Advancing oral medicine through informatics and information technology: a proposed framework and strategy.

The implementation of information technology in healthcare is a significant focus for many nations around the world. However, information technology support for clinical care, research and education in oral medicine is currently poorly developed. This situation hampers our ability to transform oral medicine into a 'learning healthcare discipline' in which the divide between clinical practice and research is diminished and, ultimately, eliminated. This paper reviews the needs of and requirements for information technology support of oral medicine and proposes an agenda designed to meet those needs. For oral medicine, this agenda includes analyzing and reviewing current clinical and documentation practices, working toward progressively standardizing clinical data, and helping define requirements for oral medicine systems. IT professionals can contribute by conducting baseline studies about the use of electronic systems, helping develop controlled vocabularies and ontologies, and designing, implementing, and evaluating novel systems centered on the needs of clinicians, researchers and educators. Successfully advancing IT support for oral medicine will require close coordination and collaboration among oral medicine professionals, information technology professionals, system vendors, and funding agencies. If current barriers and obstacles are overcome, practice and research in oral medicine stand ready to derive significant benefits from the application of information technology

Supporting Key Aspects of Practice in Making Mathematics Explicit in Science Lessons

STEM integration has often been recommended as a way to support students to develop 21st Century skills needed to function in the complex modern world. In order for students to experience integration, however, their teachers need support in designing, developing and implementing integrated curricular instruction, which is often at odds with a very subject-focused educational system. This paper reports on the second year of a research study conducted with five secondary science and mathematics teachers, concerned with supporting them to teach explicitly the mathematics components within science lessons, mediated via technology. It outlines how the teachers collaborated with the support of science and mathematics education researchers within a community of practice, named a Teaching and Learning Network (TLN). The network was intended to promote and enhance teacher capacity for the interdisciplinary teaching of mathematics in science in the face of various contextual and other obstacles observed in the first year of the study. This study found that the opportunity to work in a Teaching and Learning Network supported the teachers’ ownership of the design of the integrated learning unit, enhanced their content knowledge of the mathematics, their use of the data logging technology and their understanding of an inquiry based pedagogical approach. Participation in the TLN provided teachers with the mechanism to cross the boundaries of the subject disciplines, and thereby promoted change in their attitudes, professional knowledge and to some extent, practice

Evaluating the measurement properties of patient‐reported outcome measures in radiotherapy‐induced xerostomia

Objective: Radiotherapy‐induced xerostomia (RIX) is one of the most common adverse effects of radiotherapy to the head and neck, and a major determinant of survivors’ quality of life. A number of patient‐reported outcome measures (PROMs) have been used in clinical trials of therapeutic interventions for RIX; however, little is known regarding their measurement properties and methodological quality. / Methods: We conducted a systematic literature search in Embase, MEDLINE and PsycINFO for articles published up to May 2019 and evaluating at least one measurement property of PROMs relevant to RIX. The COSMIN guidelines were used to assess relevant measurement properties and methodological quality. / Results: Nine validations studies were identified reporting on four PROMs relevant to RIX. The Xerostomia Questionnaire (XQ) showed overall high‐quality evidence for structural validity and internal consistency, but low‐quality evidence supporting reliability. The methodological quality of the Groningen Radiotherapy‐Induced Xerostomia scale (GRIX), Xerostomia Inventory (XI) and the Xerostomia Quality of Life Scale (XeQoLS) was relatively low for all measurement properties. / Conclusions: The XQ was found to have the highest potential to capture changes in RIX according to COSMIN guidelines. Additional validation studies are required to further understand the methodological quality of the XI, GRIX and XeQoLS