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According to the Sydney Declaration, "Forensic science is [… an] endeavour to study traces […] through their detection, recognition, recovery, examination and interpretation to understand anomalous events of public interest (e.g., crimes, security incidents)." This science is focused on establishing the nature and relationships among entities related to events having a potential legal impact. Entities can be (groups of) persons, objects, activities and their corresponding sources, events and traces. Although uniqueness of an entity has been traditionally accepted as a principle of forensic science, this paper argues and illustrates that such uniqueness is illusory: Not only can an entity evolve spatially and temporally, but at any specific instant, it differs from itself according to the level of precision at which it is considered. Its characteristics vary based on when, how and by whom it is perceived. We introduce the concept of fuzzy entities - defined to formally include some essential uncertainty or imprecision. The essential impreciseness and subjectivity of an entity gives a new perspective that allows us to revisit Kirk's principle of individuality and to propose to replace it with a new principle of fuzzy unicity. We believe that this new perspective has the potential to strengthen forensic science foundations and bring closer its disciplines, which is an important step towards a harmonized forensic science., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest Lionel Brocard: Research funded by the University of Lausanne. David-Olivier Jaquet-Chiffelle: Research funded by the University of Lausanne., (Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

This work proposes a formalized model, grounded in forensic science, to support a unified understanding of the Trace across scientific disciplines. The model is precisely defined in mathematical terms that reflect the dynamics of an offense as expressed in Locard's Exchange principle. Specifically, this mathematical approach represents the Trace as the modification of a Scene, subsequently perceptible, resulting from the Event under investigation. Examples are provided to illustrate how this conceptualization applies to forensic science, including DNA and digital evidence. Broader implications of this model are presented in the context of COVID-19, emphasizing the value of cohesive scientific study of the Trace. The aim of this work is to stimulate more formalized study of the Trace, both from tangible and abstract perspectives, and to strengthen forensic science as a whole., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper. Conflict of interest The authors have no conflicts of interest related to this work., (Copyright © 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Background: The rapid emergence of new psychoactive substances (NPS) is a challenge for public health authorities and law enforcement. The phenomenon is strengthened since the increase of the Internet usage. Not only used to trade NPS, the Web is an important source of information for both potential drug consumers and experienced users. Discussion forums are among these sources of information. They are meeting points for different groups of users and include a wide range of trip reports, questions and consumption tips. Since the discussions are archived over a long period, they can be used to monitor the interest of consumers for particular substances over time. This research aims at understanding the contribution of data extracted from a major online discussion forum within a systematic monitoring process., Method: Data were collected from a discussion forum (i.e. Drugs-forum). Within the sections of the forum, the titles, content of discussion, number of replies, and the date of the first discussion were crawled and stored in a dedicated database. The intensity of the discussions related to 42 substances considered as NPS was measured through an indicator allowing to assess the popularity of substances. Furthermore, the appearance of 15 substances on the forum was compared to the date of formal notification to the EU early warning system., Results: An evolution of the different classes of substances, as well as an evolution of specific substances within a class were highlighted. Some substances were discussed for a long period of time (e.g. Kratom, 25i-NBOMe, MDPV) while others were discussed very briefly (e.g. 5-MeO-DPT, NM-2AI). Out of the fifteen substances subjected to a risk assessment from the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA), nine of them appeared on the forum before or at the same time as their first date of notification to the EU early warning system., Conclusion: In line with previous research on doping products, this article shows the potential of the monitoring of online forums in the context of psychoactive substances. Besides, the system designed to collect the data is flexible and can be systematically updated to fuel a monitoring process. It informs not only on the presence/absence of a substance in discussions between consumers, but also on its evolution over time. Such results could benefit academic research and organizations studying the NPS phenomenon. Precisely, it could complement existing early warning systems and benefit law enforcement agencies and policy makers., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Background: As patients often see the data of their medical histories scattered among various medical records hosted in several health-care establishments, the purpose of our multidisciplinary study was to define a pragmatic and secure on-demand based system able to gather this information, with no risk of breaching confidentiality, and to relay it to a medical professional who asked for the information via a specific search engine., Methods: Scattered data are often heterogeneous, which makes the task of gathering information very hard. Two methods can be compared: trying to solve the problem by standardizing and centralizing all the information about every patient in a single Medical Record system or trying to use the data "as is" and find a way to obtain the most complete and the most accurate information. Given the failure of the first approach, due to the lack of standardization or privacy and security problems, for example, we propose an alternative that relies on the current state of affairs: an on-demand system, using a specific search engine that is able to retrieve information from the different medical records of a single patient., Results: We describe the function of Medical Record Search Engines (MRSE), which are able to retrieve all the available information regarding a patient who has been hospitalized in different hospitals and to provide this information to health professionals upon request. MRSEs use pseudonymized patient identities and thus never have access to the patient's identity. However, though the system would be easy to implement as it by-passes many of the difficulties associated with a centralized architecture, the health professional would have to validate the information, i.e. read all of the information and create his own synthesis and possibly reject extra data, which could be a drawback. We thus propose various feasible improvements, based on the implementation of several tools in our on-demand based system., Conclusions: A system that gathers all of the currently available information regarding a patient on the request of health-care professionals could be of great interest. This low-cost pragmatic alternative to centralized medical records could be developed quickly and easily. It could also be designed to include extra features and should thus be considered by health authorities.

Purpose: The purpose of our multidisciplinary study was to define a pragmatic and secure alternative to the creation of a national centralised medical record which could gather together the different parts of the medical record of a patient scattered in the different hospitals where he was hospitalised without any risk of breaching confidentiality., Methods: We first analyse the reasons for the failure and the dangers of centralisation (i.e. difficulty to define a European patients' identifier, to reach a common standard for the contents of the medical record, for data protection) and then propose an alternative that uses the existing available data on the basis that setting up a safe though imperfect system could be better than continuing a quest for a mythical perfect information system that we have still not found after a search that has lasted two decades., Results: We describe the functioning of Medical Record Search Engines (MRSEs), using pseudonymisation of patients' identity. The MRSE will be able to retrieve and to provide upon an MD's request all the available information concerning a patient who has been hospitalised in different hospitals without ever having access to the patient's identity. The drawback of this system is that the medical practitioner then has to read all of the information and to create his own synthesis and eventually to reject extra data., Conclusions: Faced with the difficulties and the risks of setting up a centralised medical record system, a system that gathers all of the available information concerning a patient could be of great interest. This low-cost pragmatic alternative which could be developed quickly should be taken into consideration by health authorities., (Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Through this article, we point out the unavoidable empowerment of patients with regard to their personal health record and propose the mixed management of patients' medical records. This mixed management implies sharing responsibilities between the patient and the Medical Practitioner (MP) by making patients responsible for the validation of their administrative information, and MPs responsible for the validation of their patients' medical information. We propose a solution to gather and update patients' administrative and medical data in order to reconstitute patients' medical histories accurately. This method is based on two processes. The aim of the first process is to provide patients administrative data, in order to know where and when they received care (name of the health structure or health practitioner, type of care: outpatient or inpatient). The aim of the second process is to provide patients' medical information and to validate it under the responsibility of the MP with the help of patients if needed. During these two processes, the patients' privacy will be ensured through cryptographic hash functions like the Secure Hash Algorithm, which allows the pseudonymization of patients' identities. The Medical Record Search Engine we propose will be able to retrieve and to provide upon a request formulated by the MP all the available information concerning a patient who has received care in different health structures without divulging the patient's true identity. Associated with strong traceability of all access, modifications or deletions, our method can lead to improved efficiency of personal medical record management while reinforcing the empowerment of patients over their medical records.

Through this article, we propose a mixed management of patients' medical records, so as to share responsibilities between the patient and the Medical Practitioner by making Patients responsible for the validation of their administrative information, and MPs responsible for the validation of their Patients' medical information. Our proposal can be considered a solution to the main problem faced by patients, health practitioners and the authorities, namely the gathering and updating of administrative and medical data belonging to the patient in order to accurately reconstitute a patient's medical history. This method is based on two processes. The aim of the first process is to provide a patient's administrative data, in order to know where and when the patient received care (name of the health structure or health practitioner, type of care: out patient or inpatient). The aim of the second process is to provide a patient's medical information and to validate it under the accountability of the Medical Practitioner with the help of the patient if needed. During these two processes, the patient's privacy will be ensured through cryptographic hash functions like the Secure Hash Algorithm, which allows pseudonymisation of a patient's identity. The proposed Medical Record Search Engines will be able to retrieve and to provide upon a request formulated by the Medical Practitioner all the available information concerning a patient who has received care in different health structures without divulging the patient's identity. Our method can lead to improved efficiency of personal medical record management under the mixed responsibilities of the patient and the MP.

For more than 20 years, many countries have been trying to set up a standardised medical record at the regional or at the national level. Most of them have not reached this goal, essentially due to two main difficulties related to patient identification and medical records standardisation. Moreover, the issues raised by the centralisation of all gathered medical data have to be tackled particularly in terms of security and privacy. We discuss here the interest of a non-centralised management of medical records which would require a specific procedure that gives to the patient access to his/her distributed medical data, wherever he/she is located.