Understanding the information dynamics of medication administration in residential aged care facilities (RACFs): A prerequisite for design of effective ICT systems

Medication information is a critical part of the information required to ensure residents' safety in the highly collaborative care context of RACFs. Studies report poor medication information as a barrier to improve medication management in RACFs. Research exploring medication work practices in aged care settings remains limited. This study aimed to identify contextual and work practice factors contributing to breakdowns in medication information exchange in RACFs in relation to the medication administration process. We employed non-participant observations and semi-structured interviews to explore information practices in three Australian RACFs. Findings identified inefficiencies due to lack of information timeliness, manual stock management, multiple data transcriptions, inadequate design of essential documents such as administration sheets and a reliance on manual auditing procedures. Technological solutions such as electronic medication administration records offer opportunities to overcome some of the identified problems. However these interventions need to be designed to align with the collaborative team based processes they intend to support.

Coping with information silos: An examination of the medication management process in residential aged care facilities (RACFs)

The aim of this study was to examine the actions of geographically dispersed process stakeholders (doctors, community pharmacists and RACFs) in order to cope with the information silos that exist within and across different settings. The study setting involved three metropolitan RACFs in Sydney, Australia and employed a qualitative approach using semi-structured interviews, non-participant observations and artefact analysis. Findings showed that medication information was stored in silos which required specific actions by each setting to translate this information to fit their local requirements. A salient example of this was the way in which community pharmacists used the RACF medication charts to prepare residents' pharmaceutical records. This translation of medication information across settings was often accompanied by telephone or face-to-face conversations to cross-check, validate or obtain new information. Findings highlighted that technological interventions that work in silos can negatively impact the quality of medication management processes in RACF settings. The implementation of commercial software applications like electronic medication charts need to be appropriately integrated to satisfy the collaborative information requirements of the RACF medication process.

Automated Discovery of Structured Process Models: Discover Structured vs. Discover and Structure

This paper addresses the problem of discovering business process models from event logs. Existing approaches to this problem strike various tradeoffs between accuracy and understandability of the discovered models. With respect to the second criterion, empirical studies have shown that block-structured process models are generally more understandable and less error-prone than unstructured ones. Accordingly, several automated process discovery methods generate block-structured models by construction. These approaches however intertwine the concern of producing accurate models with that of ensuring their structuredness, sometimes sacrificing the former to ensure the latter. In this paper we propose an alternative approach that separates these two concerns. Instead of directly discovering a structured process model, we first apply a well-known heuristic technique that discovers more accurate but sometimes unstructured (and even unsound) process models, and then transform the resulting model into a structured one. An experimental evaluation shows that our “discover and structure” approach outperforms traditional “discover structured” approaches with respect to a range of accuracy and complexity measures.

Scalable multi-dimensional user intent identification using tree structured distributions

The problem of identifying user intent has received considerable attention in recent years, particularly in the context of improving the search experience via query contextualization. Intent can be characterized by multiple dimensions, which are often not observed from query words alone. Accurate identification of Intent from query words remains a challenging problem primarily because it is extremely difficult to discover these dimensions. The problem is often significantly compounded due to lack of representative training sample. We present a generic, extensible framework for learning the multi-dimensional representation of user intent from the query words. The approach models the latent relationships between facets using tree structured distribution which leads to an efficient and convergent algorithm, FastQ, for identifying the multi-faceted intent of users based on just the query words. We also incorporated WordNet to extend the system capabilities to queries which contain words that do not appear in the training data. Empirical results show that FastQ yields accurate identification of intent when compared to a gold standard.

A review of travel time estimation and forecasting for advanced traveler information systems

Providing on line travel time information to commuters has become an important issue for Advanced Traveler Information Systems and Route Guidance Systems in the past years, due to the increasing traffic volume and congestion in the road networks. Travel time is one of the most useful traffic variables because it is more intuitive than other traffic variables such as flow, occupancy or density, and is useful for travelers in decision making. The aim of this paper is to present a global view of the literature on the modeling of travel time, introducing crucial concepts and giving a thorough classification of the existing tech- niques. Most of the attention will focus on travel time estimation and travel time prediction, which are generally not presented together. The main goals of these models, the study areas and methodologies used to carry out these tasks will be further explored and categorized.

Authority files: Breaking out of the library silo to become signposts for research information

Authority files serve to uniquely identify real world ‘things’ or entities like documents, persons, organisations, and their properties, like relations and features. Already important in the classical library world, authority files are indispensable for adequate information retrieval and analysis in the computer age. This is because, even more than humans, computers are poor at handling ambiguity. Through authority files, people tell computers which terms, names or numbers refer to the same thing or have the same meaning by giving equivalent notions the same identifier. Thus, authority files signpost the internet where these identifiers are interlinked on the basis of relevance. When executing a query, computers are able to navigate from identifier to identifier by following these links and collect the queried information on these so-called ‘crosswalks’. In this context, identifiers also go under the name controlled access points. Identifiers become even more crucial now massive data collections like library catalogues or research datasets are releasing their till-now contained data directly to the internet. This development is coined Open Linked Data. The concatenating name for the internet is Web of Data instead of the classical Web of Documents.

Saberes e práticas das mães sobre o uso de broncodilatador em crianças com displasia broncopulmonar no domicílio: subsídios para a enfermagem pediátrica

Esta pesquisa teve como objeto de estudo os saberes e práticas das mães sobre o uso de broncodilatador em crianças com displasia broncopulmonar, e como objetivos: desvelar os saberes e práticas das mães sobre o uso de broncodilatador em seus filhos com displasia broncopulmonar no domicílio; conhecer os cuidados realizados pelas mães no uso do broncodilatador em seu filho com displasia broncopulmonar no domicílio e descrever as reações percebidas pelas mães em seus filhos após o uso da medicação. Trata-se de um estudo descritivo com abordagem qualitativa. O cenário foi um ambulatório de pneumologia localizado no Município do Rio de Janeiro e os sujeitos, 14 mães de crianças portadoras de displasia broncopulmonar, com idades entre 0 e 2 anos. A coleta dos dados foi realizada através da entrevista semiestruturada, no mês de julho de 2014. Utilizada a análise de conteúdo de Bardin. Como resultados, emergiram duas categorias: os saberes e medos das mães sobre o uso do broncodilatador eas práticas de cuidado da mãe na administração do broncodilatador na criança. A primeira categoria compreende quatro subcategorias: conhecimento das mães sobre a ação do medicamento; sinais de alerta percebidos pelas mães para o uso do medicamento na criança; os efeitos percebidos pelas mães após o uso do medicamento na criança e os medos relacionados ao uso do broncodilatador.A segunda categoria abrange três subcategorias: cuidados com o posicionamento da criança; cuidados com a higiene da criança e cuidados com o espaçador. A maioria das mães consegue identificar a partir dos seus saberes e de seu universo vocabular as principais ações dos broncodilatadores, no entanto podem-se evidenciar alguns relatos com informações inconsistentes, o que nos faz supor a ausência de orientações por parte dos profissionais junto a essa clientela. O esforço respiratório configura-se como sinal de alerta para que as mães utilizem a medicação para tentar evitar a crise respiratória. Sobre as alterações da criança após o uso do broncodilatador, a respiração melhorada surge como prevalente seguida da agitação. Sobre os medos que envolvem o uso do medicamento, as mães destacam aqueles relacionados ao efeito colateral, chegando a realizar subdose da droga a fim de evitá-lo. Com relação às práticas de cuidado das crianças, as mães não possuem consenso acerca da melhor posição para administrar a medicação, baseando suas escolhas em um melhor posicionamento para a criança, para ela mesma e para a eficácia da dose. Elas mencionaram realizar a higiene oral da criança após o uso do medicamento, porém não sabem o motivo correto da ação, denotando novamente que o processo educativo foi baseado em uma metodologia depositária, onde o indivíduo apenas memoriza o que foi aprendido. Conclui-se que o enfermeiro enquanto profissional educador em saúde precisa lançar mão de estratégias baseadas na problematização, dando voz a essas mães, conhecendo sua realidade e visão de mundo para que dessa maneira ela possa atrelar os seus saberes adquiridos com os saberes científicos, possibilitando uma adequada abordagem terapêutica junto aos seus filhos.

Assessment of existing information on Atlantic coastal fish habitats: development of a web-based spatial bibliography, query tools, and data summaries

The primary objective of this project, “the Assessment of Existing Information on Atlantic Coastal Fish Habitat”, is to inform conservation planning for the Atlantic Coastal Fish Habitat Partnership (ACFHP). ACFHP is recognized as a Partnership by the National Fish Habitat Action Plan (NFHAP), whose overall mission is to protect, restore, and enhance the nation’s fish and aquatic communities through partnerships that foster fish habitat conservation. This project is a cooperative effort of NOAA/NOS Center for Coastal Monitoring and Assessment (CCMA) Biogeography Branch and ACFHP. The Assessment includes three components; 1. a representative bibliographic and assessment database, 2. a Geographical Information System (GIS) spatial framework, and 3. a summary document with description of methods, analyses of habitat assessment information, and recommendations for further work. The spatial bibliography was created by linking the bibliographic table developed in Microsoft Excel and exported to SQL Server, with the spatial framework developed in ArcGIS and exported to GoogleMaps. The bibliography is a comprehensive, searchable database of over 500 selected documents and data sources on Atlantic coastal fish species and habitats. Key information captured for each entry includes basic bibliographic data, spatial footprint (e.g. waterbody or watershed), species and habitats covered, and electronic availability. Information on habitat condition indicators, threats, and conservation recommendations are extracted from each entry and recorded in a separate linked table. The spatial framework is a functional digital map based on polygon layers of watersheds, estuarine and marine waterbodies derived from NOAA’s Coastal Assessment Framework, MMS/NOAA’s Multipurpose Marine Cadastre, and other sources, providing spatial reference for all of the documents cited in the bibliography. Together, the bibliography and assessment tables and their spatial framework provide a powerful tool to query and assess available information through a publicly available web interface. They were designed to support the development of priorities for ACFHP’s conservation efforts within a geographic area extending from Maine to Florida, and from coastal watersheds seaward to the edge of the continental shelf. The Atlantic Coastal Fish Habitat Partnership has made initial use of the Assessment of Existing Information. Though it has not yet applied the AEI in a systematic or structured manner, it expects to find further uses as the draft conservation strategic plan is refined, and as regional action plans are developed. It also provides a means to move beyond an “assessment of existing information” towards an “assessment of fish habitat”, and is being applied towards the National Fish Habitat Action Plan (NFHAP) 2010 Assessment. Beyond the scope of the current project, there may be application to broader initiatives such as Integrated Ecosystem Assessments (IEAs), Ecosystem Based Management (EBM), and Marine Spatial Planning (MSP).

Oriented nano-structured hydroxyapatite from the template

Natural bone is one kind of compounds consisting of hydroxyapatite (HAp) nano-rods, which are embedded in the template of collagen matrix in vivo with the same crystallographic organization. Herein HAp nano-rods precursors were synthesized via wet chemical method. Large-scale HAp nano-wires with the same crystallographic organization as the template of anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) were obtained by the electrophoretic deposition and the technology of the template. It provides a meaningful method to study and understand the information of biological molecules' mineralization process.

TEMPEST: A Template Editor for Structured Text

TEMPEST is a full-screen text editor that incorporates a structural paradigm in addition to the more traditional textual paradigm provided by most editors. While the textual paradigm treats the text as a sequence of characters, the structural paradigm treats it as a collection of named blocks which the user can define, group, and manipulate. Blocks can be defined to correspond to the structural features of he text, thereby providing more meaningful objects to operate on than characters of lines. The structural representation of the text is kept in the background, giving TEMPEST the appearance of a typical text editor. The structural and textual interfaces coexist equally, however, so one can always operate on the text from wither point of view. TEMPEST's representation scheme provides no semantic understanding of structure. This approach sacrifices depth, but affords a broad range of applicability and requires very little computational overhead. A prototype has been implemented to illustrate the feasibility and potential areas of application of the central ideas. It was developed and runs on an IBM Personal Computer.

Evaluation of binary decision diagrams for redundancy, shadowing, generalisation and correlation in an Information sharing model.

This paper defines a structured methodology which is based on the foundational work of Al-Shaer et al. in [1] and that of Hamed and Al-Shaer in [2]. It defines a methodology for the declaration of policy field elements, through to the syntax, ontology and functional verification stages. In their works of [1] and [2] the authors concentrated on developing formal definitions of possible anomalies between rules in a network firewall rule set. Their work is considered as the foundation for further works on anomaly detection, including those of Fitzgerald et al. [3], Chen et al. [4], Hu et al. [5], among others. This paper extends this work by applying the methods to information sharing policies, and outlines the evaluation related to these.

Use and non-use of electronic information sources by undergraduates at the University of the West Indies

Ramlogan, R.,& Tedd, L. (2006). Use and non-use of electronic information sources by undergraduates at the University of the West Indies. Online Information Review, 30(1), 24-42.

Evaluating SWICE-R (South West Information for Clinical Effectiveness - Rural). Final report for South West Workforce Development Confederations (Knowledge Resources Development Unit)

Yeoman, A., Durbin, J. & Urquhart, C. (2004). Evaluating SWICE-R (South West Information for Clinical Effectiveness - Rural). Final report for South West Workforce Development Confederations, (Knowledge Resources Development Unit). Aberystwyth: Department of Information Studies, University of Wales Aberystwyth. Sponsorship: South West WDCs (NHS)

A study of information literacy initiatives between secondary schools and universities in the UK

Lonsdale, R. E. & Armstrong, C. (2006). A study of information literacy initiatives between secondary schools and universities in the UK. In A.B. Martins, A.P. Falcao, E. Conde, I. Andrade, M.B. Nunes, M.J. Vitorino (Eds.), Proceedings of 35th Annual conference of the International Association of School Librarianship, Lisboa (Portugal). The Multiple Faces of Literacy: Reading, Knowing, Doing: Selected papers from the 35th Annual Conference of IASL [CD-ROM: PDF version] Lisbon, Portugal 2006 Sponsorship: JISC