Webprevention to improve awareness in the workplace: an Italian model

Description

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.

Additional details