229 research outputs found
Factors Influencing the Adoption of Electronic Health Records in the Australian Environment
With the widespread use of medical records and the subsequent rise in the use of electronic health records (EHRs), the success of their adoption has become an important consideration for health agencies. In the current digital environment, the adoption of EHR has become significant because it limits the use of paper trails, and the care may be more effective because it is based on the electronic transfer of patient information. However, an improvement in the quality of the healthcare service is dependent upon how well EHRs are managed in healthcare as many stakeholders will contribute to them. While the advantages of EHRs are significant and cannot be disputed, a number of concerns have been raised regarding their success, as well as the ways in which they are adopted. The diversity of factors that affect the adoption of EHRs in various contexts requires a comprehensive investigation in order to establish a precise knowledge of their adoption in various healthcare settings. Such identification will help to mitigate many issues in their organisation at policy, workflow efficiency adoption and management levels. In this study, various factors that affect the adoption of EHRs in Australia will be identified and explored so as to arrive at a conceptual model that can be empirically tested later. Considering the vast amount of resources being dedicated to the adoption of EHRs in Australia, identifying barriers to their adoption, especially on an organisational level is essential for its success. Many studies have been conducted to understand barriers to the adoption of EHRs in Australia; however, there have been few studies concentrating on an organisational level in order to explore the challenges and obstacles that face specific organisations
Conceptual framework for telehealth adoption in Indian healthcare
India is a developing country with a large landmass and a huge socio-culturally, economically and, ethnically diverse population. The healthcare system for such a diverse and complex country could entail challenges and difficulties in execution and outreach. Here, the emerging area of Telehealth could afford a place for itself in providing healthcare and health education to a large section of people residing in areas where there is acute shortage of healthcare professionals. Almost, seventy per cent of the population in India are rural. The infrastructure in India, similar to other developing countries, is erratic and differs throughout the country. Similarly, the ICT infrastructure is developed in the urban areas whereas there are insufficient ICT facilities in the rural areas. As telehealth depends on the utilisation of ICT infrastructure it is essential to conduct a study to find out the determinants of ICT adoption in the Indian telehealth environment. Moreover, as evident from relevant literature, telehealth is in a nascent stage in India, with most of the projects currently in a pilot study level. As such, it would be practical to conduct the study from an organisational point of view because the organisational adoption of ICT will eventually foster the implementation of telehealth in the domain of Indian healthcare. The study focuses on developing a conceptual framework of ICT adoption in the Indian telehealth environment, as limited research has been conducted in this area. The study highlighted the drivers and barriers of telehealth around the world, reviewed the relevant models of ICT adoption and generated themes to develop the conceptual framework. Empirical testing of the conceptual framework may have the potential to establish and confirm the determinants of ICT adoption in the Indian telehealth environment. The conceptual framework may be utilised for governmental and non-governmental policy level decision making
Critical role of electron-phonon interactions in determining the relative stability of Boron Nitride polymorphs
Despite several first principles studies, the relative stability of BN
polymorphs remains controversial. The stable polymorph varies between the cubic
(c-BN) and hexagonal (h-BN) depending on the van der Waals (vdW) dispersion
approximation used. These studies are unable to explain the main experimental
results, c-BN is stable, the relative stability order and the large energy
difference between h-BN and c-BN (greater than 150 meV/formula unit). In this
study, we introduce contributions from electron-phonon interactions (EPI) to
the total energy of BN polymorphs. This clearly establishes c-BN is the stable
polymorph irrespective of the vdW approximation. Only by including EPI
contributions do the ab initio results match, for the first time, the main
experimental results mentioned above. The EPI contribution to the total energy
is strongly sensitive to chemical bonding (approximately twice in -bonded
layered over -bonded polymorphs) and to crystal structure. The crucial
role of EPI contributions is seen in -bonded layered BN polymorphs where
it is greater than the vdW contribution. Given that h-BN is a prototype layered
material, in bulk or 2D form, our results have a broader relevance, that is,
including EPI correction, along with vdW approximation, is vital for the study
of energetics in layered materials.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, 3 table
Theoretical issues in the accurate computation of the electron-phonon interaction contribution to the total energy
The total energy is the most fundamental quantity in ab initio studies. To
include electron-phonon interaction (EPI) contribution to the total energy, we
have recast Allen's equation, for the case of semiconductors and insulators.
This equivalent expression can be computed using available software, leading to
more accurate total energy. We calculate the total energies and their
differences for carbon-diamond and carbon-hexagonal polytypes. For ab initio
investigations on crystalline materials, the accepted norm is to compute
important quantities only for the primitive unit cell because per-atom
quantities are independent of unit cell size. Our results, unexpectedly, show
that the per-atom total energy (EPI included) depends on the unit cell size and
violates the unit cell independence. For example, it differs for carbon-diamond
by 1 eV/atom between the primitive cell and supercells. We observe that
reliable energy differences between polytypes are obtained when, instead of
primitive cells, supercells with identical number of atoms are used. A crucial
inference of general validity is that any equation which contains a partial
Fan-Migdal self-energy term violates the unit cell independence. Further
theoretical studies are needed to establish if the total energy (EPI included)
is an exception or can be reconciled with the unit cell independence.Comment: submitted for publication. 6 pages, 1 figure, 2 table
PDRL: Multi-Agent based Reinforcement Learning for Predictive Monitoring
Reinforcement learning has been increasingly applied in monitoring
applications because of its ability to learn from previous experiences and can
make adaptive decisions. However, existing machine learning-based health
monitoring applications are mostly supervised learning algorithms, trained on
labels and they cannot make adaptive decisions in an uncertain complex
environment. This study proposes a novel and generic system, predictive deep
reinforcement learning (PDRL) with multiple RL agents in a time series
forecasting environment. The proposed generic framework accommodates virtual
Deep Q Network (DQN) agents to monitor predicted future states of a complex
environment with a well-defined reward policy so that the agent learns existing
knowledge while maximizing their rewards. In the evaluation process of the
proposed framework, three DRL agents were deployed to monitor a subject's
future heart rate, respiration, and temperature predicted using a BiLSTM model.
With each iteration, the three agents were able to learn the associated
patterns and their cumulative rewards gradually increased. It outperformed the
baseline models for all three monitoring agents. The proposed PDRL framework is
able to achieve state-of-the-art performance in the time series forecasting
process. The proposed DRL agents and deep learning model in the PDRL framework
are customized to implement the transfer learning in other forecasting
applications like traffic and weather and monitor their states. The PDRL
framework is able to learn the future states of the traffic and weather
forecasting and the cumulative rewards are gradually increasing over each
episode.Comment: This work has been submitted to the Springer for possible
publication. Copyright may be transferred without notice, after which this
version may no longer be accessibl
The cyclin-dependent kinase PITSLRE/CDK11 is required for successful autophagy
(Macro)autophagy is a membrane-trafficking process that serves to sequester cellular constituents in organelles termed autophagosomes, which target their degradation in the lysosome. Autophagy operates at basal levels in all cells where it serves as a homeostatic mechanism to maintain cellular integrity. The levels and cargoes of autophagy can, however, change in response to a variety of stimuli, and perturbations in autophagy are known to be involved in the aetiology of various human diseases. Autophagy must therefore be tightly controlled. We report here that the Drosophila cyclin-dependent kinase PITSLRE is a modulator of autophagy. Loss of the human PITSLRE orthologue, CDK11, initially appears to induce autophagy, but at later time points CDK11 is critically required for autophagic flux and cargo digestion. Since PITSLRE/CDK11 regulates autophagy in both Drosophila and human cells, this kinase represents a novel phylogenetically conserved component of the autophagy machinery
Electron-phonon interaction contribution to the total energy of group IV semiconductor polymorphs: evaluation and implications
In density functional theory (DFT) based total energy studies, the van der
Waals (vdW) and zero-point vibrational energy (ZPVE) correction terms are
included to obtain energy differences between polymorphs. We introduce a new
correction term, due to electron-phonon interactions (EPI). We rely on Allen's
general formalism, which goes beyond the Quasi-Harmonic Approximation (QHA), to
include the free energy contributions due to quasiparticle interactions. We
show that, for semiconductors and insulators, the EPI contributions to the free
energies of electrons and phonons are constant terms. Using Allen's formalism
in combination with the Allen-Heine theory for EPI corrections, we calculate
the zero-point EPI corrections to the total energy for cubic and hexagonal
polytypes of Carbon, Silicon and Silicon Carbide. The EPI corrections alter the
energy differences between polytypes. In SiC polytypes, the EPI correction term
is more sensitive to crystal structure than the vdW and ZPVE terms and is thus
essential in determining their energy differences. It clearly establishes that
the cubic SiC-3C is metastable and hexagonal SiC-4H is the stable polytype. Our
results are consistent with the experimental results of Kleykamp. Our study
enables the inclusion of EPI corrections as a separate term in the free energy
expression. This opens the way to beyond the QHA by including the contribution
of EPI on all thermodynamic properties.Comment: Submitted for publication. 32 pages and 2 figure
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