Smartphones to Facilitate Communication and Improve Social Skills of Children with Severe Autism Spectrum Disorder: Special Education Teachers as Proxies

We present an overview of the approach we used and the challenges we encountered while designing software for smartphones to facilitate communication and improve social skills of children with severe autism spectrum disorder (ASD). We employed participatory design, using special education teachers of children with ASD as proxies for our target population

An Online Community for Teachers of Children with Autism to Support, Observe, and Evaluate Communication Enabled with Smartphones

We are developing an online community for teachers of children diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder that will provide tools to share, analyze, and evaluate assisted communication. The data will be collected from software on smartphones that allows children to communicate with teachers using images. Since this is the first approach towards systematic data collection for children with ASD, we expect a significant impact on current teaching methods

Information Systems and Healthcare XXXV: Health Informatics Forums for Health Information Systems Scholars

The use of technology in health care settings is an area of increasing interest to information systems researchers. An awareness of journals and conferences that focus on this innately interdisciplinary field is necessary if researchers in related domains, such as information systems, intend to connect methodologies, insights, and perspectives to advance health IT knowledge. This study fills a void in the literature by providing an initial peer ranking of dedicated health informatics journals and related conferences as guidance for those interested in learning more about and/or publishing in this field. Results indicate that there are at least forty-five journals that researchers may want to consider in conducting health informatics work

Signature pedagogy for entrepreneurship education: An emerging perspective

Entrepreneurial ways of thinking and doing intersect with the knowledge and skills that a global citizen needs to thrive. There is a robust body of scholarship that identifies core entrepreneurial skills however there is a dearth of evidence addressing how to successfully teach entrepreneurship. Using the lens of experiential learning, this qualitative study examines the surface, deep, and implicit structures of professional entrepreneurial culture toward revealing a meaningful, authentic pedagogical approach for entrepreneurship education. In order to achieve this outcome, researchers utilized a semi-structured comparable multiple-case study design to engage 19 incubated entrepreneurs in focus group interviews. A replication strategy to inductive qualitative analysis was employed toward cross-case analysis. Findings revealed that incubated entrepreneurs routinely engage in a wide variety of transdisciplinary experiences characterized by cycles of success and failure. Additionally, face-to-face interactions that are grounded in a network of trust were revealed to be a vital part of the entrepreneurial process. Thus, pedagogies anchored in the design process would provide an authentic, experiential context in which to prepare future entrepreneurs. Implications for elementary and secondary educational approaches are discussed

Epidemiology of Pediatric Prehospital Basic Life Support Care in the United States

Children have unique medical needs compared to adults. Emergency medical services personnel need proper equipment and training to care for children. The purpose of this study is to characterize emergency medical services pediatric basic life support to help better understand the needs of children transported by ambulance. Pediatric basic life support patients were identified in this retrospective descriptive study. Descriptive statistics were used to examine incident location, possible injury, cardiac arrest, resuscitation attempted, chief complaint, primary symptom, provider\u27s primary impression, cause of injury, and procedures performed during pediatric basic life support calls using the largest aggregate of emergency medical services data available, the 2013 National Emergency Medical Services Information System (NEMSIS) Public Release Research Data Set. Pediatric calls represented 7.4% of emergency medical services activations. Most pediatric patients were male (49.8%), White (40.0%), and of non-Hispanic origin (56.5%). Most incidents occurred in the home. Injury, cardiac arrest, and resuscitation attempts were highest in the 15 to 19 year old age group. Global complaints (37.1%) predominated by anatomic location and musculoskeletal complaints (26.9%) by organ system. The most common primary symptom was pain (30.3%) followed by mental/psychiatric (13.4%). Provider\u27s top primary impression was traumatic injury (35.7%). The most common cause of injury was motor vehicle accident (32.3%). The most common procedure performed was patient assessment (27.4%). Median EMS system response time was 7 minutes (IQR: 5?12). Median EMS scene time was 12 minutes (IQR: 8?19). Median transport time was 14 minutes (IQR: 8?24). Median EMS total call time was 51 minutes (IQR: 33?77). The epidemiology of pediatric basic life support can help to guide efforts in both emergency medical services operations and training

The Use of Immersive Visualization for the Control of Dental Anxiety During Oral Debridement

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of Immersive Visualization (IV) eyewear on anxious, adult patients during oral debridement. Methods: Thirty adult volunteers (n=23 females n=7 males) were enrolled in the study. Participants were required to be 18 years or older, exhibit at least moderate anxiety (score 9 or higher) on the Corah\u27s Dental Anxiety Scale-Revised (DAS-R), and be generally healthy. Individuals were excluded from participation if they presented with severe dental calculus, periodontal disease, or dental caries, were taking psychotropic drugs, had a history of convulsive disorders, vertigo, or equilibrium disorders, or required antibiotic premedication. Subjects received a full mouth oral prophylaxis (supra- and subgingival scaling and selective polishing) by a single experienced dental hygienist. A split mouth design was utilized whereby each subject served as their own control. Subjects were randomly divided into 2 groups: Group A used IV eyewear during the first one-half of the appointment (right side of the mouth) and Group B used IV eyewear during the second one-half of the appointment (left side of the mouth). At screening, medical and dental histories were obtained, full mouth oral examinations were performed, and DAS-R was scored to determine eligibility. At baseline, the DAS-R was re-scored to validate anxiety levels. The Calmness Scale was scored pre- and post-IV treatment on a Likert scale ranging from 1 (very calm) to 7 (less calm). At the end of the study, subjects completed a Post IV Opinion survey. Data were entered into Microsoft Excel for Mac 2011 (Microsoft Corporation Version 14.3.5) and analyzed using SAS® 9.3 statistical software. Results:Thirty subjects with a mean age of 29.9 years completed the study. Data analysis indicated no statistically significant difference between Group A and B with regard to mean DAS-R anxiety levels at baseline (3.15 and 2.40, respectively), with a p-value of 0.07. Data showed a significant difference when comparing the calmness mean scores within Group A pre- and post-IV treatments (4.66 and 2.93, respectively), with a p-value 0.01. Within Group B the data revealed a statistically significant difference between pre- and post-IV treatments (p Conclusion: Results from this study support the use of IV eyewear as an effective technique to reduce anxiety in adults during oral debridement. The use of the IV eyewear was well received by all subjects. The portable, affordable and easy-to-operate IV system makes this technique an appealing approach of reducing dental anxiety

Measuring Sense of Presence and User Characteristics to Predict Effective Training in an Online Simulated Virtual Environment

Introduction: Virtual-reality solutions have successfully been used to train distributed teams. This study aimed to investigate the correlation between user characteristics and sense of presence in an online virtual-reality environment where distributed teams are trained. A greater sense of presence has the potential to make training in the virtual environment more effective, leading to the formation of teams that perform better in a real environment. Being able to identify, before starting online training, those user characteristics that are predictors of a greater sense of presence can lead to the selection of trainees who would benefit most from the online simulated training. Methods: This is an observational study with a retrospective postsurvey of participants\u27 user characteristics and degree of sense of presence. Twenty-nine members from 3 Air Force National Guard Medical Service expeditionary medical support teams participated in an online virtual environment training exercise and completed the Independent Television Commission-Sense of Presence Inventory survey, which measures sense of presence and user characteristics. Nonparametric statistics were applied to determine the statistical significance of user characteristics to sense of presence. Results: Comparing user characteristics to the 4 scales of the Independent Television Commission-Sense of Presence Inventory using Kendall tau test gave the following results: the user characteristics how often you play video games (tau(26) = -0.458, P \u3c 0.01) and television/film production knowledge (tau(27) = -0.516, P \u3c 0.01) were significantly related to negative effects. Negative effects refer to adverse physiologic reactions owing to the virtual environment experience such as dizziness, nausea, headache, and eyestrain. The user characteristic knowledge of virtual reality was significantly related to engagement (tau(26) = 0.463, P \u3c 0.01) and negative effects (tau(26) = -0.404, P \u3c 0.05). Conclusions: Individuals who have knowledge about virtual environments and experience with gaming environments report a higher sense of presence that indicates that they will likely benefit more from online virtual training. Future research studies could include a larger population of expeditionary medical support, and the results obtained could be used to create a model that predicts the level of presence based on the user characteristics. To maximize results and minimize costs, only those individuals who, based on their characteristics, are supposed to have a higher sense of presence and less negative effects could be selected for online simulated virtual environment training