" A retrospective analysis was conducted from April 1997 untill September 2000. To evaluate the trend of service, the evaluated period was divided in 7 6-months intervals. The feedback system was used to measure the satisfaction score as an outcome. Out of 618 total enquiries, 192 (31.0%) was received in the last 6-month period. The method of receiving and providing drug information by Drug Information Research Institute (DIRI) gradually changed from telephone calls to e-mailing system (2.2% vs. 67.2% in question, 2.2% vs. 70.3% in answer). Drug information questions concerning the pharmacology (18.8%), adverse drug reaction (10.5%), availability (10.3%) and drug interaction (5.2%) were asked most frequently. The median time to respond the inquired questions was 24 hours (range: 1 hr-8 days). The reference used most frequently to answer was the tertiary literature (42.0%) followed by the second literature (27%) and primary literature (7%). The evaluable 29 feedbacks showed that DI services provided by DIRI were satisfactory in accuracy and time. On the basis of the analysis and evaluation of this project, DIRI have developed the more specified Q and A Sheet Form, systemic database and on-line Q and A corner accessible through the homepage.
Academies and Institutes ; Drug Information Services* ; Drug Interactions ; Drug-Related Side Effects and Adverse Reactions ; Electronic Mail ; Humans ; Information Centers* ; Pharmacology ; Prescriptions ; Retrospective Studies ; Telephone

PURPOSE: to measure the nurses need for the Hospital Information System(HIS) and identify the change of nurses' attitude toward computerization in pre and post HIS implementation. METHOD: Prospective survey using repeated measures design. The subjects were 166 nurses working at surgical units in a tertiary and teaching hospital. Questionnaire was developed by researchers based on the Stronge and Brodt s study (1985). Cronbach' s coefficient was 0.80. RESULT: Nurses' attitudes toward computerization were positive in pre and post Hospital Information Systems. Favorable attitude of staff nurses significantly increased after computerization. Those who were higher position, highly educated, and working longer at their hospital had more favorable attitude toward computerization. Nurses wanted a computerization of works related to laboratory tests and order check most. After computerization, nurses evaluated works related to laboratory tests and order most convenient. CONCLUSION: Appropriate reflection of nurses' need on computerization improved their favorableness towards computerization.
Hospital Information Systems* ; Hospitals, Teaching ; Surveys and Questionnaires

In the health-care market, the shift from a fee-for-service to a DRG environment has dramatically altered the landscape. To survive in this situation, hospital have to change. Information technology is one of change means. In this study, the means on information technology are presented Data warehouse, Data Mart, OLAP, Forecasting Tool, Statistic Package, Data mining.
Data Mining ; Diagnosis-Related Groups ; Forecasting

The purpose of this study are to find useful knowledge through discovering relations and patterns of unknown facts from large data using data mining technique and to introduce a scheme of knowledge management concept in medical field. The application areas of data mining in medical fields include the medical utilization review analysis, disease pattern analysis, analysis related with health promotion and hospital management analysis. Among those areas, we selected the disease pattern analysis and studied on prediction of the diagnosis of hypertension patients. Three data mining techniques of the statistical analysis, decision tree analysis and C4.5 were performed on the health examination data from Korea Medical Insurance Corporation. From the experiments, the levels of importance of factors to hypertension were inferred and the specifications between hypertensive group and normotensive group was classified and identified. These results can be applied not only to the prediction of the diagnosis of hypertension patients but also to the medical decision support system for the management of hypertension. From now on, the data mining techniques that reproduce valuable information to help decision support will provide and be applied to various areas; clinical epidemiological study, useful information of health promotion project, health care policy support information. And the technique will also give the additional efficiency of national projects related health and the realization of scientific health social management resulting the much more national welfare service.
Data Mining* ; Decision Support Techniques ; Delivery of Health Care ; Diagnosis ; Health Promotion ; Humans ; Hypertension ; Insurance ; Knowledge Management* ; Korea ; Utilization Review