Characteristics of Patient Safety Incident Occurrences Reported by Japanese Homecare Nurses: A Prospective Observational Study

Patient safety incidents (PSIs) prevention is important in healthcare because PSIs affect patients negatively and increase medical costs and resource use. However, PSI knowledge in homecare is limited. To analyze patient safety issues and strategies, we aimed to identify the characteristics and contexts of PSI occurrences in homecare settings. A prospective observational study was conducted between July and November 2017 at 27 Japanese homecare nurse (HCN) agencies. HCNs at each agency voluntarily completed PSI reports indicating whether they contributed to PSIs or were informed of a PSI by the client/informal caregiver/other care provider during a period of three months. A total of 139 PSIs were analyzed, with the most common being falls (43.9%), followed by medication errors (25.2%). Among the PSIs reported to the HCN agencies, 44 were recorded on formal incident report forms, whereas 95 were reported as PSIs that required a response (e.g., injury care) but were not recorded on formal incident report forms. Most PSIs that occurred when no HCN was visiting were not recorded as incident reports (82.1%). Developing a framework/system that can accumulate, analyze, and share information on PSIs that occur in the absence of HCNs may provide insights into PSIs experienced by HCN clients.

Trends in Architecture and Middleware of Radio Telescope Control System

The control system is the central control unit of the radio telescope. It is used to monitor, control, coordinate, and manage software and hardware systems so as to satisfy the requirements of high-precision control in astronomical observation of radio telescope. The control system architecture is the foundation for the implementation of the control system, which determines the stability, scalability, and maintainability of the control system. Furthermore, the architecture design of the control system is closely geared towards the technological development of radio telescope and computer software architecture. In this article, we analyze the characteristic of the control system of a radio telescope in various steps and discuss the development of their architecture and middleware framework. System architecture and middleware framework of control system also serve as a useful reference for the design of other radio telescope control systems.

Bot-X: An AI-based virtual assistant for intelligent manufacturing

In light of recent trends toward introducing Artificial Intelligence (AI) to enhance the Human Machine Interface (HMI), companies need to identify the key issues of the communication between operator and production machines. Despite the fact that the industrial company starts to introduce chatbots to assist the communication between humans and machines, the virtual assistant (or digital assistant) by using human natural language is still widely required in the manufacturing domain. In this paper, we introduce an AI-based virtual assistant, Bot-X, for the manufacturing industry to handle a variety of complex services, e.g., order processing, production execution. This work expands the idea in three directions. Firstly, we introduce the design motivation of Bot-X, e.g., knowledge boundary in the manufacturing context. Secondly, the design principle of Bot-X is presented, including the framework, system architecture, model architecture, and the core algorithm. Then, three scenarios are presented to test the Bot-X usability and flexibility regarding the manufacturing environment.

Big Data Analytic Framework for Organizational Leverage

Web data have grown exponentially to reach zettabyte scales. Mountains of data come from several online applications, such as e-commerce, social media, web and sensor-based devices, business web sites, and other information types posted by users. Big data analytics (BDA) can help to derive new insights from this huge and fast-growing data source. The core advantage of BDA technology is in its ability to mine these data and provide information on underlying trends. BDA, however, faces innate difficulty in optimizing the process and capabilities that require merging of diverse data assets to generate viable information. This paper explores the BDA process and capabilities in leveraging data via three case studies who are prime users of BDA tools. Findings emphasize four key components of the BDA process framework: system coordination, data sourcing, big data application service, and end users. Further building blocks are data security, privacy, and management that represent services for providing functionality to the four components of the BDA process across information and technology value chains.