91 research outputs found
Novel Small Molecule-Derived, Highly Selective Substrates for Fibroblast Activation Protein (FAP)
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A Generic Architecture for Integrating Health Monitoring and Advanced Care Provisioning
Get PDFThis paper presents a novel approach for advanced person-
alized care and health services. It consists of four tiers and presents a high level of openness, privacy and manageability compared to existing systems. Moreover, the architecture is driven by realistic underlying business opportunities and is validated through the design of multiple scenarios.sponsorship: This research is partially funded by the Interuniversity Attraction Poles Programme Belgian State, Belgian Science Policy, and by the IWT-SBO8 project (DiCoMas) "Distributed Collaboration using Multi-Agent System Architectures".status: Publishe
Model Gebaseerde Analyse van Privacy in Elektronische Diensten
No full textMany stakeholders are involved in complex electronic services. Individuals release personal information to front-ends in advanced web services. However, to what extent the acquired information is distributed and processed, what other data is included and/or merged in user profiles, remains unclear. Much more personal information is often released than strictly necessary. As is well known, many authentication technologies release personal data and make transactions linkable. Service providers can accurately profile individuals and trade profiles with external commercial entities. Moreover, service providers delegate their responsibilities for the data they collected to external entities who receive these data, while consequently, individual users lose control of their personal information. The present dissertation presents a logic based modeling approach to inspect privacy in composite electronic services from different viewpoints in data protection.
The first part provides the background for the major concepts on privacy complemented by an overview of the different privacy analysis approaches currently available.
The second part presents a logic based modeling approach for inspecting the user privacy. First of all, the key concepts necessary to reason on privacy in composite electronic services are identified. Examples are privacy policies, authentication technologies; but also, the privacy preferences and trust assumptions of users. These concepts are mapped to components of a logic based framework supporting automated privacy inspection of composite electronic services. The approach extracts profiles, containing a set of personal data that can be compiled by service providers after a user has interacted with a particular service provider. The resulting profiles constitute the input for a qualitative privacy analysis capable of providing meaningful feedback to both end-users and service designers. The former can select a service based on the minimal data disclosure principle. The latter can use the framework to select privacy-enhancing technologies and define consistent privacy policies from the earliest design stage.
In the third part, the approach is validated on two electronic public transport ticketing systems. The case study shows the extensibility of the framework.
The final part focuses on service provider accountability, one of the core privacy protection principles of the upcoming European General Data Protection Regulation. Service provider accountability refers to the obligation of data controllers to demonstrate compliance of their data practices with the rules and regulations. In this part, an inference model providing individuals with global accountability guarantees of multi-component systems is introduced. It considers different user expectations on provided evidence (i.e. log evidence) of declared data handling practices. The feedback provided by this approach is useful for both end-users and auditors who conduct privacy assessments on behalf of the end-users.status: Publishe
Evolving predictors of outcome measures in the treatment of refractory angina pectoris with implantable neuromodulation devices.
No full textIntroduction:
Patients with refractory angina pectoris do not benefit from conventional therapies anymore and are often severely restricted in performing daily activities. Therefore, patients’ quality of life (QOL) is often deteriorated. Electrical neuromodulation, in the sense of spinal cord stimulation (SCS) or subcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (SENS), can be considered as a good adjuvant therapy for these patients. However, there are patients who do not have any benefits of this electrical stimulation. The aim of the present retrospective study was to assess patients’ survival and stimulation time, to evaluate the efficacy of both modalities and to determine whether certain baseline characteristics affect the therapy outcome. Furthermore, patients QOL was examined and a comparison of both modalities, concerning the efficacy and neurostimulator settings, was also one of the objectives.
Materials and methods:
All patients who were implanted with a SCS or SENS system were included in our neuromodulation database. Of the deceased patients, only a limited amount of data (e.g. gender, age and survival time after implantation) was known and with regard to the patients who were alive, several baseline characteristics, for instance, length, weight, ECG rhythm and exercise capacity, were collected. Follow-up variables, for example, the outcome of therapy, months of stimulation and whether a patient is still stimulating, are also recorded in the database. In the case of the SENS patients, QOL scores were measured with the Seattle Angina Questionnaire (SAQ).
Results:
In total, 130 SCS and 15 SENS patients were included in the database. Out of 130 SCS patients, 56 were further analysed, 1 was lost to follow-up en 73 deceased, with a mean survival of 93.4 months. There was no difference between men and women in terms of survival time (p=0.690) and the number of deceased patients (p=0.168). A Kaplan-Meier analysis has shown a mean estimated survival and stimulation time of 153.2 (n=130) and 130.0 (n=53) months, respectively, with again no differences as a result of gender (p=0.741 and p=0.678). In case of the living SCS patients, there was no significant improvement of exercise capacity and left ventricular ejection fraction after one year. Though, there was a significant improvement of CCS classification (p<0.001). Regression analyses have shown that a lateral myocardial infarction at baseline is associated with the lack of a positive outcome. Moreover, the use of oxazepam and the number of myocardial infarctions are associated with a moderate instead of an excellent effect. With respect to the SENS patients, 1 patient was lost to follow-up and an improvement of exercise capacity (p=0.019), CCS classification (p=0.001) and QOL scores was observed with regard to the remaining patients. After comparing both modalities (SCS and SENS), it has been shown that there are no significant differences between the proportions of patients with a positive outcome (p=0.194) and the same applies to a moderate or excellent effect (p=0.740).
Conclusion:
Both the SCS as the SENS patients showed a significant improvement of their symptoms following electrical neuromodulation (CCS classification). In the case of SENS patients an improvement of exercise capacity and QOL scores was also observed. Furthermore, some baseline characteristics (including a lateral myocardial infarction, use of oxazepam and the number of myocardial infarctions) are associated with the outcome of SCS, which could be taken into account when electrical neuromodulation is indicated. No substantial outcome differences were observed after comparison of both modalities. Due to the fact that the interesting results and subsequent conclusions are based on a limited number of patients, these findings should be further investigated in a larger group of patients, preferably by means of a prospective multicentre study.
Exploring and optimizing therapeutic strategies for borderline ovarian tumors and low-grade serous ovarian cancer
Get PDFThe thesis was aimed at exploring and optimizing therapeutic strategies for borderline ovarian tumors and low-grade serous ovarian cancer. Based on our study and a thorough review of the existing literature, it can be concluded that mucinous borderline ovarian tumors very rarely present with extraovarian disease. Surgical staging procedures, with the aim of detecting extraovarian disease, can be omitted safely without compromising progression-free and overall survival rates. Omission of a staging procedure implicates less comprehensive surgery and decreased surgical morbidity, which is beneficial to the patient.Provisional diagnoses of borderline ovarian tumors are often made intraoperatively using the frozen section technique. However, it is not always possible to report a frozen section diagnosis as a borderline ovarian tumor or an invasive carcinoma and we showed that one fourth of borderline ovarian tumor diagnoses are classified as “at least borderline” upon frozen section evaluation. Nearly half of these patients had ovarian cancer as a final diagnosis. Because surgical management is based upon the frozen section result, and is different for borderline tumors and ovarian cancer, this is a dilemma for both the surgeon and pathologistThe main findings with respect to low-grade serous carcinoma in The Netherlands (2000–2019) were increased annual incidence rates, increased numbers of patients with advanced stage disease, prognostic significance of the extent to which the disease could be removed during surgery, and overall relative survival rates that did not significantly change over time. Furthermore, an increasing percentage of patients started treatment with neoadjuvant chemotherapy, which is associated with worse survival compared to starting treatment with a surgical procedure
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