OP457 A Collaborative Horizon Scanning Alert For Disinvestment And Early Awareness

2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (S1) ◽  
pp. 10-10
Author(s):  
Vigdis Lauvrak ◽  
Kelly Farrah ◽  
Rosmin Esmail ◽  
Anna Lien Espeland ◽  
Elisabet Hafstad ◽  
...  

IntroductionIn 2019, the Norwegian Institute for Public Health and Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH) received support from HTAi to produce a quarterly current awareness alert for the HTAi Disinvestment and Early Awareness Interest Group in collaboration with the HTAi Information Retrieval Interest Group. The alert focuses on methods and topical issues, and broader forecasts of potentially disruptive technologies that may be of interest to those involved in horizon scanning and disinvestment initiatives in health technology assessment (HTA).MethodsInformation specialists at both agencies developed search strategies for disinvestment and for horizon scanning in PubMed and Google. The template for the alert was based on an e-newsletter developed by the Information Retrieval Interest Group. Information specialists and researchers reviewed the monthly (PubMed) and weekly (Google) search results and selected potentially relevant publications. Additional sources were also identified through regular HTA and horizon scanning work.ResultsAlerts are posted quarterly on the HTAi Interest Group website; members receive an email notice when new alerts are available. While the revised PubMed searches are identifying relevant information, Google alerts have been disappointing, and this search may need to be revised further or dropped. When the one-year pilot project ends, in Fall 2020, interest group members will be surveyed to see if the alerts were useful, and whether they have suggestions for improving them.ConclusionsCollaborating on this alert service reduces duplication of effort between agencies, and makes new research in horizon scanning and disinvestment more accessible to colleagues in other agencies working in these areas.

1998 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 644-651 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evelinda Trindade ◽  
Leigh-Ann Topfer ◽  
Mara De Giusti

AbstractThe basis of an early warning system for new and emerging health technologies is information, and in particular, information that has been selectively extracted from the huge quantity of data in the fields of medicine, science, and biobusiness. The information will be useful only if presented in a format suitable to the needs of health care decision makers and produced at the time most likely to influence the introduction or diffusion of new technologies. In 1997 the Canadian Coordinating Office for Health Technology Assessment (CCOHTA) began a one-year pilot project to identify and provide information on developments in medical technologies that may have a significant impact on health care in Canada. We began by examining the information available to us through the Internet, based on the assumption that electronic sources can offer more timely access to a greater range of information, often with little or no cost involved. It was important to identify the sites that offered the most relevant information in the least amount of time.


2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 316-327 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohammad Sadeghi ◽  
Jesús Vegas

The performance evaluation of an information retrieval system is a decisive aspect of the measure of the improvements in search technology. The Google search engine, as a tool for retrieving information on the Web, is used by almost 92% of Iranian users. The purpose of this paper is to study Google’s performance in retrieving relevant information from Persian documents. The information retrieval effectiveness is based on the precision measures of the search results done to a website that we have built with the documents of a TREC standard corpus. We asked Google for 100 topics available on the corpus and we compared the retrieved webpages with the relevant documents. The obtained results indicated that the morphological analysis of the Persian language is not fully taken into account by the Google search engine. The incorrect text tokenisation, considering the stop words as the content keywords of a document and the wrong ‘variants encountered’ of words found by Google are the main reasons that affect the relevance of the Persian information retrieval on the Web for this search engine.


Author(s):  
Eleanor D Msidi ◽  
Moses Sinkala ◽  
Amy Bositis ◽  
Thomasine Guberski ◽  
Patrick Katayamoyo ◽  
...  

This article describes the implementation and evaluation of a program to prepare HIV Nurse Practitioners in Zambia. Thirty nurses from all nine Zambian provinces participated in this program. Data on a variety of indicators were collected at baseline and throughout the one-year program including student and supervisor assessments, student performance on pre- and post-tests, clinical and case study assessments, documentation of care in patients’ health records, and their performance on final oral and written examinations. Findings indicated that the students were able to achieve the identified competencies and that their supervisors perceived that they would be able to implement their expanded skills to improve care for patients with HIV and AIDS in Zambia. Lessons learned from this initial pilot project will be used to expand the program in order to ensure successful task-shifting to address the critical shortage of health workers in Zambia in the context of the HIV/AIDS epidemic.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
pp. 238212052095968
Author(s):  
Ajay Sampat ◽  
Danielle Larson ◽  
George Culler ◽  
Danny Bega

Background: Mentorship is critical for achieving success in academic medicine and is also considered one of the core professional competencies for residency training. Despite its importance, there has been a decline in the mentor-mentee relationship, largely due to time constraints and lack of clear guidelines for productive discussions. We provide a mentorship curriculum with an easily adoptable workbook which may serve as a guide for programs seeking more formalized mentorship opportunities. Methods: We created a mentorship curriculum that was divided into 4 quarterly sessions, each with topics to facilitate career guidance and development, and to provide insight into the practical aspects of business of medicine. The mentorship pilot curriculum was implemented during the 2017 to 2018 academic year. Specific questions were provided to stimulate reflection and appropriate discussion between resident mentee and faculty mentor. A post-curriculum survey was distributed to evaluate the effectiveness and satisfaction of the curriculum. Results: A total of 23 residents participated in this pilot project. A majority had not had any formal teaching related to the business aspects of medicine (82%). Upon completion of the curriculum, most residents felt several topics were sufficiently covered, and a majority were satisfied with the course and relationship developed with their mentor (87%). Conclusions: Our pilot curriculum provides a model to address a knowledge gap in the practical aspects of medicine while simultaneously enhancing residency mentorship. The one-year course was generally well-received by residents and can serve as a model to other academic residency programs with similar challenges and goals.


Author(s):  
Kimmo Koski ◽  
Jussi Heikonen ◽  
1Jari Miettinen ◽  
Hannes Niemi ◽  
Juha Ruokolainen ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
One Year ◽  

Author(s):  
Yifan Zhu ◽  
Kuangyuan Hou ◽  
Chung C. Fu ◽  
Naiyi Li ◽  
Ruel E. Sabellano

Joint failure, which causes leakage in bridge decks as well as deterioration in girders and substructures, is one of the most common concerns in highway bridges. Therefore, link slabs have been considered as a preventive maintenance method in eliminating these joints. This paper presents a pilot project that constructed the link slab system in Maryland, U.S., with modified bearings to improve its durability and reduce maintenance costs. Compared with the traditional bearing replacement design for the link slab systems, this project proposes a more economical method by removing the anchor bolts and restricting sliding plates of the fixed bearings at both abutments to match the designed boundary conditions while avoiding the high cost of jacking girders and replacing bearings. Furthermore, numerical analysis and structural health monitoring were conducted and validated to investigate the effectiveness of the link slab design with various high performance concrete materials. After the one-year monitoring period, the link slab system is verified to be in fully functional condition and the bearing modification design is verified to be effective.


Author(s):  
Suzanne Van den Hoogen ◽  
Kristel Fleuren-Hunter

Leisure reading collections were once as integral to academic libraries as they currently are to public libraries. This article examines the results of a partnership between an academic and a public library to provide access to leisure reading materials to a university community through a one-year pilot project. Data were collected using circulation statistics, gate counts, and comment cards in the form of book inserts. During the pilot, gate counts increased by 6%, and 91% of participants indicated that they would continue to use the collection often or sometimes. The pilot was officially adopted as a new service at the end of the one-year trial period. Auparavant, les collections de livres de détente faisaient partie intégrante des bibliothèques académiques tout comme elles font présentement partie des bibliothèques publiques. Cet article présente les résultats d’un partenariat entre une bibliothèque académique et une bibliothèque publique cherchant à donner accès à du matériel de lecture de détente à une communauté universitaire par le biais d’un projet pilote d’un an. Les données ont été recueillies en utilisant des statistiques de prêt, le nombre d’entrées et des commentaires reçus sur des formulaires insérés dans les livres. Durant le projet pilote, le nombre d’entrées a augmenté de 6% et 91% des participants ont indiqué qu’ils continueraient d’utiliser la collection souvent ou à l’occasion. Le projet a été adopté officiellement comme nouveau service suite au pilote d’un an.


Author(s):  
Vigdis Lauvrak ◽  
Rosmin Esmail ◽  
Anna Lien Espeland ◽  
Kelly Farrah ◽  
Elisabet Hafstad ◽  
...  

Abstract Objective In 2019, members of the Health Technology Assessment international (HTAi) Interest Group for Disinvestment and Early Awareness (DEA-IG) and the HTAi Interest Group for Information Retrieval (IR-IG) agreed to produce quarterly current awareness alerts for members of the DEA-IG. The purpose was to pilot a predefined strategy for sharing new publications on methods and topical issues in this area. Methods Literature search strategies for PubMed and Google were developed. Retrieved citations were posted on the DEA-IG Web site. Members of the DEA-IG received an email notification when new alerts were available. An informal survey of the DEA-IG members was used to provide feedback after the pilot. Results Six alerts were issued during the pilot (June 2019–September 2020) with a total of 170 citations. The bulk of the information were 124 PubMed indexed citations, and of these, 96 were retrieved by the PubMed search strategies. Google searches were not found to be useful, but ongoing horizon scanning work at the Canadian Agency for Drugs and Technologies in Health (CADTH) provided additional information. Based on retrospective sorting, we considered thirty-five PubMed citations to be highly relevant for health technology assessment (HTA). The response rate to the survey was limited (seventeen respondents), but most respondents found the alerts useful for their work. Conclusions The results of this pilot project can be used to revise search strategies and information sources, improve the relevance of the alerts, and plan for expanded dissemination strategies.


2007 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 4-7
Author(s):  
Christopher R. Brigham ◽  
Jenny Walker

Abstract Rating patients with head trauma and multiple neurological injuries can be challenging. The AMA Guides to the Evaluation of Permanent Impairment (AMA Guides), Fifth Edition, Section 13.2, Criteria for Rating Impairment Due to Central Nervous System Disorders, outlines the process to rate impairment due to head trauma. This article summarizes the case of a 57-year-old male security guard who presents with headache, decreased sensation on the left cheek, loss of sense of smell, and problems with memory, among other symptoms. One year ago the patient was assaulted while on the job: his Glasgow Coma Score was 14; he had left periorbital ecchymosis and a 2.5 cm laceration over the left eyelid; a small right temporoparietal acute subdural hematoma; left inferior and medial orbital wall fractures; and, four hours after admission to the hospital, he experienced a generalized tonic-clonic seizure. This patient's impairment must include the following components: single seizure, orbital fracture, infraorbital neuropathy, anosmia, headache, and memory complaints. The article shows how the ratable impairments are combined using the Combining Impairment Ratings section. Because this patient has not experienced any seizures since the first occurrence, according to the AMA Guides he is not experiencing the “episodic neurological impairments” required for disability. Complex cases such as the one presented here highlight the need to use the criteria and estimates that are located in several sections of the AMA Guides.


VASA ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 120-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Asciutto ◽  
Lindblad

Background: The aim of this study is to report the short-term results of catheter-directed foam sclerotherapy (CDFS) in the treatment of axial saphenous vein incompetence. Patients and methods: Data of all patients undergoing CDFS for symptomatic primary incompetence of the great or small saphenous vein were prospectively collected. Treatment results in terms of occlusion rate and patients’ grade of satisfaction were analysed. All successfully treated patients underwent clinical and duplex follow-up examinations one year postoperatively. Results: Between September 2006 and September 2010, 357 limbs (337 patients) were treated with CDFS at our institution. Based on the CEAP classification, 64 were allocated to clinical class C3 , 128 to class C4, 102 to class C5 and 63 to class C6. Of the 188 patients who completed the one year follow up examination, 67 % had a complete and 14 % a near complete obliteration of the treated vessel. An ulcer-healing rate of 54 % was detected. 92 % of the patients were satisfied with the results of treatment. We registered six cases of thrombophlebitis and two cases of venous thromboembolism, all requiring treatment. Conclusions: The short-term results of CDFS in patients with axial vein incompetence are acceptable in terms of occlusion and complications rates.


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