Skip to main content

Advertisement

Log in

A Decision Support System for Preventing Legionella Disease

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Journal of Medical Systems Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Information systems plays an important role in medicine because it helps process more data more efficiently while providing access to more people in different parts of the world. In this research we analyzed the data of legionella pneumophila and other legionella species collected by the public hygiene center (PHC). PHC collected 7,211 water samples from different sources of different locations in different cities in Turkey from year 1995 to 2008. The main goal of this research is to develop a conceptual framework for preventing disease and to design a medical decision support system to help administration assessing the risk of Legionnaires’ disease and preventing the outbreaks of the disease. The DSS involves SOM software which was programmed with C# to search for patterns and similarities in data sets by producing SOM risk maps. Thus administrators can decide where to monitor cautiously to prevent the disease.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4
Fig. 5
Fig. 6
Fig. 7

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Bartram, J., Chartier, Y., Lee, J. V., Pond, K., and Surman-Lee, S., Legionella and the prevention of legionellosis. World Health Organization Press, Geneva, Switzerland, 252 p. http://www.who.int/entity/water_sanitation_health/emerging/legionella.pdf

  2. Stout, J., Preventing Legionellosis. ASHRAE J. 49:58–62, 2007.

    Google Scholar 

  3. Sabria, M., Environmental cultures and hospital-acquired Legionnaires’ disease. A 5-year prospective study in 20 hospitals in Catalonia, Spain. Infect. Control Hosp. Epidemiol. 25:1072–1076, 2004. doi:10.1086/502346.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Squier, C., A proactive approach to prevention of healthcare-acquired Legionnaires’ disease: the Allegheny County (Pittsburgh) experience. Am. J. Infect. Control. 33(6):360–367, 2005. doi:10.1016/j.ajic.2005.01.012.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. Sprague, R. H., and Carlson, E. D., Building effective decision support systems. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, p. 304, 1982.

    Google Scholar 

  6. Sprague, Jr., and Hugh, J. W., Decision support systems: putting theory. Prentice Hall: Englewood Cliffs, NJ., 1986.

  7. Perreault, L., and Metzger, J. B., A Pragmatic framework for decision support. J. Healthc. Inf. Manag. 13(2):5–22, 1999.

    Google Scholar 

  8. Rahimi, B., and Vimarlund, V., Methods to evaluate health information systems in healthcare settings: a literature review. J. Med. Syst. 31:397–432, 2007. doi:10.1007/s10916-007-9082-z.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  9. Short, D., Frischer, M., and Bashford, J., The development and evaluation of a computerised decision support system for primary care based upon ‘Patient Profile Decision Analysis’. Inform. Prim. Care. 11:195–202, 2003.

    Google Scholar 

  10. Ruland, C. M., White, T., Stevens, M., Fanciullo, G., and Khilani, S. M., Effects of a computerized system to support shared decision making in symptom management of cancer patients: preliminary results. J. Am. Med. Inform. Assoc. 10:573–579, 2003. doi:10.1197/jamia.M1365.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Bogucki, B., Jacobs, B. R., and Hingle, J., Computerized reminders reduce the use of medications during shortages. J. Am. Med. Inform. Assoc. 11:278–280, 2004. doi:10.1197/jamia.M1531.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Kohonen, T., Self-organizing maps, 3rd edition. Springer, Berlin, 2001.

    MATH  Google Scholar 

  13. Vercauteren, L., Sieben, G., Praet, M., Otte, G., Vingerhoeds, R., Boullart, L., Calliauw, L., and Roels, H., The classification of brain tumours by a topological map. Proceedings of the International Neural Networks Conference, Paris, France, pp. 387–391, 1990.

  14. Pan, H. L., and Chen, Y. C., Liver tissues classification by artificial neural networks. Pattern Recogn. Lett. 13:355–368, 1992. doi:10.1016/0167-8655(92)90033-V.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Patel, D., Hannah, I., and Davies, E. R., Texture analysis for foreign object detection using a single layer neural network. IEEE World Congr. Comput. Intell. 7:4265–4268, 1994.

    Google Scholar 

  16. Cios, K. J., Goodenday, L. S., Merhi, M., and Langenderfer, R. A., Neural networks in detection of coronary artery disease. Computers in Cardiology Conference, Jerusalem, 1989. IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos, CA, USA, pp. 33–37, 1990.

    Google Scholar 

  17. Barbaree, J. M., Breiman, R. F., and Dufour, R. F., Legionella current status and emerging perspectives, 2nd edn. American Society for Microbiology: Washington, DC, USA, 1993.

  18. Şensoy, S., and Ulupınar, Y., 2008, İklim Sınıflandırmaları, Devlet Meteoroloji İşleri Genel Müdürlüğü, Ankara, Türkiye. http://www.dmi.gov.tr/files/iklim/iklim_siniflandirmalari.pdf

Download references

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Çukurova University Scientific Research Projects Fund with project number MMF2007YL38. We are most grateful for Dr. M. Ertek and Dr. E. Akbaş in sharing their data with us.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Oya H. Yüregir.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Yüregir, O.H., Oral, M. & Kalan, O. A Decision Support System for Preventing Legionella Disease. J Med Syst 34, 875–881 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-009-9302-9

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10916-009-9302-9

Keywords

Navigation