Objective: E-health may enable the empowerment process for patients, particularly the chronically ill. However, e-health is not always designed with the requirements of patient empowerment in mind. Drawing on evidence-based e-health studies, we propose directions for best practices to develop e-health that promotes patient empowerment. Methods: The concept of patient empowerment in the Dutch setting is discussed first. The prerequisites for patient empowerment are then described and translated into empowerment areas relevant to e-health. Materials: We reviewed Dutch e-health studies that provide insights into what works, and what does not, in e-health. Results: On the basis of the lessons learned from the studies, we propose directions for best practices to develop e-health that promotes patient empowerment. These directions cover various aspects, such as the design and implementation of e-health, its information content and usability, awareness, and acceptance. The studies also indicate the difficulty of establishing that e-health is really dedicated to patient empowerment. Conclusions: Despite the body of knowledge about patient empowerment, as well as the technological visibility of e-health, evidence for best practices in general and for patient empowerment in particular is scarce. We call for a more systematic evaluation of e-health for patient empowerment and more reliable evidence. Beyond the organizational and technical issues involved in e-health, there is also a need to demonstrate its practical benefits to patients. The Netherlands is active in developing sustainable e-health. National initiatives are now in place to support the processes with the aim of establishing the required evidence-based best practices.

Foreshortening of vessel segments in angiographic (biplane) projection images may cause misinterpretation of the extent and degree of coronary artery disease. The views in which the object of interest are visualized with minimum foreshortening are called optimal views. The authors present a complete approach to obtain such views with computer-assisted techniques. The object of interest is first visualized in two arbitrary views. Two landmarks of the object are manually defined in the two projection images. With complete information of the projection geometry, the vector representation of the object in the three-dimensional space is computed. This vector is perpendicular to a plane in which the views are called optimal. The user has one degree of freedom to define a set of optimal biplane views. The angle between the central beams of the imaging systems can be chosen freely. The computation of the orientation of the object and of corresponding optimal biplane views have been evaluated with a simple hardware phantom. The mean and the standard deviation of the overall errors in the calculation of the optimal angulation angles were 1.8 degrees and 1.3 degrees , respectively, when the user defined a rotation angle.

RODERICK I. SWAAB is a doctoral candidate at the Amsterdam School of Communications Research. He received his master's degree in communication and organizations at the University of Amsterdam. His research focuses on the role of information and communication in negotiation processes.TOM POSTMES is a senior lecturer at the School of Psychology, University of Exeter. He holds a doctorate in social psychology from the University of Amsterdam. He is affiliated with the Department of Communication Science, University of Amsterdam, and holds a fellowship of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). He is currently an Associate Editor of the British Journal of Social Psychology. His research and teaching is concerned with computer-mediated communication, social influence in groups, and collective behavior.PETER NEIJENS is a senior professor in communications at the University of Amsterdam and scientific director of the Amsterdam School of Communications Research. He holds a doctorate in methodology and statistics from the University of Amsterdam. His research focuses on corporate communication, decision-making, communication campaigns and media effects, and public opinion. MARIUS H. KIERS is a senior consultant at TNO building and construction research.He earned his master's degree in economics at the Free University Amsterdam. He specializes in innovation and technology management, as well as in spatial economics and regional development. ADRIE C.M. DUMAY is the head of medical informatics of TNO Prevention and Health.He holds a doctorate in information and communication theory from Delft University of Technology. The research was carried out while he was head of the Virtuality Lab of TNO. His present work focuses on simulation and information systems in medicine.ABSTRACT: The study examines a method for supporting multiparty negotiations by means of a Negotiation Support System (NSS). More specifically, this study investigated the effect of visualization support on the development of shared mental models among negotiators who resolved a spatial planning dispute. The objective of this study is to determine how to support the development of shared mental models in order to stimulate more productive negotiations. A further goal is to provide guidelines for the design of NSS. Compared with a control condition, visualization improved three Downloaded by [New York University] at 09:32 31 May 2015 130 SWAAB ET AL.aspects of negotiations: visualization support aided negotiators' convergence of perceptions of reality and had positive socio-emotional consequences in terms of increasing cohesiveness and entitativity. As a result, groups with visualization support reached consensus more easily and were more satisfied with the process. In sum, the current study provides support for the idea that presenting negotiators with unambiguous information helps negotiators develop shared mental models.KEY WORDS AND PHRASES: multiparty negotiation, negotiation support systems, prosocial climate, shared mental model, visual...

For clinical decision-making and documentation purposes we have developed techniques to extract, label and analyze the coronary vasculature from arteriograms in an automated, quantitative manner. Advanced image processing techniques were applied to extract and analyze the vasculatures from non-subtracted arteriograms while artificial intelligence techniques were employed to assign anatomical labels. Lumen diameters of 11 phantom vessels were assessed with an accuracy of 0.27 +/- 0.19 mm (dtrue = 0.45 + 0.92dmeasured; r > 0.99) and 0.21 +/- 0.15 mm (dtrue = 0.42 + 0.91dmeasured; r > 0.99), from cine and digital images, respectively. We collected a total of 15 routinely acquired cine-arteriograms showing 74 vessel segments with 18 stenoses (severity larger than 30% assessed quantitatively), and 53 digital arteriograms showing 236 vessel segments with 69 stenoses. From the cine arteriograms we extracted 64 (86%) of the vessel segments without manual correction and 196 (83%) from the digital arteriograms. Repeated analysis (3 times) of the arteriograms by the same operator resulted in a standard deviation of the mean segment diameters (precision) of 0.064 mm for the cine-images and 0.020 mm for the digital images, while the standard deviations in the measurement of the minimal luminal diameter of the observed stenoses were 0.020 mm and 0.019 mm, respectively. The LAD artery, the septal and diagonal branches were correctly identified automatically in 86% of the segments. From these evaluations we conclude that our automated approach provides reliable tools for the assessment of multi-vessel disease, both in an off- and on-line environment.

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