A integração e a troca de informação na Web é uma necessidade reconhecida no mundo atual nos mais diversos domínios de aplicação. A Web constitui hoje o principal meio de acesso a informações, disponibilizando várias formas de acesso a esse conteúdo. No entanto, disponibilizar essa informação de forma integrada para o usuário ainda é um desafio. O Serviço Web Semântico é uma tecnologia de Inteligência Artificial promissora a qual pode contribuir significativamente com o processo de integração tanto de dados como de processos disponíveis em portais Web. O objetivo do presente trabalho é realizar a integração das diferentes funcionalidades oferecidas por portais disponibilizados na Web, fazendo uso de ontologias de domínio através de Serviços Web Semânticos. Para alcançar o objetivo proposto, um sistema de busca e integração, denominado W-KIS, foi projetado e desenvolvido, fornecendo uma visão unificada e transparente ao usuário de toda informação disponível em um determinado número de portais Web, contextualizados a um domínio de aplicação específico. Dois domínios de aplicação foram explorados neste trabalho através de dois estudos de caso: a Biomedicina e a Geologia, cada um fornecendo sua própria ontologia de domínio. Serviços Web Semânticos foram desenvolvidos para encapsular portais Web em ambos os domínios, permitindo ao sistema realizar a integração em cada domínio, separadamente. A aplicação proposta foi validada através da avaliação de sua atuação em ambos os domínios, além de testes com usuários finais e comparações com outras abordagens para integração na Web e motores de busca tradicionais. Através da utilização de Serviços Web Semânticos, W-KIS é capaz de localizar e executar os serviços de forma automática, além de lidar com a heterogeneidade semântica entre as fontes de informação por meio das ontologias de domínio. Desta forma, o sistema fornece apenas informação contextualizada ao interesse do usuário. / Integration and exchange of information across the Internet is a universally recognized need, in a wide variety of domains. Nowadays, the Web is the main source of information, providing many ways to access this content. However, making this information available to the user in an integrated way is still a challenge. New promising application fields such as Semantic Web Services can improve the integration process of data and processes available in Web portals. The goal of the present research is to accomplish the integration of the different functionalities offered by portals available in the Web, making use of domain ontologies through Semantic Web Services. In order to achieve the proposed goal, a search and integration system, named W-KIS, was designed and developed. The system provides the user with a unified and transparent view of the whole information available in a number of Web portals, related to a specific application domain. Two application domains were explored in this work through two case studies: the Biomedicine and the Geology, each one providing its own domain ontology. Semantic Web Services were designed to encapsulate Web portals in both domains, allowing the system to accomplish the integration in each domain, separately. The application proposed in this project was validated through the evaluation of its behavior in both domains, besides other tests with final users and comparisons with other approaches for integration in the Web, and traditional search engines. Making use of Semantic Web Services, W-KIS is able to find and execute the services in an automatic way, besides dealing with the semantic heterogeneity in the information sources by means of domain ontologies. This way, the system provides the user with information contextualized to its interest.

Abstract Information integration – sharing of pertinent information between supply chain members – is vital to cope with the uncertainty and complexity embedded in service supply chains. The aim of this study is to understand the meaning, constituents, extent, and development means of information integration in service supply chain context. The research approach is abductive, emphasising the constant interplay between theory development and empirical observations. Analysis on a single case supply chain consisting of two types of maintenance service providers and a large steel manufacturer as the focal company is provided. A comprehensive conceptual framework for analysing and developing information integration in service supply chain is presented and applied in the case supply chain. Extent of integration is described through three levels of integration. Six information integration elements are used to define the levels: processes and activities, information technology use, information attributes, information sharing practices, collaborative foundation, and time-related issues. Service/market characteristics and supply chain relationship characteristics are deployed in explaining the differences in levels of integration. Depending on the level of integration, the performance effects sought and achieved through developing information integration range from operational to strategic level. Adopting a more structured approach to information integration in the case supply chain is suggested to address development areas in information sharing and improve performance. This can be implemented through a shared centralised maintenance information system, common procedures for information sharing, and commitment of supply chain actors. The framework in this study offers guidelines for choosing the appropriate level of integration in a service supply chain dyad. It shows that the special characteristics of service context can be deployed in designing and managing service supply chains. Service providers should be integrated to the supply chain just like other supply chain members, as it contributes to the supply chain performance. Differentiating the level of integration in service supply chain dyads within a supply chain based on the contextual setting is recommended. This study paves the way for better understanding and control of service supply chain links and contributes to the scarce empirical research on service supply chains.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Physicians receive multiple CCDs for a single patient encompassing various encounters and medical history recorded in different information systems. It is cumbersome for providers to explore different pages of CCDs to find specific data which can be duplicated or even conflicted. This study describes the steps towards a system that integrates multiple CCDs into one consolidated document for viewing or processing patient-level data. Also, the impact of the system on healthcare providers’ perceived workload is evaluated. A modular system is developed to consolidate and de-duplicate CDA-based documents. The system is engineered to be scalable, extensible and open source. The system’s performance and output has evaluated first based on synthesized data and later based on real-world CCDs obtained from INPC database. The accuracy of the consolidation system along with the gaps in identification of the duplications were assessed. Finally, the impact of the system on healthcare providers’ workload is evaluated using NASA TLX tool. All of the synthesized CCDs were successfully consolidated, and no data were lost. The de-duplication accuracy was 100% based on synthesized data and the processing time for each document was 1.12 seconds. For real-world CCDs, our system de-duplicated 99.1% of the problems, 87.0% of allergies, and 91.7% of medications. Although the accuracy of the system is still very promising, however, there is a minor inaccuracy. Due to system improvements, the processing time for each document is reduced to average 0.38 seconds for each CCD. The result of NASA TLX evaluation shows that the system significantly decreases healthcare providers’ perceived workload. Also, it is observed that information reconciliation reduces the medical errors. The time for review of medical documents review time is significantly reduced after CCD consolidation. Given increasing adoption and use of Health Information Exchange (HIE) to share data and information across the care continuum, duplication of information is inevitable. A novel system designed to support automated consolidation and de-duplication of information across clinical documents as they are exchanged shows promise. Future work is needed to expand the capabilities of the system and further test it using heterogeneous vocabularies across multiple HIE scenarios.

The focus of this study was to investigate how a spatial interface can be effectively utilized to support information presentation and information integration via human-centric data visualization, leading to decreased cognitive load, more accurate situation awareness, and subsequently, improved task performance. In high tempo, information intensive environments like those managed by an emergency operations center (EOC), information organization tools are essential. Though users can be trained to use conventional email software applications efficiently, the constraints of the information management paradigms inherent to conventional systems may limit a user's ability to gather context and create an accurate picture of the situation. It is possible that new data visualization techniques and information management paradigms may improve a user's performance far beyond these limits. To address these issues, theories regarding information management, cognitive workload and data visualization paradigms were explored and applied to create a software prototype spatial interface. This study focused on how an individual member of an EOC would need to collect and organize incoming incident reports (e.g., emails) for the purpose of quick analysis and integration. The operator then used this information to build a picture of the event or events taking place in their sphere of influence. Performance metrics were applied to determine whether or not an individual could perform faster and more accurately with the Incident Report Visual Organizer (IRVO) prototype software interface as opposed to a conventional interface (Microsoft Outlook). The findings from this exploratory evaluation are discussed, as well as the potential implications of utilizing spatial interfaces to manage information in dynamic environments.

Yes / Background: The increasing prevalence and associated cost of treating chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is unsustainable. Health care organizations are focusing on ways to support self-management and prevent hospital admissions, including telehealth-monitoring services capturing physiological and health status data. This paper reports on data captured during a pilot randomized controlled trial of telehealth-supported care within a community-based service for patients discharged from hospital following an exacerbation of their COPD. Objective: The aim was to undertake the first analysis of system data to determine whether telehealth monitoring can identify an exacerbation of COPD, providing clinicians with an opportunity to intervene with timely treatment and prevent hospital readmission. Methods: A total of 23 participants received a telehealth-supported intervention. This paper reports on the analysis of data from a telehealth monitoring system that captured data from two sources: (1) data uploaded both manually and using Bluetooth peripheral devices by the 23 participants and (2) clinical records entered as nursing notes by the clinicians. Rules embedded in the telehealth monitoring system triggered system alerts to be reviewed by remote clinicians who determined whether clinical intervention was required. We also analyzed data on the frequency and length (bed days) of hospital admissions, frequency of hospital Accident and Emergency visits that did not lead to hospital admission, and frequency and type of community health care service contacts—other than the COPD discharge service—for all participants for the duration of the intervention and 6 months postintervention. Results: Patients generated 512 alerts, 451 of which occurred during the first 42 days that all participants used the equipment. Patients generated fewer alerts over time with typically seven alerts per day within the first 10 days and four alerts per day thereafter. They also had three times more days without alerts than with alerts. Alerts were most commonly triggered by reports of being more tired, having difficulty with self-care, and blood pressure being out of range. During the 8-week intervention, and for 6-month follow-up, eight of the 23 patients were hospitalized. Hospital readmission rates (2/23, 9%) in the first 28 days of service were lower than the 20% UK norm. Conclusions: It seems that the clinical team can identify exacerbations based on both an increase in alerts and the types of system-generated alerts as evidenced by their efforts to provided treatment interventions. There was some indication that telehealth monitoring potentially delayed hospitalizations until after patients had been discharged from the service. We suggest that telehealth-supported care can fulfill an important role in enabling patients with COPD to better manage their condition and remain out of hospital, but adequate resourcing and timely response to alerts is a critical factor in supporting patients to remain at home. / This project was funded by the National Institute for Health Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research and Care Yorkshire and Humber (CLAHRC YH).

In this dissertation I use a Unified Relationship Matrix (URM) to represent a set of heterogeneous data objects and their inter-relationships. I argue that integrated and iterative computations over the Unified Relationship Matrix can help overcome the data sparseness problem (a common situation in various information application scenarios), and detect latent relationships (such as latent term associations discovered by LSI) among heterogeneous data objects. Thus, this kind of computation can be used to improve the quality of various information applications that require combining information from heterogeneous data sources. To support the argument, I further develop a unified link analysis algorithm, the Link Fusion algorithm, and a unified similarity-calculating algorithm, the SimFusion algorithm. Both algorithms attempt to better integrate information from heterogeneous sources by iteratively computing over the Unified Relationship Matrix in order to calculate some specific property of data object(s); such as the importance of a data object (as in the Link Fusion algorithm) and the similarity between a pair of data objects (as in the SimFusion algorithm). Then, I develop two set of experiments on real-world datasets to investigate whether the algorithms proposed in this dissertation can better integrate information from multiple sources. The performance of the algorithms is compared to that of traditional link analysis and similarity-calculating algorithms. Experimental results show that the algorithms developed can significantly outperform the traditional link analysis and similarity-calculating algorithms. I further investigate various pruning technologies aiming at improving efficiency and investigating the scalability of the algorithms designed. Experimental results showed that pruning technology can effectively be used to improve the efficiency of the algorithms. / Ph. D.

Percevoir la douleur d’autrui présente des intérêts considérables, autant pour la personne qui exprime une douleur, que pour la personne qui y fait face. A ce jour, l’évaluation de la douleur d’autrui demeure sous-estimée. Il apparait donc nécessaire d’approfondir la connaissance des déterminants de l’évaluation de la douleur d’autrui. Ce travail doctoral s’intéresse à l’évaluation, par des observateurs, des comportements prototypiques émis par les personnes qui ressentent des douleurs. Dans un premier temps, il examine dans quelle mesure les observateurs s’appuient sur des comportements particuliers (i.e., comportements de communication : expressions faciales et paraverbales, et de comportements de protection : cinématiques lombopelviennes et boiterie d’esquive) lorsqu’ils doivent juger l’intensité de la douleur d’autrui. Les contributions de l’expertise clinique et de la familiarité avec la douleur y sont examinées. Dans un deuxième temps, il interroge la contribution des traits de personnalité du Big Five dans la réponse sociale à la douleur d’autrui. Les résultats montrent que lorsqu’il s’agit d’estimer l’intensité de la douleur lombaire d’autrui, les expressions faciales de la douleur priment sur les cinématiques lombopelviennes (étude 1). Toutefois, lorsqu’il s’agit d’évaluer l’intensité de la douleur podale d’autrui, l’expression paraverbale de douleur ne prime pas sur les comportements de boiterie (étude 2). Les études 1 et 2 ne font pas émerger de consensus relatif aux règles d’intégration utilisées par les observateurs. Par ailleurs, le caractère consciencieux (études 3 et 4), l’agréabilité (étude 3) et le névrosisme (étude 4) contribuent à la réponse sociale à la douleur d’autrui. La contribution de ces trois traits s’exprimerait à un niveau contrôlé, i.e., top-down (étude 5). Les résultats des études menées sont susceptibles d’enrichir le Modèle de la Communication de la Douleur et étendent le champ d’application des traits de personnalité du Big Five. / Recognizing and interpreting other’s pain can be of great importance to the person in pain as well as to the person witnessing the other’s distress. According to recent studies other’s pain remains underestimated. Thus, it appears necessary to better understand the knowledge of variables that contribute to other’s pain assessement. On one hand, this doctoral project aimed at determining if observers rely more on communicative than on protective pain behaviors (facial and paraverbal expressions) when estimating other’s pain. It also questioned how observers integrate information from pain behaviors. On the other hand, the contribution of Big Five personality trait in the social response to other’s pain has been examined. When assessing low back pain, observers particularly relied on facial expression than on lumbopelvic kinematics (study 1). Nevertheless, when estimating heel pain, paraverbal expression did not contribute more than limping behaviors to observers’ pain estimates (study 2). No concensus has emerged regarding the way observers integrated information from the different pain behaviors (studies 1 and 2). In addition, conscientiousness (studies 3 and 4), agreableness (study 3), and neuroticism (study 4) contributed to the social response to other’s pain. The contribution of these traits seems to be driven by top-down processes (study 5). These results are likely to expand the communication model of pain, and the contribution of Big Five personality traits.

Business Administration, Business Process & Supply Chain Management, Degree Project (master), 15 higher education credits, 4FE06E, Spring 2013 Authors: Doruntina Pacarizi and Ya-Hui Hsu Tutor: Petra Andersson Title: Conflicting Goal and its Impact on the Level of Supply Chain Integration between Supply Chain Partners in the Automotive Industry – From Manufacturing SME’s Perspective Background: Supply chain integration assists SMEs to improve their operational performance, however the existing theories in supply chain integration are mostly from the LEs perspective. Therefore this thesis chose to focus on the level of supply chain integration from manufacturing SMEs perspective. Nevertheless supply chain integration is not simple due to conflicting goal, which exists between supply chain partners. Based on previous knowledge, the level of supply chain integration is affected by conflicting goal, which exits between supply chain partners. We believe that this is based on how the conflicting goal has been managed. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to obtain an understanding if the level of integration in the automotive industry between the manufacturing SME and its customer is affected by how the conflicting has been managed. Method: This thesis is a multiple case study and was conducted with a deductive approach. The empirical findings were gathered through qualitative interviews with semi-structured interview guides. Conclusions: The conclusions of this thesis are that the level of supply chain integration, which exists between manufacturing SME and its customer, is low/medium. Furthermore, the conflicting goal, which exists between these partners, are that the demand of delivery and volume flexibility, storage flexibility, demand of quality level and the relatively high manufacturing complexity as well as downstream complexity. Finally, the result of this thesis shows that the level of supply chain integration is affected by how the conflicting goal has been managed.

Background: In the past, enterprises had no recognition of information integration and operated as independent units within a chain. As a result, most of the firms throughout the supply chain faced inadequate information sharing, lack of collaboration, and absence of compatible IT infrastructure. Theses three elements play a crucial role in information integration that assists companies’ goal congruence. In a highly competitive market, companies from different industries take these three elements into consideration in order to synchronize their activities. Nowadays, transportation industry plays a crucial role in all developed countries in order to fulfill the customer’s needs and act as a connection between manufacturers and consumers. Intermodal freight transportation is one of the elements of transportation industry that includes two main players - freight company and terminal operator. In this respect, it is essential to review theoretical framework and explore the practice of information integration within intermodal freight transportation. Hence, this study carries an investigation on information integration in accordance with theoretical framework from the perspective of the dyad that includes a freight company and a terminal operator. Purpose: The research defines the level of information integration within intermodal freight transportation. A freight company and a terminal operator are the players studied in this research. Three elements of information integration, which are collaboration, information sharing, and IT implementation and adaptation, are investigated in order to identify the level of information integration. The main objective is to understand the information integration and its level within the industry from a dyadic perspective. Method: This research is conducted from a positivist scientific perspective along with qualitative research method and deductive approach. The authors conduct the embedded multiple-case study with a dyadic perspective. In this context, the freight companies and terminal operators are the studied players within this research. In order to gather the empirical data, semi- structured interviews are conducted via telephone and email. Empirical data is analyzed by utilizing two different methods, which are within-case and cross-case analysis. Furthermore, ethical issues are considered in this research, based upon trustworthiness and accuracy. Result and Conclusions: The conclusion of this research is based upon within and cross case analysis. Three studied dyads have shown the same result of medium level, while one dyad has demonstrated high level of information integration. In this regard, each dyad has been rated separately in accordance with the theoretical framework that provides scale with low, medium and high levels regarding collaboration, information sharing, and IT implementation and adaptation in order to find the level of information integration. From the dyadic perspective and with help of cross case analysis, the level of information integration regarding the whole research population is defined at medium level. It is remarkable that obtained results, in accordance with the theoretical framework, are different from the companies’ representatives’ perception of information integration.

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