Tech Portfolio

Researcher: Prof. Mor Peleg

Background

Clinical practice guidelines provide evidence-based recommendations on how to manage disease. They aim to increase the quality of care, reduce unjustified practice variation, and save costs. In order for them to be effective, clinical guidelines need to be integrated with the care flow and provide patient-specific advice when and where needed. As such, representing the guidelines in a computer-interpretable format enables use of a decision-support system that is based on guideline knowledge paired with electronic patient data. Such a system can provide patient-specific and personalized recommendations to clinicians and patients anytime, anywhere.

Computer-interpretable clinical guidelines (CIGs)
Prof. Mor Peleg, associate professor at the University of Haifa’s Department of Information Systems, uses task-network models to represent the logic of clinical guidelines. The computer-interpretable clinical guidelines (CIGs) use arguments for and against decision candidates (e.g., possible interventions or tests); and an informed decision about indicated candidates is assisted by instantiating the models for particular patients (against their electronic health records). Data is supplemented with ontologies that define relationships between classes of diseases and drugs, which may suggest ways to augment guideline knowledge.
Prof. Peleg is applying these models to develop mobile applications for patients that link CIGs to various data sources, such as hospital health records and wearable sensors.

More about this work can be found at: Mor Peleg. Computer-interpretable Clinical Guidelines: a Methodological Review. Journal of Biomedical Informatics Vol. 46 No. 4, pp. 744–763, 2013.

For more recent work please see: http://mis.hevra.haifa.ac.il/~morpeleg/

Research Status

Currently, Prof. Peleg is working on CIG-related research:
• Integrating recommendations derived from different CIGs that apply to patients with multi-morbidities, to detect and mitigate interactions using a goal-based approach
• Increasing patient compliance for behavioral change, using psychological interventions and behavioral economics incentives
• Personalization of CIGs for patients
• Mobile health applications of CIGs designed to involve and empower patients to self-manage their health
• Mining evidence from patient-reported outcomes
• Learning how to evolve guideline recommendations by mining data on patient treatments and outcomes
• Combining argumentation-based reasoning with OWL-based inference

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Related pages

Mor Peleg, Prof. - researcher page

Dr. Joel Lanir

Background

The Human-Computer Interaction and Visualization Lab, headed by Dr. Joel Lanir at the University of Haifa, deals with a wide variety of research areas in the broader field of human-computer interaction. The lab focuses on researching the design, implementation and evaluation of novel technologies, as well as on the study and understanding of how technologies affect human behavior.

Human-Computer Interaction and Data Visualization
Dr. Joel Lanir, head of the Human-Computer Interaction and Visualization Lab, researches a variety of topics related to human-computer interaction (HCI) and information visualization. In HCI, he examines novel mobile interaction techniques as well as context-aware computing. In information visualization, he examines ways to visualize complex data in a visual analytics process that involves a human analyzer interacting with a visualization system in order to be able to find various insights such as temporal trends and predictions.
Dr. Lanir is an expert in user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) design, as well as in the evaluation of interactive computing systems.
Research Status
Current projects headed by Dr. Lanir at the Human-Computer Interaction and Visualization Lab include:

• Examining how to visualize real-time, temporal, multidimensional information in order to find patterns that change over time and predict trends. For example: extracting news events from multiple news sources and Tweets, and visualizing the evolution of the event over time, showing temporal, geographical, theme and sentiment information.
• Augmented reality (AR) in context-aware environments: The team is examining how to build usable AR interfaces according to human social norms. The initial project looks at how to design and use an AR mobile museum guide in a smart IoT-based museum (where exhibits are equipped with sensors). The AR guide will provide the visitors with contextual information, according to their location and interests, by drawing information from the sensors around. This project is based on previous work done in the University of Haifa’s Hecht Museum.
• Technology and cultural heritage: Examining how to design and evaluate novel technology at cultural heritage sites to enhance visitor experience.

Applications
View projects being developed at the Human-Computer Interaction and Visualization Lab here.
• Augmented reality for older adults
• Understanding museum visitor behavior
• Composite indicator (CI) visualization
• DynamicMaps - a novel system for browsing through a very large set of images according to similarity
• Evaluation of spatio-temporal visualizations
• Understanding feet interaction – examining how foot interaction can serve users in controlling and interacting with technological devices
• Context-aware computing at the museum
• TeleAdvisor - allowing a remote expert to naturally guide a local user in need of assistance in carrying out physical tasks around real-world objects
• The role of emotions in image seeking
• MultiPresenter – examining how to design presentation software for very large surfaces or multiple screens

Related pages

Joel Lanir, Dr.  

Human-Computer Interaction and Data Visualization Lab's website

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Linking systems engineering with human behavior theory

Researcher : Dr. Ofer Arazy

Background

New collaborative possibilities afforded by the internet allow groups of individuals to share information, self-organize, and co-create information-based goods. Given that interactions in such settings are technology-mediated, all communications, events and co-creation activities are recorded in system logs. Mining these system logs could reveal deep insights about collective behavior, inform the administrators of such a collaboration system, and help designers improve the technology platform.

Open Online Collaboration: From System Logs to Behavioral Insights
Prof. Ofer Arazy of the University of Haifa's Department of Information Systems researches computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW) and knowledge management. His research aims to link the area of information systems engineering with theories of human behavior from fields such as linguistics, psychology and sociology. This linkage is bi-directional. First, understanding human behavior could help guide the design of information technologies (IT); and second, an understanding of IT’s capabilities could guide novel organizational forms and processes. The project is motivated by these two perspectives for linking systems engineering with human behavior theory.

Research Status
In particular, Prof. Arazy’s research of social media and the Internet of Things (IoT) involves the analysis of data from both humans and sensors (e.g., motion-triggered cameras) to detect meaningful patterns of behavior, and interpret those patterns in light of behavioral theories.

He has been employing this approach to study online production communities (e.g., Wikipedia, open source software development) and citizen science projects (e.g., volunteer-based environmental monitoring). For example, he has investigated topics such as users’ motivations, participation trajectories, the communities' role structures, quality control procedures, and community-based governance.

Potential Applications

Synthesis of Social and Technological Systems

• Smart cities ̶ involving citizens in city-level reporting and decision making
• Citizen participation in environmental projects (e.g., monitoring nature data)
• Crowdsourcing, collective intelligence, and prediction markets
• Community-based peer-production (e.g., open source software development)
 Additional areas:

• Transportation
• Health (e.g., monitoring the speared of epidemics using social media)
• Innovation markets & open innovation

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Related pages

Ofer Arazy, Prof. - Researcher page