Cytoview: development of a cell modelling framework

The biological cell, a natural self-contained unit of prime biological importance, is an enormously complex machine that can be understood at many levels. A higher-level perspective of the entire cell requires integration of various features into coherent, biologically meaningful descriptions. There are some efforts to model cells based on their genome, proteome or metabolome descriptions. However, there are no established methods as yet to describe cell morphologies, capture similarities and differences between different cells or between healthy and disease states. Here we report a framework to model various aspects of a cell and integrate knowledge encoded at different levels of abstraction, with cell morphologies at one end to atomic structures at the other. The different issues that have been addressed are ontologies, feature description and model building. The framework describes dotted representations and tree data structures to integrate diverse pieces of data and parametric models enabling size, shape and location descriptions. The framework serves as a first step in integrating different levels of data available for a biological cell and has the potential to lead to development of computational models in our pursuit to model cell structure and function, from which several applications can flow out

Translational Research in Space Exploration

This viewgraph presentation reviews NASA's role in medical translational research, and the importance in research for space exploration. The application of medical research for space exploration translates to health care in space medicine, and on earth

Mobile phone-based clinical guidance for rural health providers in India.

There are few tried and tested mobile technology applications to enhance and standardize the quality of health care by frontline rural health providers in low-resource settings. We developed a media-rich, mobile phone-based clinical guidance system for management of fevers, diarrhoeas and respiratory problems by rural health providers. Using a randomized control design, we field tested this application with 16 rural health providers and 128 patients at two rural/tribal sites in Tamil Nadu, Southern India. Protocol compliance for both groups, phone usability, acceptability and patient feedback for the experimental group were evaluated. Linear mixed-model analyses showed statistically significant improvements in protocol compliance in the experimental group. Usability and acceptability among patients and rural health providers were very high. Our results indicate that mobile phone-based, media-rich procedural guidance applications have significant potential for achieving consistently standardized quality of care by diverse frontline rural health providers, with patient acceptance

Design and development of a mobile-based patient management and information system for infectious disease outbreaks in low resource environments

BACKGROUND: The design of Patient Management and Information Systems during outbreaks of highly infectious diseases in low resource environments poses special challenges. Such systems necessitate special functional and design requirements to support patient care under austere conditions. A primary concern is to minimize spread of the disease to caregivers and non-infected individuals. Patient management in these conditions requires the design and development of systems customized for complex patient and caregiver workflows. OBJECTIVE: Design and develop a Patient Management and Information System for healthcare facilities on the frontlines of outbreaks of highly infectious diseases in low resource environments. METHODS: A team composed of clinicians with experience in Ebola care in affected areas of Africa and informaticians developed detailed hardware, software and functionality requirements. These were translated into hardware designs, software architectures, screen and interface designs and implemented using Common Off-The-Shelf hardware. An experimental app development system was used to develop mHealth software modules. RESULTS: The system was developed and implemented as a proof of concept. Acceptance testing showed that the system met functionality requirements. CONCLUSION: Useful Patient Management and Information systems can be developed and implemented for frontline use in low-resource environments during outbreaks of highly infectious diseases.This item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]

User adoption and evaluation of mobile health applications: the case for physical activity monitoring

In recent years, the presence of behavior change techniques used in mobile applications for physical activity has been investigated by several authors using content analysis and qualitative studies. However, users’ adoption and evaluation of application-specific features remain to be an unexplored area. In this study, mobile applications that employ behavioral change support features to encourage physical activity are explored in terms of users’ number of downloads and user evaluation scores, namely, ratings. An empirical hands-on analysis of 78 mobile physical activity applications from Google Play Store was conducted to extract the features that support behavior change. The mRMR methodology was used to find the most relevant features. It was found that user downloads are highly related to the features including voice coach, visualization of activity statistics, self-reports, reminders, sharing activity statistics, social platform support, and sharing with community friends. Significant features were found to vary depending on the subcategory of physical activity applications

GuideView: Structured Multi-modal Delivery of Clinical Guidelines

GuideView is a system designed for structured, multimodal delivery of clinical guidelines. Clinical instructions are presented simultaneously in voice, text, pictures or video or animations. Users navigate using mouse-clicks and voice commands. An evaluation study performed at a medical simulation laboratory found that voice and video instructions were rated highly

Cytoview: Development of a cell modelling framework

The biological cell, a natural self-contained unit of prime biological importance, is an enormously complex machine that can be understood at many levels. A higher-level perspective of the entire cell requires integration of various features into coherent, biologically meaningful descriptions. There are some efforts to model cells based on their genome, proteome or metabolome descriptions. However, there are no established methods as yet to describe cell morphologies, capture similarities and differences between different cells or between healthy and disease states. Here we report a framework to model various aspects of a cell and integrate knowledge encoded at different levels of abstraction, with cell morphologies at one end to atomic structures at the other. The different issues that have been addressed are ontologies, feature description and model building. The framework describes dotted representations and tree data structures to integrate diverse pieces of data and parametric models enabling size, shape and location descriptions. The framework serves as a fi rst step in integrating different levels of data available for a biological cell and has the potential to lead to development of computational models in our pursuit to model cell structure and function, from which several applications can fl ow out