There is evidence in scientific literature that blood pressure reduction in people with more than 140/90 mmHg results in a significant reduction of the patient?s risk for cerebral and cardiovascular accidents. Moreover, it is recognized that partnership and good communication between patients and healthcare providers are essential to improve blood pressure control. This communication is not easy, because the contacts with the institutions are limited to periodical control visits at the hypertension department (every 6-12 months). It is known that lack of compliance is the main cause of the failure of hypertension control.

Nowadays, health care organizations (HCOs) are developing into complex enterprises, where the ability of managing risks is a key factor of success for the efficiency (economic results) and the efficacy (outcome results) of the delivered care. In HCOs we can distinguish two different kinds of risk management: ?pure? risk management and clinical risk management. The former is the management of the generic risks of any company (such as fires, natural disasters, liability lawsuits, work injuries, and other types of accidents or legal actions), the latter is linked with the particular service supplied, which is the health good.

Aim of the SWIRLS1 project is to give support to practitioners working in hospital wards [1]. In particular the focus is on how practitioners can be supported by technology in coordinating their activities without disrupting their habitual practices. We chose to focus on hospital wards because they represent a paradigmatic case of work setting where actors are heterogeneous in role and experience, distributed in various locations and continuously moving from place to place. Supporting coordination work in hospital settings has always been one of the most challenging endeavors in the deployment of IT applications in real-life settings.

The Hla complex, that is the human system of histocompatibility, is composed by intrinsic proteins that are present on all the cells and that behave like antigens. When these proteins come to contact with the immune system of one different individual, they are recognized like strangers and provoke the immune answer. Its genes are situated on the short arm of chromosome 6, and they have been subdivided in two main classes: I, that comprises genes of type A, B and C and II, that comprises genes of type DP, DQ, DR.

The work presented in this paper is being carried on in the framework of the INFN MAGIC-5 (Medical Applications in a GRID Infrastructure Connection) project, whose goal is the development of software for medical applications as Computer Aided Detection (CAD) Systems and distributed databases to be implemented in a GRID Virtual Organization. In particular, here we describe the two initial steps of a CAD system for malignant nodule detection in lung Computed- Tomography (CT) images, namely the automated extraction of the pulmonary parenchyma and the following analysis of the pulmonary region for nodule detection.

Modern organisation of the health care services tends to increase the quality of the assistance and to save costs. However, except some successful pilot studies, up to now, home care telemedicine has not had much effects on the medical practice, structure and organisation of healthcare. The aim of this research project is to develop an integrated telematic solution for a homecare assistance for chronic patients (cardiology and oncology pathologies); special emphasis will be dedicated to organisational problems. A close cooperation with the GP and specialised nurse is also planned.