Advances in Teaching & Learning Day Abstracts 2005

Proceedings of the Advances in Teaching & Learning Day Regional Conference held at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston in 2005

VCU Media Lab

We propose the establishment of a VCU Media Lab – a professional creative media technology unit whose mission is to support the development, design, production and delivery of innovative media, multimedia, computer-based instruction, publications and tools in support of VCU education, research and marketing initiatives. This centrally administered, budgeted and resourced facility will acknowledge, refine, focus and expand media services that are currently being provided at VCU in a decentralized manner

Development of a Secured Information System to Manage Malaria Related Cases in South Western region of Nigeria

Effective community based management of malaria incidences in most community health care centers are hampered by failure in the prompt diagnosis and treatment of malaria. This challenge is exacerbated by the emergence of multidrug resistant plasmodium parasites which makes ineffective most of the effective therapeutic drugs used in the treatment of malaria. Furthermore, even at abrupt changes in the therapeutic recommendations does not always translate to an immediate change in the effective management and control of malaria. Thus, the quest for effective diagnosis and appropriate treatment becomes a daunting and necessary task. . In this article, a secured Information system to manage malaria related cases was developed by 2-tier architecture by using the VB.NET programming language within the Microsoft Visual studio 2008 edition. The database employed for storing relevant data was the SQL server 2005 edition and fingerprint device integrated into the information system was the Microsoft fingerprint reader. From the results in this study, we modeled a feasible medical history system for prompt diagnosis, effective drug recommendations and promulgation of policies that would serve as palliatives for community health care centers that suffers shortages in material and human resources handling malaria and its related diseases

Prospect patents, data markets, and the commons in data-driven medicine : openness and the political economy of intellectual property rights

Scholars who point to political influences and the regulatory function of patent courts in the USA have long questioned the courts’ subjective interpretation of what ‘things’ can be claimed as inventions. The present article sheds light on a different but related facet: the role of the courts in regulating knowledge production. I argue that the recent cases decided by the US Supreme Court and the Federal Circuit, which made diagnostics and software very difficult to patent and which attracted criticism for a wealth of different reasons, are fine case studies of the current debate over the proper role of the state in regulating the marketplace and knowledge production in the emerging information economy. The article explains that these patents are prospect patents that may be used by a monopolist to collect data that everybody else needs in order to compete effectively. As such, they raise familiar concerns about failure of coordination emerging as a result of a monopolist controlling a resource such as datasets that others need and cannot replicate. In effect, the courts regulated the market, primarily focusing on ensuring the free flow of data in the emerging marketplace very much in the spirit of the ‘free the data’ language in various policy initiatives, yet at the same time with an eye to boost downstream innovation. In doing so, these decisions essentially endorse practices of personal information processing which constitute a new type of public domain: a source of raw materials which are there for the taking and which have become most important inputs to commercial activity. From this vantage point of view, the legal interpretation of the private and the shared legitimizes a model of data extraction from individuals, the raw material of information capitalism, that will fuel the next generation of data-intensive therapeutics in the field of data-driven medicine

A survey of health care models that encompass multiple departments

In this survey we review quantitative health care models to illustrate the extent to which they encompass multiple hospital departments. The paper provides general overviews of the relationships that exists between major hospital departments and describes how these relationships are accounted for by researchers. We find the atomistic view of hospitals often taken by researchers is partially due to the ambiguity of patient care trajectories. To this end clinical pathways literature is reviewed to illustrate its potential for clarifying patient flows and for providing a holistic hospital perspective