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This paper starts with a description of a project to introduce automation in the libraries of the National Institute for Cancer Research and the Clinical and Experimental Oncology Institute of the University of Genoa. It then describes the information retrieval software chosen to manage various library functions, in particular the book catalogue. Use of this system led to new working methods for library staff and for the users. The users' interest in the new system has been evaluated by attendance of specific training courses and by the number of accesses to the online catalogue. Preliminary results show that this interest exists, and that adequate information can improve the library user's approach to the automated catalogue and make it a part of the user's routine work.

The right to health for all people means that everyone should have access to the needed healthcare services without suffering from severe financial hardship. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the prevalence as well as the effective factors on facing catastrophic health expenditures (CHE) among gastrointestinal cancer patients and families in Kurdistan province in west of Iran after the implementation of Health Transformation Plan (HTP).

A cross-sectional study was carried out on 189 households with gastrointestinal cancer patients in Kurdistan province in 2018. Data were collected using World Health Survey questionnaire. A method developed by World Health Organization with the threshold of 40 percent household’s capacity to pay was used in order to measure the proportion of households facing CHE. Also, logistic regression was applied for identifying the effective factors on household’s exposure to CHE. Data were analyzed using STATA version 13.

Almost 73 percent (72.7 percent) of the households (n=117) faced the CHE. Not having supplementary health insurance (adjusted odds ratio (AOR): 3.8; 95% confidence interval: 1.3–10.8 (and having low socio-economic status (AOR: 7.1; 95% CI: 1.8–28.1) were the significant factors affecting the households’ exposure to CHE. In total, 57 and 1 percent of the studied households reported that having a gastrointestinal cancer patient at home had a significant effect on refraining from using health services by other family members.

The proportion of the studied households facing CHE was very high. This may indicate the weakness of health system as well as health insurance or the weakness of HTP in financial protection of fragile population.

The subject of Expert Systems under the broader heading of intelligent knowledge‐based systems (IKBS) has attracted considerable attention over the last few years and is a central theme in the initiatives of the Alvey Programme for Advanced Information Technology, and the Science and Engineering Research Council IKBS programme. The British Computer Society Expert Systems Specialist Group (BCS ESSG) was established to provide a focus for those concerned with the development of this new area of computing. There are several definitions as to what an Expert System is, one considered definition being that provided by the ESSG:

To gain a better understanding of the importance of the control of cancer, one must first know and understand certain basic facts about the disease. Cancer is the uncontrolled growth of malignant cells. Cancer detection tests determine whether neoplasms (new, abnormal cells) are benign (non‐cancerous) units, or malignant, health‐threatening growths. Of the hundreds of known cancers, there are four types principally affecting humans: sarcoma, cancer of connective tissue and muscles; carcinoma, cancer of lining tissues; leukemia, cancer of blood‐forming tissue; and lymphoma, cancer of lymphatic tissue. Detailed scientific and medical information on cancer can be found in texts written by authorities such as Ruddon (1981).

This paper presents a framework which combines data and text retrieval techniques to exercise and evaluate ontology based query expansions. We prepare by using linguistic techniques to identify query and document concepts, locating them in a ontologically defined semantic space. Expansions originate from the identified query concepts, with success determined by matching in the relevant document set. We identify three orthogonal dimensions that can affect query expansion success; relationship source, success measure technique, and query expansion technique. Expansion technique is further divided into six different categories: simple pruning, complex probability, voting, directional, semantic propagation, and multiple source concept. We describe each technique and show examples where they would be useful. The system architecture used facilitates plugging in of various expansion and evaluation routines, and flowing results from one method to the next. The system is useful for microanalysis of query expansion, discovering which components of ontological derived knowledge most influence query expansion success. In this work, we apply our framework to the medical domain.

This study is a mortality assessment on police officers (68-years, 1950–2018) and includes all causes of death.

The authors investigated 1,853 police deaths (1950–2018) using sources of mortality that included the National Death Index, NY State, and available records from the Buffalo NY police department. Standardized Mortality Ratios were calculated. Death codes were obtained from 8th and 9th International Classification of Disease revisions in accordance with the year of death.

Compared to the US general population, white male police officers from 1950–2018 had elevated mortality rates for some causes of death, including diseases of the circulatory system, malignant neoplasms, cirrhosis of the liver, and mental disorders. Black and female officers had lower mortality rates for all causes of death compared to the general population.

The findings of elevated risk for chronic disease among police need to be studied in relation to stress, lifestyle, and exposure to chemical and physical agents. There is a special need to further study officers from minority populations as larger samples become available.

The results of this study will provide police and occupational health practitioners with objective evidence to determine the health impact of work on law enforcement officers.

This study is longest running mortality assessment on police officers ever conducted (1950–2018) and includes white, black, and female officers.

Presents some examples of the implications derived from imposing the objective of maximizing social welfare, subject to limited resources, on ethical care patients management in respect of quality performance of health services. Conventional knowledge of health economics points out that critically ill patients are responsible for increased use of technological resources and that they receive a high proportion of health care resources. Attempts to answer, from the point of view of microeconomics, the question: how do we measure comparative efficiency in the management of intensive care units? Analyses this question through data from an international empirical study using micro‐economic measures of productive efficiency in public services (data envelopment analysis). Results show a 28.8 per cent level of technical inefficiency processing data from 25 intensive care units in the USA.

Statements by Lord Denning, M.R., vividly describing the impact of European Community Legislation are increasingly being used by lawyers and others to express their concern for its effect not only on our legal system but on other sectors of our society, changes which all must accept and to which they must adapt. A popular saying of the noble Lord is “The Treaty is like an incoming tide. It flows into the estuaries and up the rivers. It cannot be held back”. The impact has more recently become impressive in food law but probably less so than in commerce or industry, with scarcely any sector left unmolested. Most of the EEC Directives have been implemented by regulations made under the appropriate sections of the Food and Drugs Act, 1955 and the 1956 Act for Scotland, but regulations proposed for Materials and Articles in Contact with Food (reviewed elsewhere in this issue) will be implemented by use of Section 2 (2) of the European Communities Act, 1972, which because it applies to the whole of the United Kingdom, will not require separate regulations for England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. This is the first time that a food regulation has been made under this statute. S.2 (2) authorises any designated Minister or Department to make regulations as well as Her Majesty Orders in Council for implementing any Community obligation, enabling any right by virtue of the Treaties (of Rome) to be excercised. The authority extends to all forms of subordinate legislation—orders, rules, regulations or other instruments and cannot fail to be of considerable importance in all fields including food law.

According to the studies conducted in Iran, the breast cancer is the most frequent type of cancer among women. This study aimed to explore the state of health information supply and demand on breast cancer among Iranian medical researchers and Iranian Web users from 2011 to 2015.

A mixed method research is conducted in this study. In qualitative part, a focus group interview is applied to the users to identify their selected keywords searched for breast cancer in Google. The collected data are analyzed using Open Code software. In quantitative part, data are synthesized using the R software in two parts. First, users’ internet information-seeking behavior (ISB) is analyzed using the Google Trends outputs from 2011 to 2015. Second, the scientific publication behavior of Iranian breast cancer specialists are surveyed using PubMed during the period of the study.

The results show that the search volume index of preferred keywords on breast cancer has increased from 4,119 in 2011 to 4,772 in 2015. Also, the findings reveal that Iranian scholars had 873 scientific papers on breast cancer in PubMed from 2011 to 2015. There was a significant and positive relationship between Iranian ISB in the Google Trends and SPB of Iranian scholars on breast cancer in PubMed.

This study investigates only the state of health information supply and demand in PubMed and Google Trends and not additional databases often used for medical studies and treatment.

This study provides a road map for health policymakers in Iran to direct the breast cancer studies.

Reviews determining factors for cancer – both intrinsic (cellular oncogenes and growth factors) and extrinsic (viruses, soil composition, wastewater recycling, dietetic factors and chemoprevention). Concludes that it should be possible progressively to eliminate the extrinsic factors from our ecosystems. Discusses geographic variations in cancer frequency, incidence among migrant populations, victims′ habits and occupational cancers.