Pharmaceutical company influences on medication prescribing and their potential impact on quality use of medicines

Background Pharmaceuticals are big business, reporting strong market growth year after year. The ‘gatekeepers’ of this market are prescribers of medicines, who are the major target of pharmaceutical companies, utilizing direct and indirect influences. Methods This paper draws on previous research investigating pharmaceutical company prescribing influences to develop a qualitative model demonstrating the synergism between commercial influences on prescribing. The generic model was used to explore a realistic but hypothetical scenario to ascertain the applicability of the model. Results and Discussion A generic influence model was developed. The model was readily able to be adapted to reflect a realistic practice scenario. Conclusion Prescriber awareness of the linkages between various seemingly separate marketing techniques could potentially improve medicines usage in an evidence-based practice paradigm.

Information experience : approaches to theory and practice

The Queensland University of Technology Research Team has recently edited a book on the idea of information experience. Authors from many parts of the world and focussed on many contexts have contributed chapters. The book represents the first attempt to profile and discuss information experience as a research domain and a research object, together with emphasis on different theories and methods being used in workplace, educational and community contexts. In this session members of the editorial team will introduce the book. We anticipate it will be of interest to any information professionals, students or researchers interested in understanding peoples' information experience.

Managing risk in process-aware information systems

This research contributes a fully-operational approach for managing business process risk in near real-time. The approach consists of a language for defining risks on top of process models, a technique to detect such risks as they eventuate during the execution of business processes, a recommender system for making risk-informed decisions, and a technique to automatically mitigate the detected risks when they are no longer tolerable. Through the incorporation of risk management elements in all stages of the lifecycle of business processes, this work contributes to the effective integration of the fields of Business Process Management and Risk Management.

Multiscale features and information extraction of online strain for long-span bridges

The strain data acquired from structural health monitoring (SHM) systems play an important role in the state monitoring and damage identification of bridges. Due to the environmental complexity of civil structures, a better understanding of the actual strain data will help filling the gap between theoretical/laboratorial results and practical application. In the study, the multi-scale features of strain response are first revealed after abundant investigations on the actual data from two typical long-span bridges. Results show that, strain types at the three typical temporal scales of 10^5, 10^2 and 10^0 sec are caused by temperature change, trains and heavy trucks, and have their respective cut-off frequency in the order of 10^-2, 10^-1 and 10^0 Hz. Multi-resolution analysis and wavelet shrinkage are applied for separating and extracting these strain types. During the above process, two methods for determining thresholds are introduced. The excellent ability of wavelet transform on simultaneously time-frequency analysis leads to an effective information extraction. After extraction, the strain data will be compressed at an attractive ratio. This research may contribute to a further understanding of actual strain data of long-span bridges; also, the proposed extracting methodology is applicable on actual SHM systems.

Migrants, refugees and mobility : how useful are information communication technologies in the first phase of resettlement?

The rate at which people move and resettle around the world is unprecedented. Mobility and resettlement is now greatly assisted by the use of inexpensive internet communication technologies (ICTs) for a wide variety of functions: to communicate locally and across territories, for localised information seeking, geo – locational mapping and for forging new social connections in host countries and cities. This article is based on a qualitative study of newly arrived migrants and mobile people from non English speaking backgrounds (NESB) to the city of Brisbane, Australia and investigates how the internet is used to assist the initial period of settling into the city. As increasing amounts of essential information is placed online, the study asks how people from NESB communities manage to negotiate the types of information they require during the early stages of resettlement, given varying levels of access to ICTs, digital and language literacy. The study finds that the internet is widely used for specific location information seeking (such as accommodation and job-seeking), but this is often supplemented with other non-mediated sources of information. The study identified implications for social policy in regard to the resourcing and access of information. While findings are specific to the study location, it is feasible that the patterns of internet use for resettlement have relevance in a broader context.

Researching information experience : methodological approaches

This chapter highlights the varied scope of research in the emerging information experience domain. First, I share my perspective as educator-researcher on information experience and its association with informed learning. Then, in six methodological snapshots I present a selection of qualitative approaches which are suited to investigating information experience. The snapshots feature: action research, constructivist grounded theory, ethnomethodology, expanded critical incident approach, phenomenography and qualitative case study. By way of illustration, six researchers explain how and why they use one of these methods. Finally, I review the key characteristics of the six methods and their respective benefits for information experience research.

Improving information in project appraisal using hedonic pricing : a case study of marina berthing charges

Hedonic pricing techniques can be used to generate quantitative information useful to the project appraiser at various stages of the project cycle, most notably project formulation and investment appraisal. To illustrate, a hedonic pricing model is applied to marina berthing charges in England and Wales. The technique determines the relevant marina facilities that are reflected in marina rental price. The contribution of the key marina facilities is expressed in monetary terms as the contribution to cost per overall rental price per foot.

The expert searcher's experience of information

Expert searchers engage with information in a variety of professional settings, as information brokers, reference librarians, information architects and faculty who teach advanced searching. As my recent research shows, the expert searcher’s information experience is defined by profound discernment of critical concepts about information, and a fluid ability to apply this knowledge to their engagement with the information environment. The information experience of the expert searcher means active and intentional participation with the processes and players that created that information environment. Expert searchers become an integral and seamless part of their information environment and also play a role in facilitating the information experiences of others. In this chapter, after discussing my understanding of the concept of information experience, I outline how I used threshold concept theory to explore the information experience of expert searchers. Through the findings, I identify four threshold concepts in the acquisition of search expertise that provide new perspectives on the information experience of the expert searcher. These new perspectives have implications for search engine design and how advanced search skills are taught. Finally, I consider how the fresh insights about the expert searcher’s experiences contribute to wider understanding about information experience.