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The contents and distribution of radionuclides in activated metallic wastes are major concerns while designing a leaching model in a safety case. This study investigated 60Co as a typical activation product in the lower tie plate (i.e., stainless steel endpiece of BWR fuel assembly) irradiated for 35.0 GWd/tHM burnup, using the imaging plate (IP) method. The activation calculations coupled with the Monte Carlo burnup and neutron transport calculation code (MCNP-BURN2) were also performed based on the burnup and operation conditions. The Co impurity content in the irradiated tie plate was obtained and used as an input to MCNP-BURN2. The IP method results showed that the intensity of photostimulated luminescence decreased with increasing distance from the top (near fuels) to bottom. This trend was consistent with that exhibited by MCNP-BURN2.Therefore, the simulations allowed us to model the three-dimensional radionuclide distribution within the tie plate. Graphical abstract Distribution of 60Co in the irradiated lower tie plate. Left shows the vertical distribution comparing the measurements and the MCNP-BURN2 results. Right represents the 3D model of 60Co distribution in the lower tie plate.

Background: There are limited data on the prevalence and burden of severe eosinophilic asthma (SEA) both in Japan and globally. This study aimed to assess the prevalence and burden of SEA i...

UNSTRUCTURED There is a consensus among researchers and practitioners recognizing that the use of artificial intelligence (AI)-based tools can provide high benefits in addition to having significant impacts not only on the practice of medicine but also on medical training and education. At the same time, although the development of AI-based tools is progressing rapidly in the field of medicine, their implementation in clinical care practice situations has not yet become a generalized reality. This situation is partially due to the paucity of knowledge related to their implementation practices. Hence, investigating AI-based tool implementation best practices is crucial not only for their acceptance by the main stakeholders, but also for generating the expected benefits. Consequently, there is a pressing need to design best practices for implementing AI-based tools in clinical care practice settings. This view point is a calling that provides three axes of research worth pursuing to bridge the gap between the rapid development of AI-based tools in the field of medicine and their actual implementation in clinical care practice settings and thus it should be of interest to health professionals and researchers.

Cosmic-ray muon scattering imaging is sensitive to high-atomic-number materials, and has potential applications in the nuclear industry. Deep learning technique was tested to estimate amount of nuclear materials of Fukushima Daiichi debris.

Electronic Health Records (EHRs) are at the heart of reforms aimed at improving the efficiency and quality of healthcare services provided to citizens. Although there is still some skepticism, open source (OS) EHR is a growing phenomenon in health informatics. Given the widespread adoption of OS software (OSS) in several domains, including operating systems, and enterprise systems, the repeated shortfalls faced by healthcare organizations with dominant proprietary EHRs create an opportunity for other alternatives, such as OSS to demonstrate their abilities in addressing these well-documented problems, including inflexibility, high costs, and low interoperability. However, scholars have expressed extensive concerns about the sustainability of OS EHR. Recognizing that OSS project sustainability relies on their governance arrangements, this case study reports on the evolution of the governance and sustainability of a Japanese OS EHR project and provides rich insights to other open source EHR initiative stakeholders, including physicians, developers, researchers, and policy-makers.

To visualize alpha contamination, an alpha-particle detection system has been developed that is capable of detecting alpha-induced UV lights from a few meters distance in dark environments. It detects UV lights from ionized nitrogen with a photomultiplier tube. To identify the contaminated spot quickly, large diameter lenses were designed and tested.

Objectives:With the increase in technologies to support an aging population, health technology assessment (HTA) of aging-related technologies warrants special consideration. At Health Technology Assessment international (HTAi) 2016 and HTAi 2017, an international panel explored interests in HTA focused on aging.Methods:Panelists from five countries shared the state of aging and HTA in their countries. Opportunities were provided for participants to discuss and rate the themes identified by the panelists.Results:In 2016, the highest ranked themes were: (i) identifying unmet needs of older adults that could be met by technology—how can HTA help?; (ii) differences in assessment of aging-related technologies—what is the scope?; and (iii) involvement of older adults and caregivers. These themes became the starting point for discussion in 2017, for which the highest ranked themes were: (i) identification of challenges in HTA and aging; and (ii) approaches to advancing effectiveness of HTA for aging.Conclusion:These discussions allowed for examination of future directions for HTA and aging: engagement of older adults to inform the agenda of HTA and the broader public policy enterprise; a systems approach to thinking about needs of older persons should support the type and level of care desired by the individual rather than the health institutions, and HTA should reflect these desires when evaluating technological aides; and there is potential for health information systems and “big data” to support HTA activities that assess usability of technologies for older adults. We hope to build on the momentum of this community to continue exploring opportunities for aging and HTA.

Electronic Health Records (EHRs) are at the heart of reforms aiming for improving the efficiency and quality of citizens healthcare services. Although there is still some skepticism, open source (OS) EHR is a growing phenomenon in health informatics. Given the widespread adoption of OS software (OSS) in several domains, including operating systems, and enterprise systems, the repeated shortfalls faced by healthcare organizations with dominant proprietary EHRs create an opportunity for other alternatives, such as OSS to demonstrate their abilities in addressing these well-documented problems, including inflexibility, high costs, and low interoperability. However, scholars have expressed extensive concerns about the sustainability of OS EHR. Recognizing that OSS project sustainability relies on their governance arrangements, this case study reports on the evolution of the governance and sustainability of a Japanese OS EHR project and provides rich insights to other open source EHR initiative stakeholders, including physicians, developers, researchers, and policymakers.

Medication processes are consisted with multiple steps by professionals and consumers. Physicians prescribe drugs to patient with conformance, but sometimes they were changed to other drugs. We designed concept models to capture medication workflow process records by openEHR archetype models, and four templates were determined with each step of the medication process. We will show the detail of clinical modeling about medication workflow in this article.

Laboratory tests results have potential secondary usage. Each healthcare facility has a laboratory test code. Hence, test code mapping is required to support laboratory technicians. An automatic code mapping can reduce the burden of manual mapping during data preparation. The authors developed a semi-automatic mapping support system that uses the newest test results generated in the electronic health record.

Medical Markup Language (MML) is a standard format for exchange of healthcare data among healthcare providers. Following the last major update (version 3), we developed new modules and discussed the requirements for the next major updates. Subsequently, in 2016 we released MML version 4 and used it to obtain clinical data from healthcare providers for a nationwide electronic health records (EHR) system. In this article we provide an overview of this major update of MML version 4 and discuss its interoperability for clinical data.

A method to measure an amount of nuclear materials in fuel debris by using muon tomography has being developed for proceeding with decommissioning of Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. As a result of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, the molten fuels were mixed with reactor structures and accumulated as fuel debris in the reactor buildings. There is still a large amount of fuel debris remained in each reactor. Fuel debris removal is planned in the near future and the debris will be taken out in this process. The debris need to be inspected from a viewpoint of nuclear material control. Since the debris is a mixture of fuel and other structures, it is hard to quantitate nuclear materials in debris by existing measurement method. Muons are cosmic-ray particles which have high energies, therefore, they are highly penetrative. This feature makes muon tomography sensitive to find heavy materials such as uranium or plutonium. We conducted a simulation study of applying muon tomography to measure fuel debris by using a Monte-Carlo method. A simulation model which includes muon detectors, shielding container and fuel debris was constructed to reproduce a measurement situation at the site. In conclusion, muon tomography quantitate the nuclear materials, therefore, this method should be useful for the fuel debris removal of Fukushima Daiichi reactors.

Shared clinical information is an important contribution to regional medicine. Clinical information sharing with patients is also recommended to motivate patients and promote health. On the other hand, the threat of information leaks, caused by internet connected records, is critical to hospitals. The traditional approach is complete isolation of hospital networks, instead of information sharing. The authors propose methods here to maximize information sharing by following hospital preferences for electronic health records.

Many isolated EHRs in Japan hinders the availability of patients' clinical data who need treatment in a region outside the scope of their local EHR. We propose a timelier approach that increases availability of patient clinical data to unknown doctors and has the patient and their representative involved; they can grant access to doctors who are anonymous to the patients' local EHR domain.