PP293 Tiered Rapid Response Products In The Evidence Directorate Of Healthcare Improvement Scotland

IntroductionThe Evidence Directorate produced eighteen rapid responses during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. To address this need while retaining methodological integrity a three-tiered system for rapid responses was developed.MethodsAll rapid responses answer specific research questions rather than broad health system issues. The appropriate level varies depending on the time and resource available, and the requester's need: •Level 1 – Reference List (turnaround 4–8hrs, delivered by an information scientist): a quick search for best available evidence, and results presented as a reference list.•Level 2 – Summary of evidence (turnaround 1–2 days, delivered by an information scientist): a quick search and brief summary of the best available evidence.•Level 3 – Synthesis of evidence (turnaround 3–7 days, delivered by a Health Services Researcher or Health Economist): a quick search and then a narrative summary and synthesis of the best available evidence, with a brief appraisal of validity, reliability and generalizability.ResultsSince the launch of the three-tiered model in September 2020 there have been five rapid responses. Two were Level 2 products and three were Level 3 products.ConclusionsThe Evidence Directorate of Healthcare Improvement Scotland now has an agile rapid response product which can be applied to a variety of settings and needs. This was borne out of a need for a rapid turnaround and evidence synthesis during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Review on Real-Time Search Result Minimization using NLP

At any given time thousands of people are searching about a particular thing and only about a fraction of those people might get the answer that they wanted. Whenever we do a quick search the possibility of getting the right answer is good but when we look into the time required to reach the right answer is not always fast as for every single search query we get about hundreds of search results which is good but also is a bit confusing for the user. The user might have to try many links only to reach his desired answer. So, in our proposed system the user just has to enter the search query and has to select his desired website for the answer and in a few seconds the answer will be displayed to him. When the user inputs the search query and a particular website he data is scrapped from that particular website and is then fed to a NLP sys-tem which is responsible to minimize the size of the answer keeping in mind not to change or lose any valuable data.

A Novel Electrically Small Ground-Penetrating Radar Patch Antenna with a Parasitic Ring for Respiration Detection

An electrically small patch antenna with a low-cost high-permittivity ceramic substrate material for use in a ground-penetrating radar is proposed in this work. The antenna is based on a commercial ceramic 915 MHz patch antenna with a size of 25 × 25 × 4 mm3 and a weight of 12.9 g. The influences of the main geometric parameters on the antenna’s electromagnetic characteristics were comprehensively studied. Three bandwidth improvement techniques were sequentially applied to optimize the antenna: tuning the key geometric parameters, adding cuts on the edges, and adding parasitic radiators. The designed antenna operates at around 1.3 GHz and has more than 40 MHz continuous −3 dB bandwidth. In comparison to the original antenna, the −3 and −6 dB fractional bandwidth is improved by 1.8 times and 4 times, respectively. Two antennas of the proposed design together with a customized radar were installed on an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) for a quick search for survivors after earthquakes or gas explosions without exposing the rescue staff to the uncertain dangers of moving on the debris.

Contemporary Review of Smartphone Apps for Tinnitus Management and Treatment

Tinnitus is a complex and heterogeneous psycho-physiological disorder responsible for causing a phantom ringing or buzzing sound albeit the absence of an external sound source. It has a direct influence on affecting the quality of life of its sufferers. Despite being around for a while, there has not been a cure for tinnitus, and the usual course of action for its treatment involves use of tinnitus retaining and sound therapy, or Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT). One positive aspect about these therapies is that they can be administered face-to-face as well as delivered via internet or smartphone. Smartphones are especially helpful as they are highly personalized devices, and offer a well-established ecosystem of apps, accessible via respective marketplaces of differing mobile platforms. Note that current therapeutic treatments such as CBT have shown to be effective in suppressing the tinnitus symptoms when administered face-to-face, their effectiveness when being delivered using smartphones is not known so far. A quick search on the prominent market places of popular mobile platforms (Android and iOS) yielded roughly 250 smartphone apps offering tinnitus-related therapies and tinnitus management. As this number is expected to steadily increase due to high interest in smartphone app development, a contemporary review of such apps is crucial. In this paper, we aim to review scientific studies validating the smartphone apps, particularly to test their effectiveness in tinnitus management and treatment. We use the PRISMA guidelines for identification of studies on major scientific literature sources and delineate the outcomes of identified studies.

Voice Identification Using MFCC and Vector Quantization

The speaker identification is one of the fundamental problems in speech processing and voice modeling. The speaker identification applications include authentication in critical security systems and the accuracy of the selection. Large-scale voice recognition applications are a major challenge. Quick search in the speaker database requires fast, modern techniques and relies on artificial intelligence to achieve the desired results from the system. Many efforts are made to achieve this through the establishment of variable-based systems and the development of new methodologies for speaker identification. Speaker identification is the process of recognizing who is speaking using the characteristics extracted from the speech's waves like pitch, tone, and frequency. The speaker's models are created and saved in the system environment and used to verify the identity required by people accessing the systems, which allows access to various services that are controlled by voice, speaker identification involves two main parts: the first part is the feature extraction and the second part is the feature matching.

30.K. Round table: What is and what is not HIA; expectations and realities

Health impact assessment as a public health tool to contribute to development of healthy public policy and later health in all policies approach entered public health practice, research, education and policy at the end of 1990'. During last 20 years the methodology spread around the globe, tools and guidelines have been developed, potential collaboration with other impact assessments discussed or even legally mandated. A quick search in PubMed using a MESH keyword “Health impact assessment” conducted in January 21, 2020 yielded 628 publications in time period of 2010-2019. Reading the abstract of last 100 from 2019 and partially 2018 based on first authors, manuscripts came from 31 countries of all five continents, USA being the most frequent contributor. This quick search revealed also substantial heterogeneity of the use of term; epidemiological studies, often environmental epidemiological ones, health care intervention evaluation studies, methodological development studies, general evaluation studies are often using health impact assessment label. Out of 100 abstracts, 14 seemed to be in-line with description of HIA by Gothenburg consensus paper, the basic document of HIA. On one hand, this is very positive showing the wide possibilities of use of HIA. On other hand however, it is hazardous as it could lead to misunderstandings and consequently to decreased interest for the methodology. With this regard it shall be noted that after a plateau in number of publications between 2014-2017, there seems to be a consistent decline of new research papers addressing using HIA. Looking at one database only can be a limitation of course. The aim of this round table workshop is to discuss where to go with HIA during coming years, identify potential facilitators for broader implementation and use of the methodology. After introductory presentation by workshop coordinators, five presentations will discuss potential facilitators such as common language and expectations, implementation and place of HIA within public health toolkit, capacity building and recent opportunities such as health in EIA and the SDG's. The final part of the round table will be as general discussion with involvement of the audience facilitated by workshop organizer. Key messages HIA is used for different purposes, not only the one described by Gothenburg consensus paper. There is a substantial heterogeneity in use of HIA influenced by language, implementation method, available capacities and motivation.

Database of Digitized Archives in the State Archives in Zagreb

Due to the increasing number of digital copies of original archival documents in the State Archives in Zagreb, the question has arisen; how come we properly store and preserve the originals, while for digital copies, there is still no solution for organized storage and quick search. In anticipation of solving this problem at the national level, the State Archives in Zagreb approached the problem in their way. A database was designed to store digitized archival documents. Storage of digital archival documents is provided in a format that is intended for permanent preservation. Furthermore, each upload requires the input of appropriate metadata. Accurate and detailed metadata entry allows the search of the database, linking of keywords and content.

What Makes Some Mitigation Measures and Programs “Creative”? (And Where Does That Leave the Rest of Them?)

ABSTRACTA quick search on antonyms for “creative” yields obvious results such as “uncreative,” “unimaginative,” and “uninspired,” but also terms such as “dull,” “derivative,” and “stodgy.” In the world of cultural resources and mitigation of adverse effects, “creative” is most often opposed to “standard.” That sounds like a good thing, right? Good old, reliable, dependable, predictable standard mitigation. But as we will see from the articles in this special issue, remarkable things can happen when those designing mitigation programs replace or augment “standard” approaches. What is it about a mitigation measure or program that leads us to term it “creative”? How can we expand those defining qualities of creative mitigation measures and programs to enhance the quality of standard mitigation approaches? How can we make the standard approaches, if not creative, at least not stodgy?