No Arabic abstract
Secure and privacy-preserving management of Personal Health Records (PHRs) has proved to be a major challenge in modern healthcare. Current solutions generally do not offer patients a choice in where the data is actually stored and also rely on at least one fully trusted element that patients must also trust with their data. In this work, we present the Health Access Broker (HAB), a patient-controlled service for secure PHR sharing that (a) does not impose a specific storage location (uniquely for a PHR system), and (b) does not assume any of its components to be fully secure against adversarial threats. Instead, HAB introduces a novel auditing and intrusion-detection mechanism where its workflow is securely logged and continuously inspected to provide auditability of data access and quickly detect any intrusions.
Large-scale national level Personal Health Record (PHR) has been implemented in Australia. However, usability, data quality and poor functionalities have resulted in low utility affecting enrollment and participation rates by both patients and clinicians alike. Development of new applications deriving secondary utility of data can enhance use of PHRs but there is limited understanding on processes involved in development of third-party applications with nationally run PHRs. This paper prsents an analysis of processes and regulatory requirements for developing applications of data from My Health Record, Australian nationally run PHR and subsequently implementation of a patient oriented software application using data sourced from My Health Record.
In recent years, we have witnessed an increased interest in temporal modeling of patient records from large scale Electronic Health Records (EHR). While simpler RNN models have been used for such problems, memory networks, which in other domains were found to generalize well, are underutilized. Traditional memory networks involve diffused and non-linear operations where influence of past events on outputs are not readily quantifiable. We posit that this lack of interpretability makes such networks not applicable for EHR analysis. While networks with explicit memory have been proposed recently, the discontinuities imposed by the discrete operations make such networks harder to train and require more supervision. The problem is further exacerbated in the limited data setting of EHR studies. In this paper, we propose a novel memory architecture that is more interpretable than traditional memory networks while being easier to train than explicit memory banks. Inspired by well-known models of human cognition, we propose partitioning the external memory space into (a) a primary explicit memory block to store exact replicas of recent events to support interpretations, followed by (b) a secondary blurred memory block that accumulates salient aspects of past events dropped from the explicit block as higher level abstractions and allow training with less supervision by stabilize the gradients. We apply the model for 3 learning problems on ICU records from the MIMIC III database spanning millions of data points. Our model performs comparably to the state-of the art while also, crucially, enabling ready interpretation of the results.
Patient representation learning refers to learning a dense mathematical representation of a patient that encodes meaningful information from Electronic Health Records (EHRs). This is generally performed using advanced deep learning methods. This study presents a systematic review of this field and provides both qualitative and quantitative analyses from a methodological perspective. We identified studies developing patient representations from EHRs with deep learning methods from MEDLINE, EMBASE, Scopus, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Digital Library, and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Xplore Digital Library. After screening 363 articles, 49 papers were included for a comprehensive data collection. We noticed a typical workflow starting with feeding raw data, applying deep learning models, and ending with clinical outcome predictions as evaluations of the learned representations. Specifically, learning representations from structured EHR data was dominant (37 out of 49 studies). Recurrent Neural Networks were widely applied as the deep learning architecture (LSTM: 13 studies, GRU: 11 studies). Disease prediction was the most common application and evaluation (31 studies). Benchmark datasets were mostly unavailable (28 studies) due to privacy concerns of EHR data, and code availability was assured in 20 studies. We show the importance and feasibility of learning comprehensive representations of patient EHR data through a systematic review. Advances in patient representation learning techniques will be essential for powering patient-level EHR analyses. Future work will still be devoted to leveraging the richness and potential of available EHR data. Knowledge distillation and advanced learning techniques will be exploited to assist the capability of learning patient representation further.
We conducted a survey of 67 graduate students enrolled in the Privacy and Security in Healthcare course at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis. This was done to measure user preference and their understanding of usability and security of three different Electronic Health Records authentication methods: single authentication method (username and password), Single sign-on with Central Authentication Service (CAS) authentication method, and a bio-capsule facial authentication method. This research aims to explore the relationship between security and usability, and measure the effect of perceived security on usability in these three aforementioned authentication methods. We developed a formative-formative Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) model to measure the relationship between the latent variables of Usability, and Security. The measurement model was developed using five observed variables (measures). - Efficiency and Effectiveness, Satisfaction, Preference, Concerns, and Confidence. The results obtained highlight the importance and impact of these measures on the latent variables and the relationship among the latent variables. From the PLS-SEM analysis, it was found that security has a positive impact on usability for Single sign-on and bio-capsule facial authentication methods. We conclude that the facial authentication method was the most secure and usable among the three authentication methods. Further, descriptive analysis was done to draw out the interesting findings from the survey regarding the observed variables.
Traditionally, the regime of mental healthcare has followed an episodic psychotherapy model wherein patients seek care from a provider through a prescribed treatment plan developed over multiple provider visits. Recent advances in wearable and mobile technology have generated increased interest in digital mental healthcare that enables individuals to address episodic mental health symptoms. However, these efforts are typically reactive and symptom-focused and do not provide comprehensive, wrap-around, customized treatments that capture an individuals holistic mental health model as it unfolds over time. Recognizing that each individual is unique, we present the notion of Personalized Mental Health Navigation (MHN): a therapist-in-the-loop, cybernetic goal-based system that deploys a continuous cyclic loop of measurement, estimation, guidance, to steer the individuals mental health state towards a healthy zone. We outline the major components of MHN that is premised on the development of an individuals personal mental health state, holistically represented by a high-dimensional cover of multiple knowledge layers such as emotion, biological patterns, sociology, behavior, and cognition. We demonstrate the feasibility of the personalized MHN approach via a 12-month pilot case study for holistic stress management in college students and highlight an instance of a therapist-in-the-loop intervention using MHN for monitoring, estimating, and proactively addressing moderately severe depression over a sustained period of time. We believe MHN paves the way to transform mental healthcare from the current passive, episodic, reactive process (where individuals seek help to address symptoms that have already manifested) to a continuous and navigational paradigm that leverages a personalized model of the individual, promising to deliver timely interventions to individuals in a holistic manner.