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BackgroundThe provision of health and wellness care is undergoing an enormous transformation. A key element of this revolution consists in prioritizing prevention and proactivity based on the analysis of people’s conducts and the empowerment of individuals in their self-management. Digital technologies are unquestionably destined to be the main engine of this change, with an increasing number of domain-specific applications and devices commercialized every year; however, there is an apparent lack of frameworks capable of orchestrating and intelligently leveraging, all the data, information and knowledge generated through these systems.MethodsThis work presents Mining Minds, a novel framework that builds on the core ideas of the digital health and wellness paradigms to enable the provision of personalized support. Mining Minds embraces some of the most prominent digital technologies, ranging from Big Data and Cloud Computing to Wearables and Internet of Things, as well as modern concepts and methods, such as context-awareness, knowledge bases or analytics, to holistically and continuously investigate on people’s lifestyles and provide a variety of smart coaching and support services.ResultsThis paper comprehensively describes the efficient and rational combination and interoperation of these technologies and methods through Mining Minds, while meeting the essential requirements posed by a framework for personalized health and wellness support. Moreover, this work presents a realization of the key architectural components of Mining Minds, as well as various exemplary user applications and expert tools to illustrate some of the potential services supported by the proposed framework.ConclusionsMining Minds constitutes an innovative holistic means to inspect human behavior and provide personalized health and wellness support. The principles behind this framework uncover new research ideas and may serve as a reference for similar initiatives.

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Data-driven knowledge acquisition and validation against published guidelines were used to help a team of physicians and knowledge engineers create executable clinical knowledge. The advantages of the R-CKM are twofold: it reflects real practices and conforms to standard guidelines, while providing optimal accuracy comparable to that of a PM. The proposed approach yields better insight into the steps of knowledge acquisition and enhances collaboration efforts of the team of physicians and knowledge engineers.

A multicenter prospective nonrandomized trial was conducted to evaluate the efficacy of self-administered oral ofloxacin in the treatment of cancer patients with fever and neutropenia. Patients receiving chemotherapy who either resided far away and were unable to reach the oncology ward within 12 hours of the onset of fever or were unable to afford the expensive inpatient care were eligible for inclusion in the study. Requirements for enrollment included an absolute neutrophil count of < or = 0.5 x 10(9)/L, temperature of > 38 degrees C, and the ability to take oral medications. The patients were instructed to immediately self-administer oral ofloxacin on recognition of fever and to maintain daily telephonic contact with the oncology staff. One-hundred eleven such episodes were evaluable. Neutropenia was mostly of short duration (87% of episodes, < or = 1 week); 92 (83%) of the febrile episodes responded to ofloxacin with resolution of fever and neutropenia (hospitalization was not required). Two episodes resulted in death before the patients could be brought to the hospital; 17 (15%) did not respond to ofloxacin, and the patients required hospitalization. The conditions of all except one improved with parenteral combination antibiotic therapy. No toxicity was observed, and the cost of therapy was negligible. Treatment with oral ofloxacin may possibly serve as an alternative to hospitalization for those who are otherwise at low risk of morbidity and death.