The Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network: a history of multicenter collaboration in the United States.

In this article, we review the history and progress of a large multicenter research network pertaining to emergency medical services for children. We describe the history, organization, infrastructure, and research agenda of the Pediatric Emergency Care Applied Research Network (PECARN), and highlight some of the important accomplishments since its inception. We also describe the network's strategy to grow its research portfolio, train new investigators, and study how to translate new evidence into practice. This strategy ensures not only the sustainability of the network in the future, but the growth of research in emergency medical services for children in general

Towards Identifying and closing Gaps in Assurance of autonomous Road vehicleS - a collection of Technical Notes Part 1

This report provides an introduction and overview of the Technical Topic Notes (TTNs) produced in the Towards Identifying and closing Gaps in Assurance of autonomous Road vehicleS (Tigars) project. These notes aim to support the development and evaluation of autonomous vehicles. Part 1 addresses: Assurance-overview and issues, Resilience and Safety Requirements, Open Systems Perspective and Formal Verification and Static Analysis of ML Systems. Part 2: Simulation and Dynamic Testing, Defence in Depth and Diversity, Security-Informed Safety Analysis, Standards and Guidelines

Culturally-Responsive Canadian Postsecondary Performance Measurement

Student success has multiple meanings; however, the postpositivist bias prevalent in Canadian postsecondary education restricts how student success is defined and measured. When we standardize measures of student success we assume that the student experience is homogeneous and risk implementing policies and programs based on insufficient information. Unless new evaluation approaches are adopted, it is unlikely postsecondary institutions will generate the knowledge and wisdom needed to serve their regional, national, and international learners and communities. Postsecondary education leaders must be cognizant of the legacy of colonialism and consider cultural congruency between performance measurement systems and local context. This organizational improvement plan proposes a theory of action model for culturally-responsive postsecondary performance measurement that leverages shared governance through participatory, emergent, and appreciative processes and qualitative evaluation methodologies. Perception and socially constructed norms play a pivotal role in addressing the postsecondary education sector’s quantitative bias; therefore, an interpretivist lens is used to critically examine the cultural appropriateness of quality assurance and measurement processes at a Canadian university. Culturally-responsive performance measurement requires consideration of diverse worldviews and methodologies. Qualitative evaluation can amplify the lived experiences of students and inform complex policy issues through examination of phenomena and local variability. The next generation of quality assurance requires inclusive decision-making structures to generate collective wisdom and cultivate an ethic of community by engaging community members, faculty, staff, and students as change agents

The Impact of Requirements on Systems Development Speed: A Multiple-Case Study in Automotive

Automotive\ua0manufacturers have historically adopted rigid\ua0requirements\ua0engineering processes. This allowed them to meet safety-critical\ua0requirements\ua0when producing\ua0a\ua0highly complex and differentiated product out of the integration of thousands of physical and software components. Nowadays, few software-related domains are as rapidly changing as the\ua0automotive\ua0industry.\ua0In\ua0particular, the needs of improving\ua0development\ua0speed\ua0are increasingly pushing companies\ua0in\ua0this domain toward new ways of developing software.\ua0In\ua0this paper, we investigate how the goal to increase\ua0development\ua0speed\ua0impacts how\ua0requirements\ua0are managed\ua0in\ua0the\ua0automotive\ua0domain. We start from\ua0a\ua0manager perspective, which we then complement with\ua0a\ua0more general perspective. We used\ua0a\ua0qualitative\ua0multiple-case\ua0study, organized\ua0in\ua0two steps.\ua0In\ua0the first step, we had 20 semi-structured interviews, at two\ua0automotive\ua0manufacturers. Our sampling strategy focuses on manager roles, complemented with technical specialists.\ua0In\ua0the second step, we validated our results with 12 more interviews, covering nine additional respondents and three recurring from the first step.\ua0In\ua0addition to validating our qualitative model, the second step of interviews broadens our perspective with technical experts and change managers. Our respondents indicate and rank six aspects of the current\ua0requirements\ua0engineering approach that\ua0impact\ua0development\ua0speed. These aspects include the negative\ua0impact\ua0of\ua0a\ua0requirements\ua0style dominated by safety concerns as well as decomposition of\ua0requirements\ua0over many levels of abstraction. Furthermore, the use of\ua0requirements\ua0as part of legal contracts with suppliers is seen as hindering fast collaboration. Six additional suggestions for potential improvements include domain-specific tooling, model-based\ua0requirements, test automation, and\ua0a\ua0combination of lightweight upfront\ua0requirements\ua0engineering preceding\ua0development\ua0with precise specifications post-development. Out of these 12 aspects, seven can likely be addressed as part of an ongoing agile transformation. We offer an empirical account of expectations and needs for new\ua0requirements\ua0engineering approaches\ua0in\ua0the\ua0automotive\ua0domain, necessary to coordinate hundreds of collaborating organizations developing software-intensive and potentially safety-critical\ua0systems

Sustainability and Spread of Community-based Initiatives: A case study of Community Cares, a Children’s Hospital’s 16 year effort to serve its community

The sustainability and spread of innovations is often elusive, presenting continuous challenges to clinicians and healthcare leaders. Somewhere between 33 - 70% of all innovations are reportedly not sustained, and even fewer are spread beyond the original team, or to other units within an organization. In plain language, sustainability is defined as locking in progress, while continually building upon that foundation, while spread is the exchange of knowledge and experience to others beyond the original implementing team. The literature supports the concept that sustainability is both multi-dimensional and multi-factorial and has several characteristics and pre-conditions. Tax-exempt, not-for-profit organizations in the USA must provide measurable community benefits to the populations they seek to serve. Many of these community benefits take the form of locating necessary services closer to or directly within the communities being served in order to enhance access. A case study of a 16 year effort to provide a medical home-oriented primary care model to underserved children in Houston, Texas Children’s Pediatrics’ Community Cares, is presented as illustrative of such a community benefit. Many of the characteristics and preconditions essential to a model for sustainability and spread are highlighted and the Community Cares case study is discussed from the standpoint of this framework

Risks, Safety and Security in the Ecosystem of Smart Cities

We have performed a review of systemic risks in smart cities dependent on intelligent and partly autonomous transport systems. Smart cities include concepts such as smart transportation/use of autonomous transportation systems (i.e., autonomous cars, subways, shipping, drones) and improved management of infrastructure (power and water supply). At the same time, this requires safe and resilient infrastructures and need for global collaboration. One challenge is some sort of risk based regulation of emergent vulnerabilities. In this paper we focus on emergent vulnerabilities and discussion of how mitigation can be organized and structured based on emergent and known scenarios cross boundaries. We regard a smart city as a software ecosystem (SEC), defined as a dynamic evolution of systems on top of a common technological platform offering a set of software solutions and services. Software ecosystems are increasingly being used to support critical tasks and operations. As a part of our work we have performed a systematic literature review of safety, security and resilience software ecosystems, in the period 2007–2016. The perspective of software ecosystems has helped to identify and specify patterns of safety, security and resilience on a relevant abstraction level. Significant vulnerabilities and poor awareness of safety, security and resilience has been identified. Key actors that should increase their attention are vendors, regulators, insurance companies and the research community. There is a need to improve private-public partnership and to improve the learning loops between computer emergency teams, security information providers (SIP), regulators and vendors. There is a need to focus more on safety, security and resilience and to establish regulations of responsibilities on the vendors for liabilities

Smart Kitchens for People with Cognitive Impairments: A Qualitative Study of Design Requirements

Individuals with cognitive impairments currently leverage extensive human resources during their transitions from assisted living to independent living. In Western Europe, many government-supported volunteer organizations provide sheltered living facilities; supervised environments in which people with cognitive impairments collaboratively learn daily living skills. In this paper, we describe communal cooking practices in sheltered living facilities and identify opportunities for supporting these with interactive technology to reduce volunteer workload. We conducted two contextual observations of twelve people with cognitive impairments cooking in sheltered living facilities and supplemented this data through interviews with four employees and volunteers who supervise them. Through thematic analysis, we identified four themes to inform design requirements for communal cooking activities: Work organization, community, supervision, and practicalities. Based on these, we present five design implications for assistive systems in kitchens for people with cognitive deficiencies

The chaotic nature of healthcare information systems: The need for transdisciplinary collaboration

Copyright @ 2013 EMCIS.This paper demonstrates one of the challenges of the healthcare information systems development, namely the chaotic nature of healthcare systems. Although the reliable evidence demonstrating the positive effects of health information systems on safety and quality remains inconclusive (a growing body of research revealing the unintended consequences and potentially error producing effects of health information systems’ implementation. Different arguments from the literature concerning the chaotic nature of healthcare, including but not limited to the nature of patients and disease have been presented. The requirements of new ways of systems design and the need for transdisciplinary dynamic teams within the requirements engineering phase as a start has been discussed. These arguments have been investigated in the context of an exploratory case addressing one of the advanced oncology centres in the US. This paper concludes that there is an important need to rethink healthcare information systems development method, which has to be in a dynamic ongoing manner for some major issues