ICT’s Effect on Parents’ Feelings of Presence, Awareness, and Connectedness during a Child’s Hospitalization

This study evaluates how off-the-shelf commercial ICTs can contribute to creating a feeling of Presence, Connectedness, and Awareness between parents and their hospitalized child. Thematic analysis and descriptive statistics are used to analyse qualitative and quantitative data collected through a survey of thirty eight parents whose children were admitted to the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Through analysis of data, Presence is found to be less facilitated through ICT than are Awareness and Connectedness. Although participants reported that voice call on mobile phones was the most common way of communication, their ideal was a video-chat application such as Skype, or a combination of Skype and TV to facilitate feeling of Presence. We discovered a strong desire by parents to use rich media such as video and audio to achieve a greater feeling of the Presence of their absent child

Motivational and Situational Aspects of Active and Passive Social Media Breaks May Explain the Difference Between Recovery and Procrastination

Students frequently multitask with social media (SM) during self-study. Such social media multitasking (SMM) has the potential either to support wellbeing by acting as a recovery activity or subvert it by acting as a procrastination activity. It is currently unclear which specific SM behaviours and related factors push SMM towards recovery or procrastination. We conducted semi-structured interviews with 16 undergraduates to explore which SMM behaviours and factors led to recovery or procrastination. We found that both active and passive SM breaks have the potential to be recovery or procrastination activities. Whether a SM break becomes a recovery or procrastination activity partly depends on its automaticity and situational SM factors. This paper contributes empirical evidence that supports emerging criticism of an existing simplistic understanding of the relationship between active/passive SM use and wellbeing, and demonstrates how a richer model can inform the design of technologies that support better SM breaks

Artificial Intelligence-Assisted Online Social Therapy for Youth Mental Health

Introduction: Benefits from mental health early interventions may not be sustained over time, and longer-term intervention programs may be required to maintain early clinical gains. However, due to the high intensity of face-to-face early intervention treatments, this may not be feasible. Adjunctive internet-based interventions specifically designed for youth may provide a cost-effective and engaging alternative to prevent loss of intervention benefits. However, until now online interventions have relied on human moderators to deliver therapeutic content. More sophisticated models responsive to user data are critical to inform tailored online therapy. Thus, integration of user experience with a sophisticated and cutting-edge technology to deliver content is necessary to redefine online interventions in youth mental health. This paper discusses the development of the moderated online social therapy (MOST) web application, which provides an interactive social media-based platform for recovery in mental health. We provide an overview of the system's main features and discus our current work regarding the incorporation of advanced computational and artificial intelligence methods to enhance user engagement and improve the discovery and delivery of therapy content.Methods: Our case study is the ongoing Horyzons site (5-year randomized controlled trial for youth recovering from early psychosis), which is powered by MOST. We outline the motivation underlying the project and the web application's foundational features and interface. We discuss system innovations, including the incorporation of pertinent usage patterns as well as identifying certain limitations of the system. This leads to our current motivations and focus on using computational and artificial intelligence methods to enhance user engagement, and to further improve the system with novel mechanisms for the delivery of therapy content to users. In particular, we cover our usage of natural language analysis and chatbot technologies as strategies to tailor interventions and scale up the system.Conclusions: To date, the innovative MOST system has demonstrated viability in a series of clinical research trials. Given the data-driven opportunities afforded by the software system, observed usage patterns, and the aim to deploy it on a greater scale, an important next step in its evolution is the incorporation of advanced and automated content delivery mechanisms

Implementation of the Enhanced Moderated Online Social Therapy (MOST+) Model Within a National Youth E-Mental Health Service (eheadspace): Protocol for a Single Group Pilot Study for Help-Seeking Young People

Background: There is a substantial need for youth electronic mental health (e-mental health) services. In addressing this need, our team has developed a novel moderated online social therapy intervention called enhanced moderated online social therapy (MOST+). MOST+ integrates real-time, clinician-delivered Web chat counseling, interactive user-directed online therapy, expert and peer moderation, and private and secure peer-to-peer social networking. MOST+ has been designed to give young people immediate, 24-hour access to anonymous, evidence-based, and short-term mental health care. Objective: The primary aims of this pilot study were to determine the feasibility, acceptability, and safety of the intervention. Secondary aims were to assess prepost changes in key psychosocial outcomes and collect qualitative data for future intervention refinement. Methods: MOST+ will be embedded within eheadspace, an Australian youth e-mental health service, and will be evaluated via an uncontrolled single-group study. Approximately 250 help-seeking young people (16-25 years) will be progressively recruited to the intervention from the eheadspace home page over the first 4 weeks of an 8-week intervention period. All participants will have access to evidence-based therapeutic content and integrated Web chat counseling. Additional access to moderated peer-to-peer social networking will be granted to individuals for whom it is deemed safe and appropriate, through a three-tiered screening process. Participants will be enrolled in the MOST+ intervention for 1 week, with the option to renew their enrollment across the duration of the pilot. Participants will complete a survey at enrollment to assess psychological well-being and other mental health outcomes. Additional assessment will occur following account deactivation (ie, after participant has opted not to renew their enrollment, or at trial conclusion) and will include an online survey and telephone interview assessing psychological well-being and experience of using MOST+. Results: Recruitment for the study commenced in October 2017. We expect to have initial results in March 2018, with more detailed qualitative and quantitative analyses to follow. Conclusions: This is the first Australia-wide research trial to pilot an online social media platform merging real-time clinical support, expert and peer moderation, interactive online therapy, and peer-to-peer social networking. The importance of the project stems from the need to develop innovative new models for the efficient delivery of responsive evidence-based online support to help-seeking young people. If successful, this research stands to complement and enhance e-mental health services in Australia

How are Australian higher education institutions contributing to change through innovative teaching and learning in virtual worlds?

Over the past decade, teaching and learning in virtual worlds has been at the forefront of many higher education institutions around the world. The DEHub Virtual Worlds Working Group (VWWG) consisting of Australian and New Zealand higher education academics was formed in 2009. These educators are investigating the role that virtual worlds play in the future of education and actively changing the direction of their own teaching practice and curricula. 47 academics reporting on 28 Australian higher education institutions present an overview of how they have changed directions through the effective use of virtual worlds for diverse teaching and learning activities such as business scenarios and virtual excursions, role-play simulations, experimentation and language development. The case studies offer insights into the ways in which institutions are continuing to change directions in their teaching to meet changing demands for innovative teaching, learning and research in virtual worlds. This paper highlights the ways in which the authors are using virtual worlds to create opportunities for rich, immersive and authentic activities that would be difficult or not possible to achieve through more traditional approaches

The development and validation of a scoring tool to predict the operative duration of elective laparoscopic cholecystectomy

Background: The ability to accurately predict operative duration has the potential to optimise theatre efficiency and utilisation, thus reducing costs and increasing staff and patient satisfaction. With laparoscopic cholecystectomy being one of the most commonly performed procedures worldwide, a tool to predict operative duration could be extremely beneficial to healthcare organisations. Methods: Data collected from the CholeS study on patients undergoing cholecystectomy in UK and Irish hospitals between 04/2014 and 05/2014 were used to study operative duration. A multivariable binary logistic regression model was produced in order to identify significant independent predictors of long (> 90 min) operations. The resulting model was converted to a risk score, which was subsequently validated on second cohort of patients using ROC curves. Results: After exclusions, data were available for 7227 patients in the derivation (CholeS) cohort. The median operative duration was 60 min (interquartile range 45–85), with 17.7% of operations lasting longer than 90 min. Ten factors were found to be significant independent predictors of operative durations > 90 min, including ASA, age, previous surgical admissions, BMI, gallbladder wall thickness and CBD diameter. A risk score was then produced from these factors, and applied to a cohort of 2405 patients from a tertiary centre for external validation. This returned an area under the ROC curve of 0.708 (SE = 0.013, p  90 min increasing more than eightfold from 5.1 to 41.8% in the extremes of the score. Conclusion: The scoring tool produced in this study was found to be significantly predictive of long operative durations on validation in an external cohort. As such, the tool may have the potential to enable organisations to better organise theatre lists and deliver greater efficiencies in care

The ‘out-of-avatar experience’: objectfocused collaboration in Second Life

Abstract. Much of our current understanding of collaboration around objects in collaborative virtual environments comes from studies conducted with experimental immersive systems. Now Internet-based desktop virtual worlds (VWs) have become a popular form of 3d environment, and have been proposed for a variety of workplace scenarios. One popular VW, Second Life (SL), allows its users to create and manipulate objects. This provides an opportunity to examine the problems and practices of objectfocused collaboration in a current system and compare them to prior results. We studied small groups as they assembled objects in SL under varying conditions. In this paper we discuss the problems they encountered and the techniques they used to overcome them. We present measures of camera movement and verbal reference to objects, and discuss the impact of the UI upon these behaviors. We argue that while well-documented old problems remain very much alive, their manifestation in SL suggests new possibilities for supporting collaboration in 3d spaces. In particular, directly representing users ’ focus of attention may be more efficient than indirectly representing it via avatar gaze or gestures