scholarly journals How resource limitations and household economics may compromise efforts to safeguard children during outbreaks

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kellen Myers ◽  
Agnesa Redere ◽  
Nina H. Fefferman
BJS Open ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (Supplement_1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chung Mun Alice Lin ◽  
Alexander Orman ◽  
Nicholas D Clement ◽  
David J Deehan ◽  
Chung M A Lin

Abstract Introduction There is currently an increased demand for elective orthopaedic surgery. However, due to the ever-growing financial, time and resource limitations, there is a pressing need to identify those who would benefit most from surgery but with the lowest risk of complications. Comorbidities are a fundamental factor in this decision and the traditional way to ascertain this is through medical record data abstraction during pre-operative assessment. However, this can be time consuming and expensive. We therefore set out to establish whether patient reported comorbidities are reliable as a principal source of information. Method Searches were performed on PubMed and Medline, and citations independently screened. Included studies were published between 2010 to 2020 assessing the reliability of at least one patient reported comorbidity against their medical record or clinical assessment as gold standard. Cohen’s kappa coefficient values were grouped into systems and a meta-analysis performed comparing the reliability between studies. Results Meta-analysis data showed poor-to-moderate reliability for diseases in cardiovascular, musculoskeletal, neurological and respiratory systems as well as for malignancy and depression. Endocrine diseases showed good-to-excellent reliability. Factors found to affect the concordance included sex, age, ethnicity, education, living alone, marital status, number or severity of comorbidities, mental health and disability. Conclusion Our study showed poor-to-moderate reliability for all systems except endocrine, consisting of thyroid disease and diabetes mellitus, which demonstrated good-to-excellent reliability. Although patient reported data is useful and can facilitate a complete pre-operative overview of the patient, it is not reliable enough to be used as a standalone measure.


Data & Policy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harrison Wilde ◽  
Lucia L. Chen ◽  
Austin Nguyen ◽  
Zoe Kimpel ◽  
Joshua Sidgwick ◽  
...  

Abstract Rough sleeping is a chronic experience faced by some of the most disadvantaged people in modern society. This paper describes work carried out in partnership with Homeless Link (HL), a UK-based charity, in developing a data-driven approach to better connect people sleeping rough on the streets with outreach service providers. HL's platform has grown exponentially in recent years, leading to thousands of alerts per day during extreme weather events; this overwhelms the volunteer-based system they currently rely upon for the processing of alerts. In order to solve this problem, we propose a human-centered machine learning system to augment the volunteers' efforts by prioritizing alerts based on the likelihood of making a successful connection with a rough sleeper. This addresses capacity and resource limitations whilst allowing HL to quickly, effectively, and equitably process all of the alerts that they receive. Initial evaluation using historical data shows that our approach increases the rate at which rough sleepers are found following a referral by at least 15% based on labeled data, implying a greater overall increase when the alerts with unknown outcomes are considered, and suggesting the benefit in a trial taking place over a longer period to assess the models in practice. The discussion and modeling process is done with careful considerations of ethics, transparency, and explainability due to the sensitive nature of the data involved and the vulnerability of the people that are affected.


2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 39-42
Author(s):  
Shuochao Yao ◽  
Jinyang Li ◽  
Dongxin Liu ◽  
Tianshi Wang ◽  
Shengzhong Liu ◽  
...  

Future mobile and embedded systems will be smarter and more user-friendly. They will perceive the physical environment, understand human context, and interact with end-users in a human-like fashion. Daily objects will be capable of leveraging sensor data to perform complex estimation and recognition tasks, such as recognizing visual inputs, understanding voice commands, tracking objects, and interpreting human actions. This raises important research questions on how to endow low-end embedded and mobile devices with the appearance of intelligence despite their resource limitations.


2020 ◽  
Vol 33 (6) ◽  
pp. 271-276
Author(s):  
Danielle de Moissac ◽  
Jacinthe Savard ◽  
Sébastien Savard ◽  
Florette Giasson ◽  
Lucy-Ann Kubina

Evidence suggests that language barriers present obstacles to healthcare access and quality for Francophone seniors in official language minority communities across Canada. Addressing language barriers and providing continuity is challenging, as French language services (FLSs) rely heavily on bilingual providers and the practice of active offer by all staff. This qualitative research used semi-structured group and individual interviews to explore mechanisms supporting FLS coordination and continuity in two Canadian provinces. Identification of the language variable in health records, virtual healthcare, and FLS directories are conducive to FLS continuity, but financial and resource limitations present major obstacles. Management strategies to facilitate continuity of FLS across health organizations are discussed.


Author(s):  
George A. Mertz ◽  
Gregory S. Raffio ◽  
Kelly Kissock

Environmental and resource limitations provide increased motivation for design of net-zero energy or net-zero CO2 buildings. The optimum building design will have the lowest lifecycle cost. This paper describes a method of performing and comparing lifecycle costs for standard, CO2-neutral and net-zero energy buildings. Costs of source energy are calculated based on the cost of photovoltaic systems, tradable renewable certificates, CO2 credits and conventional energy. Building energy simulation is used to determine building energy use. A case study is conducted on a proposed net-zero energy house. The paper identifies the least-cost net-zero energy house, the least-cost CO2 neutral house, and the overall least-cost house. The methodology can be generalized to different climates and buildings. The method and results may be of interest to builders, developers, city planners, or organizations managing multiple buildings.


Burns ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 42 (6) ◽  
pp. 1340-1344 ◽  
Author(s):  
M.T.D. Smith ◽  
N.L. Allorto ◽  
D.L. Clarke

2021 ◽  
Vol 42 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. S35-S35
Author(s):  
Jeffrey E Carter ◽  
Herbert Phelan ◽  
Colleen M Ryan ◽  
James C Jeng ◽  
Kathryn Mai ◽  
...  

Abstract Introduction The COVID-19 pandemic has raised global awareness of healthcare resource limitations. Specifically, the pandemic has demonstrated that burn disaster planning should involve non-burn disasters that threaten staff, supplies, or space. The ABA facilitated bed counts with the assistance of regional disaster coordinators from April through August of 2020. Our analysis examines the impact of the pandemic on burn surge and bed capacity in the U.S. Methods Bed availability was obtained by the ABA regional disaster coordinators through an initiative by the Organization and Delivery of Burn Care Committee. Bed availability was defined as immediately available burn beds and categorized as adult, pediatric, or flexible. Surge capacity was defined as the maximum number of patients that a burn center could admit in a surge situation. Data was deidentified by the central office with descriptive statistics to determine bed availability and surge capacity trends regionally and nationally. Results Bed counts were performed 6 times from 04/17/2020 through 08/14/2020. Response rates from the 137 North American burn centers varied from 86–96%. At least 6 burn centers (5%) were either closed or converted for COVID patients during the initial two bed counts. The total number of adult or pediatric burn beds was 2,082. Total bed availability decreased from 845 at the first survey down to 572 beds at the last survey. Surge capacity baseline was 1,668 beds and decreased from 1,132 beds in the initial survey down to 833 beds in the final survey. Conclusions Our study demonstrates a significant impact on burn bed availability due to the COVID-19 pandemic with a 37% reduction in available burn beds from April to August and a 26% reduction in surge capacity. This study demonstrates a substantial reduction in bed availability during the pandemic with additional analysis in process to examine regional trends.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document