HIPPP: health information portal for patients and public

Cancer misinformation is becoming an increasingly complex issue. When a person or a loved one receives a diagnosis of possible cancer, that person, family and friends will try to better inform themselves in this area of healthcare. Like most people, they will turn to their clinician for guidance and the internet to better verse themselves on the topic. But can they trust the information provided online? Are there ways to provide a quick evaluation of such information in order to prevent low-quality information and potentially dangerous consequences of trusting it? In the context of the UL Cancer Research Network (ULCan), this interdisciplinary project aims to develop the Health Information Portal for Patients and Public (HIPPP), a web-based application co-designed with healthcare domain experts that helps to improve people navigate the health information space online. HIPPP will be used by patients and the general public to evaluate user-provided web-based health information (WBHI) sources with respect to the QUEST framework and return a quality score for the information sources. As a web application, HIPPP is developed with modern extreme model-driven development (XMDD) technologies in order to make it easily adaptable and evolvable. To facilitate the automated evaluation of WBHI, HIPPP embeds an artificial intelligence (AI) pipeline developed following model-driven engineering principles. Through co-design with health domain experts and following model-driven engineering principles, we have extended the Domain Integrated Modelling Environment (DIME) to include a graphical domain-specific language (GDSL) for developing websites for evaluating WBHI. This GDSL allows for greater participation from stakeholders in the development process of both the user-facing website and the AI-driven evaluation pipeline through encoding concepts familiar to those stakeholders within the modelling language. The time efficiency study conducted as part of this research found that the HIPPP evaluation pipeline evaluates a sample of WBHI with respect to the QUEST framework up to 98.79% faster when compared to the time taken by a human expert evaluator.</p

Children in hospital in Ireland - what do they eat and what do they weigh: a cross-sectional study

Background: Overweight and obesity is a growing problem in Ireland. Many parents are unaware when their child is overweight or obese. Our objectives were to examine parents’ perceptions of a healthy diet and their children’s BMI; and to evaluate the food offered to children in our paediatric in-patient unit. Findings: A retrospective questionnaire was distributed to 95 patients and their families admitted over one month. Seventy-eight had BMI values calculated (42 males, 36 females). Twenty-one children (26.9%) were overweight/ obese: 14/21 parents (66.7%) thought their child had a normal weight. Sixty percent of children served dinner in the hospital were given fried potatoes. Four had fruit/vegetables. Forty-six parents brought food into hospital, of these 14 brought purchased food. Conclusions: This study highlights the problem of child obesity in Ireland and parental underestimation of this problem. The nutritional value of food served to children in hospital needs to be improved and hospital admissions used as opportunities to promote healthy eating habits

Children's television and nutrition

The prevalence of overweight children, and hours of television viewed are positively correlated1,2. Causality may include greater periods of inactivity and exposure to food advertising and product placement while watching television. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends a maximum of 2 hours of non-educational television viewing per day for children over 2 years3. However, recent evidence suggests that children aged 6-11 years watch 24.5 hours of television weekly4. A healthy and balanced diet provides the recommended amounts of nutrients and other food components to promote normal growth and development, reduce chronic disease risk, and foster appropriate energy balance and a healthy weight trajectory. But the current eating regimes of children and adolescents differ markedly from recommended patterns and increase their risks of obesity and poor health5. Obesity is associated with increased risks of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, lower life expectancy and poor quality of life scores6-8

Paediatric diabetes: information-seeking behaviours of families

The Internet provides patients and their families with ready access to on-line health related information. However, this information is not always accurate, understandable or provided by health professionals or advocacy groups. One hundred children with Type 1 diabetes mellitus, or their parents, attending a paediatric diabetes clinic during September to November 2011 were invited sequentially to participate in this questionnaire-based survey of Internet use in searching for diabetes-related information. Sixty-seven (67%) returned completed anonymised questionnaires: 36/67 (53%) were categorised as socio-economic groups C1/C2. Of the 67 families who returned completed questionnaires, 64 (96%) had a home computer and 62 (93%) had home Internet access; 27 (40%) rarely, and 40 (60%) frequently, searched on-line for diabetes-related information. Key search terms were not provided by respondents. There appears to be considerable internet use in seeking health related information for children with Type 1 diabetes mellitus. Clinicians should make efforts to direct patients and their families to websites that present accurate and current information

Key performance indicators for mental health and substance use disorders: a literature review and discussion paper

With increasing recognition of the importance of mental and substance use disorders for population health and health systems and the potential value of systems-based performance indicators in addressing this issue, we aimed to describe the development and content of key performance indicators for mental and substance use disorders. Publications were identified through official websites, Google searches and PubMed. Following ‘PRISMA’ guidelines, twenty-five studies were kept for qualitative synthesis and six for quantitative analysis. We describe their use in practice by comparing their application across a range of public and mixed healthcare systems. Currently, key performance indicator development for mental and substance use disorders adopts several methodologies, including expert opinion, literature review, stakeholder consultation and the structured consensus method. The rationales provided for selection of particular key performance indicators vary greatly between systems. Systems exhibit different levels of key performance indicator adaptability, which is reflective of dynamic changes in evidence-based practices. We noted bias in the level of key performance indicator assessment towards system/health plan evaluation followed by programme/service evaluation. Similarly, there is a large skew towards key performance indicators that reflect evaluation of processes. Collection of data in all systems is nearly exclusively reliant on electronic administrative/medical data. Experiences from these systems are synthesized into methodological recommendations, and considerations for further research and clinical practice are provided

Exercise portrayal in children's television programmes: analysis of United Kingdom and Irish programming.

Background: Television watching is obesogenic due to its sedentary nature and programming content, which influences children. Few studies have examined exercise placement within children-specific programming. This study aimed to investigate the frequency and type of exercise placement in children-specific television broadcasts and to compare placements on the UK and Irish television channels. Methods: Content analysis for five weekdays’ worth of children-specific television broadcasting totaling 82.5 hours on both the UK (British Broadcasting Corporation) and Irish (Radió Teilifís Éireann) television channels was performed. For the purposes of comparing the UK and Irish placements, analysis was restricted to programming broadcast between 6 am and 11.30 am. Exercise placements were coded based on type of activity, activity context, activity motivating factors and outcome, and characters involved. Results: A total of 780 cues were recorded during the total recording period. A wide variety of sports were depicted, but dancing-related cues were most commonly seen (n=163, 23.3%), with the majority of cues being of mild (n=365, 65.9%) or moderate (n=172, 31.0%) intensity. The majority of cues were associated with a positive outcome (n=404, 61.4%), and social motivations were most commonly seen (n=289, 30.3%). The Irish and the UK portrayals were broadly similar. Conclusion: This study highlights the wide variety of sports portrayed and the active effort undertaken by television stations to depict physical exercise and recreation in a positive light

Food and beverage cues in children's television programmes: the influence of programme genre

Objective: The link between childhood obesity and both television viewing and television advertising have previously been examined. We sought to investigate the frequency and type of food and beverage placements in children-specific television broadcasts and, in particular, differences between programme genres.Method: Content of five weekdays of children-specific television broadcasting on both UK (BBC) and Irish (RTE) television channels was summarized. Food and beverage placements were coded based on type of product, product placement, product use and characters involved. A comparison was made between different programme genres: animated, cartoon, child-specific, film, quiz, tween and young persons' programming.Results: A total of 1155 (BBC = 450; RTE = 705) cues were recorded giving a cue every 4.2 min, an average of 12.3 s/cue. The genre with most cues recorded was cartoon programming (30.8 %). For the majority of genres, cues related to sweet snacks (range 1.8-23.3 %) and sweets/candy (range 3.6-25.8 %) featured highly. Fast-food (18.0 %) and sugar-sweetened beverage (42.3 %) cues were observed in a high proportion of tween programming. Celebratory/social motivation factors (range 10-40 %) were most common across all genres while there were low proportions of cues based on reward, punishment or health-related motivating factors.Conclusions: The study provides evidence for the prominence of energy-dense/nutrient-poor foods and beverages in children's programming. Of particular interest is the high prevalence of fast-food and sugar-sweetened beverage cues associated with tween programming. These results further emphasize the need for programme makers to provide a healthier image of foods and beverages in children's television

Ghana health services and the Irish health system – bridging the gap

The University of Limerick Hospitals Group (ULHG), and the University of Limerick (UL), are committed to fostering links with the developing world and contributing to solutions of the challenges these countries face. In 2016 a group from UL and ULHG visited the Upper West Region of Ghana to explore the possibility of establishing a partnership with Ghana Health Services (GHS). In this article, we describe aspects of GHS and outline some of the challenges for Irish institutions trying to engage with the realties of the developing world

Fibrocytes contribute to mesenteric manifestations in Crohn s disease

no abstract availabl

Past and future burden of inflammatory bowel diseases based on modeling of population-based data

BACKGROUND & AIMS: Inflammatory bowel diseases (IBDs) exist worldwide, with high prevalence in North America. IBD is complex and costly, and its increasing prevalence places a greater stress on health care systems. We aimed to determine the past current, and future prevalences of IBD in Canada. METHODS: We performed a retrospective cohort study using population-based health administrative data from Alberta (2002–2015), British Columbia (1997– 2014), Manitoba (1990–2013), Nova Scotia (1996–2009), Ontario (1999–2014), Quebec (2001–2008), and Saskatchewan (1998–2016). Autoregressive integrated moving average regression was applied, and prevalence, with 95% prediction intervals (PIs), was forecasted to 2030. Average annual percentage change, with 95% confidence intervals, was assessed with log binomial regression. RESULTS: In 2018, the prevalence of IBD in Canada was estimated at 725 per 100,000 (95% PI 716–735) and annual average percent change was estimated at 2.86% (95% confidence interval 2.80%–2.92%). The prevalence in 2030 was forecasted to be 981 per 100,000 (95% PI 963–999): 159 per 100,000 (95% PI 133–185) in children, 1118 per 100,000 (95% PI 1069–1168) in adults, and 1370 per 100,000 (95% PI 1312–1429) in the elderly. In 2018, 267,983 Canadians (95% PI 264,579–271,387) were estimated to be living with IBD, which was forecasted to increase to 402,853 (95% PI 395,466–410,240) by 2030. CONCLUSION: Forecasting prevalence will allow health policy makers to develop policy that is necessary to address the challenges faced by health systems in providing high-quality and cost-effective care