8,068 research outputs found

    Improving Access to Health Through Collaboration: Lessons Learned from The Colorado Trust's Partnerships for Health Initiative Evaluation

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    This report presents findings from the evaluation of four Partnerships in Health Initiative grantees that were addressing access to health in their communities through the formation of collaboratives. Outcomes achieved by the grantees as well as lessons learned for others embarking on collaborative processes are described

    Multisite adaptive computation offloading for mobile cloud applications

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    The sheer amount of mobile devices and their fast adaptability have contributed to the proliferation of modern advanced mobile applications. These applications have characteristics such as latency-critical and demand high availability. Also, these kinds of applications often require intensive computation resources and excessive energy consumption for processing, a mobile device has limited computation and energy capacity because of the physical size constraints. The heterogeneous mobile cloud environment consists of different computing resources such as remote cloud servers in faraway data centres, cloudlets whose goal is to bring the cloud closer to the users, and nearby mobile devices that can be utilised to offload mobile tasks. Heterogeneity in mobile devices and the different sites include software, hardware, and technology variations. Resource-constrained mobile devices can leverage the shared resource environment to offload their intensive tasks to conserve battery life and improve the overall application performance. However, with such a loosely coupled and mobile device dominating network, new challenges and problems such as how to seamlessly leverage mobile devices with all the offloading sites, how to simplify deploying runtime environment for serving offloading requests from mobile devices, how to identify which parts of the mobile application to offload and how to decide whether to offload them and how to select the most optimal candidate offloading site among others. To overcome the aforementioned challenges, this research work contributes the design and implementation of MAMoC, a loosely coupled end-to-end mobile computation offloading framework. Mobile applications can be adapted to the client library of the framework while the server components are deployed to the offloading sites for serving offloading requests. The evaluation of the offloading decision engine demonstrates the viability of the proposed solution for managing seamless and transparent offloading in distributed and dynamic mobile cloud environments. All the implemented components of this work are publicly available at the following URL: https://github.com/mamoc-repo

    The Costs of Out-of-School-Time Programs: A Review of the Available Evidence

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    Commissioned by The Wallace Foundation and written in collaboration with The Finance Project, this report reviews a variety of studies conducted since 1993 in an attempt to gain a broad sense of what it costs to run out-of-school-time programs. Among the report's findings: there is a lack of up-to-date information about program costs; researchers and practitioners do not have a standard methodology for estimating costs; selected cost studies suggest wide variation across programs -- from 449to449 to 7160 per child per year; much of this variation is attributable to differences in sample size, how costs are calculated and whether in-kind resources are taken into account; and not much is known about the cost implications of investments to improve the quality of out-of-school-time programs. This report is part of a larger study being conducted by P/PV and The Finance Project (with support from The Wallace Foundation) to asses the costs of out-of-school-time programs. A second report, including a comprehensive guide to the costs of various types of programs, will be published in 2007

    The guideline implementability research and application network (GIRAnet): an international collaborative to support knowledge exchange: study protocol

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    <p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Modifying the format and content of guidelines may facilitate their use and lead to improved quality of care. We reviewed the medical literature to identify features desired by different users and associated with guideline use to develop a framework of implementability and found that most guidelines do not contain these elements. Further research is needed to develop and evaluate implementability tools.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We are launching the Guideline Implementability Research and Application Network (GIRAnet) to enable the development and testing of implementability tools in three domains: Resource Implications, Implementation, and Evaluation. Partners include the Guidelines International Network (G-I-N) and its member guideline developers, implementers, and researchers. In phase one, international guidelines will be examined to identify and describe exemplar tools. Indication-specific and generic tools will populate a searchable repository. In phase two, qualitative analysis of cognitive interviews will be used to understand how developers can best integrate implementability tools in guidelines and how health professionals use them for interpreting and applying guidelines. In phase three, a small-scale pilot test will assess the impact of implementability tools based on quantitative analysis of chart-based behavioural outcomes and qualitative analysis of interviews with participants. The findings will be used to plan a more comprehensive future evaluation of implementability tools.</p> <p>Discussion</p> <p>Infrastructure funding to establish GIRAnet will be leveraged with the in-kind contributions of collaborating national and international guideline developers to advance our knowledge of implementation practice and science. Needs assessment and evaluation of GIRAnet will provide a greater understanding of how to develop and sustain such knowledge-exchange networks. Ultimately, by facilitating use of guidelines, this research may lead to improved delivery and outcomes of patient care.</p

    AQUEDUCT intervention for crisis team quality and effectiveness in dementia: protocol for a feasibility study

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    Background: Specialist community teams often support people with dementia who experience crisis. These teams may vary in composition and models of practice, which presents challenges when evaluating their effectiveness. A best practice model for dementia crisis services could be used by teams to improve the quality and effectiveness of the care they deliver. Objective: The aim of this study is to examine the feasibility of conducting a large-scale randomized controlled trial comparing the AQUEDUCT (Achieving Quality and Effectiveness in Dementia Using Crisis Teams) Resource Kit intervention to treatment as usual. Methods: This is a multisite feasibility study in preparation for a future randomized controlled trial. Up to 54 people with dementia (and their carers) and 40 practitioners will be recruited from 4 geographically widespread teams managing crisis in dementia. Quantitative outcomes will be recorded at baseline and at discharge. This study will also involve a nested health economic substudy and qualitative research to examine participant experiences of the intervention and acceptability of research procedures. Results: Ethical approval for this study was granted in July 2019. Participant recruitment began in September 2019, and as of September 2020, all data collection has been completed. Results of this study will establish the acceptability of the intervention, recruitment rates, and will assess the feasibility and appropriateness of the outcome measures in preparation for a large-scale randomized controlled trial. Conclusions: There is a need to evaluate the effectiveness of crisis intervention teams for older people with dementia. This is the first study to test the feasibility of an evidence-based best practice model for teams managing crisis in dementia. The results of this study will assist in the planning and delivery of a large-scale randomized controlled trial. International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID): DERR1-10.2196/1897
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