STAT-HI: A Socio-Technical Assessment Tool for Health Informatics Implementations

This paper proposes a socio-technical assessment tool (STAT-HI) for health informatics implementations. We explore why even projects allegedly using sound methodologies repeatedly fail to give adequate attention to socio-technical issues, and we present an initial draft of a structured assessment tool for health informatics implementation that encapsulates socio-technical good practice. Further work is proposed to enrich and validate the proposed instrument. This proposal was presented for discussion at a meeting of the UK Faculty of Health Informatics in December 2009

A serious games platform for cognitive rehabilitation with preliminary evaluation

In recent years Serious Games have evolved substantially, solving problems in diverse areas. In particular, in Cognitive Rehabilitation, Serious Games assume a relevant role. Traditional cognitive therapies are often considered repetitive and discouraging for patients and Serious Games can be used to create more dynamic rehabilitation processes, holding patients' attention throughout the process and motivating them during their road to recovery. This paper reviews Serious Games and user interfaces in rehabilitation area and details a Serious Games platform for Cognitive Rehabilitation that includes a set of features such as: natural and multimodal user interfaces and social features (competition, collaboration, and handicapping) which can contribute to augment the motivation of patients during the rehabilitation process. The web platform was tested with healthy subjects. Results of this preliminary evaluation show the motivation and the interest of the participants by playing the games.- This work has been supported by FCT - Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia in the scope of the projects: PEst-UID/CEC/00319/2015 and PEst-UID/CEC/00027/2015. The authors would like to thank also all the volunteers that participated in the study

Fluconazole prophylaxis for prevention of invasive fungal infections in targeted highest risk preterm infants limits drug exposure

Objective: Previous reports suggest a benefit of fluconazole prophylaxis in extremely low birth weight (ELBW) infants <1000 g. Our aim was to evaluate if limiting fluconazole prophylaxis to targeted highest risk infants effectively prevents invasive fungal infections, has no undesired side effects and limits unnecessary drug exposure. Study Design: This nonrandomized retrospective pre-post intervention study compared two groups of infants: (1) Infants <26 weeks gestation and/or <750 g birth weight, requiring central vascular access and admitted to the Monroe Carell Jr Children's Hospital at Vanderbilt neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) prior to 5 days of age, who received fluconazole prophylaxis and (2) a matched control group from the year prior to prophylaxis. This target population was selected for fluconazole prophylaxis based on prior infection control data from our institution and a number needed to treat of <15 to prevent one episode of fungemia. Following implementation and integration through the institution's computerized physician order entry (CPOE) system, provider adherence to the protocol was assessed during the prophylaxis period. Result: A total of 86 patients were included in the study, 44 in the no-prophylaxis group and 42 in the prophylaxis group. In the targeted prophylaxis group, no invasive fungal infections were observed as compared to nine infants with invasive infections in the no-prophylaxis group (P ¼ 0.004). No significant adverse effects were recorded. Targeting the highest risk infants reduced the number of infants <1000 g requiring prophylaxis from 80 to 42 (48% reduction) with no preventable infection missed. Provider compliance was 91% following implementation of this protocol through the CPOE system using a standardized order set. Conclusion: Targeting the highest risk infants for fluconazole prophylaxis through CPOE can effectively prevent invasive fungal infections and limit drug exposure with no unwanted side effects

The effect of Gonadotrophins on estrus induction and fertility in prepubertal gilts

The aim of our study was to investigate the efficacy of exogenous gonadotrophin to induce puberty and pregnancy in prepubertal gilts which had reach the weight of fully grown pigs. The animals used in the study included 195 crossbreed German Landrace gilts aged between 150-180 days old, weighing between 75-90 kg and 24 crossbreed German Landrace adult male pigs. The prepubertal gilts of Group I (n = 65) and Group H (n = 65) were first administered with single IM dose of 1500 IU PMSG. At the same time, animals from the Group III (n = 65), which formed the control group, received 2 ml of a placebo. Seventy two hours after the PMSG administration, animals from the group I received IM 500 IU hCG while 8 mug of GnRH was given to die Group 11. Animals from the control group were administered at the same time with a placebo. Twenty four hours after hCG, GnRH placebo administrations, the gilts were exposed to the male pigs during 72 hours. Pregnancy diagnosis was performed by ultrasonic techniques between 35-45 days after mating. Estrus symptoms were recorded in 56 animals (86.2 %) from the Group 1, 4.2 +/- 0.4 days after the last administration the estrus was detected in 55 animals (84.6 %) from the Group H, 4.3 +/- 0.5 days after the end of the treatment. In the control group, 61 animals exhibited estrus behaviour spontaneously 48 : 10,4 days after the last placebo administration. Pregnancy was diagnosed in 53 animals of the Group 1 (81.5 %), 51 of the Group 11 (78.5 %) and 57 of the control group (87.7 %). The size of the first litter was a 7.8 +/- 1.3 in Group 1, 7.6 +/- 1.4 in Group II and 10.2 +/- 1.1 in the control group. It has been concluded that, a fertile estrus can be induced using exogenous gonadotrophins (PMSG and hCG) or a treatment associating PMSG with GnRH in prepubertal gilts and that these treatments improve lifetime reproductive performance

Effects of bovine oviduct epithelial cells, fetal calf serum and bovine serum albumin on gene expression in single bovine embryos produced in the synthetic oviduct fluid culture system

In this study the synthetic oviduct fluid (SOF) system with bovine oviduct epithelial cell ( BOEC) co-culture is compared with an SOF system with common protein supplements. One thousand six hundred bovine embryos were cultured in SOF media supplemented with BOEC, fetal calf serum (FCS) and bovine serum albumin (BSA). Eight different culture groups were assigned according to the different supplementation factors. Developmental competence and the expression levels of five genes, namely glucose transporter-1 (Glut- 1), heat shock protein 70 (HSP), connexin43 (Cx43), beta-actin (ACTB) and glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH), analysed as mRNA by using reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction, were measured on bovine embryos cultured for 9 days. Gene expression of these in vitro-produced embryos was compared with the gene expression of in vivo-produced embryos. There was no significant difference found in embryo developmental competence between the Day 9 embryos in BOEC co-culture, FCS and BSA supplements in SOF media. However, differences in gene expression were observed. With respect to gene expression in in vivo and in vitro embryos, BOEC co-culture affected the same genes as did supplementation with FCS and BSA. HSP was the only gene that differed significantly between in vitro and in vivo embryos. When the different in vitro groups were compared, a significant difference between the BOEC co-culture and the FCS supplementation groups due to Glut- 1 expression was observed

CorpVis: An Online Emotional Speech Corpora Visualisation Interface

Abstract. Our research in emotional speech analysis has led to the construction of several dedicated high quality, online corpora of natural emotional speech assets. The requirements for querying, retrieval and organization of assets based on both their metadata descriptors and their analysis data led to the construction of a suitable interface for data visualization and corpus management. The CorpVis interface is intended to assist collaborative work between several speech research groups working with us in this area, allowing online collaboration and distribution of assets to be performed. This paper details the current CorpVis interface into our corpora, and the work performed to achieve this