Not Home Alone: Leveraging Telehealth and Informatics to Create a Lean Model for COVID-19 Patient Home Care

In response to the emerging COVID-19 public health emergency in March 2020, the Medical University of South Carolina rapidly implemented an analytics-enhanced remote patient monitoring (RPM) program with state-wide reach for SARS-CoV-2-positive patients. Patient-reported data and other analytics were used to prioritize the sickest patients for contact by RPM nurses, enabling a small cadre of RPM nurses, with the support of ambulatory providers and urgent care video visits, to oversee 1234 patients, many of whom were older, from underserved populations, or at high risk of serious complications. Care was escalated based on prespecified criteria to primary care provider or emergency department visit, with 89% of moderate- to high-risk patients treated solely at home. The RPM nurses facilitated the continuity of care during escalation or de-escalation of care, provided much-needed emotional support to patients quarantining at home and helped find medical homes for patients with tenuous ties to health care

Searching for evidence in public health emergencies: a white paper of best practices

Objectives: Information professionals have supported medical providers, administrators and decision-makers, and guideline creators in the COVID-19 response. Searching COVID-19 literature presented new challenges, including the volume and heterogeneity of literature and the proliferation of new information sources, and exposed existing issues in metadata and publishing. An expert panel developed best practices, including recommendations, elaborations, and examples, for searching during public health emergencies. Methods: Project directors and advisors developed core elements from experience and literature. Experts, identified by affiliation with evidence synthesis groups, COVID-19 search experience, and nomination, responded to an online survey to reach consensus on core elements. Expert participants provided written responses to guiding questions. A synthesis of responses provided the foundation for focus group discussions. A writing group then drafted the best practices into a statement. Experts reviewed the statement prior to dissemination. Results: Twelve information professionals contributed to best practice recommendations on six elements: core resources, search strategies, publication types, transparency and reproducibility, collaboration, and conducting research. Underlying principles across recommendations include timeliness, openness, balance, preparedness, and responsiveness. Conclusions: The authors and experts anticipate the recommendations for searching for evidence during public health emergencies will help information specialists, librarians, evidence synthesis groups, researchers, and decision-makers respond to future public health emergencies, including but not limited to disease outbreaks. The recommendations complement existing guidance by addressing concerns specific to emergency response. The statement is intended as a living document. Future revisions should solicit input from a broader community and reflect conclusions of meta-research on COVID-19 and health emergencies

Neuropsychological Correlates of Cystic Fibrosis in Patients 5 to 8 Years Old

Intellectual, academic, and neuropsychological tests were administered to 20 children with cystic fibrosis (CF). Results were compared to test results from 20 controls matched for gender, age, and socioeconomic status. No differences between the groups were found. For children with CF, Verbal IQ, sensory-perceptual skills, and incidental learning correlated (rs = .39-.67) with Shwachman criteria of disease severity, with significant positive relations with the Growth and Nutrition measure, an index of the severity of the disease. Processing of tactile-perceptual information may be particularly vulnerable to disease severity. This study provides more information than previously available on the neuropsychological status of young children with CF, and it offers some hypotheses regarding the relation between disease severity and neuropsychological function.published_or_final_versio

The CI-FLOW Project: A System for Total Water Level Prediction from the Summit to the Sea

Kildow et al. (2009) reported that coastal states support 81% of the U.S. population and generate 83 percent [$11.4 trillion (U.S. dollars) in 2007] of U.S. gross domestic product. Population trends show that a majority of coastal communities have transitioned from a seasonal, predominantly weekend, tourist-based economy to a year-round, permanently based, business economy where industry expands along shorelines and the workforce commutes from inland locations. As a result of this transition, costs associated with damage to the civil infrastructure and disruptions to local and regional economies due to coastal flooding events are escalating, pushing requirements for a new generation of flood prediction technologies and hydrologic decision support tools

Collaborative research to develop a specialist, post-graduate competency-based education curriculum and continuing professional development structure for health librarians in Australia

Through a grant received from the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA), members of Health Libraries Australia (HLA) are collaborating with a researcher/educator to conduct a twelve month research project with the goal of developing an educational framework for the Australian health librarianship workforce of the future. The collaboration comprises the principal researcher and a representative group of practitioners from different sectors of the health industry who are affiliated with ALIA in various committees, advisory groups and roles. The research has two main aims: to determine the future skills requirements for the health librarian workforce in Australia; and to develop a structured, modular education framework for specialist post-graduate qualifications together with a structure for ongoing continuing professional development. The paper highlights some of the major trends in the health sector and some of the main environmental influences that may act as drivers for change for health librarianship as a profession, and particularly for educating the future workforce. The research methodology is outlined and the main results are described; the findings are discussed with regard to their implications for the development of a structured, competency-based education framework

Employers' perspectives on future roles and skills requirements for Australian health librarians

Objective – This study, which comprises one stage of a larger project (ALIA/HLA Workforce and Education Research Project), aimed to discover employers’ views on how (or whether) health librarians assist in achieving the mission-critical goals of their organizations; how health librarians contribute to the organization now and into the future; and what are the current and future skills requirements of health librarians.Methods – Each member of the project group approached between one and five individuals known to them to generate a convenience sample of 22 employers of health librarians. There were 15 semi-structured interviews conducted between October and November 2010 with employers in the hospital, academic, government, private, consumer health and not-for-profit sectors. The interview schedule was sent to each interviewee prior to the interview so that they had time to consider their responses. The researchers wrote up the interview notes using the interview schedule and submitted them to the principal researcher, who combined the data into one document. Content analysis of the data was used to identify major themes.Results – Employers expressed a clear sense of respect for the roles and responsibilities of library staff in their organizations. Areas of practice such as education and training, scientific research and clinical support were highlighted as critical for the future. Current areas of practice such as using technology and systems to manage information, providing information services to meet user needs and management of health information resources in a range of formats were identified as remaining highly relevant for the future. There was potential for health librarians to play a more active and strategic role in their organizations, and to repackage their traditional skill sets for anticipated future roles. Interpersonal skills and the role of health librarians as the interface between clinicians and information technology were also identified as critical for the future. Conclusions – Interviews with employers provided valuable insights into the current and future roles and skills requirements of health librarians in Australia, enriching the findings of the earlier stages of the research project. The next step is to work with the stakeholder groups in this project and use the research project’s findings as the evidence base on which to develop a structured, modular education framework comprising a postgraduate qualification in health librarianship and a continuing professional development structure supporting a three-year cycle of certification and revalidation

Lost in translation - campaign to restore a useful tool not replicated in the new PubMed

A proposal from the Clinical Information Retrieval Improvement Collaborative (CIRIC

Australia's Health Libraries: A Research-directed Future

Health Libraries Australia, a group from the Australian Library and Information Association, is currently undertaking a research project to determine the future requirements for the health librarian workforce in Australia. The study has yielded an in-depth literature review exploring the Australian health care system and health library sector and international trends in health libraries that may impact Australian health librarian education. It has also produced surveys of Australian health librarians and health library managers. This article reviews the first stage of the project. The data will provide a solid foundation for development of the next phase of the project—scoping a structured, modular education framework for postgraduate qualifications in health librarianship and an ongoing continuing professional development structure.published or submitted for publicatio

Health Librarianship Workforce and Education : Research to plan the future. Final Report.

In late 2009, Health Libraries Australia (HLA) received a small grant to undertake a national research project to determine the future requirements for health librarians in the workforce in Australia and develop a structured, modular education framework (post-graduate qualification and continuing professional development structure) to meet these requirements. \ud \ud The main objective was to consider the education and professional development framework that would ensure that health librarians have a clearly defined scope of practice and the specific competency based knowledge and skills that enable them to contribute to the design and delivery of high quality health services in this country.\ud \ud The final report presents a detailed discussion of the changing Australian healthcare environment and the resulting impact on the health library sector, as well as an overview of international trends in health libraries and the implications for Australian health librarianship education. The research methodology is outlined, followed by an analysis of the findings from the two surveys with health librarians and health library managers and the semi-structured interviews conducted with employers. The Medical Library Association (MLA) in the United States had developed a policy document detailing the competencies\ud required by health librarians. It was found that the MLA competencies represented an accepted professional framework of skills which could be used objectively in the survey instrument to measure the areas of professional knowledge and responsibilities that were relevant in the current workplace, and to identify how these requirements might change in the next three to five years.\ud \ud The research results underscore the imperative for health librarians to engage in regular, relevant professional development activities that will enable them to stay abreast with the rapid contextual changes impacting on their practice. In order to be accepted as key members of the multi-disciplinary health professional team, it is strongly believed that health librarians should commit to establishing the mechanisms for specialist certification maintained through compulsory CPD in an ongoing three-year\ud cycle of revalidation. This development would align ALIA and health librarians with other health sector professional associations which are responsible for the self regulation of entry to and continuation in their profession