FIT FOR USE ASSESSMENT OF BIOZEN AS A BIOMETRIC SENSOR CONCENTRATOR FOR REMOTE PATIENT MONITORING

In recent years, COVID-19 highlighted the importance of virtual health solutions with regard to improving patient health and conserving valuable hospital resources. Currently, the Defense Health Agency (DHA) does not own a remote patient-monitoring solution and relies on external commercial entities to provide the application and services. This could potentially lead to the DHA not retaining complete data ownership when patient data would reside on or traverse through commercial remote patient-monitoring solutions. This thesis evaluates BioZen, a DHA-owned biomedical sensor concentrator designed to run on a mobile phone, as a remote patient-monitoring tool. From this analysis, several key measures of effectiveness and measures of performance for remote patient-monitoring tools are identified and operationalized to measure the overall value BioZen brings to the DHA. Based on this research, it was found that the current build of BioZen, 2.0.0, is unable to meet any of the measures outlined in the study as a remote patient-monitoring tool. A future build of BioZen, or any remote patient-monitoring tool, could then be assessed using the measures of effectiveness and measures of performance within this study to determine the overall value brought to the DHA.Defense Health Agency, 7700 Arlington Boulevard, Falls Church, VA 22042Captain, United States ArmyLieutenant, United States NavyApproved for public release. Distribution is unlimited

A large-scale evaluation of computational protein function prediction.

Automated annotation of protein function is challenging. As the number of sequenced genomes rapidly grows, the overwhelming majority of protein products can only be annotated computationally. If computational predictions are to be relied upon, it is crucial that the accuracy of these methods be high. Here we report the results from the first large-scale community-based critical assessment of protein function annotation (CAFA) experiment. Fifty-four methods representing the state of the art for protein function prediction were evaluated on a target set of 866 proteins from 11 organisms. Two findings stand out: (i) today's best protein function prediction algorithms substantially outperform widely used first-generation methods, with large gains on all types of targets; and (ii) although the top methods perform well enough to guide experiments, there is considerable need for improvement of currently available tools

Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy (4th edition)

In 2008, we published the first set of guidelines for standardizing research in autophagy. Since then, this topic has received increasing attention, and many scientists have entered the field. Our knowledge base and relevant new technologies have also been expanding. Thus, it is important to formulate on a regular basis updated guidelines for monitoring autophagy in different organisms. Despite numerous reviews, there continues to be confusion regarding acceptable methods to evaluate autophagy, especially in multicellular eukaryotes. Here, we present a set of guidelines for investigators to select and interpret methods to examine autophagy and related processes, and for reviewers to provide realistic and reasonable critiques of reports that are focused on these processes. These guidelines are not meant to be a dogmatic set of rules, because the appropriateness of any assay largely depends on the question being asked and the system being used. Moreover, no individual assay is perfect for every situation, calling for the use of multiple techniques to properly monitor autophagy in each experimental setting. Finally, several core components of the autophagy machinery have been implicated in distinct autophagic processes (canonical and noncanonical autophagy), implying that genetic approaches to block autophagy should rely on targeting two or more autophagy-related genes that ideally participate in distinct steps of the pathway. Along similar lines, because multiple proteins involved in autophagy also regulate other cellular pathways including apoptosis, not all of them can be used as a specific marker for bona fide autophagic responses. Here, we critically discuss current methods of assessing autophagy and the information they can, or cannot, provide. Our ultimate goal is to encourage intellectual and technical innovation in the field