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Gait velocity has been considered the sixth vital sign. It can be used not only to estimate the survival rate of the elderly, but also to predict the tendency of falling. Unfortunately, gait velocity is usually measured on a specially designed walk path, which has to be done at clinics or health institutes. Wearable tracking services using an accelerometer or an inertial measurement unit can measure the velocity for a certain time interval, but not all the time, due to the lack of a sustainable energy source. To tackle the shortcomings of wearable sensors, this work develops a framework to measure gait velocity using distributed tracking services deployed indoors. Two major challenges are tackled in this paper. The first is to minimize the sensing errors caused by thermal noise and overlapping sensing regions. The second is to minimize the data volume to be stored or transmitted. Given numerous errors caused by remote sensing, the framework takes into account the temporal and spatial relationship among tracking services to calibrate the services systematically. Consequently, gait velocity can be measured without wearable sensors and with higher accuracy. The developed method is built on top of WuKong, which is an intelligent IoT middleware, to enable location and temporal-aware data collection. In this work, we present an iterative method to reduce the data volume collected by thermal sensors. The evaluation results show that the file size is up to 25% of that of the JPEG format when the RMSE is limited to 0.5◦.

The Tutotest is one of the few structured instruments developed for the assessment of students' learning skills in a problem-based learning (PBL) curriculum. This study was designed to validate the Tutotest in a hybrid PBL curriculum. Forty-four tutors completed 370 evaluations on second to fourth year medical students at the end of the first semester in 2004 using the Chinese version of the Tutotest. There was significant correlation between global rating and Tutotest-C (r = 0.44, P less than 0.001). The Cronbach's [alpha] coefficient was 0.97. Two-week test-retest correlation coefficient was 0.85. Factor analysis revealed four factors, where three were similar to the factors of "effectiveness in group", "communication and leadership skills", and "respect for others" identified in the original Tutotest. "Hypothesis forming and testing" instead of "scientific curiosity" became the fourth factor in our data. Our study validated the Tutotest-C in a hybrid PBL curriculum and students from the Chinese educational system. The test-retest reliability measure with a 2-week interval at the end of the PBL tutorial confirmed the stability of the Tutotest, which has not been previously reported. Since most Asian medical schools adopted a hybrid PBL curriculum, a valid student evaluation instrument for this type of curriculum is valuable.

Background and Purpose: The use of standardized patients (SPs) is a powerful method for performance evaluation in medical education. It has gained increasing popularity in teaching and evaluation of clinical skills of medical students in the last decade. Maintaining an active and effective SP program requires a tremendous amount of financial and manpower investment, which may be difficult for many medical schools to provide. This study investigated the feasibility and effectiveness of using senior residents as SPs (SRSPs) to alleviate the financial and manpower burdens of an SP program., Methods: A total of 112 fifth year medical students and 26 third year senior residents from a university hospital participated in this research in 2000. Students at the end of a 9-week rotating clerkship in internal medicine formed groups of 7 members. Senior residents took multiple roles as case developers, SPs, teachers, and evaluators. Test and recess stations were integrated, and sequential individual and group discussion with SRSPs was used to provide feedback immediately after the completion of the examination. Students were given a test report including scores and written narrative feedback. Semi-constructive questionnaires were used for opinion survey from students as well as the SRSPs., Results: All SRSPs demonstrated their ability to function in multiple roles and regarded the SRSP experience as helpful to improve this ability. Most SRSPs (89%) considered the experience beneficial in improving their clinical teaching skills. Ninety percent of SRSPs thought that a case should be portrayed for no more than 4 hours in order to maintain the consistency and accuracy. Seventy two percent of medical students reported that SRSPs' status as teachers did not interfere with their performance, 68% reported being able to treat SRSPs as real patients, and 96% reported that the evaluation was helpful to their professional development., Conclusions: An SRSP program is feasible, practical, and easy to establish. It can provide benefits to both students and senior residents with clinical training responsibilities, and serve as an alternative method for performance evaluation of students in medical schools with limited resources.