Errors in the administration of medication in inpatient hospitals: A systematic review of the research literature on commercial computerized physician order entry systems

Errors in the administration of medication represent a significant loss of medical resources and pose life altering or life threatening risks to patients. This paper considered the question, what impact do Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE) systems have on medication errors in the hospital inpatient environment? Previous reviews have examined evidence of the impact of CPOE on medication errors, but have come to ambiguous conclusions as to the impact of CPOE and decision support systems (DSS). Forty-three papers were identified. Thirty-one demonstrated a significant reduction in prescribing error rates for all or some drug types; decreases in minor errors were most often reported. Several studies reported increases in the rate of duplicate orders and failures to remove contraindicated drugs, often attributed to inappropriate design or to an inability to operate the system properly. The evidence on the effectiveness of CPOE to reduce errors in medication administration is compelling though it is limited by modest study sample sizes and designs. ^

DEVELOPMENT OF NOVEL METHODS TO MINIMIZE THE IMPACT OF SEQUENCING ERRORS IN THE NEXT-GENERATION SEQUENCING DATA ANALYSIS

Next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology has become a prominent tool in biological and biomedical research. However, NGS data analysis, such as de novo assembly, mapping and variants detection is far from maturity, and the high sequencing error-rate is one of the major problems. . To minimize the impact of sequencing errors, we developed a highly robust and efficient method, MTM, to correct the errors in NGS reads. We demonstrated the effectiveness of MTM on both single-cell data with highly non-uniform coverage and normal data with uniformly high coverage, reflecting that MTM’s performance does not rely on the coverage of the sequencing reads. MTM was also compared with Hammer and Quake, the best methods for correcting non-uniform and uniform data respectively. For non-uniform data, MTM outperformed both Hammer and Quake. For uniform data, MTM showed better performance than Quake and comparable results to Hammer. By making better error correction with MTM, the quality of downstream analysis, such as mapping and SNP detection, was improved. SNP calling is a major application of NGS technologies. However, the existence of sequencing errors complicates this process, especially for the low coverage (

Improving disclosure of medical errors: Including patients and family members in the disclosure process

Over the last decade, adverse events and medical errors have become a main focus of interest for the standards of quality and safety in the U.S. healthcare system (Weinstein & Henderson, 2009). Particularly when a medical error occurs, the disclosure of medical errors and its practices have become a focal point of the healthcare process. Patients and family members who have experienced a medical error might be able to provide knowledge and insight on how to improve the disclose process. However, patient and family member are not typically involved in the disclosure process, thus their experiences go unnoticed. ^ The purpose of this research was to explore how best to include patients and family members in the disclosure process regarding a medical error. The research consisted of 28 qualitative interviews from three stakeholder groups: Hospital Administrators, Clinical Service Providers, and Patients and Family Members. They were asked for their ideas and suggestions on how best to include patients and family members in the disclosure process. Framework Analysis was used to analyze this data and find prevalent themes based on the primary research question. A secondary aim was to index categories created based on the interviews that were collected. Data was used from the Texas Disclosure and Compensation Study with Dr. Eric Thomas as the Principal Investigator. Full acknowledgement of access to this data is given to Dr. Thomas. ^ The themes from the research revealed that each stakeholder group was interested and open to including patients and family members in the disclosure process and that the disclosure process should not be a "one-way" avenue. The themes gave many suggestions regarding how to best include patients and family members in the disclosure process of a medical error. Secondary aims revealed several ways to assess the ideas and suggestion given by the stakeholders. Overall, acceptability of getting the perspective of patients and family members was the most common theme. Comparison of each stakeholder group revealed that including patients and family members would be beneficial to improving hospital disclosure practices. ^ Conclusions included a list of recommendations and measureable appropriate strategies that could provide hospital with key stakeholders insights on how to improve their disclosure process. Sharing patients and family members experience with healthcare providers can encourage a shift in culture where patients are valued and active in participating in hospital practices. To my knowledge, this research is the very first of its kind and moves the disclosure process conversation forward in a patient-family member inclusion direction that will assist in improving disclosure practices. Future research should implement and evaluate the success of the various inclusion strategies.^

Standard Errors for the Blinder-Oaxaca Decomposition

The decomposition technique introduced by Blinder (1973) and Oaxaca (1973) is widely used to study outcome differences between groups. For example, the technique is commonly applied to the analysis of the gender wage gap. However, despite the procedure's frequent use, very little attention has been paid to the issue of estimating the sampling variances of the decomposition components. We therefore suggest an approach that introduces consistent variance estimators for several variants of the decomposition. The accuracy of the new estimators under ideal conditions is illustrated with the results of a Monte Carlo simulation. As a second check, the estimators are compared to bootstrap results obtained using real data. In contrast to previously proposed statistics, the new method takes into account the extra variation imposed by stochastic regressors.

Reduction of truncation errors in planar, cylindrical and partial spherical near-field antenna measurements

A method to reduce truncation errors in near-field antenna measurements is presented. The method is based on the Gerchberg-Papoulis iterative algorithm used to extrapolate band-limited functions and it is able to extend the valid region of the calculated far-field pattern up to the whole forward hemisphere. The extension of the valid region is achieved by the iterative application of a transformation between two different domains. After each transformation, a filtering process that is based on known information at each domain is applied. The first domain is the spectral domain in which the plane wave spectrum (PWS) is reliable only within a known region. The second domain is the field distribution over the antenna under test (AUT) plane in which the desired field is assumed to be concentrated on the antenna aperture. The method can be applied to any scanning geometry, but in this paper, only the planar, cylindrical, and partial spherical near-field measurements are considered. Several simulation and measurement examples are presented to verify the effectiveness of the method.

Correction of systematic errors in Wide Area Multilateration

This work presents a method to estimate and correct slow time-dependent position errors due to non perfect ground station synchronization and tropospheric propagation. It uses opportunity traffic emissions, i.e. signals transmitted from the aircrafts within the coverage zone. This method is used to overcome the difficulty of installing reference beacons simultaneously visible by all the base stations in a given Wide Area Multilateration (WAM) system.

A New Method to Reduce Truncation Errors in Partial Spherical Near-Field Measurements

A new and effective method for reduction of truncation errors in partial spherical near-field (SNF) measurements is proposed. The method is useful when measuring electrically large antennas, where the measurement time with the classical SNF technique is prohibitively long and an acquisition over the whole spherical surface is not practical. Therefore, to reduce the data acquisition time, partial sphere measurement is usually made, taking samples over a portion of the spherical surface in the direction of the main beam. But in this case, the radiation pattern is not known outside the measured angular sector as well as a truncation error is present in the calculated far-field pattern within this sector. The method is based on the Gerchberg-Papoulis algorithm used to extrapolate functions and it is able to extend the valid region of the calculated far-field pattern up to the whole forward hemisphere. To verify the effectiveness of the method, several examples are presented using both simulated and measured truncated near-field data.

New methods to reduce leakage errors in planar near-field measurements

This paper describes two methods to cancel the effect of two kinds of leakage signals which may be presented when an antenna is measured in a planar near-field range. One method tries to reduce leakage bias errors from the receiver¿s quadrature detector and it is based on estimating the bias constant added to every near-field data sample. Then, that constant is subtracted from the data, removing its undesired effect on the far-field pattern. The estimation is performed by back-propagating the field from the scan plane to the antenna under test plane (AUT) and averaging all the data located outside the AUT aperture. The second method is able to cancel the effect of the leakage from faulty transmission lines, connectors or rotary joints. The basis of this method is also a reconstruction process to determine the field distribution on the AUT plane. Once this distribution is known, a spatial filtering is applied to cancel the contribution due to those faulty elements. After that, a near-field-to-far-field transformation is applied, obtaining a new radiation pattern where the leakage effects have disappeared. To verify the effectiveness of both methods, several examples are presented.

Subjective Evaluation of Transmission Errors in IPTV and 3DTV

The increase of multimedia services delivered over packet-based networks has entailed greater quality expectations of the end-users. This has led to an intensive research on techniques for evaluating the quality of experience perceived by the viewers of audiovisual content, considering the different degradations that it could suffer along the broadcasting system. In this paper, a comprehensive study of the impact of transmission errors affecting video and audio in IPTV is presented. With this aim, subjective assessment tests were carried out proposing a novel methodology trying to keep as close as possible home environment viewing conditions. Also 3DTV content in side-by-side format has been used in the experiments to compare the impact of the degradations. The results provide a better understanding of the effects of transmission errors, and show that the QoE related to the first approach of 3DTV is acceptable, but the visual discomfort that it causes should be reduced.

Subjective assessment of the impact of transmission errors in 3DTV compared to HDTV

Recently, broadcasted 3D video content has reached households with the first generation of 3DTV. However, few studies have been done to analyze the Quality of Experience (QoE) perceived by the end-users in this scenario. This paper studies the impact of trans- mission errors in 3DTV, considering that the video is delivered in side-by-side format over a conventional packet-based network. For this purpose, a novel evaluation methodology based on standard sin- gle stimulus methods and with the aim of keeping as close as pos- sible the home environment viewing conditions has been proposed. The effects of packet losses in monoscopic and stereoscopic videos are compared from the results of subjective assessment tests. Other aspects were also measured concerning 3D content as naturalness, sense of presence and visual fatigue. The results show that although the final perceived QoE is acceptable, some errors cause important binocular rivalry, and therefore, substantial visual discomfort.

Analyzing Query Success and User Context

This paper describes the participation of DAEDALUS at the LogCLEF lab in CLEF 2011. This year, the objectives of our participation are twofold. The first topic is to analyze if there is any measurable effect on the success of the search queries if the native language and the interface language chosen by the user are different. The idea is to determine if this difference may condition the way in which the user interacts with the search application. The second topic is to analyze the user context and his/her interaction with the system in the case of successful queries, to discover out any relation among the user native language, the language of the resource involved and the interaction strategy adopted by the user to find out such resource. Only 6.89% of queries are successful out of the 628,607 queries in the 320,001 sessions with at least one search query in the log. The main conclusion that can be drawn is that, in general for all languages, whether the native language matches the interface language or not does not seem to affect the success rate of the search queries. On the other hand, the analysis of the strategy adopted by users when looking for a particular resource shows that people tend to use the simple search tool, frequently first running short queries build up of just one specific term and then browsing through the results to locate the expected resource

Tomas Lopez's Geographic Atlas of Spain in the Peninsular War: A methodology for determining errors

During the Peninsular War, Napoleon's and Wellington's armies were aware of the lack of precision in the maps of Spain and its provinces that appeared in Tomas Lopez \s Geographical Atlas of Spain. The errors were due to the non-topographical surveying method he used which he had learned from his teacher Jean Baptiste Bourguignon D 'Anville. To map all of the Spanish provinces, Tomas Lopez divided them into circles of three leagues in diameter (16,718 m), taking a particular town as the centre. He asked the town's priest to draw a map of the territory and to complete a questionnaire that Tomas Lopez sent to him. The priest was to return the two documents after he had completed them. Subsequently, at his desk, Tomas Lopez used the maps and reports as well as other graphic and written sources from various locations to make an outline of each map. Next, he made a mosaic that served as a pattern for drawing the final provincial map. We will see the way that this method was applied in two concrete cases: the villages ofChavaler and Monteagudo, situated in the Spanish province of Soria, and verify their degree of accuracy. We will use the maps drawn by the priests in 1767, the final map of the province which was published in 1804 by Tomás López, and a current map of the province showing the angular and linear errors in Lopez \s map.

Ecient Inference-aware RDB2RDF Query Rewriting

RDB2RDF systems generate RDF from relational databases, operating in two dierent manners: materializing the database content into RDF or acting as virtual RDF datastores that transform SPARQL queries into SQL. In the former, inferences on the RDF data (taking into account the ontologies that they are related to) are normally done by the RDF triple store where the RDF data is materialised and hence the results of the query answering process depend on the store. In the latter, existing RDB2RDF systems do not normally perform such inferences at query time. This paper shows how the algorithm used in the REQUIEM system, focused on handling run-time inferences for query answering, can be adapted to handle such inferences for query answering in combination with RDB2RDF systems.