a big data approach

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to propose and demonstrate how Tourism2vec, an adaptation of a natural language processing technique Word2vec, can serve as a tool to investigate tourism spatio-temporal behavior and quantifying tourism dynamics. Design/methodology/approach: Tourism2vec, the proposed destination-tourist embedding model that learns from tourist spatio-temporal behavior is introduced, assessed and applied. Mobile positioning data from international tourists visiting Tuscany are used to construct travel itineraries, which are subsequently analyzed by applying the proposed algorithm. Locations and tourist types are then clustered according to travel patterns. Findings: Municipalities that are similar in terms of their scores of their neural embeddings tend to have a greater number of attractions than those geographically close. Moreover, clusters of municipalities obtained from the K-means algorithm do not entirely align with the provincial administrative segmentation.authorsversionpublishe

the story of a knowledge commons for the patient innovation project

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Patient innovation under rare diseases and chronic needs

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A Hybrid Recommender System for Patient-Doctor Matchmaking in Primary Care

We partner with a leading European healthcare provider and design a mechanism to match patients with family doctors in primary care. We define the matchmaking process for several distinct use cases given different levels of available information about patients. Then, we adopt a hybrid recommender system to present each patient a list of family doctor recommendations. In particular, we model patient trust of family doctors using a large-scale dataset of consultation histories, while accounting for the temporal dynamics of their relationships. Our proposed approach shows higher predictive accuracy than both a heuristic baseline and a collaborative filtering approach, and the proposed trust measure further improves model performance.Comment: This paper is accepted at DSAA 2018 as a full paper, Proc. of the 5th IEEE International Conference on Data Science and Advanced Analytics (DSAA), Turin, Ital

Essays in user innovation

This doctoral thesis is comprised of three empirical studies that explore a broad set of questions related to the user innovation: its extent and importance to individuals, firms and the society; the process of innovation; and factors that influence user innovation and diffusion of user-developed solutions. The first study represents a novel approach to exploration of employees’ engagement in innovation within firms from a user innovation perspective. We contend and confirm that innovation proposals in an idea management system that embody job-related user innovations by employees have distinctive value for the firm in comparison to the other proposals in the system. We discuss the implication of this finding with respect to innovation management in firms – organizing to innovate with internal resources, and using idea management system to harness and improve user innovations by employees. In the second study we measure the extent of innovation activity and diffusion of patientdeveloped solutions among rare diseases patients. We also explore the differences of user innovation in this extreme need settings, and factors that influence patient innovation and diffusion. We find high levels of innovation activity among rare disease patients and caregivers, and positive impact of the patient-developed solution on the user’s quality of life. Also, we confirm the existence of a market failure associated with user innovation studies – patient developed solutions that are potentially useful to others with similar needs do not diffuse. We discuss our findings from the perspective of patient care, user innovation theory, health policy. The third study embodies a deeper examination of the user innovation and adoption processes. On the basis of multiple case-study analysis we map the dynamics of adopt-ordevelop problem solving process that the patients follow, and offer it as a framework against which policy interventions on patient innovation may be considered. In the second step we explore factors that influence adoption of patient-developed solutions among rheumatic diseases patients. The importance of this effort becomes clear when one considers safety issues related to the diffusion of untested solution within informal networks of peers, patients and caregivers. We discuss the importance of our findings for theory, practice, and health policy

Innovation by patients with rare diseases and chronic needs

We provide the first empirical exploration of disease-related innovation by patients and their caregivers. Our aims were to explore to what degree do patients develop innovative solutions; how many of these are unique developments; and do these solutions have positive perceived impact on the patients' overall quality of life? In addition, we explored the factors associated with patient innovation development, and sharing of the solutions that the patients developed. Methods: We administered a questionnaire via telephone interviewing to a sample of 500 rare disease patients and caregivers. The solutions reported were pre-screened by the authors for their fit with the self-developed innovation aim of the study. All the reported solutions were then validated for their novelty by two medical professionals. Logistic regression models were used to test the relationships between our key variables, patient innovation and solution sharing. Results: 263 (53%) of our survey respondents reported developing and using a solution to improve management of their diseases. An initial screening removed 81 (16%) solutions for being an obvious misfit to the self-developed innovation aim of the study. This lowered the sample of potentially innovative solutions to 182 (36%). Assessment of novelty and usefulness of the solutions, conducted by two medical evaluators, confirmed that 40 solutions (8%) were indeed novel, while the remaining 142 (28%) were already known to medicine. The likelihood of patient innovation increased as the education level increased (OR 2, p < 0.05), and as their perception of limitations imposed by their disease increased (OR 1.3, p < 0.05). 55 individuals diffused their solutions to some degree, with 50 of these sharing via direct diffusion to other patients. There is a positive relationship between the impact of a solution on the respondents' overall quality of life and likelihood of solution sharing. Conclusions: Given that hundreds of millions of people worldwide are afflicted by rare diseases, patient and their caregivers can be a tremendous source of innovation for many who are similarly afflicted. Our findings suggest that many patients could be greatly assisted by improved diffusion of known solutions and best practices to and among patients and their caregivers.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

counselors’ perceptions and use and practices

The recent surge of interest in algorithmic decision-making among scholars across disciplines is associated with its potential to resolve the challenges common to administrative decision-making in the public sector, such as greater fairness and equal treatment of each individual, among others. However, algorithmic decision-making combined with human judgment may introduce new complexities with unclear consequences. This article offers evidence that contributes to the ongoing discussion about algorithmic decision-making and governance, contextualizing it within a public employment service. In particular, we discuss the use of a decision support system that employs an algorithm to assess individual risk of becoming long-term unemployed and that informs counselors to assign interventions accordingly. We study the human interaction with algorithms in this context using the lenses of human detachment from and attachment to decision-making. Employing a mixed-method research approach, we show the complexity of enacting the potentials of the data-driven decision-making in the context of a public agency.publishersversionpublishe

O uso de tecnologia em inovações de doentes e cuidadores: uma investigação empírica de soluções desenvolvidas para ajudar crianças e jovens com problemas mentais ou cognitivos

Introdução: A valorização do papel do doente e o uso de tecnologias de informação para a melhoria da qualidade de vida têm sido dois eixos marcantes em recentes progressos nos cuidados de saúde. Ademais, investigação na área da inovação por utilizadores tem sugerido a possibilidade de doentes e cuidadores desenvolverem importantes soluções inovadoras para as suas situações, falhando contudo a sua partilha e difusão. Perante isto, o projecto de investigação Patient Innovation tem aspirado a compreender os processos de inovação de doentes, cuidadores e colaboradores e promover a partilha de soluções inovadoras de forma aberta na comunidade. Metodologia: Desenvolvimento de uma plataforma multilingue, sem fins lucrativos e de livre-acesso (http://patient-innovation.com), onde doentes, cuidadores e colaboradores podem publicar as suas inovações. A plataforma foi lançada em Fevereiro de 2014. Após triagem médica, as soluções são partilhadas entre os utilizadores. Neste trabalho, 220 soluções foram revistas e seleccionadas as relativas a jovens e adolescentes com limitações cognitivas e/ou doenças mentais. Resultados: Foram analisadas 16 soluções desta categoria. Os resultados foram interessantes e apresentamos aqui 4 exemplos: o uso de tecnologia para lidar com doenças de crianças e jovens com doenças mentais e cognitivas; Síndrome de Angelman (i.e. uma mãe usou balões de hélio para ajudar o seu filho a andar); Autismo (i.e. uma mãe criou dispositivos electrónicos para ajudar a filha a usar o bacio); Cri du Chat (i.e. os pais notaram que a filha tinha uma fixação por cabelos e os puxava quando estava enervada, excepto quando o cabelo estava molhado, pelo que passaram a colocar-lhe gel). Conclusões: Os resultados empíricos do projecto podem trazer uma contribuição relevante não só para o desenvovimento de estratégias para lidar com as doenças, mas também para a compreensão da forma como pessoas que lidam directamente com doenças crónicas geram formas originais para melhorar a qualidade das suas vidas.Introduction: Recent trends in medical care have stressed the role of patient empowerment as well as the use of new communication technologies in improving the quality of life of those who are ill. Furthermore, research on user innovation has hinted at the possibility of patients and caregivers developing important innovative solutions to their conditions, but not sharing them in an effective way. Against this backdrop, the research project Patient Innovation has pursued the goal of understanding the process of innovation by patients, caregivers, and collaborators and promote the share of innovative solutions to the open community. Methodology: Development of a multilingual, non-profit, free-access online platform (http://patient-innovation.com) where patients, caregivers and collaborators can post their innovations. The platform was launched in Feb 2014. After medical screening the solutions are shared among users. In this work 220 solutions were reviewed and selected the ones related with children and adolescents with cognitive impairment and/or mental disorders. Results: 16 solutions fell in those categories and were analyzed. Results were interesting and 4 examples are listed below: the use of technology in coping with cognitive impairing diseases of children and youth; Angelman Syndrome (e.g. a mother used helium balloons to help her son to walk); Autism (e.g. a mother created electronic devices to help her daughter use the potty) and Cri du Chat (e.g. the parents noticed that their daughter had an obsession for hair and pulled it when upset, unless it was wet, so they started putting hair gel on it). Conclusion: The empirical findings of this project may have a major contribution not only to the development of coping strategies, but also to the understanding of how people who deal directly with chronic diseases generate original ways to improve their quality of life. Palavras-chave / KeywordsMedicina 2.0, Inovação de doentes, Tecnologias de comunicação, Valorização do paciente, Doenças mentais e cognitivas.Medicine 2.0, Patient innovation, Communication technologies, Patient empowerment, Mental and cognitive diseases

National Representative Study of 6204 Citizens

BACKGROUND: There is growing evidence that many patients and caregivers innovate by developing new solutions to cope with their health disorders. Given the easy access to vast internet resources and peers globally, it is increasingly important to understand what may influence user innovation and its adoption in health for improving individual well-being and ensuring their safety, in particular, how interactions with peers and physicians or search behavior, along with sociodemographics, may influence the decision to develop a solution or adopt one developed by a peer. OBJECTIVE: The aim of this paper was to study the development and peer-to-peer adoption of user innovations in health care and identify individual-level factors associated with these processes. METHODS: Data were collected via computer-assisted phone survey from a large, random, and representative sample of adult residents in Portugal (N=6204). User innovation questions were added to 1 wave of an ongoing observational, longitudinal, population-based epidemiological study. By asking about individual innovation activity, the sample was split into 3 groups: (1) the developers of health-related solutions for own use (developers), (2) the adopters of solutions developed by other patients or caregivers (peer-to-peer adopters), and (3) the rest of the population. Within the last group, intention to adopt was measured and used as a proxy of future behavior. Regression analysis is used to test the associations. RESULTS: In the population considered in this paper, an estimated 1.3% (75/6008) reported having developed a solution for own use and 3.3% reported to have adopted a solution developed by peers. The 3 groups (developers, adopters, and remaining population) have distinctive characteristics. Gender plays an important role in the solution development, as women are less likely to develop one (odds ratio [OR] 0.4, 95% CI 0.20-0.81; P<.05). Education is positively associated with the development activity (OR 1.13, 95% CI 1.03-1.24; P<.05) but also with the intentions to adopt a peer-developed solution. Search for health-related information is positively associated with the development, adoption, and the intentions to adopt a solution. Interactions with peers over the internet are rare, but in-person interactions are frequent and have a positive association with the dependent variables in all 3 groups. The results also suggest that trust in doctors represents an important dimension that shapes the attitudes of the population toward peer-developed solutions. CONCLUSIONS: This paper demonstrates the importance of the peer community, doctor-patient relationship, citizen's search for information on innovation, and individual attitudes toward peer-to-peer adoption in health care. It stresses the need for a reliable Web-based health-related information and the necessity to deeper understand complex relationships between the need to improve health and fulfill the need and the perception of the health care system.publishersversionpublishe