Be He@lthy - Be Mobile (A handbook on how to implement mAgeing)

The Be He@lthy, Be Mobile initiative is a global partnership led by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), representing the United Nations agencies for health and information and communications technologies (ICTs). The initiative supports the scale up of mobile health technology (mHealth) within national health systems to help combat noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) and support healthy ageing. Mobile health, or mHealth, is defined as "medical and public health practice supported by mobile devices, such as mobile phones, patient monitoring devices, personal digital assistants, and other wireless devices” (1). The Be Healthy, Be Mobile initiative uses basic technologies common in most mobile phones. The BHBM initiative has overseen the development and implementation of several mHealth programmes, including mTobaccoCessation (2), mDiabetes, and mCervicalCancer. The mHealth programme-specific handbooks act as aids to policy-makers and implementers of national or large-scale mHealth programs. See Annex 1 for further information on the Be He@lthy, Be Mobile initiative. mHealth for Ageing, or mAgeing is a new programme under the initiative, the central objective of which is to assist older persons (a person whose age has passed the median life expectancy at birth) in maintaining functional ability and living as independently and healthily as possible through evidence-based self-management and self-care interventions. This handbook provides guidance for national programmes and organizations responsible for the care of older persons to develop, implement, monitor, and evaluate an mAgeing programme. The text messaging communication provided uses evidence-based behaviour change techniques to help older persons prevent and manage early declines in intrinsic capacity and functional ability. The mAgeing programme is based on WHO’s Integrated Care for Older People (ICOPE): Guidelines on community-level interventions to manage declines in intrinsic capacity (3) which include interventions to prevent declines in intrinsic capacity and functional abilities in older people, namely: mobility loss, malnutrition, visual impairment and hearing loss; as well as cognitive impairments and depressive symptoms. The messages are designed to encourage participation in activities, and to prevent, reduce, or even partly reverse, significant losses in capacity. The content of the mAgeing programme will complement routine care offered by health care professionals by supporting self-care and self-management. All content in this handbook is based on the WHO ICOPE Guidelines and other relevant WHO recommendations. The ICOPE Guideline recommendations were reached by the consensus of a guideline development group, convened by WHO, which based its decisions on a summary of systematic reviews of the best quality evidence most relevant to community-level care for older people, as well as the most up-to-date research on the effectiveness of mHealth

Physiologic responses to water immersion in man: A compendium of research

A total of 221 reports published through December 1973 in the area of physiologic responses to water immersion in man were summarized. The author's abstract or summary was used whenever possible. Otherwise, a detailed annotation was provided under the subheadings: (1) purpose, (2) procedures and methods, (3) results, and (4) conclusions. The annotations are in alphabetical order by first author; author and subject indexes are included. Additional references are provided in the selected bibliography

An overview of gravitational physiology

The focus of this review is on the response of humans and animals to the effects of the near weightless condition occurring aboard orbiting spacecraft. Gravity is an omnipresent force that has been a constant part of our lives and of the evolution of all living species. Emphasis is placed on the general mechanisms of adaptation to altered gravitational fields and vectors, i.e., both hypo- and hypergravity. A broad literature review of gravitational biology was conducted and the general state of our knowledge in this area is discussed. The review is specifically targeted at newcomers to the exciting and relatively new area of space and gravitational biology

Aerospace medicine and biology: A continuing bibliography with indexes (supplement 335)

This bibliography lists 143 reports, articles and other documents introduced into the NASA Scientific and Technical Information System during March, 1990. Subject coverage includes: aerospace medicine and psychology, life support systems and controlled environments, safety equipment, exobiology and extraterrestrial life, and flight crew behavior and performance

Committed to Safety: Ten Case Studies on Reducing Harm to Patients

Presents case studies of healthcare organizations, clinical teams, and learning collaborations to illustrate successful innovations for improving patient safety nationwide. Includes actions taken, results achieved, lessons learned, and recommendations

Aerospace Medicine and Biology: A continuing bibliography with indexes, supplement 127, April 1974

This special bibliography lists 279 reports, articles, and other documents introduced into the NASA scientific and technical information system in March 1974

Systematic observation in healthcare: Utility and limitations of a threat and error management-based safety audit

Improving teamwork has become a major safety goal for healthcare organizations. Audit tools currently available are useful, but they remain inadequate because they are reactive and fail to provide context for “the interaction between people and the operational context (i.e., organizational, regulatory and environmental factors) within which people discharge their operational duties” (Maurino, 2005). Accurate and relevant information about real-world team behavior is theorized to confer the ability to address, through process design &/or training, significant issues which can then be re-assessed through repeat observations. In the mid-1990s, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) funded collaboration between the University of Texas and Continental Airlines to directly observe in-flight behaviors associated with safety and risk. This methodology, now known as the Line Operation Safety Audit (LOSA), was instrumental in developing the Threat and Error Management (TEM) model of cockpit work performance. In 2006, the FAA made TEM-based LOSA a “voluntary safety recommendation,” and all major US commercial air carriers engage in this on a regular basis as a component of their safety management systems (FAA, 2006). This thesis describes the adaptation of LOSA to a Threat and Error Management-based Clinical Operation Safety Audit (COSA), and reports a series of 30 observations of trauma team activations in the Emergency Department at an American College of Surgeons accredited level 1 trauma center in the United States of America. Results of these observations showed discrepancies between work as designed and as executed, as well as other behaviors, associated with increased risk to patients. Analysis of data revealed important areas for targeted improvement based on risk created by the healthcare system during normal clinical operations. Systematic observation following the COSA protocol can become a vital and essential new tool to assist in improving patient safety in healthcare. The bulk of this thesis considers the criticality of context in work analysis throughout the discussion section. Though concepts of threats and undesired states were easily adaptable to healthcare, error was found to be too narrow a concept. I therefore propose discarding error for a more open and inclusive interpretation of performance: Task Adaptation. We therefore propose to widen our scope and continue to develop Threat Management and Task Adaptation-based COSA throughout the hospital to enhance system performance and improve patient safety

Investigation of possible causes for human-performance degradation during microgravity flight

The results of the first year of a three year study of the effects of microgravity on human performance are given. Test results show support for the hypothesis that the effects of microgravity can be studied indirectly on Earth by measuring performance in an altered gravitational field. The hypothesis was that an altered gravitational field could disrupt performance on previously automated behaviors if gravity was a critical part of the stimulus complex controlling those behaviors. In addition, it was proposed that performance on secondary cognitive tasks would also degrade, especially if the subject was provided feedback about degradation on the previously automated task. In the initial experimental test of these hypotheses, there was little statistical support. However, when subjects were categorized as high or low in automated behavior, results for the former group supported the hypotheses. The predicted interaction between body orientation and level of workload in their joint effect on performance in the secondary cognitive task was significant for the group high in automatized behavior and receiving feedback, but no such interventions were found for the group high in automatized behavior but not receiving feedback, or the group low in automatized behavior

Southwest Research Institute assistance to NASA in biomedical areas of the technology

Significant applications of aerospace technology were achieved. These applications include: a miniaturized, noninvasive system to telemeter electrocardiographic signals of heart transplant patients during their recuperative period as graded situations are introduced; and economical vital signs monitor for use in nursing homes and rehabilitation hospitals to indicate the onset of respiratory arrest; an implantable telemetry system to indicate the onset of the rejection phenomenon in animals undergoing cardiac transplants; an exceptionally accurate current proportional temperature controller for pollution studies; an automatic, atraumatic blood pressure measurement device; materials for protecting burned areas in contact with joint bender splints; a detector to signal the passage of animals by a given point during ecology studies; and special cushioning for use with below-knee amputees to protect the integrity of the skin at the stump/prosthesis interface