Validation of Acute Myocardial Infarction (AMI) in the FDA’s Mini-Sentinel Distributed Database

The Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Mini-Sentinel is a pilot program that aims to conduct active surveillance to detect and refine safety signals that emerge for marketed medical products. The purpose of this Mini-Sentinel AMI Validation project was to: (a) develop and design an abstraction and adjudication process to use when full text medical record review is required to confirm a coded diagnosis; and (b) to test this approach by validating a code algorithm for acute myocardial infarction (AMI)

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

PANC Study (Pancreatitis: A National Cohort Study): national cohort study examining the first 30 days from presentation of acute pancreatitis in the UK

Abstract Background Acute pancreatitis is a common, yet complex, emergency surgical presentation. Multiple guidelines exist and management can vary significantly. The aim of this first UK, multicentre, prospective cohort study was to assess the variation in management of acute pancreatitis to guide resource planning and optimize treatment. Methods All patients aged greater than or equal to 18 years presenting with acute pancreatitis, as per the Atlanta criteria, from March to April 2021 were eligible for inclusion and followed up for 30 days. Anonymized data were uploaded to a secure electronic database in line with local governance approvals. Results A total of 113 hospitals contributed data on 2580 patients, with an equal sex distribution and a mean age of 57 years. The aetiology was gallstones in 50.6 per cent, with idiopathic the next most common (22.4 per cent). In addition to the 7.6 per cent with a diagnosis of chronic pancreatitis, 20.1 per cent of patients had a previous episode of acute pancreatitis. One in 20 patients were classed as having severe pancreatitis, as per the Atlanta criteria. The overall mortality rate was 2.3 per cent at 30 days, but rose to one in three in the severe group. Predictors of death included male sex, increased age, and frailty; previous acute pancreatitis and gallstones as aetiologies were protective. Smoking status and body mass index did not affect death. Conclusion Most patients presenting with acute pancreatitis have a mild, self-limiting disease. Rates of patients with idiopathic pancreatitis are high. Recurrent attacks of pancreatitis are common, but are likely to have reduced risk of death on subsequent admissions. </jats:sec

Multipurpose microphone array using Raspberry Pi and MATRIX Creator

Microphone arrays have become increasingly popular due to their usefulness in a variety of speech related applications. A lot of studies have been conducted on microphone arrays, with commercial products such as Amazon Echo enjoying widespread usage. However, existing commercial microphone array systems are either not easily customizable, difficult to deploy or too costly to be used in microphone array research and development. Thus, this project aims to develop a microphone array system that is both overcomes these issues while still being robust enough to handle heavy usage. This project uses MATRIX Creator alongside Raspberry Pi as the hardware of choice due to their ease of deployment, customization, and their relatively small size. A mobile application was developed in tandem with this system to provide a wireless architecture. WiFi tethering is used to form an ad-hoc network of any number of microphone array devices that can operate synchronously for real world applications and provides a method to upload saved data to a cloud server via cellular network. To ensure that the system is robust enough to handle heavy usage, wake word detection is used to conserve computational power and power consumption. The system also introduces Voice Activity Detection (VAD) to only save voiced data and discard the remaining data to conserve memory storage. The battery-life of the system can last up to 100 hours in passive-listening mode and up to 30 hours of active recording usage which is sufficient for practical applications. Audio samples were tested to ensure the best sample accuracy between devices and the results showed a sample deviation of around 30 samples, showing a large improvement over the non-synchronized version which has a sample deviation of around 500 samples. Overall, the developed system has met the objectives of being easy to customize and deploy while still meeting real-world use case requirements. Therefore, this project could potentially bridge the gap between developers and end-users while helping to facilitate future research and development on microphone arrays.Bachelor of Engineering (Computer Science

Stakeholders’ Views on Data Sharing and Multisite Research

Background: Data sharing is a fundamental step in multisite studies, enabling research on rare outcomes, treatment heterogeneity and greater generalizability. However, data sharing entails costs and risks. Newly developed privacy-preserving analytic and data-sharing methods offer an approach to sharing data and conducting multisite research that eliminates the need to share identifiable patient-level information. Identifying stakeholders’ perceptions and synthesizing overarching themes about willingness to share data are important first steps toward increasing the acceptability and use of these new tools. We therefore sought to understand stakeholders’ views on data sharing generally and privacy-preserving methods in particular. Methods: We conducted semi-structured group and individual interviews with a purposive sample of stakeholders to gather a variety of perspectives on data sharing in general and the use of privacy-preserving methods (PPM) specifically. Interviews were audio-recorded and professionally transcribed. Using content coding followed by thematic coding, we sought to identify factors affecting stakeholders’ willingness to share data, with particular attention to the potential impact of privacy-preserving methods. Results: A total of 11 stakeholder interviews were completed, involving patients (n = 15), researchers (n = 10), institutional review board and regulatory staff (n = 3), multicenter research governance (n = 2) and health care system leaders (n = 4). Stakeholders’ perceptions of the benefit and value of the research was the strongest influence toward data sharing; perceived value was related to the relevance of the scientific question and the methodologic rigor. Influences against data sharing were primarily cost and data-security risks; the latter was mitigated by various safeguards (encryption, data use agreements, oversight), successful data sharing experience, established relationships and trust. The risk reduction obtained by sharing aggregate data rather than individual-level data was acknowledged as being potentially more acceptable to some stakeholders, but interviewees also expressed concerns about the increased cost and questioned whether aggregating data resulted in a loss of information that would in turn lessen the value or validity of the research. Conclusion: The gains in privacy protection associated with the use of privacy-preserving methods in multisite studies involving data sharing were attractive to some stakeholders, but factors such as the value and generalizability of the research appear potentially more influential

Checklist of Established Animal Species in Singapore

doi:10.25540/CVM3-SVW

Checklist of Introduced Animal Species in Southeast Asia

doi:10.25540/VG7A-KPN