Using information from electronic patient records for clinical, epidemiological and health services research

Background: Improving current and future healthcare is heavily reliant on continuous research and the secondary use of data from patients' medical records, particularly from electronic records. Considerable amounts of data are collected during the care and treatment of a patient, and this data can offer many opportunities, not only for supporting and improving individual patient care or making important contributions to research, but also for investigating causes of diseases, establishing the prevalence of risk factors, and identifying populations at risk of adverse outcomes. However, the management of such data poses challenges, which many believe can be mitigated by storing it electronically. The traditional method of storing medical information in a paper-based format has severe limitations, especially concerning the amount of effort needed to extract information. In contrast, data from electronic patient records (EPRs) is much easier to extract and allows healthcare professionals access to the information needed in a timely manner to provide appropriate care to patients and improve the public’s health. The UK still faces the hurdle of balancing public interest with individual privacy. There is clearly a benefit regarding the use of EPRs but there is an increasing need for public education in order to be able to reap the maximum benefits they offer. This thesis examines the benefits and impact of EPRs in the contexts of clinical care and epidemiological and health services research. Methods: The methods used for this research project involved reviewing published materials available through electronic searching, grey literature and websites of bodies such as the Department of Health, and the Health and Social Care Information Centre. The use of the main national primary care databases and secondary care databases and their growth over time was also examined. Results: EPRs are extremely beneficial to research and have a significant potential to improve patient overall care. The use of EPRs is growing as technology advances and health systems move from paper to electronic records. Conclusions: The use of EPRs will only be successful when both the public, researchers and healthcare providers agree on their benefits. The use of EPRs will take healthcare to another level, where the accuracy of data entered is of very high quality and standardised, data security is well-controlled, and there is acceptance by the public concerning the use of their data both for providing clinical care and for other secondary uses.Open Acces

Can we ID from CCTV? Image quality in digital CCTV and face identification performance

CCTV is used for an increasing number Of purposes, and the new generation of digital systems can be tailored to serve a wide range of security requirements. However, configuration decisions are often made without considering specific task requirements, e.g. the video quality needed for reliable person identification. Our Study investigated the relationship between video quality and the ability of untrained viewers to identify faces from digital CCTV images. The task required 80 participants to identify 64 faces belonging to 4 different ethnicities. Participants compared face images taken from a high quality photographs and low quality CCTV stills, which were recorded at 4 different video quality bit rates (32, 52, 72 and 92 Kbps). We found that the number of correct identifications decreased by 12 (similar to 18%) as MPEG-4 quality decreased from 92 to 32 Kbps, and by 4 (similar to 6%) as Wavelet video quality decreased from 92 to 32 Kbps. To achieve reliable and effective face identification, we recommend that MPEG-4 CCTV systems should be used over Wavelet, and video quality should not be lowered below 52 Kbps during video compression. We discuss the practical implications of these results for security, and contribute a contextual methodology for assessing CCTV video quality

Applying psychological science to the CCTV review process: a review of cognitive and ergonomic literature

As CCTV cameras are used more and more often to increase security in communities, police are spending a larger proportion of their resources, including time, in processing CCTV images when investigating crimes that have occurred (Levesley & Martin, 2005; Nichols, 2001). As with all tasks, there are ways to approach this task that will facilitate performance and other approaches that will degrade performance, either by increasing errors or by unnecessarily prolonging the process. A clearer understanding of psychological factors influencing the effectiveness of footage review will facilitate future training in best practice with respect to the review of CCTV footage. The goal of this report is to provide such understanding by reviewing research on footage review, research on related tasks that require similar skills, and experimental laboratory research about the cognitive skills underpinning the task. The report is organised to address five challenges to effectiveness of CCTV review: the effects of the degraded nature of CCTV footage, distractions and interrupts, the length of the task, inappropriate mindset, and variability in people’s abilities and experience. Recommendations for optimising CCTV footage review include (1) doing a cognitive task analysis to increase understanding of the ways in which performance might be limited, (2) exploiting technology advances to maximise the perceptual quality of the footage (3) training people to improve the flexibility of their mindset as they perceive and interpret the images seen, (4) monitoring performance either on an ongoing basis, by using psychophysiological measures of alertness, or periodically, by testing screeners’ ability to find evidence in footage developed for such testing, and (5) evaluating the relevance of possible selection tests to screen effective from ineffective screener

Training methods for facial image comparison: a literature review

This literature review was commissioned to explore the psychological literature relating to facial image comparison with a particular emphasis on whether individuals can be trained to improve performance on this task. Surprisingly few studies have addressed this question directly. As a consequence, this review has been extended to cover training of face recognition and training of different kinds of perceptual comparisons where we are of the opinion that the methodologies or findings of such studies are informative. The majority of studies of face processing have examined face recognition, which relies heavily on memory. This may be memory for a face that was learned recently (e.g. minutes or hours previously) or for a face learned longer ago, perhaps after many exposures (e.g. friends, family members, celebrities). Successful face recognition, irrespective of the type of face, relies on the ability to retrieve the to-berecognised face from long-term memory. This memory is then compared to the physically present image to reach a recognition decision. In contrast, in face matching task two physical representations of a face (live, photographs, movies) are compared and so long-term memory is not involved. Because the comparison is between two present stimuli rather than between a present stimulus and a memory, one might expect that face matching, even if not an easy task, would be easier to do and easier to learn than face recognition. In support of this, there is evidence that judgment tasks where a presented stimulus must be judged by a remembered standard are generally more cognitively demanding than judgments that require comparing two presented stimuli Davies & Parasuraman, 1982; Parasuraman & Davies, 1977; Warm and Dember, 1998). Is there enough overlap between face recognition and matching that it is useful to look at the literature recognition? No study has directly compared face recognition and face matching, so we turn to research in which people decided whether two non-face stimuli were the same or different. In these studies, accuracy of comparison is not always better when the comparator is present than when it is remembered. Further, all perceptual factors that were found to affect comparisons of simultaneously presented objects also affected comparisons of successively presented objects in qualitatively the same way. Those studies involved judgments about colour (Newhall, Burnham & Clark, 1957; Romero, Hita & Del Barco, 1986), and shape (Larsen, McIlhagga & Bundesen, 1999; Lawson, Bülthoff & Dumbell, 2003; Quinlan, 1995). Although one must be cautious in generalising from studies of object processing to studies of face processing (see, e.g., section comparing face processing to object processing), from these kinds of studies there is no evidence to suggest that there are qualitative differences in the perceptual aspects of how recognition and matching are done. As a result, this review will include studies of face recognition skill as well as face matching skill. The distinction between face recognition involving memory and face matching not involving memory is clouded in many recognition studies which require observers to decide which of many presented faces matches a remembered face (e.g., eyewitness studies). And of course there are other forensic face-matching tasks that will require comparison to both presented and remembered comparators (e.g., deciding whether any person in a video showing a crowd is the target person). For this reason, too, we choose to include studies of face recognition as well as face matching in our revie

Featural and configurational processes in the recognition of faces of different familiarity

Previous research suggests that face recognition may involve both configurational and piecemeal (featural) processing. To explore the relationship between these processing modes, we examined the patterns of recognition impairment produced by blurring, inversion, and scrambling, both singly and in various combinations. Two tasks were used: recognition of unfamiliar faces (seen once before) and recognition of highly familiar faces (celebrities). The results provide further support for a configurational - featural distinction. Recognition performance remained well above chance if faces were blurred, scrambled, inverted, or simultaneously inverted and scrambled: each of these manipulations disrupts either configurational or piecemeal processing, leaving the other mode available as a route to recognition. However, blurred/scrambled and blurred/inverted faces were recognised at or near chance levels, presumably because both configurational processing and featural processing were disrupted. Similar patterns of effects were found for both familiar and unfamiliar faces, suggesting that the relationship between configurational and featural processing is qualitatively similar in both cases

Patient reactions to a web-based cardiovascular risk calculator in type 2 diabetes: a qualitative study in primary care.

Use of risk calculators for specific diseases is increasing, with an underlying assumption that they promote risk reduction as users become better informed and motivated to take preventive action. Empirical data to support this are, however, sparse and contradictory

ROC analysis of the verbal overshadowing effect: testing the effect of verbalisation on memory sensitivity

This study investigated the role of memory sensitivity versus recognition criterion in the verbal overshadowing effect (VOE). Lineup recognition data was analysed using ROC analysis to separate the effects of verbalisation on memory sensitivity from criterion placement. Participants watched a short crime video, described the perpetrator's facial features then attempted a lineup identification. Description instructions were varied between participants. There was a standard (free report), forced (report everything), and warning (report accurate information) condition. Control participants did not describe the perpetrator. Memory sensitivity was greater in the control compared to the standard condition. Memory sensitivity was also greater in the warning compared to forced and standard conditions. Memory sensitivity did not differ across the forced and standard description conditions, although a more conservative lineup decision standard was employed in the forced condition. These results, along with qualitative analyses of descriptions, support both retrieval-based and criterion-based explanations of the VOE

User profiles matching for different social networks based on faces embeddings

It is common practice nowadays to use multiple social networks for different social roles. Although this, these networks assume differences in content type, communications and style of speech. If we intend to understand human behaviour as a key-feature for recommender systems, banking risk assessments or sociological researches, this is better to achieve using a combination of the data from different social media. In this paper, we propose a new approach for user profiles matching across social media based on embeddings of publicly available users' face photos and conduct an experimental study of its efficiency. Our approach is stable to changes in content and style for certain social media.Comment: Submitted to HAIS 2019 conferenc

Head Start since the War on Poverty: Taking on New Challenges to Address Persistent School Readiness Gaps

This article explores Head Start’s overall effectiveness in improving school readiness outcomes and its potential to reduce gaps in these outcomes in light of changing program goals, resource and funding capacity, and the demographic changes in the low-income child population it serves. Although not an explicit goal of the Head Start program, we assess whether and how the program can address reducing school readiness gaps between children of different racial and ethnic backgrounds and income groups. Because of changing policy priorities and targeting vulnerable groups of children with diverse needs, meeting Head Start goals within funding constraints can be challenging. Yet, as we will show in this paper, the program has successfully adapted to its changing environment, and despite the evolving nature of its goals and populations served, it has managed to demonstrate a favorable impact on children. Future research on tailored programming, program implementation and impacts on specific groups of children is needed to help Head Start further improve its ability to address persistent school readiness gaps