Towards Empowering People Living with Type-2 Diabetes: A perspective on self-management in the context of a group-based education program

With the exponential rise in chronic disease, Online Health Communities (OHCs) offer opportunities for people to share information and experiences. Type-2 diabetes is one of the most prevalent chronic diseases globally and one that can have a devastating effect on an individuals’ life. This paper aims to investigate the potential for OHCs practices to empower diabetic patients who are participating in a face-to-face Diabetes Group Education Program (DGEP). Using a qualitative content analysis of the three most popular type-2 diabetes communities on Reddit, we identified three salient themes including (1) exchange lifestyle-related advice, (2) experience of commonality, and (3) brainstorm potential solutions for daily challenges. Our findings revealed OHCs could extend the value of the faceto-face DGEP by leveraging online value co-creation behaviour. This paper provides a novel framework for maximising the effectiveness of the DGEP and identifies avenues for future research

Improving the Theoretical Understanding Toward Patient-Driven Health Care Innovation Through Online Value Cocreation: Systematic Review.

Background: Patient participation in the health care domain has surged dramatically through the availability of digital health platforms and online health communities (OHCs). Such patient-driven service innovation has both potential and challenges for health care organizations. Over the last 5 years, articles have surfaced that focus on value cocreation in health care services and the importance of engaging patients and other actors in service delivery. However, a theoretical understanding of how to use OHCs for this purpose is still underdeveloped within the health care service ecosystem. Objective: This paper aimed to introduce a theoretical discussion for better understanding of the potential of OHCs for health care organizations, in particular, for patient empowerment. Methods: This literature review study involved a comprehensive search using 12 electronic databases (EMBASE, PsycINFO, Web of Science, Scopus, ScienceDirect, Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online, PubMed, Elton B Stephens Co [academic], Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature, Accelerated Information Sharing for Law Enforcement, Association for Computing Machinery, and Google Scholar) from 2013 to 2019. A total of 1388 studies were identified from the database search. After removing duplicates and applying inclusion criteria, we thematically analyzed 56 articles using the Braun and Clarke thematic analysis approach. Results: We identified a list of 5 salient themes: Communication extension, improved health literacy for patients and health care organizations, communication transparency with patients, informational and social support for patients, and patient empowerment in self-management. The most frequent theme was communication extension, which covers 39% (22/56) of the literature. This theme reported that an extension of communication between patients, caregivers, and physicians and organizations led to new opportunities to create value with minimal time and cost restrictions. Improved health literacy and communication transparency with patients were the second and third most frequent themes, respectively, covering 26% (15/56) and 25% (14/56) of the literature, respectively. The frequency of these themes indicated that the use of OHCs to generate new knowledge from patients' interactions helped health care organizations to customize treatment plans and establish transparent and effective communication between health care organizations and patients. Furthermore, of the 56 studies, 13 (23%) and 10 (17%) studies contended the opportunity of using OHCs in terms of informational and emotional support and empowering patients in their self-management of diseases. Conclusions: This review enables better understanding of the current state of the art of the online value cocreation and its potential for health care organizations. This study found that the opportunities for health care organizations through enhancement of patient participation and their cocreation of value in digital health platforms have been rapidly increasing. The identified gaps and opportunities in this study would identify avenues for future directions in modernized and more effective value-oriented health care informatics research.</p

Improved Bounds on Relaxations of a Parallel Machine Scheduling Problem

We consider the problem of scheduling n jobs with release dates on m identical parallel machines to minimize the average completion time of the jobs. We prove that the ratio of the average completion time of the optimal nonpreemptive schedule to that of the optimal preemptive schedule is at most 7}{3}, improving a bound of (3- 1}{m}) due to Phillips, Stein and Wein. We then use our technique to give an improved bound on the quality of a linear programming relaxation of the problem considered by Hall, Schulz, Shmoys and Wein

The Ingredients for Innovation: impacts for practice and the education of health service managers

Background:&nbsp;Innovation is associated with improvement, however, there is little published about the “ingredients” for successful innovation in healthcare, and the skills required of Health Service Managers (HSMs) who facilitate change in their organisations.&nbsp; &nbsp;Aim:&nbsp;This paper synthesizes the findings of a literature review performed to describe the organizational and contextual factors that enable and sustain innovation in healthcare settings.&nbsp; &nbsp;Implications for the practice of Health Service Management and curriculum development have been extrapolated as innovation has been identified as a solution to escalating health system demands in a rapidly changing environment.Approach: A literature review used a systematic approach to source articles from the Scopus and Emerald databases over the period of 1993 to February 2016.&nbsp; Papers were also retrieved from a BMC Health Services Research weekly alert.&nbsp; Snowballing from relevant articles identified additional and significant papers.&nbsp; Grey literature, peer-reviewed papers and reports were similarly reviewed to incorporate contemporary perspectives on this topic across the business, health and University sectors, and to facilitate discussion of the skills and competencies for HSMs practice and education in relation to this topic.&nbsp;Context:&nbsp;Innovation is crucial to the sustainability and viability of Australia’s world class health system.&nbsp; There is potential for innovation to lead to more cost-effective and efficient ways to address the challenges of limited health budgets and increasingly complex morbidities in an ageing population.&nbsp;Main findings: Successful innovation according to the literature, is determined by a complex interaction of determinants including organizational culture, support and resourcing for innovation, leadership and a clear and shared vision.&nbsp; An organizational culture supportive of innovation includes strong transdisciplinary communication, engaged and invested staff and recognition of the role of innovation in health improvement and outcomes.&nbsp; A setting that is open to identifying, testing and evaluating initiatives for innovation requires capabilities to establish and maintain the working relationships, team dynamics and to prioritise resourcing to facilitate and sustain new ways of working, services, products or technologies.Recent research on the skills required for health service management employability and career success was also examined and identified the importance of skills such as communication, creativity and problem solving.&nbsp; These skills are critical and linked to the role of the HSM in accelerating innovation in their organisations.Conclusions:&nbsp;The key ingredients for successful innovation in health were inferred from the literature.&nbsp; HSMs are well positioned to support innovation as they possess the necessary technical and professional skillsets. The literature suggests that the development of graduate skills in the areas of communication, problem solving, and team work is critical to meet industry needs and for HSMs to enable innovation.Universities educating health service managers strive to ensure that graduates are professionals equipped to lead and manage health services. HSM graduates can foster the organizational and contextual factors that sustain and sanction innovative ideas to flourish and progress to implementation.&nbsp; Current research advocates that strong industry and higher education collaboration is important to further develop the graduate attributes necessary for innovation.&nbsp

Complete genome sequence of Allochromatium vinosum DSM 180T

Allochromatium vinosum formerly Chromatium vinosum is a mesophilic purple sulfur bacterium belonging to the family Chromatiaceae in the bacterial class Gammaproteobacteria. The genus Allochromatium contains currently five species. All members were isolated from freshwater, brackish water or marine habitats and are predominately obligate phototrophs. Here we describe the features of the organism, together with the complete genome sequence and annotation. This is the first completed genome sequence of a member of the Chromatiaceae within the purple sulfur bacteria thriving in globally occurring habitats. The 3,669,074 bp genome with its 3,302 protein-coding and 64 RNA genes was sequenced within the Joint Genome Institute Community Sequencing Program

Complete genome sequence of Meiothermus silvanus type strain (VI-R2).

Meiothermus silvanus (Tenreiro et al. 1995) Nobre et al. 1996 belongs to a thermophilic genus whose members share relatively low degrees of 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity. Meiothermus constitutes an evolutionary lineage separate from members of the genus Thermus, from which they can generally be distinguished by their slightly lower temperature optima. M. silvanus is of special interest as it causes colored biofilms in the paper making industry and may thus be of economic importance as a biofouler. This is the second completed genome sequence of a member of the genus Meiothermus and only the third genome sequence to be published from a member of the family Thermaceae. The 3,721,669 bp long genome with its 3,667 protein-coding and 55 RNA genes is a part of the Genomic Encyclopedia of Bacteria and Archaea project

Complete genome sequence of Isosphaera pallida type strain (IS1B).

Isosphaera pallida (ex Woronichin 1927) Giovannoni et al. 1995 is the type species of the genus Isosphaera. The species is of interest because it was the first heterotrophic bacterium known to be phototactic, and it occupies an isolated phylogenetic position within the Planctomycetaceae. Here we describe the features of this organism, together with the complete genome sequence and annotation. This is the first complete genome sequence of a member of the genus Isosphaera and the third of a member of the family Planctomycetaceae. The 5,472,964 bp long chromosome and the 56,340 bp long plasmid with a total of 3,763 protein-coding and 60 RNA genes are part of the Genomic Encyclopedia of Bacteria and Archaea project