scholarly journals ASSESSMENT OF MAST IN EUROPEAN PATIENT-CENTERED TELEMEDICINE PILOTS

2015 ◽  
Vol 31 (5) ◽  
pp. 304-311 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Granstrøm Ekeland ◽  
Astrid Grøttland

Objectives: Model for ASsessment of Telemedicine Applications (MAST) is a health technology assessment (HTA) inspired framework for assessing the effectiveness and contribution to quality of telemedicine applications based on rigorous, scientific data. This study reports from a study of how it was used and perceived in twenty-one pilots of the European project RENEWING HEALTH (RH). The objectives of RH were to implement large-scale, real-life test beds for the validation and subsequent evaluation of innovative patient-centered telemedicine services. The study is a contribution to the appraisal of HTA methods.Methods: A questionnaire was administered for project leaders of the pilots. It included questions about use and usefulness of MAST for (i) preceding considerations, (ii) evaluation of outcomes within seven domains, and (iii) considerations of transferability. Free text spaces allowed for proposals of improvement. The responses covered all pilots. A quantitative summary of use and a qualitative analysis of usefulness were performed.Results: MAST was used and considered useful for pilot evaluations. Challenges included problems to scientifically determine alternative service options and outcome within the seven domains. Proposals for improvement included process studies and adding domains of technological usability, responsible innovation, health literacy, behavior change, caregiver perspectives and motivational issues of professionals.Conclusions: MAST was used according to its structure. Its usefulness in patient centered pilots can be improved by adding new stakeholder groups. Interdependencies between scientific rigor, resources and timeliness should be addressed. Operational options for improvements include process studies, literature reviews and sequential mini-HTAs for identification of areas for more elaborate investigations.

Author(s):  
N. Broers ◽  
N.A. Busch

AbstractMany photographs of real-life scenes are very consistently remembered or forgotten by most people, making these images intrinsically memorable or forgettable. Although machine vision algorithms can predict a given image’s memorability very well, nothing is known about the subjective quality of these memories: are memorable images recognized based on strong feelings of familiarity or on recollection of episodic details? We tested people’s recognition memory for memorable and forgettable scenes selected from image memorability databases, which contain memorability scores for each image, based on large-scale recognition memory experiments. Specifically, we tested the effect of intrinsic memorability on recollection and familiarity using cognitive computational models based on receiver operating characteristics (ROCs; Experiment 1 and 1) and on remember/know (R/K) judgments (Experiment 1). The ROC data of Experiment 1 indicated that image memorability boosted memory strength, but did not find a specific effect on recollection or familiarity. By contrast, ROC data from Experiment 1, which was designed to facilitate encoding and, in turn, recollection, found evidence for a specific effect of image memorability on recollection. Moreover, R/K judgments showed that, on average, memorability boosts recollection rather than familiarity. However, we also found a large degree of variability in these judgments across individual images: some images actually achieved high recognition rates by exclusively boosting familiarity rather than recollection. Together, these results show that current machine vision algorithms that can predict an image’s intrinsic memorability in terms of hit rates fall short of describing the subjective quality of human memories.


2016 ◽  
Vol 34 (3_suppl) ◽  
pp. 164-164
Author(s):  
Erika Lauren Tribett ◽  
Jordan Chavez ◽  
Alison Morris

164 Background: Palliative medicine (PM) is an essential component of survivorship care from point of diagnosis. While PM is philosophically committed to supporting patient and family survivorship goals, very few programs incorporate patient and family input into the formation of a patient-centered model of care for symptom management and quality of life. We utilized design theory to develop novel interventions for primary and specialist PM delivery. Methods: Baseline data collected in Fall 2014 revealed a need for assistance navigating support services as well as barriers to PM integration including branding, lack of primary palliative skills, and poor understanding of outcomes of PM integration. In February 2015, we convened a multidisciplinary group of 25 patients, family members, oncology clinicians and experts in patient experience and health services research, to evaluate current state data and formulate ideas for optimizing PM to support symptom management and quality of life. During a 1-day workshop, the group generated interventions for primary and specialist PM. Small teams were assigned to pilot projects based on these recommendations. Proposed solutions are being tested from July - October 2015. Results: The design team generated five focus areas for meeting patient needs and overcoming barriers: standard processes for access to PM, education on primary PM, rapid reporting of outcomes, relationship-building with referring clinicians, and improved access to primary and specialist palliative resources. Three interventions are being developed to address these: 1. A subspecialist “hub” that allows single referrals and streamlined access to supportive care, 2. a novel two-question probe about goals conducted by the oncologist, and 3. a peer support system between PM social work and nursing staff to proactively manage patients with complex needs. Conclusions: Patient and family-centered PM mandates a novel approach. Design theory allows for clear delineation of problem areas, generation of multiple solution sets, and rapid testing and refinement prior to large-scale adoption. A participatory design approach emphasizes user values and limitations and creates values-based solutions.


2010 ◽  
Vol 26 (01) ◽  
pp. 29-35
Author(s):  
Alok K. Verma ◽  
Ray Ferrari ◽  
Manorama Talaiver ◽  
Sueanne E. McKinney ◽  
Daniel Dickerson ◽  
...  

Low enrollment and high attrition rates in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) based degree programs have created a shortage of workforce in industries such as shipbuilding and repair that are important for national security. Part of this problem can be attributed to pedagogical issues such as lack of engaging hands-on activities used for math and science instruction in middle and high schools. Another reason for this is that the teachers are not trained in taking an integrated approach to teaching math and science. This has led to large-scale flight and attrition from STEM-based career tracks. Consequently, engineering and engineering technology programs throughout the nation have observed declining graduation rates and quality of incoming students. To engage students' interest in STEM-based careers, it is important that students establish a link between the math and science instruction and its application to solve real-life problems early in their learning experience. Project-based activities have a proven record as a pedagogical method. Effectiveness of this pedagogy has been supported by research in the acquisition and retention of knowledge. The MarineTech Project funded by the State Council of Higher Education of Virginia and supported by the shipbuilding and repair industry has attempted to address the quality of STEM education in Virginia by developing project-based learning kits and providing professional development training in the use of these kits. The project also provided teacher training in 21st century skills and integrated math and science education while increasing awareness of teachers about the shipbuilding and repair industry. The paper presents the motivation behind developing these project-based learning (PBL) modules, issues related to implementation, and results from student and teacher workshops.


Dermatology ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Morgane Condamina ◽  
Laetitia Penso ◽  
Viet-Thi Tran ◽  
Claire Hotz ◽  
Philippe Guillem ◽  
...  

<b><i>Background:</i></b> Hidradenitis suppurativa (HS) is a chronic inflammatory skin condition substantially impacting patients’ quality of life; the pathogenesis remains unclear, and treatment is complex and not yet standardized. Observational data are increasingly being used to evaluate therapeutics in “real-life” interventions, and the development of e-cohorts is offering new tools for epidemiological studies at the population level. <b><i>Objective:</i></b> The aim of this study was to describe the clinical characteristics and treatment history of HS participants in the Community of Patients for Research (ComPaRe) cohort and to compare these to other cohorts. <b><i>Methods:</i></b> We performed a cross-sectional study of the baseline data of HS participants in ComPaRe, an e-cohort of patients with chronic diseases. Data were collected using patient-reported questionnaires about clinical-dem­ographic aspects, quality of life, and treatment history. <b><i>Results:</i></b> A total of 396 participants (339 females, 57 males) were included (mean age 38 years); 83 (21%) had a family history of HS, 227 (57.3%) were current smokers, and 241 (60.9%) were overweight or obese. Most of the participants declared a Hurley stage II (<i>n</i> = 263, 66.4%) or III (<i>n</i> = 76, 20.3%). The breast was more frequently affected in women than men (37.5 vs. 5.3%, <i>p</i> &#x3c; 0.0001), whereas the dorsal region was more frequently affected in men (39.5 vs. 10.9%, <i>p</i> &#x3c; 0.0001). Increased disease stage was associated with obesity (25.9 vs. 33.8 vs. 51.3%, <i>p</i> = 0.02) and some HS localizations (genital [<i>p</i> &#x3c; 0.005], pubis [<i>p</i> &#x3c; 0.007], gluteal fold [<i>p</i> = 0.02], and groin [<i>p</i> &#x3c; 0.0001]). The most frequently prescribed treatments were oral antibiotics (<i>n</i> = 362, 91.4%), especially amoxicillin-clavulanic acid and cyclins. Less than 10% of participants received biologics. Most of these results were consistent with previously published cohorts. <b><i>Conclusion:</i></b> Recruitment of participants by such a web platform can be a faster way to get relevant scientific data for a wide variety of patients that could be used for epidemiological studies and to evaluate therapeutics in “real-life” interventions.


2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierre Dubois ◽  
Paulo Albuquerque ◽  
Olivier Allais ◽  
Céline Bonnet ◽  
Patrice Bertail ◽  
...  

AbstractTo examine whether four pre-selected front-of-pack nutrition labels improve food purchases in real-life grocery shopping settings, we put 1.9 million labels on 1266 food products in four categories in 60 supermarkets and analyzed the nutritional quality of 1,668,301 purchases using the FSA nutrient profiling score. Effect sizes were 17 times smaller on average than those found in comparable laboratory studies. The most effective nutrition label, Nutri-Score, increased the purchases of foods in the top third of their category nutrition-wise by 14%, but had no impact on the purchases of foods with medium, low, or unlabeled nutrition quality. Therefore, Nutri-Score only improved the nutritional quality of the basket of labeled foods purchased by 2.5% (−0.142 FSA points). Nutri-Score’s performance improved with the variance (but not the mean) of the nutritional quality of the category. In-store surveys suggest that Nutri-Score’s ability to attract attention and help shoppers rank products by nutritional quality may explain its performance.


2020 ◽  
Vol 34 (05) ◽  
pp. 7805-7813
Author(s):  
Shai Gretz ◽  
Roni Friedman ◽  
Edo Cohen-Karlik ◽  
Assaf Toledo ◽  
Dan Lahav ◽  
...  

Identifying the quality of free-text arguments has become an important task in the rapidly expanding field of computational argumentation. In this work, we explore the challenging task of argument quality ranking. To this end, we created a corpus of 30,497 arguments carefully annotated for point-wise quality, released as part of this work. To the best of our knowledge, this is the largest dataset annotated for point-wise argument quality, larger by a factor of five than previously released datasets. Moreover, we address the core issue of inducing a labeled score from crowd annotations by performing a comprehensive evaluation of different approaches to this problem. In addition, we analyze the quality dimensions that characterize this dataset. Finally, we present a neural method for argument quality ranking, which outperforms several baselines on our own dataset, as well as previous methods published for another dataset.


Author(s):  
D. Zhesnkhan ◽  
Sh. E. Alpeissova

In the article, the authors identified a group of problems in its implementation, reflecting a number of programs adopted for the development of rural settlements in Kazakhstan, and suggested ways to effectively solve them. Among the main problems that negatively affect the development of rural settlements were: incomplete financing of rural development programs; duplication of the government's structural activities with the structure of local akimats in comparison with economic activities; dilapidated social and engineering infrastructure in priority villages of the Republic; decrease in the quality of education due to the lack of competition among social professionals in the SNP. In order to effectively address these problems, a number of proposals were made, including: it is shown that there is a need for phased funding of SNP development programs and strict control over its implementation, and the main reasons. To increase the remuneration of specialists in the field of agriculture, it was shown that it is necessary to develop applied solutions aimed at improving performance in the field of agriculture. The need for the competent authorities to develop a large-scale plan for the development, promotion and introduction of opportunities for private entrepreneurship and small business in agriculture was justified. It is shown that budget expenditures for the development of rural localities with small or low potential in the SNP are inefficient. The methods of research, analysis, synthesis, dynamic comparison, systematization, economic expertise, and generalization of scientific data were used in the disclosure of the topic.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nico Broers ◽  
Niko Busch

Many photographs of real-life scenes are very consistently remembered or forgotten by most people, making these images intrinsically memorable or forgettable. Although machine vision algorithms can predict a given image’s memorability very well, nothing is known about the subjective quality of these memories: are memorable images recognized based on strong feelings of familiarity or on recollection of episodic details? We tested people’s recognition memory for memorable and forgettable scenes selected from image memorability databases, which contain memorability scores for each image, based on large-scale recognition memory experiments. Specifically, we tested the effect of intrinsic memorability on recollection and familiarity using cognitive computational models based on Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROCs; Experiment 1 and 2) and on remember/know (R/K) judgments (Experiment 2). The ROC data of experiment 1 indicated that image memorability boosted memory strength, but did not find a specific effect on recollection or familiarity. By contrast, ROC data from Experiment 2, which was designed to facilitate encoding and, in turn, recollection, found more evidence for a specific effect of image memorability on recollection. Moreover, R/K judgments showed that, on average, memorability boosts recollection rather than familiarity. However, we also found a large degree of variability in these ratings across individual images: some images actually achieved high recognition rates by exclusively boosting familiarity rather than recollection. Together, these results show that current machine vision algorithms that can predict an image’s intrinsic memorability in terms of hit rates fall short of describing the subjective quality of human memories.


1996 ◽  
Vol 34 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 33-40
Author(s):  
K. H. Pecher ◽  
R. Haußmann

The sewer tank is a specific type of overflow tank. While sewer tanks with a surplus flow at the beginning of the sewer are regarded as uncritical, in sewer tanks with a surplus flow at the end of the sewer, sedimentation may be remobilised and transported into the receiving waters. For this reason, in Germany, additional capacity over and above the minimum requirements is demanded for these sewers. In order to ensure the qualitative mode of action of sewer tanks with a surplus flow at the end of the sewer, pilot-scale investigations into a model sewer, with artificial combined water, as well as large-scale investigations under real life conditions, were carried out. The findings of these investigations illustrated that a sedimentation of solids takes place in the majority of flow circumstances, including times of overflow. Thus, even at times of high stormwater flow, the outflow to the receiving waters contains only a low level of pollution. As well as storing the stormwater, the sewer tank with a surplus flow at the end of the sewer has the additional environmentally friendly effect of improving the quality of the outflow and reducing its pollution content.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria de Fátima Brito ◽  
Carla Torre ◽  
Beatriz Silva-Lima

Diabetes Mellitus is one of the World Health Organization's priority diseases under research by the first and second programmes of Innovative Medicines Initiative, with the acronyms IMI1 and IMI2, respectively. Up to October of 2019, 13 projects were funded by IMI for Diabetes &amp; Metabolic disorders, namely SUMMIT, IMIDIA, DIRECT, StemBANCC, EMIF, EBiSC, INNODIA, RHAPSODY, BEAT-DKD, LITMUS, Hypo-RESOLVE, IM2PACT, and CARDIATEAM. In general, a total of €447 249 438 was spent by IMI in the area of Diabetes. In order to prompt a better integration of achievements between the different projects, we perform a literature review and used three data sources, namely the official project's websites, the contact with the project's coordinators and co-coordinator, and the CORDIS database. From the 662 citations identified, 185 were included. The data collected were integrated into the objectives proposed for the four IMI2 program research axes: (1) target and biomarker identification, (2) innovative clinical trials paradigms, (3) innovative medicines, and (4) patient-tailored adherence programmes. The IMI funded projects identified new biomarkers, medical and research tools, determinants of inter-individual variability, relevant pathways, clinical trial designs, clinical endpoints, therapeutic targets and concepts, pharmacologic agents, large-scale production strategies, and patient-centered predictive models for diabetes and its complications. Taking into account the scientific data produced, we provided a joint vision with strategies for integrating personalized medicine into healthcare practice. The major limitations of this article were the large gap of data in the libraries on the official project websites and even the Cordis database was not complete and up to date.


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