Abstract 14058: Sex-based Differences in Reported Payments to Cardiologists by Drug and Device Manufacturers

Circulation ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 142 (Suppl_3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kayle Shapero ◽  
Qurat-ul-ain Jelani ◽  
Peter Kahn
Keyword(s):  
Continuing Education ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Equal Opportunities ◽  
Female Representation ◽  
Physician Specialty ◽  
National Plan ◽  
Cardiovascular Medicine ◽  
State Of Practice ◽  
Device Manufacturer ◽  
Open Payments

Introduction: Sex-based disparities in salaries and promotion in cardiovascular medicine are well known, but there is little data on industry compensation by sex. We attempted to explore sex differences in financial ties to industry in the form of drug and device manufacturer payments to cardiologists. Methods: 2018 Open Payments data was obtained from Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). A cross walk was used to link CMS National Plan and Provider Enumeration System National Provider Identifier Data with open payments data. Physician specialty (adult cardiology), sex, state of practice, number and amount of payments, drug and device information were obtained and aggregated for analysis using natural language processing. Results: In 2018, total of 879,119 payments were made to 29246 physicians (10.2% female), totaling $145,556,106. Nationwide, female cardiologists had lower rates of payments (15.5 payments per year vs 25.9 payments), lower average compensation per payment ($113 vs $169) when compared to their male counterparts. Analysis of five drugs/devices with the largest aggregated payments revealed that the female representation in certain categories (consulting, compensation for serving as speaker-non continuing education, and travel and lodging) was far lower than expected (3.8%, 5.4%, and 4.2% respectively). Conclusions: Female cardiologists received fewer payments and lower compensation per payment from drug and device manufacturers as compared to their male counterparts. Further studies are required to determine reasons behind differences in compensation and efforts be made to standardize compensation regardless of sex to promote equal opportunities for all physicians.

scholarly journals Towards women-inclusive ecology: Representation, behavior, and perception of women at an international conference

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (12) ◽  
pp. e0260163
Author(s):  
Anna Lupon ◽  
Pablo Rodríguez-Lozano ◽  
Mireia Bartrons ◽  
Alba Anadon-Rosell ◽  
Meritxell Batalla ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Personal Experience ◽  
Equal Opportunities ◽  
Female Representation ◽  
Gender Gaps ◽  
Women In Academia ◽  
International Conference ◽  
Cultural Events ◽  
Gender Biases ◽  
Women's Participation

Conferences are ideal platforms for studying gender gaps in science because they are important cultural events that reflect barriers to women in academia. Here, we explored women’s participation in ecology conferences by analyzing female representation, behavior, and personal experience at the 1st Meeting of the Iberian Society of Ecology (SIBECOL). The conference had 722 attendees, 576 contributions, and 27 scientific sessions. The gender of attendees and presenters was balanced (48/52% women/men), yet only 29% of the contributions had a woman as last author. Moreover, men presented most of the keynote talks (67%) and convened most of the sessions. Our results also showed that only 32% of the questions were asked by women, yet the number of questions raised by women increased when the speaker or the convener was a woman. Finally, the post-conference survey revealed that attendees had a good experience and did not perceive the event as a threatening context for women. Yet, differences in the responses between genders suggest that women tended to have a worse experience than their male counterparts. Although our results showed clear gender biases, most of the participants of the conference failed to detect it. Overall, we highlight the challenge of increasing women’s scientific leadership, visibility and interaction in scientific conferences and we suggest several recommendations for creating inclusive meetings, thereby promoting equal opportunities for all participants.

scholarly journals Upon Improving the Performance of Localized Healthcare Virtual Assistants

Healthcare ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 99
Author(s):  
Nikolaos Malamas ◽  
Konstantinos Papangelou ◽  
Andreas L. Symeonidis
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
General Population ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Word Embeddings ◽  
Learning Models ◽  
Efficient Manner ◽  
Repetitive Tasks ◽  
Open Source Framework ◽  
State Of Practice ◽  
Machine Learning Models

Virtual assistants are becoming popular in a variety of domains, responsible for automating repetitive tasks or allowing users to seamlessly access useful information. With the advances in Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing, there has been an increasing interest in applying such assistants in new areas and with new capabilities. In particular, their application in e-healthcare is becoming attractive and is driven by the need to access medically-related knowledge, as well as providing first-level assistance in an efficient manner. In such types of virtual assistants, localization is of utmost importance, since the general population (especially the aging population) is not familiar with the needed “healthcare vocabulary” to communicate facts properly; and state-of-practice proves relatively poor in performance when it comes to specialized virtual assistants for less frequently spoken languages. In this context, we present a Greek ML-based virtual assistant specifically designed to address some commonly occurring tasks in the healthcare domain, such as doctor’s appointments or distress (panic situations) management. We build on top of an existing open-source framework, discuss the necessary modifications needed to address the language-specific characteristics and evaluate various combinations of word embeddings and machine learning models to enhance the assistant’s behaviour. Results show that we are able to build an efficient Greek-speaking virtual assistant to support e-healthcare, while the NLP pipeline proposed can be applied in other (less frequently spoken) languages, without loss of generality.

scholarly journals The Implementation of a Women’s Quota System in Lebanese Legislation

1970 ◽  
pp. 56-59
Author(s):  
Arda Arsenian Ekmekji
Keyword(s):  
College Graduates ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
Arab Countries ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Equal Opportunities ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Female Representation ◽  
Legislative Elections ◽  
Quota System ◽  
Do So

Lebanon was among the first Arab countries to grant women suffrage rights in 1953. Its Constitution clearly stipulates that all its citizens have equal rights (Article 7)1 and enjoy equal opportunities in all spheres of life (Article 12). 2 Yet after half a century of alleged political rights, it is surprising to find that female representation in the Lebanese parliament is still at a minimum. In the 2005 legislative elections, only six women out of the 128 members made it to parliament (4.7 percent), thus ranking Lebanon 125th (out of 138) on the IPU list.3 For a country that prides itself on being among the pioneer Middle Eastern countries in the high proportion of women college graduates the above grading is quite ‘degrading.’ The late women's rights activist, Laure Moghaizel,4 once exclaimed that all Lebanese women who enter parliament do so wearing black since they always run for a seat vacated by a deceased father or spouse.

scholarly journals PrediGen: A tool to track the genealogy of medical device predicates in the United States

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dhruv Pai
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Medical Device ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Medical Devices ◽  
The United States ◽  
Risks And Benefits ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Device Manufacturer ◽  
The Right ◽  
Patients Perspective

In the United States, medical devices are regulated and subject to review by the Food and Drug Administration (“FDA”) before they can be marketed. Novel medical devices have to undergo a premarket authorization (PMA) process before they can proceed to market, and this process can be fairly cumbersome, expensive, and time-consuming. An alternate faster and less-pricey pathway to going to market is the 510(k) pathway. In this approach, if the device manufacturer can show that their device is substantially equivalent in safety and effectiveness to a pre-existing FDA-approved marketed device (or “predicates”), they can go to market with their device. Due to the possibility of daisy-chaining predicate devices, it can very quickly be difficult to unravel the logic and justification of how a particular medical device’s equivalence was established. From patients’ perspective, this minimizes transparency in the process. From a vendor perspective, it can be difficult to determine the right predicate that applies to their device. PrediGen (short for “Predicates Genealogy”) is being developed as an approach to graphically map the connectivity of various predicates in the medical device field using data publicly made available by the FDA, and by combining text mining and novel natural language processing (NLP) techniques. Besides enabling a better understanding of the risks and benefits of the 510(k) process, this tool can increase consumer confidence in the medical devices that are currently in the marketplace.

Language processing is not a race against time

2016 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giosuè Baggio ◽  
Carmelo M. Vicario
Keyword(s):  
Information Processing ◽  
Human Brain ◽  
Language Processing ◽  
Cognitive Functions ◽  
Memory Systems ◽  
Language System ◽  
Moderating Factors

AbstractWe agree with Christiansen & Chater (C&C) that language processing and acquisition are tightly constrained by the limits of sensory and memory systems. However, the human brain supports a range of cognitive functions that mitigate the effects of information processing bottlenecks. The language system is partly organised around these moderating factors, not just around restrictions on storage and computation.

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