Worldwide telemedicine services based on distributed multimedia electronic patient records by using the second generation Web server hyperwave

A distributed multimedia electronic patient record (EPR) is a central component of a medicine-telematics application that supports physicians working in rural areas of South America, and offers medical services to scientists in Antarctica. A Hyperwave server is used to maintain the patient record. As opposed to common web servers--and as a second generation web server--Hyperwave provides the capability of holding documents in a distributed web space without the problem of broken links. This enables physicians to browse through a patient's record by using a standard browser even if the patient's record is distributed over several servers. The patient record is basically implemented on the "Good European Health Record" (GEHR) architecture.

The predictive role of psychosocial stress on symptom severity in premenstrual syndrome

Twenty-five women with well defined, severe premenstrual syndrome (PMS) were studied prospectively during three consecutive menstrual cycles to examine the association between concurrent psychosocial stress and symptom severity. Stress, mood, physical symptoms, and urinary ovarian steroid metabolites were measured daily. Stress accounted for only 6% and 10% of the unique variance in physical symptom and mood scores, respectively, across the menstrual cycle. In individual woman, there was no association between the severity of symptoms and the cumulative daily stress reported during each cycle. We conclude that in this carefully screened population of women without coexisting psychiatric disorder, PMS symptom severity could not be determined by the amount of psychosocial stress.