Análisis de usabilidad del sistema de gestión de contenidos de la web de la Facultad

El objetivo de este proyecto es analizar desde el punto de vista de la usabilidad la herramienta “Sistema de gestión de contenidos” con el objetivo de proponer una serie de modificaciones y mejorar así la eficiencia de uso. Esta herramienta es utilizada por el personal de la Facultad para modificar y agregar nuevas páginas a la página Web de la Facultad. Para obtener la lista de cambios en primer lugar se plantea realizar una evaluación heurística donde se debe determinar los principios heurísticos a cumplir por la herramienta. Siguiendo estos principios se va a determinar una lista inicial de cambios y errores encontrados en el sistema la cual será refinada y actualizada a lo largo del proyecto según se vaya avanzando en el proyecto. A continuación se estudia a los usuarios para conocer sus características: conocimientos, tareas que realizan, cuándo usan la herramienta y bajo qué circunstancias. De esta manera, se puede amoldar la herramienta a las necesidades de los usuarios. Por último se estudian las tareas que realizan los usuarios y cómo las realizan siendo de gran importancia analizar porqué realizan las tareas de una determinada manera. Para cada error o fallo encontrado se va a determinar su prioridad de cambio y se va a indicar los hechos que provocan que se proponga un cambio para mejorarlo. No sólo se pretende determinar los errores sino también la mejor manera de solucionarlos. Para esto último es necesario por lo tanto conocer en profundidad a los usuarios de esta herramienta ya que son los grandes beneficiarios de este proyecto. A lo largo del proyecto se va a ir determinando el proceso a seguir para obtener los mejores resultados en el estudio. Este proceso incluye la creación de formularios que podrán ser utilizados en análisis de herramientas de características parecidas. Todos los formularios utilizados en el proyecto son de nueva creación y se explicará en cada caso las ideas en las que han basado para obtener el formulario final. Además se va a desarrollar un manual de usuario del sistema estudiado con el fin de que las personas que lean este proyecto se familiaricen con la herramienta que se evalúa. Este manual puede ser distribuido entre los nuevos usuarios de la herramienta ya que explica detenidamente su modo de funcionamiento. En conclusión, los principales objetivos de este proyecto son dos. En primer lugar obtener una lista ordenada por prioridad de cambios propuestos para la mejora de la herramienta desde el punto de vista de usabilidad estudiando a los usuarios y las tareas que realizan. En segundo lugar, determinar un proceso válido para analizar cualquier herramienta de características parecidas definiendo unos principios heurísticos así como una serie de formularios y cuestionarios. Un trabajo de este tipo es el que realizan las empresas especializadas en consultoría de usabilidad

Discovering HIV related information by means of association rules and machine learning

Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) is still one of the main health problems worldwide. It is therefore essential to keep making progress in improving the prognosis and quality of life of affected patients. One way to advance along this pathway is to uncover connections between other disorders associated with HIV/AIDS-so that they can be anticipated and possibly mitigated. We propose to achieve this by using Association Rules (ARs). They allow us to represent the dependencies between a number of diseases and other specific diseases. However, classical techniques systematically generate every AR meeting some minimal conditions on data frequency, hence generating a vast amount of uninteresting ARs, which need to be filtered out. The lack of manually annotated ARs has favored unsupervised filtering, even though they produce limited results. In this paper, we propose a semi-supervised system, able to identify relevant ARs among HIV-related diseases with a minimal amount of annotated training data. Our system has been able to extract a good number of relationships between HIV-related diseases that have been previously detected in the literature but are scattered and are often little known. Furthermore, a number of plausible new relationships have shown up which deserve further investigation by qualified medical experts

Global variation in postoperative mortality and complications after cancer surgery: a multicentre, prospective cohort study in 82 countries

© 2021 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an Open Access article under the CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licenseBackground: 80% of individuals with cancer will require a surgical procedure, yet little comparative data exist on early outcomes in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs). We compared postoperative outcomes in breast, colorectal, and gastric cancer surgery in hospitals worldwide, focusing on the effect of disease stage and complications on postoperative mortality. Methods: This was a multicentre, international prospective cohort study of consecutive adult patients undergoing surgery for primary breast, colorectal, or gastric cancer requiring a skin incision done under general or neuraxial anaesthesia. The primary outcome was death or major complication within 30 days of surgery. Multilevel logistic regression determined relationships within three-level nested models of patients within hospitals and countries. Hospital-level infrastructure effects were explored with three-way mediation analyses. This study was registered with ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT03471494. Findings: Between April 1, 2018, and Jan 31, 2019, we enrolled 15 958 patients from 428 hospitals in 82 countries (high income 9106 patients, 31 countries; upper-middle income 2721 patients, 23 countries; or lower-middle income 4131 patients, 28 countries). Patients in LMICs presented with more advanced disease compared with patients in high-income countries. 30-day mortality was higher for gastric cancer in low-income or lower-middle-income countries (adjusted odds ratio 3·72, 95% CI 1·70–8·16) and for colorectal cancer in low-income or lower-middle-income countries (4·59, 2·39–8·80) and upper-middle-income countries (2·06, 1·11–3·83). No difference in 30-day mortality was seen in breast cancer. The proportion of patients who died after a major complication was greatest in low-income or lower-middle-income countries (6·15, 3·26–11·59) and upper-middle-income countries (3·89, 2·08–7·29). Postoperative death after complications was partly explained by patient factors (60%) and partly by hospital or country (40%). The absence of consistently available postoperative care facilities was associated with seven to 10 more deaths per 100 major complications in LMICs. Cancer stage alone explained little of the early variation in mortality or postoperative complications. Interpretation: Higher levels of mortality after cancer surgery in LMICs was not fully explained by later presentation of disease. The capacity to rescue patients from surgical complications is a tangible opportunity for meaningful intervention. Early death after cancer surgery might be reduced by policies focusing on strengthening perioperative care systems to detect and intervene in common complications. Funding: National Institute for Health Research Global Health Research Unit

Effects of hospital facilities on patient outcomes after cancer surgery: an international, prospective, observational study

© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an Open Access article under the CC BY 4.0 licenseBackground: Early death after cancer surgery is higher in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs) compared with in high-income countries, yet the impact of facility characteristics on early postoperative outcomes is unknown. The aim of this study was to examine the association between hospital infrastructure, resource availability, and processes on early outcomes after cancer surgery worldwide. Methods: A multimethods analysis was performed as part of the GlobalSurg 3 study—a multicentre, international, prospective cohort study of patients who had surgery for breast, colorectal, or gastric cancer. The primary outcomes were 30-day mortality and 30-day major complication rates. Potentially beneficial hospital facilities were identified by variable selection to select those associated with 30-day mortality. Adjusted outcomes were determined using generalised estimating equations to account for patient characteristics and country-income group, with population stratification by hospital. Findings: Between April 1, 2018, and April 23, 2019, facility-level data were collected for 9685 patients across 238 hospitals in 66 countries (91 hospitals in 20 high-income countries; 57 hospitals in 19 upper-middle-income countries; and 90 hospitals in 27 low-income to lower-middle-income countries). The availability of five hospital facilities was inversely associated with mortality: ultrasound, CT scanner, critical care unit, opioid analgesia, and oncologist. After adjustment for case-mix and country income group, hospitals with three or fewer of these facilities (62 hospitals, 1294 patients) had higher mortality compared with those with four or five (adjusted odds ratio [OR] 3·85 [95% CI 2·58–5·75]; p<0·0001), with excess mortality predominantly explained by a limited capacity to rescue following the development of major complications (63·0% vs 82·7%; OR 0·35 [0·23–0·53]; p<0·0001). Across LMICs, improvements in hospital facilities would prevent one to three deaths for every 100 patients undergoing surgery for cancer. Interpretation: Hospitals with higher levels of infrastructure and resources have better outcomes after cancer surgery, independent of country income. Without urgent strengthening of hospital infrastructure and resources, the reductions in cancer-associated mortality associated with improved access will not be realised. Funding: National Institute for Health and Care Research