CARE2X Integrated Hospital Information System

In learning we often look in turn for role models, exemplars then even some comparator or examples against which to compare and contrast to understand the context and our own knowledge, skills and potential.

In health and social care information systems it's useful for me to look at what is available in Drupal. A recent find is Care2X with a demo available. There are numerous plans to take these systems further:

 Care3g is seeking funding.

There is also Project Mtuha.

There's a post by Tim Schofield - Helping African hospitals with open source software that describes how the enterprise resource planning system KwaMoja @KwaMoja is being used to provide administration systems for hospitals in Africa.

Even though not on the same scale as commercial hospital systems in the USA and EU ... these are significant software projects compared with my purposes which are educational.

Care2X presentation

Drupal 8 An Introduction

October beckons - update PHP, Drupal and Public Health

October looks to be a busy month, at least the first half.

It's the PHPNW Conference next weekend and I'm pleased that they were able to use some copy I provided for their blog. The 2010 conf was very good and 2012 is looking a real treat.

Before then, this Wednesday evening it's the monthly NW Drupal User Group meeting also in Manchester. They are continuing the Back to Basics sessions. Since last month I've not had much time to explore and use DrupalPro. I will do before Wednesday, after the excellent input I was provided with last month it's over to me now.

Another event - and one needing a presentation is the -

Institute of Public Health: Open Conference 2012

Thursday, 11^th October 2012 at The King's Hall, Belfast. After visiting Dublin last November for the first time I'm really looking forward to this brief first trip to Northern Ireland too.

On the blog front I've deleted a service that was slowing things down. I've also reduced the total number of posts on display.

A fellow delegate and a full-time academic at the IPONS conference in Leeds earlier this month suggested that I blog less and write more. Things will go quieter here - year on year...

More to follow - for the time being!

DrupalCamp North West November 24-25 Manchester

If your are based in the North West of England, or can travel to Manchester there are plans for a DrupalCamp in November 24-25th at Media City Salford.

You can sign up for news - http://ow.ly/dvj8r.

For the next few months the North West Drupal User Group are having 'back to basics' sessions (Madlab, Manchester 1st Weds in the month). I'm really grateful to Phil who sorted VirtualBox and DrupalPro on my Macbook last Wednesday. I've been struggling with MAMP since Drupalcon in Munich, asking too much of the conference wifi and paying the price with 'MySQL server gone away' and PDO errors. DrupalPro is quite something behold.

Thanks to the NW gang, friends old and new. Before DrupalCamp there is also PHPNW 2012 to enjoy next month.

Conceptual Space Markup Language (CSML): Towards the Cognitive Semantic Web

I'll start May hopefully in tune with plans towards the month's end and attending Conceptual Spaces at Work.

The SCIENCES domain page has included Markup Languages (ML) for a great many years.

In the early versions of the h2cm website there were just two 'resource' pages. When the ongoing four page format arrived then markup languages had a place.

Looking at the programme for next month's Conceptual Spaces at Work the first session listed includes this reference:

Adams, B., Raubal, M. (2009). Conceptual Space Markup Language (CSML): Towards the Cognitive Semantic Web. ICSC '09 Proceedings of the 2009 IEEE International Conference on Semantic Computing IEEE Computer Society Washington, DC, USA.

Abstract—CSML is a semantic markup language created for the publishing and sharing of conceptual spaces, which are geometric structures that represent semantics at the conceptual level. CSML can be used to describe semantics that are not captured well by the ontology languages commonly used in the Semantic Web. Measurement of the semantic similarity of concepts as well as the combination of concepts without shared properties are common human cognitive tasks. However, these operations present sources of difficulty for tools reliant upon set-theoretic and syllogistic reasoning on symbolic ontologies. In contrast, these operations can be modeled naturally using conceptual spaces. This paper describes the design decisions behind CSML, introduces the key component elements of a CSML document, and presents examples of its usage.

This is an excellent source. CSML is a really significant development for me as Adams and Raubal highlight on the first page:

The computational foundation of the Semantic Web is the formal representation of concepts and their relationships using the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and the Web Ontology Language (OWL) variants [5], [6]. These families of languages allow one to describe semantic relationships between concepts and ontologies, which can be queried using a first-order logic reasoner. An underlying assumption to these methods is the realist approach to semantics, which states that the meanings of concepts are in the real world. That is, there is a direct mapping between language terms and the world but there is no consideration of how individuals understand concepts differently. In contrast, cognitive semantics states that the meanings of terms are cognitive structures in people’s minds. This approach is of central importance for the Semantic Web, because web services interface with human users.

This isn't excellent or significant in the sense that the emergence of CSML demonstrates h2cm as a conceptual space.

Far from it.

Here and for h2cm CSML is obviously an essential tool to examine, understand and possibly extend. Anyone for PHP and XML (Drupal)? Reading the paper, it's clear that even thinking of applying CSML to Hodges' model demands answers to difficult and yet fascinating questions that involve nursing (theory, practice and values), informatics, philosophy and some maths too.

CSML project
http://virunga.sourceforge.net/

Image source:
http://www.lucs.lu.se/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/conceptual_spaces_wordl.png

Oxford Drupal 'Education' Camp 22 - 23 June 2012

I have booked a holiday for Friday 22 June because as their website announces -
 Oxford Drupal 'Education' Camp is happening!

Venue: St Catherine’s College, Oxford.

I'm hoping to meet people from other Drupal events and specifically from Drupalcamp Cambridge. Although Drupal is far from a dedicated educational platform - either for authoring materials and managing learners / learning - there are many contributed modules that can be adapted and extended.

One of the three papers mentioned last week will be published by an online journal in June. News of the other two must wait, one is an end-of-year prospect. Although an abstract and preparation for the ICN Congress (if accepted!) is a non trivial undertaking, further writing must fit in with future web developments. This Drupalcamp will help bring several threads together.