Journal of Community Medicine & Health Education
Open Access

Abstract

Prevention is the best method to reduce chronic and degenerative diseases and also death, above all in the workplace and in Non Communicable Diseases; as detailed updated evidence has established. The main aim is to improve the prevention culture in all environments, above all in the workplace; the utilization of Information Technology proposals provide the most efficient and useful tool. Currently, in this sector, large-scale information sources are designed to support general queries and lack the ability to support specific scenarios: information navigation, gathering, and presentation. As a result, users are often unable to obtain the specific information desired within a well-defined subject area. Therefore, a knowledge extraction tool was developed to help users to access relevant material which can support specific information needs. The tool is composed of a search engine based on Text Mining and Natural Language Processing techniques, and a presentation module which processes the search results; in order to organize the results and then create semantic links between documents and information sources. The approach was tested on the available knowledge about prevention in many fields such as: chemical, physical and biological risk, International, National and Regional regulations, occupational safety, risk factors, preventive medicine and lifestyle. In conclusion, the system is shown to be able i) to effectively retrieve medical concepts and assist users in their prevention search and ii) works successfully both in English and Italian languages.

Biography

Dr. Daniela T Vecchio is biologist (1972). She was teacher in secondary schools. She was Researcher Chief at the National Cancer Institute of Genoa since 1980. In the department of Epidemiology and Prevention she was responsible for Prevention of Risks in the Working and Living Environment (PRALV). Since 1988 she has conducted epidemiological studies regarding the population exposed to hazardous environmental and occupational agents. She organised a Data Bank of Molecular Epidemiology on genotoxicity and cancer. She was responsible in Italy for the project ?International study of cancer risk in biology research laboratory workers?, co-ordinated by IARC (International Agency for Research on Cancer - Lyon, France). Dr. Daniela T Vecchio is the Co-ordinator for the Italian Comprehensive Cancer Centres network in a study on chemical, physical and biological risk in research laboratories (Italian Ministry of Labour and Social Security); Responsible for the project ?Prevention and risk of cancer in post-menopausal women? (Italian Ministry of Health 1999); Responsible for the project ?Women at work: offspring anomalies in healthcare females workers? (Italian Ministry of Health); Responsible for the project ?Telework in a Public Scientific Institute? (Italian Ministry of Health) (Italian winner of the European Commission Telework Award 1999) and she collaborated with the Italian Ministry for Public Administration. She has a Master in Public Health Management (2003). From 1997 she is interested to the production of multimedial tools for prevention and collaborated with DIST of the University of Genoa. From 2002 to 2008 she was the Scientific Coordinator of European Projects in the sector of Prevention and IT(Worksafe and Euroworksafe). She retired from the National Cancer Institute of Genoa (2008).She went in Fogo(Cap Vert)at the S.Francesco Hospital as voluntary worker (Sept- Oct 2010). Now she is consultant of DIST Department of Communication Computer and System Sciences (DIST) of University of Genoa She is scientific coordinator of some projects and organiser of courses and conferences.