Design Recommendations for Presenting Clinical Guidelines on Mobile Devices.

Some areas of clinical practice are still required to access and utilise clinical information that is inefficient or restrictive. Therefore, mobile device information delivery is becoming a key factor. However, recommendations on presenting clinical information on mobile devices are limited or not optimised for modern mobile design. Results from user-centred design studies inform the creation of a set of recommendations to assist in creating and delivering clinical guidelines on mobile devices.

Evaluating the clinical decision making of physiotherapists in the assessment and management of paediatric shoulder instability.

OBJECTIVE: To elicit what information and clinical decision-making processes physiotherapists use in the assessment and management of paediatric shoulder instability. DESIGN: Qualitative study. A modified nominal focus group technique, involving three clinical vignettes, was used to elicit physiotherapists' decision-making processes. SETTING: Physiotherapy departments from across four separate clinical sites. SUBJECTS: Twenty-five physiotherapists, (18F:7M), ranging from two to 29 years post qualification. OUTCOMES MEASURES: Thematic analysis. The initial round of coding was used to draw up a quantitative assessment of the diagnoses and map information used for clinical decision-making against the International Classification of Functioning (ICF) framework. RESULTS: The themes identified related to 'Differences in diagnoses, classification and diagnostic processes', 'Diagnostic process occurs over a long period of time', 'Management and prognosis are influenced by a number of factors' and 'Diagnostic test choices and prognosis influenced by factors beyond the patient injury'. CONCLUSION: Current methods of assessment are prone to bias and error and may lead to inconsistent or delayed provision of essential care. Further work is needed to develop methods of measurement and frameworks which can accurately identify relevant physiological mechanisms and personal factors associated with shoulder instability as a part of the assessment/diagnostic process.

Implications for the design of a Diagnostic Decision Support System (DDSS) to reduce time and cost to diagnosis in paediatric shoulder instability.

BACKGROUND: Currently the diagnosis of shoulder instability, particularly in children, is difficult and can take time. These diagnostic delays can lead to poorer outcome and long-term complications. A Diagnostic Decision Support System (DDSS) has the potential to reduce time to diagnosis and improve outcomes for patients. The aim of this study was to develop a concept map for a future DDSS in shoulder instability. METHODS: A modified nominal focus group technique, involving three clinical vignettes, was used to elicit physiotherapists decision-making processes. RESULTS: Twenty-five physiotherapists, (18F:7 M) from four separate clinical sites participated. The themes identified related to 'Variability in diagnostic processes and lack of standardised practice' and 'Knowledge and attitudes towards novel technologies for facilitating assessment and clinical decision making'. CONCLUSION: No common structured approach towards assessment and diagnosis was identified. Lack of knowledge, perceived usefulness, access and cost were identified as barriers to adoption of new technology. Based on the information elicited a conceptual design of a future DDSS has been proposed. Work to develop a systematic approach to assessment, classification and diagnosis is now proposed. Trial Registraty This was not a clinical trial and so no clinical trial registry is needed.

Follow #eHealth2011: Measuring the Role and Effectiveness of Online and Social Media in Increasing the Outreach of a Scientific Conference.

BACKGROUND: Social media promotion is increasingly adopted by organizers of industry and academic events; however, the success of social media strategies is rarely questioned or the real impact scientifically analyzed. OBJECTIVE: We propose a framework that defines and analyses the impact, outreach, and effectiveness of social media for event promotion and research dissemination to participants of a scientific event as well as to the virtual audience through the Web. METHODS: Online communication channels Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and a Liveblog were trialed and their impact measured on outreach during five phases of an eHealth conference: the setup, active and last-minute promotion phases before the conference, the actual event, and after the conference. RESULTS: Planned outreach through online channels and social media before and during the event reached an audience several magnitudes larger in size than would have been possible using traditional means. In the particular case of eHealth 2011, the outreach using traditional means would have been 74 attendees plus 23 extra as sold proceedings and the number of downloaded articles from the online proceedings (4107 until October 2013). The audience for the conference reached via online channels and social media was estimated at more than 5300 in total during the event. The role of Twitter for promotion before the event was complemented by an increased usage of the website and Facebook during the event followed by a sharp increase of views of posters on Flickr after the event. CONCLUSIONS: Although our case study is focused on a particular audience around eHealth 2011, our framework provides a template for redefining "audience" and outreach of events, merging traditional physical and virtual communities and providing an outline on how these could be successfully reached in clearly defined event phases.

Evaluating the online activity of users of the e-Bug web site.

Web server log analysis is being increasingly used to evaluate the user behaviour on healthcare resource web sites due to the detailed record of activity that they contain. This study aimed to use this information to evaluate the e-Bug web site, a healthcare resource that provides a range of educational resources about microbes, hand and respiratory hygiene, and antibiotics. This evaluation was conducted by analysing the web server logs of the e-Bug web site for the period January 2008 to November 2009, using a proprietary application named Sawmill. The e-Bug web site has had >900,000 page views generated from >88,000 users, with an increase in May 2009 during the swine flu epidemic and a further increase in September 2009 following the official launch of e-Bug. The majority of visitors were from the UK, but visits were recorded from 190 different countries. Word(®) document resources were downloaded >169,000 times, with the most popular being a swine flu factsheet. PowerPoint(®) document resources were downloaded >36,000 times, with the most popular relating to the 'chain of infection'. The majority of visitor referrals originated from search engines, with the most popular referral keywords being variations on the e-Bug name. The most common non-search engine referrals were from other healthcare resources and agencies. Use of the site has increased markedly since the official launch of e-Bug, with average page views of >200,000 per month, from a range of countries, illustrating the international demand for a teaching resource for microbes, hygiene and antibiotics.

eBug--teaching children hygiene principles using educational games.

Technology enhanced education has been recently established as a new approach for all stages of education. However, among these new IT media it is computer games playing the central role in delivering education in particular to children and teenagers, however, real world sound evaluation is often given little attention. The EU funded e-Bug project developed web games aimed at children to teach basic principles of prudent antibiotics use, hand and respiratory hygiene and aims to reinforces an awareness of microbes, hand and respiratory hygiene among junior and senior school children in 10 countries in Europe. An educational pack implemented in schools across Europe is complemented by Internet web games for two age groups teaching a set of learning objectives (LOs) using a fast and interactive platform game design for junior children and investigate detective games based on PBL principles for senior children. In this paper, we present the design of e-Bug junior and senior games and evaluation results.

A user-centred evaluation framework for the Sealife semantic web browsers.

BACKGROUND: Semantically-enriched browsing has enhanced the browsing experience by providing contextualized dynamically generated Web content, and quicker access to searched-for information. However, adoption of Semantic Web technologies is limited and user perception from the non-IT domain sceptical. Furthermore, little attention has been given to evaluating semantic browsers with real users to demonstrate the enhancements and obtain valuable feedback. The Sealife project investigates semantic browsing and its application to the life science domain. Sealife's main objective is to develop the notion of context-based information integration by extending three existing Semantic Web browsers (SWBs) to link the existing Web to the eScience infrastructure. METHODS: This paper describes a user-centred evaluation framework that was developed to evaluate the Sealife SWBs that elicited feedback on users' perceptions on ease of use and information findability. Three sources of data: i) web server logs; ii) user questionnaires; and iii) semi-structured interviews were analysed and comparisons made between each browser and a control system. RESULTS: It was found that the evaluation framework used successfully elicited users' perceptions of the three distinct SWBs. The results indicate that the browser with the most mature and polished interface was rated higher for usability, and semantic links were used by the users of all three browsers. CONCLUSION: Confirmation or contradiction of our original hypotheses with relation to SWBs is detailed along with observations of implementation issues.