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Clustering prior to regression analysis improves the accuracy of prediction in clinical decision making. However, most previously described methods focused on numerical data only. This paper investigated how well textual features can improve the accuracy of regression predictions. Preliminary diagnosis, diagnosis summary, and drug names used in prescriptions as provided in the MIMIC II dataset were used to derive textual features. We proposed the bag-of-entities indexing method, which relies on named entity recognition, a machine learning technique used for locating and identifying words into predefined classes. The proposed technique captured meaningful phrases from texts in health records and represented them in numerical vector format. Dimensionality of the data space was reduced using principal component analysis. The additional well-tuned textual features were then combined with existing numerical features in using cluster-boosted regression to predict patient mortality in ICU. The experimental results showed prediction improvement obtained from textual features over the use of numerical features only. We found that using the proposed indexing method outperformed traditional word-vector representation approaches (bag-of-words and bag-of-bigrams) as well as a state-of-the-art approach (Doc2vec) in terms of resulting accuracy in predicting death status. Moreover, instead of directly interpreting, the identifiable individual features were grouped into types and summarized. The summarized de-identified data of textual features handled by the proposed framework can support predictive classification while also reducing privacy concerns. Grouping of similar patients based on their electronic health records also benefits physicians through the improved differential diagnosis and effective treatment planning.

IntroductionThe global COVID-19 pandemic continues to have wide-ranging implications for health, including psychological well-being. A growing corpus of research reviews has emerged on the topic of psychological resilience in the context of the pandemic. However, this body of work has not been systematically reviewed for its quality, nor with respect to findings on the effectiveness of tools and strategies for psychological resilience. To this end, a meta-review protocol is proposed with the following objectives: (1) identify review work on the topic of psychological resilience during COVID-19; (2) assess the quality of this review work using A MeaSurement Tool to Assess systematic Reviews; (3) assess the risk of bias in this work; (4) generate a narrative summary of the key points, strengths and weaknesses; (5) identify the psychological resilience strategies that have been reviewed; (6) identify how these strategies have been evaluated for their effectiveness; (7) identify what outcomes were measured and (8) summarise the findings on strategies for psychological resilience so far, providing recommendations, if possible.Methods and analysisA systematic meta-review will be conducted in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews for Protocols and Joanna Briggs Institute umbrella review guidelines. Electronic searches of general databases, especially Web of Science, Scopus and PubMed, will be conducted. Only results from January 2020 onwards will be considered, coinciding with the COVID-19 pandemic. Only results in English will be included. Descriptive statistics, thematic analysis and narrative summaries describing the nature of the reviewed work and evaluation of psychological resilience strategies will be carried out.Ethics and disseminationEthical approval is not needed for systematic review protocols. The results of the meta-review will be published in an international peer-reviewed journal. The raw and summarised data will be shared in the journal or other open venues.PROSPERO registration numberCRD42021235288.

Heart failure patients require complex, long-term care. Research shows that self-care education improves health outcomes of these patients. This study reports the results of a randomized trial which compared the effects of two remote educational interventions on heart failure patients' knowledge of self-care practices. The first group reviewed self-care content on a Web site and had email access to a cardiac nurse. The second group had access to the Web site, and participated in four telephone-based sessions with the cardiac nurse. The test scores of both groups significantly improved following the intervention. However, the post-intervention test scores of the group that included telephone sessions were significantly higher than the scores for the group that had access to the Web site only. These results show a benefit to learning of a teleconferencing intervention that is over and above the benefit of an intervention based on Web information and email access alone.

Background To identify individual differences in physicians' needs for the presentation of evidence resources and preferences for mobile devices. Methods Within-groups analysis of responses to semi-structured interviews. Interviews consisted of using prototypes in response to task-based scenarios. The prototypes were implemented on two different form factors: a tablet style PC and a pocketPC. Participants were from three user groups: general internists, family physicians and medicine residents, and from two different settings: urban and semi-urban. Verbal protocol analysis, which consists of coding utterances, was conducted on the transcripts of the testing sessions. Statistical relationships were investigated between staff physicians' and residents' background variables, self-reported experiences with the interfaces, and verbal code frequencies. Results 47 physicians were recruited from general internal medicine, family practice clinics and a residency training program. The mean age of participants was 42.6 years. Physician specialty had a greater effect on device and information-presentation preferences than gender, age, setting or previous technical experience. Family physicians preferred the screen size of the tablet computer and were less concerned about its portability. Residents liked the screen size of the tablet, but preferred the portability of the pocketPC. Internists liked the portability of the pocketPC, but saw less advantage to the large screen of the tablet computer (F[2,44] = 4.94, p = .012). Conclusion Different types of physicians have different needs and preferences for evidence-based resources and handheld devices. This study shows how user testing can be incorporated into the process of design to inform group-based customization.

An evaluation framework and simulator of an interactive information retrieval system (SIIIRS) is introduced. SIIIRS is designed to allow researchers to conduct many exploratory studies that can help to narrow the focus of future human subject studies by showing which differences in information exploration style and functionality are likely to produce significant differences in future human subject studies. An experiment was carried out to demonstrate how SIIIRS could be used to predict performance when using different search strategies in a dynamic hypertext environment. The analysis of both the performance and behavioural measures obtained in the experiment showed significant differences in how the different agents (search strategies) performed when using different combinations of query difficulty, newness, and query tail size (as defined in the research reported in this paper). Overall, the agents differed in terms of their behaviours compared to one another and in terms of their interaction with the simulator parameter of newness and the dynamic hypertext control parameter of query tail size. The analysis of the behavioural measures showed the same pattern as found in the performance measures, with query tail size (an indicator of how easy it is to modify the topic during the search) having a strong influence on performance. The results of this study are discussed in terms of their implications for future automated evaluation of hypertext search interfaces.

This paper discusses the problem of how to grow and evolve virtual infrastructures that support the development and growth of geographically dispersed research communities. It will describe ongoing research into personalization within a collaborative environment intended as a "virtual campus". As part of this research we will provide initial reports on a project that is developing collaborative workspaces for dispersed research teams, and we will review relevant literature pertaining to the use of online collaborative workspaces to build virtual communities.

Cognitive and functional impairment resulting from neurologic injury can have devastating consequences on tasks such as activities of daily living (e.g. mobility, showering, eating, toileting, etc.) and instrumental activities of daily living (e.g. paying bills, grocery shopping, managing medication, etc.). Continuous and non-invasive forms of assessment that are easy to administer and complete can assist in identifying signs of impairment, prevent further decline, and potentially enhance skills. Using a user-centered design process, we designed a game-based screening tool to assist occupational therapists in evaluating an individual's cognitive and functional. We describe the process used and our initial usability findings, as well as suggest guidelines on the design and implementation of screening tools for use in neurorehabilitation.

In this paper we examine the reliability of subjective rating judgments along a single dimension, focusing on estimates of technical quality produced by integrity impairments and failures (non-accessibility, and non-retainability) associated with viewing video. There is often considerable variability, both within and between individuals, in subjective rating tasks. In the research reported here we consider different approaches to screening out unreliable participants. We review available alternatives, including a method developed by the ITU, a method based on screening outliers, a method based on strength of correlations with an assumed “natural” ordering of impairments, and a clustering technique that makes no assumptions about the data. We report on an experiment that assesses subjective quality of experience associated with impairments and failures of online video. We then assess the reliability of the results using a correlation method and a clustering method, both of which give similar results. Since the clustering method utilized here makes fewer assumptions about the data, it may be a useful supplement to existing techniques for assessing reliability of participants when making subjective evaluations of the technical quality of videos.

Serious games are proposed as a more efficient and enjoyable way to carry out cognitive assessment. We compare prediction of cognitive ability with a purpose-built serious game and with a similar game built using a game engine. In an experiment conducted with 28 participants, performance on the two games is assessed relative to three cognitive abilities, using two different tablet sizes and two different input methods. The results for the game-engine variant were similar to the purpose-built game, where both games significantly predicted performance on the three cognitive abilities, and were sensitive to the effects of age. Performance on both games was not significantly affected by tablet size or input method. These results support earlier findings that serious games can provide valid cognitive assessment, and they show that game engines can be used to develop serious games for cognitive assessment, cost effectively and without loss of predictive validity.

Background Osteoporosis affects over 200 million people worldwide at a high cost to healthcare systems, yet gaps in management still exist. In response, we developed a multi-component osteoporosis knowledge translation (Op-KT) tool involving a patient-initiated risk assessment questionnaire (RAQ), which generates individualized best practice recommendations for physicians and customized education for patients at the point of care. The objective of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of the Op-KT tool for appropriate disease management by physicians. Methods The Op-KT tool was evaluated using an interrupted time series design. This involved multiple assessments of the outcomes 12 months before (baseline) and 12 months after tool implementation (52 data points in total). Inclusion criteria were family physicians and their patients at risk for osteoporosis (women aged ≥50 years, men aged ≥65 years). Primary outcomes were the initiation of appropriate osteoporosis screening and treatment. Analyses included segmented linear regression modeling and analysis of variance. Results The Op-KT tool was implemented in three family practices in Ontario, Canada representing 5 family physicians with 2840 age eligible patients (mean age 67 years; 76% women). Time series regression models showed an overall increase from baseline in the initiation of screening (3.4%; P