Factors influencing Community Healthcare Worker’s adoption of mobile health technology (mhealth): A case of sangini supportive supervision (sangini) app, Uttar Pradesh, India

Background: Community Health Workers (CHWs) are agents in delivering primary healthcare.  mhealth is being used to improve their performance. However, there are little evidences on factors influencing adoption of technology. Henceforth, sangini app was undertaken for analysis. Objective: To investigate factors of adoption of sangini app among users and non-users. Methods & statistical analysis: Constructs from Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Theory of Self-Efficacy (SE) were used as tools for study. The study used an experimental study design Kaushambi and Pratapgarh districts of Uttar Pradesh (U.P.), India was selected as intervention and control groups respectively. The study sample consisted of CHWs i.e. 90 Sangini and 270 ASHAs. Two sample t test with equal variances and univariate regression analysis was applied. Results: TA and SE were predicators however; individual characters didn’t impact adoption of mhealth. Conclusion: There is need to comprehend factors influencing adoption of mhealth to improve performance of CHWs

How benign is benign tertian malaria?

Objective: This retrospective study was conducted to determine the incidence of variouscomplications of Plasmodium vivax malaria based on review of case records.Methods: The case records of all confirmed cases of malaria over the period of one year (September2005–August 2006) were studied. Complete blood count, peripheral blood findings, liver and kidneyfunctions were reviewed. The results of rapid diagnostic test for malaria (OptiMAL test, DiamedAG, Switzerland) were correlated with the peripheral blood smear findings in the patients in whomit was requested. All abnormal results like a positive direct Coomb’s test were noted. Findingswere clinically correlated.Results: There were 265 confirmed cases by peripheral blood examination. Of these 221 were dueto Plasmodium vivax and 41 due to P. falciparum. Two cases had mixed infection and in one casethe species could not be identified as it showed only malarial pigment. The peak incidence ofmalaria was seen in September 2005 and August 2006. The complications in P. vivax werethrombocytopenia, biochemical evidence of hepatic dysfunction, renal damage, positive DCT anddeath due to ARDS. Thrombocytopenia was seen in 213 patients with counts < 20 x 103/μl in 13patients. Nine (4%) patients had serum bilirubin >3 mg/dl with normal liver enzymes. Liver enzymeswere elevated in 60 patients with seven patients showing liver enzymes level, three times the normal.Renal dysfunction was seen in 17 patients with serum creatinine ranging from 1.3–10.65 mg/dl.One patient went into acute renal failure following quinine therapy and showed red cell fragmentsin the peripheral blood. In two children DCT was positive with the peripheral smear showing RBCagglutinates around the parasitised RBC. There were three maternal deaths at about 32 weeksgestation due to ARDS. The peripheral blood smear in these patients showed WBC agglutinates.Conclusion: This paper is presented to highlight that P. vivax malaria though considered to be abenign entity can also have a severe and complicated course which is usually associated with P.falciparum malaria

Retrospective analytical study of total abdominal hyeterectomy for benign gynaecological conditions

Background: Hysterectomy, which is one of the most common surgeries performed on women, dates back to ancient time. This retrospective study was done to determine a baseline data on various indications for total abdominal hysterectomy for benign gynaecological conditions, most common presenting symptoms, and socio-economic status and their histopathology correlation.Methods: This retrospective study was performed in the department of Obstetrics and gynaecology, in collaboration with Department of Pathology, Gandhi Medical College, Bhopal. Baseline data were collected from inpatient files and histopathology reports to determine the indication for surgery, pattern of gynaecological diseases, and distribution with respect to age, parity, rural, urban, socio-economic status and final histopathology correlation. Histopathology reports were collected from Department of Pathology.Results: Majority of women undergone TAH for benign gynaecological diseases were in age group of 40-49 years [n=341 (48.99% cases)], multi para and from urban areas (57.26%). most common indication for TAH is fibroid uterus [n=347 (49.85%)]. The most common mode of presentation is excessive prolonged frequent bleeding per vagina (58.14%). Most common histopathology reports of TAH were leiomyoma with chronic cervicitis {n=347 (49.78%)}.Conclusions: Majority of women undergoing for TAH for benign gynaecological conditions have great satisfaction as they got relieved from their complaints and very minimum post-operative complications, but their long term outcome are still debatable

Closest Conjunct Agreement in Head-Final Languages

Linguistic

An Enhanced K-Medoid Clustering Algorithm

Data mining is a technique of mining information from the raw data. It is a non trivial process of identifying valid and useful patterns in data. Some of the major Data Mining techniques used for analysis are Association, Classification and Clustering etc. Clustering is used to group homogenous kind of data, but it is different approach from classification process. In the classification process data is grouped on the predefined domains or subjects. A basic clustering technique represents a list of topics for each data and calculates the distance for how accurately a data fit into a group. The Cluster is helpful to get fascinating patterns and structures from an outsized set of knowledge. There are a lots of clustering algorithms that have been proposed and they can be divided as: partitional, grid, density, model and hierarchical based. This paper propose the new enhanced algorithm for k-medoid clustering algorithm which eliminates the deficiency of existing k-medoid algorithm. It first calculates the initial medoids ‘k’ as per needs of users and then gives relatively better cluster. It follows an organized way to generate initial medoid and applies an effective approach for allocation of data points into the clusters. It reduces the mean square error without sacrificing the execution time and memory use as compared to the existing k-medoid algorithm

An esoteric identity with many parameters and other elliptic extensions of elementary identities

We provide elliptic extensions of elementary identities such as the sum of the first $n$ odd or even numbers, the geometric sum and the sum of the first $n$ cubes. Many such identities, and their $q$-analogues, are indefinite sums, and can be obtained from telescoping. So we used telescoping in our study to find elliptic extensions of these identities. In the course of our study, we obtained an identity with many parameters, which appears to be new even in the $q$-case. In addition, we recover some $q$-identities due to Warnaar.Comment: 15 pages, comments welcom