scholarly journals Informatics solutions for bridging the gap between clinical and laboratory services in a low-resource setting

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Driessen ◽  
Henry Limula ◽  
Oliver J. Gadabu ◽  
Gervase Gamadzi ◽  
Edwin Chitandale ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Formal Analysis ◽  
Laboratory Data ◽  
Quality Audit ◽  
Laboratory Service ◽  
Low Resource ◽  
Resource Limited ◽  
Laboratory Services ◽  
Resource Setting ◽  
Low Resource Setting ◽  
Resource Laboratory

Background: There has been little formal analysis of laboratory systems in resource-limited settings, despite widespread consensus around the importance of a strong laboratory infrastructure.Objectives: This study details the informational challenges faced by the laboratory at Kamuzu Central Hospital, a tertiary health facility in Malawi; and proposes ways in which informatics can bolster the efficiency and role of low-resource laboratory systems.Methods: We evaluated previously-collected data on three different aspects of laboratory use. A four-week quality audit of laboratory test orders quantified challenges associated with collecting viable specimens for testing. Data on tests run by the laboratory over a one yearperiod described the magnitude of the demand for laboratory services. Descriptive information about the laboratory workflow identified informational process breakdowns in the pre-analytical and post-analytical phases and was paired with a 24-hour sample of laboratory data on results reporting.Results: The laboratory conducted 242 242 tests over a 12-month period. The four-week quality audit identified 54% of samples as untestable. Prohibitive paperwork errors were identified in 16% of samples. Laboratory service workflows indicated a potential process breakdown in sample transport and results reporting resulting from the lack of assignment of these tasks to any specific employee cadre. The study of result reporting time showed a mean of almost six hours, with significant variation.Conclusions: This analysis identified challenges in each phase of laboratory testing. Informatics could improve the management of this information by streamlining test ordering and the communication of test orders to the laboratory and results back to the ordering physician.

scholarly journals Challenges to Bringing Personalized Medicine to a Low-Resource Setting in Peru

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 1470
Author(s):  
Nelly Solis ◽  
Elizabeth Zavaleta ◽  
Patrik Wernhoff ◽  
Constantino Dominguez-Barrera ◽  
Mev Dominguez-Valentin
Keyword(s):  
Low Income ◽  
Age Of Onset ◽  
Genomic Research ◽  
Mortality And Morbidity ◽  
Screening Programs ◽  
Low Resource ◽  
Effective Interventions ◽  
Resource Limited ◽  
Resource Setting ◽  
Low Resource Setting

We provide an overview of the challenges that low-resource setting cities are facing, including a lack of global implementation of cancer screening programs, accurate data and statistics that may aid the health authorities and guide future public health activities, as well as reorient strategies, interventions and budgets to promote lifestyles that help prevent disease. Current cancer care does not fully reflect ethnic, cultural, environmental and resource differences. Herein, we described a snapshot of the cancer mortality and morbidity from a hospital that cares a rural and low-income population from Peru, called Chimbote (316,966 inhabitants) and showed the limitation of access to oncological care and genetic services. The city is located in the region of Ancash, which is a department of Northern Peru. Of note, we identified a greater proportion of cancer cases than previously described, with a young age of onset and differential profile of the most frequent cancers. With the emergence of increasingly effective interventions, it becomes paramount that populations living in resource-limited settings have access to cancer services and participate in genetics and genomic research.

Evaluation of a New Protocol of Insulin Dose Adjustment in a Low-Resource Setting

Diabetes ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 67 (Supplement 1) ◽  
pp. 93-LB
Author(s):  
EDDY JEAN BAPTISTE ◽  
PHILIPPE LARCO ◽  
MARIE-NANCY CHARLES LARCO ◽  
JULIA E. VON OETTINGEN ◽  
EDDLYS DUBOIS ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Dose Adjustment ◽  
Insulin Dose ◽  
Low Resource ◽  
Resource Setting ◽  
Low Resource Setting

scholarly journals Right paraduodenal hernia with extensive bowel gangrene treated with staged surgery: a Bogota bag followed by resection in a low-resource setting

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. e239250
Author(s):  
Vijay Anand Ismavel ◽  
Moloti Kichu ◽  
David Paul Hechhula ◽  
Rebecca Yanadi
Keyword(s):  
Plastic Material ◽  
Successful Outcome ◽  
Paraduodenal Hernia ◽  
Transparent Plastic ◽  
Low Resource ◽  
Entire Small Bowel ◽  
Resource Setting ◽  
Low Resource Setting ◽  
Right Paraduodenal Hernia ◽  
Bowel Gangrene

We report a case of right paraduodenal hernia with strangulation of almost the entire small bowel at presentation. Since resection of all bowel of doubtful viability would have resulted in too little residual length to sustain life, a Bogota bag was fashioned using transparent plastic material from an urine drainage bag and the patient monitored intensively for 18 hours. At re-laparotomy, clear demarcation lines had formed with adequate length of viable bowel (100 cm) and resection with anastomosis was done with a good outcome on follow-up, 9 months after surgery. Our description of a rare cause of strangulated intestinal obstruction and a novel method of maximising length of viable bowel is reported for its successful outcome in a low-resource setting.

scholarly journals Humanitarian Surgical Missions in Times of COVID-19: Recommendations to Safely Return to a Sub-Saharan Africa Low-Resource Setting

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Víctor Lopez-Lopez ◽  
Ana Morales ◽  
Elisa García-Vazquez ◽  
Miguel González ◽  
Quiteria Hernandez ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Low Resource ◽  
Resource Setting ◽  
Low Resource Setting ◽  
Sub Saharan

scholarly journals Vulvar cancer: surgical management and survival trends in a low resource setting

2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Navin Kumar ◽  
Mukur Dipi Ray ◽  
D. N. Sharma ◽  
Rambha Pandey ◽  
Kanak Lata ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Surgical Management ◽  
Vulvar Cancer ◽  
Low Resource ◽  
Resource Setting ◽  
Low Resource Setting

Multi-level Chunk-based Constituent-to-Dependency Treebank Transformation for Tibetan Dependency Parsing

2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Shumin Shi ◽  
Dan Luo ◽  
Xing Wu ◽  
Congjun Long ◽  
Heyan Huang
Keyword(s):  
Language Processing ◽  
Manual Annotation ◽  
Syntactic Parsing ◽  
Dependency Parsing ◽  
Low Resource ◽  
Resource Setting ◽  
Dependency Tree ◽  
Low Resource Setting ◽  
Novel Method ◽  
Multi Level

Dependency parsing is an important task for Natural Language Processing (NLP). However, a mature parser requires a large treebank for training, which is still extremely costly to create. Tibetan is a kind of extremely low-resource language for NLP, there is no available Tibetan dependency treebank, which is currently obtained by manual annotation. Furthermore, there are few related kinds of research on the construction of treebank. We propose a novel method of multi-level chunk-based syntactic parsing to complete constituent-to-dependency treebank conversion for Tibetan under scarce conditions. Our method mines more dependencies of Tibetan sentences, builds a high-quality Tibetan dependency tree corpus, and makes fuller use of the inherent laws of the language itself. We train the dependency parsing models on the dependency treebank obtained by the preliminary transformation. The model achieves 86.5% accuracy, 96% LAS, and 97.85% UAS, which exceeds the optimal results of existing conversion methods. The experimental results show that our method has the potential to use a low-resource setting, which means we not only solve the problem of scarce Tibetan dependency treebank but also avoid needless manual annotation. The method embodies the regularity of strong knowledge-guided linguistic analysis methods, which is of great significance to promote the research of Tibetan information processing.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document