Perception of Benefits Achieved by IT Management Accounting in the Public Sector

Information technology (IT) is of high relevance in public administrations. Thus, a systematic management and control of its usage is required. IT management accounting is an instrument addressing this issue. However, public IT-managers do not perceive its supposed benefits due to the way in which it is currently implemented. This leads to a low usage of IT management accounting in public administrations. To analyze the gap between its supposed and perceived benefits, we reviewed literature and conducted a case study in a German public administration. Our findings show that - out of the various benefits of IT management accounting according to the literature - public IT-managers only focus on transparency and support for decision-making as benefits. The findings contribute to a better understanding of IT management accounting in public administrations and support practitioners by designing IT management accounting according to the potential benefits for departmental and cross-departmental IT-managers

Dimensionen digitaler Mündigkeit und politische Beteiligung im Netz

Die Forschung zur digitalen Spaltung (Digital Divide) oder auch Beteiligungsspaltung (Participation Divide) hat diverse Voraussetzungen einer partizipativen Internetnutzung untersucht. Im Mittelpunkt steht dabei eine immer größere Vielzahl förderlicher "Literacies" oder Kompetenzen. Um einer zunehmenden Unübersichtlichkeit dieses Forschungsfelds entgegenzutreten, haben erste konzeptionelle Studien das umfassendere Konzept der "digitalen Mündigkeit" vorgeschlagen. Basierend auf einer interdisziplinären Literaturanalyse erarbeitet der vorliegende Beitrag eine Definition der "digitalen Mündigkeit", und führt das Konzept durch eine entsprechende Operationalisierung erstmals einer empirischen Analyse zu. Basierend auf einer Befragung von 1.044 deutschen Internetnutzenden wird der Einfluss der digitalen Mündigkeit - neben soziodemographischen Faktoren, politischer Orientierung und Regierungsvertrauen - auf die politische Online-Beteiligung untersucht

Corona Health -- A Study- and Sensor-based Mobile App Platform Exploring Aspects of the COVID-19 Pandemic

Physical and mental well-being during the COVID-19 pandemic is typically assessed via surveys, which might make it difficult to conduct longitudinal studies and might lead to data suffering from recall bias. Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) driven smartphone apps can help alleviate such issues, allowing for in situ recordings. Implementing such an app is not trivial, necessitates strict regulatory and legal requirements, and requires short development cycles to appropriately react to abrupt changes in the pandemic. Based on an existing app framework, we developed Corona Health, an app that serves as a platform for deploying questionnaire-based studies in combination with recordings of mobile sensors. In this paper, we present the technical details of Corona Health and provide first insights into the collected data. Through collaborative efforts from experts from public health, medicine, psychology, and computer science, we released Corona Health publicly on Google Play and the Apple App Store (in July, 2020) in 8 languages and attracted 7,290 installations so far. Currently, five studies related to physical and mental well-being are deployed and 17,241 questionnaires have been filled out. Corona Health proves to be a viable tool for conducting research related to the COVID-19 pandemic and can serve as a blueprint for future EMA-based studies. The data we collected will substantially improve our knowledge on mental and physical health states, traits and trajectories as well as its risk and protective factors over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic and its diverse prevention measures

Medical device regulation efforts for mHealth apps during the COVID-19 pandemic — an experience report of Corona Check and Corona Health

Within the healthcare environment, mobile health (mHealth) applications (apps) are becoming more and more important. The number of new mHealth apps has risen steadily in the last years. Especially the COVID-19 pandemic has led to an enormous amount of app releases. In most countries, mHealth applications have to be compliant with several regulatory aspects to be declared a “medical app”. However, the latest applicable medical device regulation (MDR) does not provide more details on the requirements for mHealth applications. When developing a medical app, it is essential that all contributors in an interdisciplinary team — especially software engineers — are aware of the specific regulatory requirements beforehand. The development process, however, should not be stalled due to integration of the MDR. Therefore, a developing framework that includes these aspects is required to facilitate a reliable and quick development process. The paper at hand introduces the creation of such a framework on the basis of the Corona Health and Corona Check apps. The relevant regulatory guidelines are listed and summarized as a guidance for medical app developments during the pandemic and beyond. In particular, the important stages and challenges faced that emerged during the entire development process are highlighted

Mid infrared spectroscopy as a tool for disease pattern recognition from human blood

NRC publication: Ye

Disease pattern recognition in infrared spectra of human sera using diabetes mellitus as an example

NRC publication: Ye

Roles of stargazin and phosphorylation in the control of AMPA receptor subcellular distribution

Understanding how the subcellular fate of newly synthesized AMPA receptors (AMPARs) is controlled is important for elucidating the mechanisms of neuronal function. We examined the effect of increased synthesis of AMPAR subunits on their subcellular distribution in rat hippocampal neurons. Virally expressed AMPAR subunits (GluR1 or GluR2) accumulated in cell bodies and replaced endogenous dendritic AMPAR with little effect on total dendritic amounts and caused no change in synaptic transmission. Coexpressing stargazin (STG) or mimicking GluR1 phosphorylation enhanced dendritic GluR1 levels by protecting GluR1 from lysosomal degradation. However, STG interaction or GluR1 phosphorylation did not increase surface or synaptic GluR1 levels. Unlike GluR1, STG did not protect GluR2 from lysosomal degradation or increase dendritic GluR2 levels. In general, AMPAR surface levels, and not intracellular amounts, correlated strongly with synaptic levels. Our results suggest that AMPAR surface expression, but not its intracellular production or accumulation, is critical for regulating synaptic transmission