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As part of the routine work of the medical committees in the Israel Defense Forces, a unique nationwide computerized control system is being implemented to assess and manage medical processes. The purpose of this paper is to report on that implementation.

The computerized system consists of three main components: a specific status indicating the processes in each file, an appointment system, and an internal computerized system that uses a magnetic card for the regulation of the local waiting lists.

The combined computerized system improves the control and management of the medical processes and informatics from the point‐of‐view of both the patients and system operators. Different parameters of quality control regarding the medical and administrative processes are assessed (such as efficiency), and solutions are sought. Computerized system‐based design and re‐allocation of human and medical resources were implemented according to the capacities and limitations of the medical system. A reduction in the daily number of invited recruits improved the quality of the medical encounters. Specific combined status codes were introduced for the efficient planning of the medical encounters. Implementation and automation of medical regulations and procedures within the computerized system make the latter play a key role and serve as a control tool during the decision‐making process.

The computerized system allows efficient follow‐up and management of medical processes and informatics, led to a better utilization of human and medical resources, and becomes a component of the decision making by the system operators and the administrative staff. Such a system could be used with success in clinics, hospitals, and other medical facilities.

The paper aims to focus on a unique quality control system that was set up ten years ago to evaluate Medical Classification Committee decision‐making processes at the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) conscription center.

Two main approaches were deployed by the control system to assess medical classification committees' performance. The first was direct assessment of the medical committees' clinical work and decision‐making processes. The second applied data mining procedures to the computerized medical databases. The functional classification codes (FCCs) – codes for the most common medical disorders assigned to male recruits from the central computerized central IDF database, the sub‐districts comprising the recruitment centers, and the chairmen assigning the FCCs to recruits – were all analyzed.

A total of 26 FCCs, each indicating a common medical problem and its severity, constituted approximately 90 percent of all FCCs assigned at recruitment centers between 2001 and 2006. Major contributors to medical profiling outcomes were underweight, asthma, chronic headache, mental illness, symptomatic scoliosis, hypnosis, chronic back pain, knee joint disorders, allergic rhinitis and sinusitis. Evaluating the computerized medical database revealed significant differences in: medical profile prevalence; recruitment center FCCs; different sub‐districts in a given recruitment center; and profiling by medical committee chairmen.

Findings indicate disparities between recruitment centers and their chairmen in the medical profiling process owing to variations in recruitment center working methods and medical history taking, physical examinations, interpreting medical information and individual differences in the chairmen's decision‐making process. Other reasons include technician and laboratory staff inaccuracies. These significant discrepancies highlighted the need for an intervention program. To minimize variations and create a uniform work platform, an orderly instruction system and training programs for the committee chairmen, technicians and laboratory staff were established. These actions resulted in improved performance in 2007 as confirmed by a decreased variability in the assignment of medical FCCs.

The paper highlights methods that can be used to assess disability screening, sports medicine committees and primary care setting procedures.

This paper seeks to examine an intervention program which was developed in order to improve the performance and skills of technical medical personnel at the military recruitment medical committees.

Evaluation of the technician soldiers' performance was carried out by the usage of a specifically farmed survey, comprising a designed questionnaire, and direct observation of their work, including appraisal of their measurements and interpretation skills.

Prior to intervention, analysis revealed: insufficient knowledge of normal range of blood pressure and pulse values, visual acuity of color vision, urinalysis and their relation to the classification process at medical committees; and inadequate technicalities such as incorrect weight and height measurements.

The model of the intervention program could be modified and adopted by medical committees, sports medicine examinations, periodic screening procedures, and primary care medicine in order to improve the quality of medical records and medical care.

Introducing immunity or vaccine passports is one non-pharmaceutical intervention that governments are considering to exempt immune, vaccinated or otherwise risk-free individuals from lockdowns and other public health restrictions during the coronavirus pandemic. The primary objective of these documents would be to begin reopening societies, restarting economies and returning to a pre-pandemic normalcy. This article aims to present the start of a conceptual documentary analysis of (proposed and existing) COVID-19 immunity passports in order to more fully center their documentary status within research, considerations and conversations about their potential roles, impacts and implications.

Inspired by Paula A. Treichler's argument for the importance of theoretical thought for untangling the socio-cultural phenomena of epidemics, and drawing upon interdisciplinary theories of documentation, identity and public health, combined with recent news coverage of the coronavirus pandemic, this article provides a contemporary overview and conceptual analysis of emerging documentary regimes of COVID-19 immunity verification involving immunity or vaccine passports.

Three major interconnected objectives could be fulfilled by immunity passports. First, they would establish and materialize an official identity of COVID-19 immune for people possessing the formal document. Second, they would serve as material evidence establishing and verifying individuals' immunity, vaccination or risk-free status from the coronavirus that would, in term, determine and regulate their movements and other privileges. Third, they would create tangible links between individuals and governments' official or recognized identity category of COVID-19 immune. Immunity passports would, therefore, help enable and enforce governmental authority and power by situating individuals within documentary regimes of COVID-19 immunity verification.

In the expanding interdisciplinary literature on COVID-19 immunity passports, sometimes also called certificates, licenses, or passes, there appears to be only minimal reference to their documentary instantiations, whether physical, digital, and/or hybrid documents. As yet, there is not any specific documentary approach to or analysis of immunity passports as kinds of documentation. A documentary approach helps to illuminate and emphasize the materiality of and ontological considerations concerning the coronavirus pandemic and its associated kinds of immunity or vaccination.

By beginning an exploration of what makes immunity passports thinkable as a public health response to the coronavirus pandemic, this article illuminates these health and identity documents' material implications for, and effects on, individuals and societies. This article, therefore, helps shed light on what immunity passports reveal about the complicated and contested intersections of identity, documentation, public health and socio-political control and discipline.

This article contributes the start of a documentary analysis of (proposed and existing) COVID-19 immunity passports in order to more fully center their documentary status within research and conversations about them.

Electrical capacitance tomography (ECT) and electrical resistance tomography (ERT) are promising techniques for multiphase flow measurement due to their high speed, low cost, non-invasive and visualization features. There are two major difficulties in image reconstruction for ECT and ERT: the “soft-field”effect, and the ill-posedness of the inverse problem, which includes two problems: under-determined problem and the solution is not stable, i.e. is very sensitive to measurement errors and noise. This paper aims to summarize and evaluate various reconstruction algorithms which have been studied and developed in the word for many years and to provide reference for further research and application.

In the past 10 years, various image reconstruction algorithms have been developed to deal with these problems, including in the field of industrial multi-phase flow measurement and biological medical diagnosis.

This paper reviews existing image reconstruction algorithms and the new algorithms proposed by the authors for electrical capacitance tomography and electrical resistance tomography in multi-phase flow measurement and biological medical diagnosis.

The authors systematically summarize and evaluate various reconstruction algorithms which have been studied and developed in the word for many years and to provide valuable reference for practical applications.

The purpose of this paper is to determine arsenic, cadmium and lead contents of rice imports and to estimate their impact on these heavy metal intakes in Qatar.

In total, 30 rice samples imported from various countries (Vietnam, Thailand, India, Pakistan, the USA, Australia, the UK and Lebanon) were analyzed for arsenic, cadmium and lead contents with plasma optical spectrometer. These heavy metal intakes from rice were estimated for Qatar population based on the per capita consumption of rice as per 2018 rice consumption data.

In all rice samples, mean concentrations of arsenic, cadmium and lead were 1.11 mg/kg, 19.7 µg/kg and 131.3 µg/kg, respectively. Average arsenic, cadmium and lead contents were the highest in rice imported from Thailand (1.25 mg/kg), Vietnam (30 µg/kg) and India (178.3 µg/kg), respectively. Estimated arsenic, cadmium and lead intakes through rice consumption by Qatari population were 225.7, 4 and 26.7 µg/day, respectively.

In all rice imports, arsenic content is approximately 5.5 times higher than the maximum allowable concentration (MAC), whereas the cadmium and lead levels are within the MAC. Because these heavy metals are linked to health, all Middle Eastern countries that import rice from Thailand, Vietnam and India should monitor the metal contents in their food supply on a regular basis.

Medical diagnosis and treatment processes exhibit a high degree of variability, as during the process execution, healthcare professionals can decide on additional steps, change the execution order or skip a task. Process models can help to document and to discuss such processes. However, depicting variability in graphical process models using standardized languages, such as Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN), can lead to large and complicated diagrams that medical staff who do not have formal training in modeling languages have difficulty understanding. This study proposes a pattern-based process visualization that medical doctors can understand without extensive training. The process descriptions using this pattern-based visualization can later be transformed into formal business process models in languages such as BPMN.

The authors derived patterns for expressing variability in healthcare processes from the literature and medical guidelines. Then, the authors evaluated and revised these patterns based on interviews with physicians in a Danish hospital.

A set of business process variability patterns was proposed to express situations with variability in hospital treatment and diagnosis processes. The interviewed medical doctors could translate the patterns into their daily work practice, and the patterns were used to model a hospital process.

When communicating with medical personnel, the patterns can be used as building blocks for documenting and discussing variable processes.

The patterns can reduce complexity in process visualization. This study provides the first validation of these patterns in a hospital.