Informatics Education 2020

PIT-UN writes about Good Systems and the Conference on Undergraduate Informatics Education on March 3-4, 2020.Office of the VP for Researc

Innovate and prosper: ensuring Australia's future competitiveness through university-industry collaboration

Executive summary The continuation of Australia’s economic growth is under threat. In order to sustain the levels of prosperity we have previously experienced, we have to build on our competitive edge in key industries to remain globally competitive. Alongside these developments, Australia’s higher education system is under increased pressure to become more productive and develop courses that address employability. Innovation represents the most reliable and sustainable solution to transition into a high value, high wage economy. Yet Australia ranks 29th out of 30 in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in terms of the proportion of large businesses and small to medium enterprises (SMEs) collaborating with higher education and public research institutions on innovation.   This report acts as the next level of detail to publications such as the Department of Industry’s Boosting the Commercial Returns from Research report and the Business Council of Australia’s Building Australia’s Comparative Advantages, which have highlighted Australia’s poor performance in collaborative innovation. We present five recommendations that are a call to action to universities, industry and Government to take the necessary steps to build an innovation economy. They are not a call for additional funding from Government, rather a more effective way of using our existing resources. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) have engaged with leading figures from industry, including the Australian Industry Group (Ai Group), and partnered with the ATN to develop this five point action plan for Government, the university sector and industry 5 that will provide incentives and impetus for collaboration. Our recommendations include: Rebalance the national research agenda to underpin Australia\u27s economy and future prosperity Create incentives for university-industry collaboration Train researchers for diverse careers Enhance career mobility between industry, academia and government Provide incentives for co-investment in research infrastructure between universities, industry and state and federal government Each recommendation contains a number of practical strategies for consideration by Government, universities and industry. The hope is that the report will encourage dialogue between the three groups and prompt bold policy changes in the coming 12 months and beyond. &nbsp

Conducting retrospective impact analysis to inform a medical research charity’s funding strategies: The case of Asthma UK

© 2013 Hanney et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.BACKGROUND: Debate is intensifying about how to assess the full range of impacts from medical research. Complexity increases when assessing the diverse funding streams of funders such as Asthma UK, a charitable patient organisation supporting medical research to benefit people with asthma. This paper aims to describe the various impacts identified from a range of Asthma UK research, and explore how Asthma UK utilised the characteristics of successful funding approaches to inform future research strategies. METHODS: We adapted the Payback Framework, using it both in a survey and to help structure interviews, documentary analysis, and case studies. We sent surveys to 153 lead researchers of projects, plus 10 past research fellows, and also conducted 14 detailed case studies. These covered nine projects and two fellowships, in addition to the innovative case studies on the professorial chairs (funded since 1988) and the MRC-Asthma UK Centre in Allergic Mechanisms of Asthma (the ‘Centre’) which together facilitated a comprehensive analysis of the whole funding portfolio. We organised each case study to capture whatever academic and wider societal impacts (or payback) might have arisen given the diverse timescales, size of funding involved, and extent to which Asthma UK funding contributed to the impacts. RESULTS: Projects recorded an average of four peer-reviewed journal articles. Together the chairs reported over 500 papers. All streams of funding attracted follow-on funding. Each of the various categories of societal impacts arose from only a minority of individual projects and fellowships. Some of the research portfolio is influencing asthma-related clinical guidelines, and some contributing to product development. The latter includes potentially major breakthroughs in asthma therapies (in immunotherapy, and new inhaled drugs) trialled by university spin-out companies. Such research-informed guidelines and medicines can, in turn, contribute to health improvements. The role of the chairs and the pioneering collaborative Centre is shown as being particularly important. CONCLUSIONS: We systematically demonstrate that all types of Asthma UK’s research funding assessed are making impacts at different levels, but the main societal impacts from projects and fellowships come from a minority of those funded. Asthma UK used the study’s findings, especially in relation to the Centre, to inform research funding strategies to promote the achievement of impact.This study was funded by Asthma UK

Barriers and opportunities for evidence-based health service planning: the example of developing a Decision Analytic Model to plan services for sexually transmitted infections in the UK

Decision Analytic Models (DAMs) are established means of evidence-synthesis to differentiate between health interventions. They have mainly been used to inform clinical decisions and health technology assessment at the national level, yet could also inform local health service planning. For this, a DAM must take into account the needs of the local population, but also the needs of those planning its services. Drawing on our experiences from stakeholder consultations, where we presented the potential utility of a DAM for planning local health services for sexually transmitted infections (STIs) in the UK, and the evidence it could use to inform decisions regarding different combinations of service provision, in terms of their costs, cost-effectiveness, and public health outcomes, we discuss the barriers perceived by stakeholders to the use of DAMs to inform service planning for local populations, including (1) a tension between individual and population perspectives; (2) reductionism; and (3) a lack of transparency regarding models, their assumptions, and the motivations of those generating models

Future CCS Technologies : European Zero Emission Technology and Innovation Platform

ZEP has published a report entitled "Future CCS Technologies". The report has been developed following COP21 and the aim of limiting the global temperature increase to well below 2°C. The report analyses emerging CCS technologies and concludes that "CCS is ready for immediate implementation, thus, it is essential that current first-generation technologies are tested in actual CCS projects, to subsequently enable emerging techniques to progress

Nursing and Midwifery Links [May 2017 Issue]

Nursing & Midwifery Links aims to disseminate information on the Global Network of WHO Collaborating Centres for Nursing and Midwifery Development and publish technical-scientific articles related to Nursing and Midwifery in the light of WHO\u27s program of work. The document attached to this record is the complete issue published in May 2017

Nursing and Midwifery Links [July 2016 Issue]

Nursing & Midwifery Links aims to disseminate information on the Global Network of WHO Collaborating Centres for Nursing and Midwifery Development and publish technical-scientific articles related to Nursing and Midwifery in the light of WHO\u27s program of work. The document attached to this record is the complete issue published in July 2016

Nursing and Midwifery Links [April 2015 Issue]

The document attached to this record is the first Global Network Links Magazine produced by the newly elected [at time of publication] Secretariat of the Global Network of WHO Collaborating Centres for Nursing and Midwifery at the University of Technology Sydney in Australia. It highlights the ongoing work of Network members

Nursing and Midwifery Links [October 2015 Issue]

Nursing & Midwifery Links aims to disseminate information on the Global Network of WHO Collaborating Centres for Nursing and Midwifery Development and publish technical-scientific articles related to Nursing and Midwifery in the light of WHO\u27s program of work. The document attached to this record is the complete issue published in October 2015