1,479 research outputs found
Automated Essay Writing: An AIED Opinion
No full textThis opinion piece emerged from research for the book, Story Machines: How Computers Have Become Creative Writers, by Mike Sharples and Rafael Pérez y Pérez, published by Routledge. While thinking of ways to promote the book, I realised that students could employ AI story generators to write essays. That led me to research automated essay writing, write a Twitter thread that has garnered 43,000 engagements, and author a blog article (Sharples, 2022). The current piece is a revised and expanded version of that article
Multi-state Modeling of thr Hospitalizations Process of Patients affected by Chronic Heart Failure
No full textIn chronic diseases like Heart Failure (HF), often more than one type of event plays a role and more than one outcome has to be considered for a proper modeling of the disease progression.
Accounting jointly for outcomes and events provides more detailed information on the disease-control process, and allows for a more precise understanding of the prognosis of patients, enabling people in charge of healthcare planning to assess and predict more accurately the impact and the costs of the
disease of interest. We propose the use of two different multi-state models for the joint analysis of outcomes and events related to HF-patients, whose data come from the administrative databank of an Italian regional district (Lombardia). The aim is to point out a flexible approach that is able to catch important features of disease progression, such as multiple ordered events and distinction between the clinical events of death and hospitalizations, accommodating for competing risks
Multi-state modelling of repeated hospitalisation and death in patients with heart failure: The use of large administrative databases in clinical epidemiology.
No full textIn chronic diseases like heart failure (HF), the disease course and associated clinical event histories for the patient population vary widely. To improve understanding of the prognosis of patients and enable health care providers to assess and manage resources, we wish to jointly model disease progression, mortality and their relation with patient characteristics. We show how episodes of hospitalisation for disease-related events, obtained from administrative data, can be used as a surrogate for disease status. We propose flexible multi-state models for serial hospital admissions and death in HF patients, that are able to accommodate important features of disease progression, such as multiple ordered events and competing risks. Fully parametric and semi-parametric semi-Markov models are implemented using freely available software in R. The models were applied to a dataset from the administrative data bank of the Lombardia region in Northern Italy, which included 15,298 patients who had a first hospitalisation ending in 2006 and 4 years of follow-up thereafter. This provided estimates of the associations of age and gender with rates of hospital admission and length of stay in hospital, and estimates of the expected total time spent in hospital over five years. For example, older patients and men were readmitted more frequently, though the total time in hospital was roughly constant with age. We also discuss the relative merits of parametric and semi-parametric multi-state models, and model assessment and comparison
Designing a semantic sketchbook to create opportunities for serendipity
No full textSerendipity is where unexpected circumstances and an insightful 'aha' moment result in a valuable outcome. We discuss how interactive systems can support the process of serendipity: from making new connections, to projecting and exploiting their potential value. We focus in particular on how technology can support reflection -- which is an important part of the serendipity process. By considering findings from a set of empirical studies and a set of design principles aimed at encouraging reflection, we present an early stage digital 'Semantic Sketchbook' which was designed with the aim of supporting reflection (as well as other aspects of the process of serendipity). We discuss how our 'Semantic Sketchbook' has the potential to create opportunities for serendipity and the next steps we intend to take in developing it and evaluating its success
Why the inflation in legislation on women’s bodies
No full textThis dissertation argues that historical patriarchal theories have crept into the world’s legal systems to date, and as a result this has led to inflation in legislation upon women’s bodies. The author seeks to prove that patriarchal theories have become part of our social and legal institutions to date, resulting in unnecessary controls placed upon women’s bodies to the point that, women’s attempt to assert autonomy over their own bodies have been criminalised or placed under heavy civil penalties. The author suggests that this has been particularly so because, women have been relegated to the private sphere and as such, are underrepresented within the legislature, political arenas, the process passing legislation and the legal profession in general. As well as analysing the structure of the various social, legal and political institutions as they relate to the causes of inflation in legislation upon women’s bodies, the author investigates the medicalisation of women’s bodies which has led to over legislation with regards to: legislation and women’s attire, Indecent exposure and the breast, the treatment of military women with regards to their bodily autonomy and pregnancy
Contemporary roles of registries in clinical cardiology: When do we need randomized trials?
No full textClinical registries are established as tools for auditing clinical standards and benchmarking quality improvement initiatives. They also have an emerging role (as electronic health records) in cardiovascular research and, in particular, the conduct of RCTs. While the RCT is accepted as the most robust experimental design, observational data from clinical registries has become increasingly valuable for RCTs. Data from clinical registries may be used to augment results from RCTs, identify patients for recruitment and as an alternative when randomization is not practically possible or ethically desirable. Here the authors appraise the advantages and disadvantages of both methodologies, with the aim of clarifying when their joint use may be successful
A scheme for review, annotation and correction of specifications
No full textIn this paper we outline a scheme for marking suggested edits and
annotations on specifications during the process of review and correction.
The scheme is based on a formal model of negotiation and typographic
marking methods used in conventional document preparation. The
scheme permits precise and interpretable marking and annotation of
complex structured documents which use many different notations. It
supports and guides the process of correction. Some examples and a
sample visual notation are given. Tool support for using this scheme is
discussed
The magic door : smart interactions between students and lecturers using contactless technologies
No full textIn this paper we describe an information system designed to simplify the interactions which occur frequently between students and lecturers within a Higher Education environment. The concept focuses on utilizing both objects in the physical world and online services to create new experiences to support flexible learning for educational settings. With the opportunities offered by Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) / Near Field Communication (NFC) technologies, tags can be used to identify and perform interactions between users. The system allows for the timetabling of meetings, delivery of messages and course announcements between the students and lecturers. The objective is to eliminate the problems which are encountered when arranging appointments or convening with students. By placing the responsibility of booking appointments in the hands of students using their mobile devices; the system aims to provide an interactive and ubiquitous support technology for both student and faculty members
Evaluating the effect of healthcare providers on the clinical path of heart failure patients through a semi-Markov, multi-state model
No full textBackground: Investigating similarities and differences among healthcare providers, on the basis of patient healthcare experience, is of interest for policy making. Availability of high quality, routine health databases allows a more detailed analysis of performance across multiple outcomes, but requires appropriate statistical methodology. Methods: Motivated by analysis of a clinical administrative database of 42,871 Heart Failure patients, we develop a semi-Markov, illness-death, multi-state model of repeated admissions to hospital, subsequent discharge and death. Transition times between these health states each have a flexible baseline hazard, with proportional hazards for patient characteristics (case-mix adjustment) and a discrete distribution for frailty terms representing clusters of providers. Models were estimated using an Expectation-Maximization algorithm and the number of clusters was based on the Bayesian Information Criterion. Results: We are able to identify clusters of providers for each transition, via the inclusion of a nonparametric discrete frailty. Specifically, we detect 5 latent populations (clusters of providers) for the discharge transition, 3 for the in-hospital to death transition and 4 for the readmission transition. Out of hospital death rates are similar across all providers in this dataset. Adjusting for case-mix, we could detect those providers that show extreme behaviour patterns across different transitions (readmission, discharge and death). Conclusions: The proposed statistical method incorporates both multiple time-to-event outcomes and identification of clusters of providers with extreme behaviour simultaneously. In this way, the whole patient pathway can be considered, which should help healthcare managers to make a more comprehensive assessment of performance
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