A hybrid EAV-relational model for consistent and scalable capture of clinical research data

Many clinical research databases are built for specific purposes and their design is often guided by the requirements of their particular setting. Not only does this lead to issues of interoperability and reusability between research groups in the wider community but, within the project itself, changes and additions to the system could be implemented using an ad hoc approach, which may make the system difficult to maintain and even more difficult to share. In this paper, we outline a hybrid Entity-Attribute-Value and relational model approach for modelling data, in light of frequently changing requirements, which enables the back-end database schema to remain static, improving the extensibility and scalability of an application. The model also facilitates data reuse. The methods used build on the modular architecture previously introduced in the CURe project

Addressing the challenge of integrated care through digital technology

There is a need to constantly tackle a range of diverse and, sometimes, contradictory requirements of people with multiple chronic conditions. Integrated Care provides a potential solution to this need and digital technology can be the proposition for addressing its implementation challenge. Digital technology can support clinical teams to achieve care across all levels and provide independence in patients’ lives, by supporting them in enhanced and integrated activity within our societal structures

Large NcN_c Universality of The Baryon Isgur--Wise Form Factor: The Group Theoretical Approach

In a previous article, it has been proved under the framework of chiral soliton model that the same Isgur--Wise form factor describes the semileptonic $\Lambda_b\to\Lambda_c$ and $\Sigma^{(*)}_b\to\Sigma^{(*)}_c$ decays in the large $N_c$ limit. It is shown here that this result is in fact independent of the chiral soliton model and is solely the consequence of the spin-flavor SU(4) symmetry which arises in the baryon sector in the large $N_c$ limit.Comment: 10 pages in REVTeX, no figure

E-health for active ageing : a systematic review

Enabling successful active ageing is an international priority to meet the challenges of increasing life expectancy. Digital strategies, such as telemedicine and e-health, offer the potential to deliver active ageing in a cost-effective manner at scale. This article aims to establish the extent to which the research literature considers e-health-based and telemedicine-based active ageing interventions. A systematic review was conducted according to PRISMA standards. Independently, two authors searched the Cochrane, EMBASE & CINAHL databases, with subsequent independent extraction and semi-quantitative analysis. We report a considerable breadth in digital active ageing research, which is truly international in its scope. There is a diverse range of both interventions and technologies, including a reassuring focus on community-based interventions. Whilst there are a number of quantitative studies, sample sizes are small, with a limited amount of statistical testing of the results. There is significant variation in the outcome measures reported and little consensus as to the most effective intervention strategies. Overall, whilst there is considerable breadth to the research published in the literature, there is a clear restriction in the depth of this research. There is little overall consensus. This lack of depth and consensus may be due to the need to recognize the important role of technical research elements alongside more traditional research methodologies, such as randomized controlled trials. Enabling both technical and clinical research methods to be recognized, in tandem, has enormous potential to support individuals, communities, clinicians and policy makers to make more informed decisions in relation to active ageing

Relativistic Effects in S-Wave Quarkonium Decay

The decay widths of S-wave quarkonia (\etc,\etb\to \gg{~~and~~} \J,\U\to\ee) are calculated on the basis of a quasipotential approach. The nontrivial dependence on relative quark motion of decay amplitude is taken into consideration via quarkonium wave function. It is shown that relativistic corrections may be large (10-50 %) and comparable with QCD corrections.Comment: 10 pages, no figure

Probing Lepton Flavor Violation at Future Colliders

Supersymmetric theories with significant lepton flavor violation have $\tilde{e}$ and $\tilde{\mu}$ nearly degenerate. In this case, pair production of $\tilde{e}^+ \tilde{e}^-$ and $\tilde{\mu}^+ \tilde{\mu}^-$ at LEPII and at the Next Linear Collider leads to the phenomenon of slepton oscillations, which is analogous to neutrino oscillations. The reach in $\Delta m^2$ and $\sin^2 2 \theta$ gives a probe of lepton flavor violation which is significantly more powerful than the current bounds from rare processes, such as $\mu \to e\gamma$. Polarizable $e^-$ beams and the $e^-e^-$ mode at the NLC are found to be promising options.Comment: 10 pages, 3 figures, RevTeX, minor corrections, published versio

A BioPortal-based terminology service for health data interoperability

A terminology service makes diverse terminologies/ontologies accessible under a uniform interface. The EU TRANSFoRm project built an online terminology service for European primary care research. The service experienced performance limitations during its operation. Based on community feedback, we evaluated alternative solutions and developed a new version of the service. Based on BioPortal’s scalable infrastructure, the new service delivers more features with improved performance and reduced maintenance cost. We plan to extend the service to meet Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources specifications