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Biomedical subjects

U Cortés

Publications and source records attributed to U Cortés.

8 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2006

Dynamic reasoning to solve complex problems in activated sludge processes: a step further in decision support systems.

Decision support systems (DSS) have generated high expectations as a tool to support activated sludge operation because of their ability to represent heuristic reasoning and to handle large amounts of qualitative, uncertain and low-accuracy data. Previous applications have been satisfactory to control simple problems, when static reasoning and literature-based solutions were enough. However to face complex operational problems with biological origin and slow dynamics (e.g. solids separation problems), it is necessary to use dynamic reasoning and apply long-term control strategies, monitoring the evolution of the process and adjusting the action plan according to the feed back of the process. This paper presents a dynamic reasoning DSS to face solids separation problems in the activated sludge system. The DSS is capable of identifying the complex problem affecting the process, determining if the current situation is new or a continuation from the previous one, assessing what is the specific cause of the situation, and recommending a long-term control strategy, which is daily adjusted according to the evolution of the process.

Artificial Intelligence↗
PubMed2005

BanTeC: a software tool for management of corneal transplantation.

BACKGROUND: Until recently, all cornea information at our tissue bank was managed manually, no specific database or computer tool had been implemented to provide electronic versions of documents and medical reports. The main objective of the BanTeC project was therefore to create a computerized system to integrate and classify all the information and documents used in the center in order to facilitate management of retrieved, transplanted corneal tissues. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We used the Windows platform to develop the project. Microsoft Access and Microsoft Jet Engine were used at the database level and Data Access Objects was the chosen data access technology. CONCLUSIONS: In short, the BanTeC software seeks to computerize the tissue bank. All the initial stages of the development have now been completed, from specification of needs, program design and implementation of the software components, to the total integration of the final result in the real production environment. BanTeC will allow the generation of statistical reports for analysis to improve our performance.

Corneal Transplantation↗
PubMed2005

CARREL: an internet platform for the distribution of human organs for transplantation.

BACKGROUND: Human organs for transplant from a deceased donor are presently distributed in Spain by means of manual handling and telephone or fax transmission of data. This procedure is conducted organ by organ with the information transmitted sequentially. This process has several inherent drawbacks, the main one being the long length of time to allocate organs on many occasions. A difficulty of this type could be solved by means of an electronic system of data management and transmission through the Internet. CARREL is a platform that could provide an alternative organ distribution procedure. The main objective of CARREL was to increase the efficiency, safety, rapidity, and quality of organ distribution for transplantation, thereby helping the allocation process. MATERIALS AND METHODS: CARREL is a database system, accessible through the Internet, to which any medical center authorized to perform organ transplants in Spain may subscribe. CARREL allows information share between centers, including administrative, anthropometric, immunological, analytical, and clinical data, as well as parameters concerning donor maintenance. CONCLUSIONS: CARREL is an online system that can reduce organ distribution time, directly store complete information concerning the donor, and also share data between centers. It facilitates communication between transplant coordinators at different centers, thereby improving and hastening candidate selection.

Databases, Factual↗
PubMed2005

Knowledge Discovery on Functional Disabilities: Clustering Based on Rules versus other Approaches.

In Europe senior citizens are a fast growing part of population, increasing proportion of disabled persons and that of persons with reduced quality of life. The concept of disability itself is not always precise and quantifiable. To improve agreement on it, the World Health Organization (WHO) developed the clinical test WHO Disability Assessment Schedule, (WHO-DASII) that includes physical, mental, and social well-being, as a generic measure of functioning. From the medical point of view, the purpose of this work is to extract knowledge about performance of the WHO-DASII using a sample of patients from an italian hospital.This Knowledge Discovery problem has been faced by using clustering based on rules, an hybrid AI and Statistics technique introduced by Gibert (1994), which combines some Inductive Learning (from AI) with clustering (from Statistics) to extract knowledge from certain complex domains in form of tipical profiles. In this paper, the results of applying this technique to the WHO-DASII results is presented together with a comparison of other more classical analysis approaches.

Cluster Analysis↗
PubMed2003

A knowledge-based approach to the deflocculation problem: integrating on-line, off-line, and heuristic information.

A knowledge-based approach for the supervision of the deflocculation problem in activated sludge processes was considered and successfully applied to a full-scale plant. To do that, a methodology that integrates on-line, off-line and heuristic information has been proposed. This methodology consists of three steps: (i). development of a decision tree (which involves knowledge acquisition and representation); (ii). implementation into a rule-based system; and (iii). validation. The set of symptoms most useful in diagnosing the deflocculation problem has been identified, the different branches to diagnose pin-point floc and dispersed growth have been built (using generic and specific knowledge), and all this knowledge has been codified into an object-oriented shell. The results obtained in the application of this knowledge-based approach to the Granollers WWTP (which treats about 130000 inhabitants-equivalents) showed that the system was able to identify correctly the problem with reasonable accuracy. Our positive experience building this system suggests that this approach is a practical and valuable element to include in an intelligent supervisory system combining numerical and reasoning techniques.

Artificial Intelligence↗
PubMed2003

Formalizing an electronic institution for the distribution of human tissues.

The use of multi-agent systems (MAS) in health-care domains is increasing. Such agent-mediated medical systems can manage complex tasks and have the potential to adapt gracefully to unexpected events. However, in these kinds of systems the issues of privacy, security and trust are particularly sensitive in relation to matters such as agents' access to patient records, what is acceptable behaviour for an agent in a particular role and the development of trust both between (heterogeneous) agents and between users and agents. To address these issues we propose a formal normative framework, deriving from and developing the notion of an electronic institution. Such institutions provide a framework to define and police norms that guide, control and regulate the behaviour of the heterogeneous agents that participate in the institution. These norms define the acceptable actions that each agent may perform depending on the role or roles it is playing, and clearly specifies the data it may access and/or modify in playing those roles. In this paper, we present the formalization of Carrel, a virtual organization for the procurement of organs and tissues for transplantation purposes, as an electronic institution using the ISLANDER institution specification language as formalizing languages. We demonstrate aspects of the formalization of such an institution, example fragments in the language used for the textual specification, and how such formalization can be used as a blueprint in the implementation of the final agent architecture, through techniques such as skeleton generation.

Artificial Intelligence↗
PubMed2002

A hybrid supervisory system to support WWTP operation: implementation and validation.

Integrated operation of Wastewater Treatment Plants is still far from being solved. A reasonable proposal should link advanced and robust control algorithms to some knowledge-based techniques, allocating the detailed engineering to numerical computations, while delegating the logical analysis and reasoning to supervisory intelligent systems. This paper describes the development and implementation of a knowledge-based Hybrid Supervisory System to support the operation of a real Wastewater Treatment Plant. The system integrates different reasoning modules, overcoming the limitations in the use of each single technique, while providing an agent based architecture with additional modularity and independence. It is structured into three separated levels: data gathering, diagnosis, and decision support. The different tasks of the system are performed in a seven-step cycle: data gathering and update, diagnosis, supervision, prediction, communication, actuation, and evaluation phase. In spite of certain reservations of the scientific community about the use of these techniques, the system is successfully performing real-time support to the operation of the Granollers facility since September 1999. Results of the first four-month validation period are shown and discussed. An example of the system behavior is also shown in the paper. The conclusions indicate the key steps which are necessary to transfer the system to another facility.

Algorithms↗