The Comprehensive Cancer Center

This open access book provides a valuable resource for hospitals, institutions, and health authorities worldwide in their plans to set up and develop comprehensive cancer care centers. The development and implementation of a comprehensive cancer program allows for a systematic approach to evidence-based strategies of prevention, early detection, diagnosis, treatment, and palliation. Comprehensive cancer programs also provide a nexus for the running of clinical trials and implementation of novel cancer therapies with the overall aim of optimizing comprehensive and holistic care of cancer patients and providing them with the best opportunity to improve quality of life and overall survival. This book's self-contained chapter format aims to reinforce the critical importance of comprehensive cancer care centers while providing a practical guide for the essential components needed to achieve them, such as operational considerations, guidelines for best clinical inpatient and outpatient care, and research and quality management structures. Intended to be wide-ranging and applicable at a global level for both high and low income countries, this book is also instructive for regions with limited resources. The Comprehensive Cancer Center: Development, Integration, and Implementation is an essential resource for oncology physicians including hematologists, medical oncologists, radiation oncologists, surgical oncologists, and oncology nurses as well as hospitals, health departments, university authorities, governments and legislators

An Elicitation Method for Technology-Assisted Goal Setting: Combating Problematic Social Networks Use as a Case Study.

Now that digital media has become an integral part of our everyday lives, people spend significant time using it for various purposes, including social networking and gaming. There is increasing acceptance in the literature of the link between obsessive, compulsive, and excessive usage of social media, e.g. social networks, and the wellbeing of users, whether personal, economic, or social. Despite the research on the negative experiences linked to problematic social networking usage, the work on how to regulate such an effect is at a preliminary stage. In the literature on behavioural change, technology-assisted solutions that utilise the concept of behavioural goals have started to appear, such as gamification and persuasive technology, mainly to increase motivation for change. Also, the literature has revealed that social networks can be augmented with functionalities to assist those seeking to regulate their problematic usage. When technology is used to assist behavioural change, e.g. apps for diet and smoking cessation, requirements become behavioural. While there are established methods for capturing business requirements in organisational information systems, characterised mainly by being a desired and declared state of the system, capturing behavioural requirements, such as goals, requires a different approach to the entire engineering lifecycle. Behavioural requirements gathering and validation would require dealing with issues of unreliability and denial present in problematic behaviours. Therefore, this thesis aims to provide a method expressly tailored to the elicitation of behavioural requirements. The method will be supported by the goal setting strategy and its associated elements. In order to attain this aim, this thesis followed a qualitative research approach with experts, practitioners, and end-users who self-declared having problematic social networking usage and seeking help. This process includes literature reviews, focus group sessions, experts' and practitioners' interviews, user interviews, and analysis of extended survey comments. Research conducted resulted in reference checklists for common goal setting elements, a taxonomy of the negative life experiences associated with problematic usage, and users' perceptions of the use of technology to assist goal setting. The results of the studies helped to propose a method to support users in specifying their goal-setting design requirements. The thesis then evaluated the proposed method with representative users who self-declared having problematic social network usage. The evaluation aimed to investigate the method’s effectiveness, whether it covers all the goal-setting elements, and how communication should work between study participants

7th International Conference on Higher Education Advances (HEAd'21)

Information and communication technologies together with new teaching paradigms are reshaping the learning environment.The International Conference on Higher Education Advances (HEAd) aims to become a forum for researchers and practitioners to exchange ideas, experiences,opinions and research results relating to the preparation of students and the organization of educational systems.Doménech I De Soria, J.; Merello Giménez, P.; Poza Plaza, EDL. (2021). 7th International Conference on Higher Education Advances (HEAd'21). Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/HEAD21.2021.13621EDITORIA

Spinoff 2015

Topics covered include: 3D Endoscope to Boost Safety, Cut Cost of Surgery; Audio App Brings a Better Night's Sleep Liquid Cooling Technology Increases Exercise Efficiency; Algae-Derived Dietary Ingredients Nourish Animals; Space Grant Research Launches Rehabilitation Chair; Vision Trainer Teaches Focusing Techniques at Home; Aircraft Geared Architecture Reduces Fuel Cost and Noise; Ubiquitous Supercritical Wing Design Cuts Billions in Fuel Costs; Flight Controller Software Protects Lightweight Flexible Aircraft; Cabin Pressure Monitors Notify Pilots to Save Lives; Ionospheric Mapping Software Ensures Accuracy of Pilots' GPS; Water Mapping Technology Rebuilds Lives in Arid Regions; Shock Absorbers Save Structures and Lives during Earthquakes; Software Facilitates Sharing of Water Quality Data Worldwide; Underwater Adhesives Retrofit Pipelines with Advanced Sensors; Laser Imaging Video Camera Sees through Fire, Fog, Smoke; 3D Lasers Increase Efficiency, Safety of Moving Machines; Air Revitalization System Enables Excursions to the Stratosphere; Magnetic Fluids Deliver Better Speaker Sound Quality; Bioreactor Yields Extracts for Skin Cream; Private Astronaut Training Prepares Commercial Crews of Tomorrow; Activity Monitors Help Users Get Optimum Sun Exposure; LEDs Illuminate Bulbs for Better Sleep, Wake Cycles; Charged Particles Kill Pathogens and Round Up Dust; Balance Devices Train Golfers for a Consistent Swing; Landsat Imagery Enables Global Studies of Surface Trends; Ruggedized Spectrometers Are Built for Tough Jobs; Gas Conversion Systems Reclaim Fuel for Industry; Remote Sensing Technologies Mitigate Drought; Satellite Data Inform Forecasts of Crop Growth; Probes Measure Gases for Environmental Research; Cloud Computing Technologies Facilitate Earth Research; Software Cuts Homebuilding Costs, Increases Energy Efficiency; Portable Planetariums Teach Science; Schedule Analysis Software Saves Time for Project Planners; Sound Modeling Simplifies Vehicle Noise Management; Custom 3D Printers Revolutionize Space Supply Chain; Improved Calibration Shows Images' True Colors; Micromachined Parts Advance Medicine, Astrophysics, and More; Metalworking Techniques Unlock a Unique Alloy; Low-Cost Sensors Deliver Nanometer-Accurate Measurements; Electrical Monitoring Devices Save on Time and Cost; Dry Lubricant Smooths the Way for Space Travel, Industry; and Compact Vapor Chamber Cools Critical Components

Information Management during Care Transitions of Older Adults receiving Skilled Home Healthcare Services after Hospital Discharge

Background: Older adults who require skilled home health care (SHHC) services following hospital discharge are among those at highest risk of experiencing suboptimal outcomes during care transitions. Information management (IM) refers to the ability of skilled home healthcare providers (SHHCP) to collect, organize, and communicate older adults’ care plans to key stakeholders. Optimal IM is critical to ensure patient safety during a care transition from hospital to home, yet little is known about IM during this care transition. Human factors engineering (HFE), a systems science that investigates factors affecting human performance, may be used to understand risks and outcomes experienced by older adults receiving SHHC services after hospital discharge. Objectives: We used a HFE approach to: 1) identify key components of IM from the perspectives of SHHCPs directly responsible for executing older adults’ transitions; and 2) describe IM-related process failures during the SHHC admissions process and initial home visit after hospital discharge. Methods: This was a qualitative study primarily guided by the HFE-informed Information Chaos framework, which groups IM-related process failures (i.e., information problems that may contribute to errors) that contribute to suboptimal IM into five categories: information overload (too much information), information underload (too little information), information scatter (information in many places), information conflict (information not matching other information), and erroneous information (incorrect information). We interviewed 33 SHHC administrative staff to obtain contextual information about the SHHC admissions process (~24 hours after hospital discharge) and initial home visit (~48-72 hours after hospital discharge). We directly observed interactions among SHHCPs, older adults, and informal caregivers during the initial home visit after hospital discharge (n=60 visits). Following each visit, we interviewed the older adults (n=60), informal caregivers (n=40), and SHHCPs (n=46) involved. Participants were admitted to SHHC at five sites associated with three SHHC agencies in rural and urban sites across the US. Both field notes and audiotapes of interviews were transcribed, coded, and analyzed. Themes, subthemes, and information flow diagrams were generated. Results: We identified four action steps involved in the flow of information during the SHHC admissions process primarily taking place in the hospital and at the SHHC agency: 1) prepare referral and inform agency; 2) verify insurance; 3) contact older adult; and 4) review case to schedule visit. We subsequently identified four action steps involved in the flow of information during the initial start-of-care (SOC) home visit: 1) assess appropriateness for SHHC and obtain consent for treatment; 2) manage expectations; 3) ensure safety; and 4) develop contingency plans and recovery scenarios. Within each of these action steps, we identified examples of IM-related process failures: too much information for older adults to process upon hospital discharge (information overload); SHHCPs without access to complete information during the SOC visit (information underload); SHHC coordinators needing to access information from multiple places to prepare the initial referral (information scatter); older adult and informal caregivers’ mismatched expectations regarding what SHHC services they will actually receive, compared with what they were told in the hospital (information conflict); and SHHCPs encountering wrong diagnoses or medication lists during the SOC visit (erroneous information). We also identified important characteristics of IM during hospital/SHHC transitions: overlap among roles, tasks, information sources, and information targets; propagation of IM-related process failures over time; and variation in IM across study sites. Conclusions: Understanding IM during hospital/SHHC transitions elicited factors influencing the quality of care delivered during this particularly high-risk transition. IM required a high reliance on others (e.g., hospital staff, SHHC staff, older adults, informal caregivers) for success to reduce the risk of propagating IM-related process failures throughout the care transition. However, SHHCP often did not have access to complete and correct information during the SOC visit, nor did they have easy access to the sources of that information. This suggests that clinical and organizational infrastructure was not in place to adequately support IM during the hospital/SHHC transition

Background Examples of Literature Searches on Topics of Interest

A zip file of various literature searches & some resources related to our work related to exposure after the Chernobyl accident and as we began looking at helping in Semey Kazakhstan----a collection of literature reviews on various topics we were interested in... eg. establishing a registry of those exposed for longterm follow-up, what we knew about certain areas like genetics and some resources like A Guide to Environmental Resources on the Internet by Carol Briggs-Erickson and Toni Murphy which could be found on the Internet and was written to be used by researchers, environmentalists, teachers and any person who is interested in knowing and doing something about the health of our planet. See more at https://archives.library.tmc.edu/dm-ms211-012-0060

Design and evaluation of a negotiation-based sleep scheduler app for insomnia treatment

Sleep problems are increasing among society. The solutions are available yet limited to the public. Digital platforms have the benefit of accessibility. However, a lack of personalization is a primary challenge of digitalization. We designed a sleep scheduler app to support insomnia treatment and based the concepts with the principles of sleep restriction therapy. Restricted sleep schedules are provided through negotiation by taking personal sleep records into account. The app is evaluated with clinicians and target users through semi-structured interviews. The clinicians found the app well-aligned with the traditional practice. Anxiety is a significant concern as people with insomnia are sensitive by nature. The users perceived the instrument to play a vital role, and the predictions and feedback seem to be relevant to their situation. The design and strategy can increase therapy delivery, enhance the tailoring of digital interventions, and help solve the problem of scalability with higher adherence