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Adverse drug events (ADEs) occur when multiple drugs interact within an individual, thus causing effects that were not initially predicted. Such toxic interactions lead to morbidity and mortality. Contemporary research surrounding ADEs has tended to focus on the detection of potential ADEs without great concern for elucidating the associations of drug-drug interaction (DDI) mechanisms that can predict potential adverse drug reactions (ADRs). Such associations are of great practical importance for everyday pharmacovigilance efforts. This study presents a data-driven framework for conducting knowledge-driven data analysis that combines a semantic inference system and enrichment analysis in order to identify potential ADE mechanisms. The framework was used to rank mechanisms according to their relevance for DDIs and also to categorize ADEs based on the number of DDI mechanism associations identified through enrichment analysis. Its validity is demonstrated through using both commercial and publicly available DDI resources. The results of this study solidly prove the framework’s effectiveness and highlight potential for future research by way of incorporating additional and broader data to deepen and expand its capabilities.

Blockchain is attracting tremendous attention in the logistics industry on account of its cutting-edge appeal, potential for integration within the sector, and capacity to disrupt established practices. Among other things, blockchain technology promises to open up new horizons in traceability, transparency, accuracy, and safety throughout the supply chain. However, as an emerging technology, blockchain is still relatively nascent, and familiarity with the technology is limited, as are its implementations. In addition, there is a dearth of studies concerning blockchain technology specifically, as it pertains to transport and logistics, as opposed to finance and cryptocurrency. It remains unknown what factors enable blockchain adoption by logistics service providers and how its adoption affects firm performance and capabilities. This research examines extant literature and conducts research on an eminent global transportation company to elucidate the potential influence of blockchain adoption on firm performance. The results of this work support the model that advancing theory-driven and empirical blockchain studies will increase firm capabilities and foster a competitive edge in the emerging digitalized era.

Background The COVID-19 pandemic remains an immediate and present concern, yet as of now there is still no approved therapeutic available for the treatment of COVID-19.This study aimed to investigate and report evidence concerning demographic characteristics and currently-used medications that contribute to the ultimate outcomes of COVID-19 ICU patients. Methods A retrospective cohort study was conducted among all COVID-19 patients in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of Asir Central Hospital in Saudi Arabia between the 1st and 30th of June 2020. Data extracted from patients’ medical records included their demographics, home medications, medications used to treat COVID-19, treatment durations, ICU stay, hospital stay, and ultimate outcome (recovery or death).Descriptive statistics and regression modelling were used to analyze and compare the results. The study was approved by the Institutional Ethics Committees at both Asir Central Hospital and King Khalid University. Results A total of 118 patients with median age of 57 years having definite clinical and disease outcomes were included in the study. Male patients accounted for 87% of the study population, and more than 65% experienced at least one comorbidity. The mean hospital and ICU stay was 11.4 and 9.8 days, respectively. The most common drugs used were tocilizumab (31.4%), triple combination therapy (45.8%), favipiravir (56.8%), dexamethasone (86.7%), and enoxaparin (83%). Treatment with enoxaparin significantly reduced the length of ICU stay (p = 0.04) and was found to be associated with mortality reduction in patients aged 50−75 (p = 0.03), whereas the triple regimen therapy and tocilizumab significantly increased the length of ICU stay in all patients (p = 0.01, p = 0.02 respectively). Conclusion COVID-19 tends to affect males more significantly than females. The use of enoxaparin is an important part of COVID-19 treatment, especially for those above 50 years of age, while the use of triple combination therapy and tocilizumab in COVID-19 protocols should be reevaluated and restricted to patients who have high likelihood of benefit.

As more drugs are developed and the incidence of polypharmacy increases, it is becoming critically important to anticipate potential DDIs before they occur in the clinic, along with those for which effects might go unobserved. However, traditional methods for DDI identification are unable to coalesce interaction mechanisms out of vast lists of potential or known DDIs, much less study them accurately. Computational methods have great promise but have realized only limited clinical utility. This work develops a rule-based inference framework to predict DDI mechanisms and support determination of their clinical relevance. Given a drug pair, our framework interrogates and describes DDI mechanisms based on a knowledge graph that integrates extensive available biomedical resources through semantic web technologies and backward chaining inference, effectively identifying facts within the graph that prove and explain the mechanisms of the drugs’ interaction. The framework was evaluated through a case study combining a chemotherapy agent, irinotecan, and a widely used antibiotic, levofloxacin. The mutual interactions identified indicate that our framework can effectively explore and explain the mechanisms of potential DDIs. This approach has the potential to improve drug discovery and design and to support rapid and cost-effective identification of DDIs along with their putative mechanisms, a key step in determining clinical relevance and supporting clinical decision-making.

Drug-drug interactions (DDIs) are a potentially distressing corollary of drug interventions, and may result in discomfort, debilitating illness, or even death. Existing research predominantly considers only a single level of interaction; however, serious health complications may result from multi-pathway DDIs, and so new methods are needed to enable predicting and preventing complex DDIs. This article introduces a novel method for the prediction of DDIs at two pharmacological levels (metabolic and transporter interactions) by means of a rule-based model implemented with Semantic Web technologies. The chemotherapy agent irinotecan is used as a case study for demonstrating the validity of this approach. Mechanistic and interaction data were mined from available sources and then used to predict interactors of irinotecan, including potential DDIs mediated by previously unidentified mechanisms. The findings also draw attention to the profound variation between DDI resources, indicating that clinical practice would see significant value from the development of an evidence-based resource to support DDI identification.

Potential drug-drug interactions (DDIs) are a core concern across medical decision support systems. Among healthcare practitioners, the common practice for screening these interactions is via computer software. However, as real-world negative reporting is missing, counterexamples that serve as contradictory evidence may exist. In this study, we have developed an anti-DDI resource, a set of drug combinations having negative reported interactions. This resource was created from a set of the top 200 most-used drugs, resulting in 14365 prospective negative reported DDI pairs. During analysis and filtering, 2110 DDIs (14.69%) were found in publicly free DDI resources, another 11130 (77.48%) were filtered by a rule-based inference engine incorporating ten mechanisms of interaction, and 208 were identified through commercial resources. Additionally, 90 pairs were removed due to recent FDA approvals or being unapplicable in clinical use. The final set of 827 drug pairs represents combinations potentially having negative reported interactions. The anti-DDI resource is intended to provide a distinctly different direction from the state of the art and establish a ground focus more centered on the evaluation and utilization of existing knowledge for performing thorough assessments. Our negative reported DDIs resource shall provide healthcare practitioners with a level of certainty on DDIs that is worth investigating.

WOS:000556407600004 In this article, an algorithm is proposed for creating an ensemble classifier. The name of the algorithm is the F-score subspace method (FsBoost). According to this method, the features are selected with the F-score and classified with different or the same classifiers. In the next step, the ensemble classifier is created. Two versions that are named FsBoost.V1 and FsBoost.V2 have been developed based on classification by the same or different classifiers. According to the results obtained, the results are consistent with the literature. Besides, a higher accuracy rate is obtained compared with many algorithms in the literature. The algorithm is fast because it has a few steps. It is thought that the algorithm will be successful due to these advantages.

In the current work, the stochastic point reactor model is analyzed using the Wiener-Hermite expansion (WHE). The simplified stochastic point reactor model (Ayyoubzadeh and Vosoughi, 2014), at which no matrix square root, is considered. The stochastic system is reduced to a set of deterministic equations that are solved to get the mean and variance of the neutron and precursor populations. The well-known numerical deterministic techniques are used to get the solution without the need for the time-consuming sampling techniques. Estimations of the neutron and precursor groups fluctuations at the startup are quantified. Many cases are tested and compared with the results in the literature. The current technique is shown to be efficient, accurate and simple compared with the available techniques.

Heart failure (HF) is considered a deadliest disease worldwide. Therefore, different intelligent medical decision support systems have been widely proposed for detection of HF in literature. However, low rate of accuracies achieved on the HF data is a major problem in these decision support systems. To improve the prediction accuracy, we have developed a feature-driven decision support system consisting of two main stages. In the first stage, χ2 statistical model is used to rank the commonly used 13 HF features. Based on the χ2 test score, an optimal subset of features is searched using forward best-first search strategy. In the second stage, Gaussian Naive Bayes (GNB) classifier is used as a predictive model. The performance of the newly proposed method (χ2-GNB) is evaluated by using an online heart disease database of 297 subjects. Experimental results show that our proposed method could achieve a prediction accuracy of 93.33%. The developed method (i.e., χ2-GNB) improves the HF prediction performance of GNB model by 3.33%. Moreover, the newly proposed method also shows better performance than the available methods in literature that achieved accuracies in the range of 57.85–92.22%.

Diagnosis is a crucial precautionary step in research studies of the coronavirus disease, which shows indications similar to those of various pneumonia types. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a significant outbreak in more than 150 nations and has significantly affected the wellness and lives of many individuals globally. Particularly, discovering the patients infected with COVID-19 early and providing them with treatment is an important way of fighting the pandemic. Radiography and radiology could be the fastest techniques for recognizing infected individuals. Artificial intelligence strategies have the potential to overcome this difficulty. Particularly, transfer learning MobileNetV2 is a convolutional neural network architecture that can perform well on mobile devices. In this study, we used MobileNetV2 with transfer learning and augmentation data techniques as a classifier to recognize the coronavirus disease. Two datasets were used: the first consisted of 309 chest X-ray images (102 with COVID-19 and 207 were normal), and the second consisted of 516 chest X-ray images (102 with COVID-19 and 414 were normal). We assessed the model based on its sensitivity rate, specificity rate, confusion matrix, and F1-measure. Additionally, we present a receiver operating characteristic curve. The numerical simulation reveals that the model accuracy is 95.8% and 100% at dropouts of 0.3 and 0.4, respectively. The model was implemented using Keras and Python programming.

As an initial step towards diversifying Saudi Arabia economy, the kingdom is focusing on the development and improvement of all public services through technology especially the health sector to meet the standards of the western world. We discuss the progress of the health informatics education globally with the main focus on the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. For this purpose, we survey all academic institutions with their levels of education and found that only 9% of the 109 academic institutions offered specific programs in Health Informatics. While we focus on Saudi Arabia, we also gather information on courses per AMIA identification for Saudi academic institutions.

Heart failure is considered one of the leading cause of death around the world. The diagnosis of heart failure is a challenging task especially in under-developed and developing countries where there is a paucity of human experts and equipments. Hence, different researchers have developed different intelligent systems for automated detection of heart failure. However, most of these methods are facing the problem of overfitting i.e. the recently proposed methods improved heart failure detection accuracy on testing data while compromising heart failure detection accuracy on training data. Consequently, the constructed models overfit to the testing data. In order, to come up with an intelligent system that would show good performance on both training and testing data, in this paper we develop a novel diagnostic system. The proposed diagnostic system uses random search algorithm (RSA) for features selection and random forest model for heart failure prediction. The proposed diagnostic system is optimized using grid search algorithm. Two types of experiments are performed to evaluate the precision of the proposed method. In the first experiment, only random forest model is developed while in the second experiment the proposed RSA based random forest model is developed. Experiments are performed using an online heart failure database namely Cleveland dataset. The proposed method is efficient and less complex than conventional random forest model as it produces 3.3% higher accuracy than conventional random forest model while using only 7 features. Moreover, the proposed method shows better performance than five other state of the art machine learning models. In addition, the proposed method achieved classification accuracy of 93.33% while improving the training accuracy as well. Finally, the proposed method shows better performance than eleven recently proposed methods for heart failure detection.

The population models allow for a better understanding of the dynamical interactions with the environment and hence can provide a way for understanding the population changes. They are helpful in studying the biological invasions, environmental conservation and many other applications. These models become more complicated when accounting for the stochastic and/or random variations due to different sources. In the current work, a spectral technique is suggested to analyze the stochastic population model with random parameters. The model contains mixed sources of uncertainties, noise and uncertain parameters. The suggested algorithm uses the spectral decompositions for both types of randomness. The spectral techniques have the advantages of high rates of convergence. A deterministic system is derived using the statistical properties of the random bases. The classical analytical and/or numerical techniques can be used to analyze the deterministic system and obtain the solution statistics. The technique presented in the current work is applicable to many complex systems with both stochastic and random parameters. It has the advantage of separating the contributions due to different sources of uncertainty. Hence, the sensitivity index of any uncertain parameter can be evaluated. This is a clear advantage compared with other techniques used in the literature.

MotivationDrug-drug interactions (DDIs) are complex processes which may depend on many clinical and non-clinical factors. Identifying and distinguishing ways in which drugs interact remains a challenge. To minimize DDIs and to personalize treatment based on accurate stratification of patients, it is crucial that mechanisms of interaction can be identified. Most DDIs are a consequence of metabolic mechanisms of interaction, but DDIs with different mechanisms occur less frequently and are therefore more difficult to identify.ResultsWe developed a method (D4) for computationally identifying potential DDIs and determining whether they interact based on one of eleven mechanisms of interaction. D4 predicts DDIs and their mechanisms through features that are generated through a deep learning approach from phenotypic and functional knowledge about drugs, their side-effects and targets. Our findings indicate that our method is able to identify known DDIs with high accuracy and that D4 can determine mechanisms of interaction. We also identify numerous novel and potential DDIs for each mechanism of interaction and evaluate our predictions using DDIs from adverse event reporting systems.Availabilityhttps://github.com/bio-ontology-research-group/D4Contactarnoor@kau.edu.sa and robert.hoehndorf@kaust.edu.sa

Identifying and distinguishing cancer driver genes among thousands of candidate mutations remains a major challenge. Accurate identification of driver genes and driver mutations is critical for advancing cancer research and personalizing treatment based on accurate stratification of patients. Due to inter-tumor genetic heterogeneity, many driver mutations within a gene occur at low frequencies, which make it challenging to distinguish them from non-driver mutations. We have developed a novel method for identifying cancer driver genes. Our approach utilizes multiple complementary types of information, specifically cellular phenotypes, cellular locations, functions, and whole body physiological phenotypes as features. We demonstrate that our method can accurately identify known cancer driver genes and distinguish between their role in different types of cancer. In addition to confirming known driver genes, we identify several novel candidate driver genes. We demonstrate the utility of our method by validating its predictions in nasopharyngeal cancer and colorectal cancer using whole exome and whole genome sequencing.

Objective: To develop a novel pharmacovigilance inferential framework to infer mechanistic explanations for asserted drug-drug interactions (DDIs) and deduce potential DDIs. Materials and Methods: A mechanism-based DDI knowledge base was constructed by integrating knowledge from several existing sources at the pharmacokinetic, pharmacodynamic, pharmacogenetic, and multipathway interaction levels. A query-based framework was then created to utilize this integrated knowledge base in conjunction with 9 inference rules to infer mechanistic explanations for asserted DDIs and deduce potential DDIs. Results: The drug-drug interactions discovery and demystification (D3) system achieved an overall 85% recall rate in terms of inferring mechanistic explanations for the DDIs integrated into its knowledge base, while demonstrating a 61% precision rate in terms of the inference or lack of inference of mechanistic explanations for a balanced, randomly selected collection of interacting and noninteracting drug pairs. Discussion: The successful demonstration of the D3 system’s ability to confirm interactions involving well-studied drugs enhances confidence in its ability to deduce interactions involving less-studied drugs. In its demonstration, the D3 system infers putative explanations for most of its integrated DDIs. Further enhancements to this work in the future might include ranking interaction mechanisms based on likelihood of applicability, determining the likelihood of deduced DDIs, and making the framework publicly available. Conclusion: The D3 system provides an early-warning framework for augmenting knowledge of known DDIs and deducing unknown DDIs. It shows promise in suggesting interaction pathways of research and evaluation interest and aiding clinicians in evaluating and adjusting courses of drug therapy.

Objective: To develop a novel pharmacovigilance inferential framework to infer mechanistic explanations for asserted drug-drug interactions (DDIs) and deduce potential DDIs. Materials and Methods: A mechanism-based DDI knowledge base was constructed by integrating knowledge from several existing sources at the pharmacokinetic, pharmacodynamic, pharmacogenetic, and multipathway interaction levels. A query-based framework was then created to utilize this integrated knowledge base in conjunction with 9 inference rules to infer mechanistic explanations for asserted DDIs and deduce potential DDIs. Results: The drug-drug interactions discovery and demystification (D3) system achieved an overall 85% recall rate in terms of inferring mechanistic explanations for the DDIs integrated into its knowledge base, while demonstrating a 61% precision rate in terms of the inference or lack of inference of mechanistic explanations for a balanced, randomly selected collection of interacting and noninteracting drug pairs. Discussion: The successful demonstration of the D3 system’s ability to confirm interactions involving well-studied drugs enhances confidence in its ability to deduce interactions involving less-studied drugs. In its demonstration, the D3 system infers putative explanations for most of its integrated DDIs. Further enhancements to this work in the future might include ranking interaction mechanisms based on likelihood of applicability, determining the likelihood of deduced DDIs, and making the framework publicly available. Conclusion: The D3 system provides an early-warning framework for augmenting knowledge of known DDIs and deducing unknown DDIs. It shows promise in suggesting interaction pathways of research and evaluation interest and aiding clinicians in evaluating and adjusting courses of drug therapy.

Heart failure (HF) is considered a deadliest disease worldwide. Therefore, different intelligent medical decision support systems have been widely proposed for detection of HF in literature. However, low rate of accuracies achieved on the HF data is a major problem in these decision support systems. To improve the prediction accuracy, we have developed a feature-driven decision support system consisting of two main stages. In the first stage, χ2 statistical model is used to rank the commonly used 13 HF features. Based on the χ2 test score, an optimal subset of features is searched using forward best-first search strategy. In the second stage, Gaussian Naive Bayes (GNB) classifier is used as a predictive model. The performance of the newly proposed method (χ2-GNB) is evaluated by using an online heart disease database of 297 subjects. Experimental results show that our proposed method could achieve a prediction accuracy of 93.33%. The developed method (i.e., χ2-GNB) improves the HF prediction performance of GNB model by 3.33%. Moreover, the newly proposed method also shows better performance than the available methods in literature that achieved accuracies in the range of 57.85–92.22%.

The growing complexity of healthcare systems worldwide and the medical profession’s increasing dependency on information technology for accurate practice and treatment call for specific standardized education in health informatics programming, and accreditation of health informatics programs based on core competencies is progressing at an international level. This study investigates the state of affairs in health informatics programs within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) to determine (1) how well international standards are being met and (2) what further development is needed in light of KSA’s recent eHealth initiatives. This descriptive study collected data from publicly available resources to investigate Health Informatics programs at 109 Saudi institutions. Information about coursework offered at each institution was compared with American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) curriculum guidelines. Of 109 institutions surveyed, only a handful offered programs specifically in health informatics. Of these, most programs did not match the coursework recommended by AMIA, and the majority of programs mimicked existing curricula from other countries rather than addressing unique Saudi conditions. Education in health informatics in KSA appears to be scattered, non-standardized, and somewhat outdated. Based on these findings, there is a clear opportunity for greater focus on core competencies within health informatics programs. The Saudi digital transformation (eHealth) initiative, as part of Saudi Vision 2030, clearly calls for implementation of internationally accepted health informatics competencies in education programs and healthcare practice, which can only occur through greater collaboration between medical and technology educators and strategic partnerships with companies, medical centers, and governmental institutions.