Need For Technological Support Research Articles

Implementation of Differentiated Instruction in a Maldivian Primary School

This study aimed to gather insights from primary teachers in Fuvahmulah City, Maldives regarding the challenges they encountered while implementing differentiated instruction (DI) in their classrooms. Qualitative research methodology was employed, with data collection primarily conducted through face-to-face interviews using Zoom, a teleconferencing application. Purposive sampling was utilised to select a total of five participants from one primary school who had extensive teaching experience and had experience differentiating their instructions. The collected data was thematically analysed to extract meaningful insights for discussion. The research findings reveal three challenges faced by the teachers, namely (i) resources and support, (ii) classroom and class structures, and (iii) teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge. This study extends the current understanding to include the need for technological support and context-based pedagogical knowledge on DI for teachers to effectively differentiate their instructions.

Modernizing the Kenyan Electoral System through Polkadot Blockchain Network

The 2007/8 post-election violence in Kenya brought the nascent Kenyan democracy to the brink of collapse. It anachronistically demonstrated that old ways of managing elections were being antiquated by new realities, such as a growing population, the need for technological support, and the immediacy of a supportive electoral legal regime. A decade and a half after the posthumous murder of Kenyans during the 2007 disputed election, Kenya is leapfrogging and sauntering to establish a vibrant democracy, albeit with specific challenges. Firstly, the presidential elections have been disputed thrice after the promulgation of the constitution in 2010. And secondly, the allegation of voter fraud against the electoral body is imminent. Further, public trust in the electoral body is low and has been so since the advent of pluralism politics in 1991. Besides, the electoral body gets overwhelmed by the number of elections they manage during the general elections, and technological failures have been a significant impediment. Ostensibly, these challenges compound an existing problem of mistrust among political players and gather moss, especially during the period between the end of the voting exercise and the announcement of presidential results by the electoral body. Erstwhile, such a fragile situation manifested and threatened public safety after the 2013, 2017, and 2022 general elections. However, despite scepticism, the finality of the supreme court process as an arbitrator of the disputed presidential elections has played a role in quelling violence and settling such matters. In this article, the author argues that the maturation of digital democracies and the incorporation of blockchain technologies can modernize grassroots elections and resolve allegations of voter fraud.

Telemedicine in Neurology: Lessons Learned During the COVID-19 Pandemic (P6-7.002)

<h3>Objective:</h3> Describe barriers and facilitators to telemedicine in neurology, and to examine the impact of telemedicine on neurologists’ job satisfaction. <h3>Background:</h3> Telemedicine facilitates patients access to specialized care and lowers patients physical and financial burden of traveling to appointments. But telemedicine is underutilized in neurology. Thus, little is known about neurologists’ experiences with telemedicine. Increased patients’ access via telemedicine may increase workload on neurologists, leading to increased stress and burnout. Exploring neurologists’ experiences with telemedicine will inform optimizing telemedicine in neurology. <h3>Design/Methods:</h3> A cross sectional study via a survey examined telemedicine related technological difficulties, need for technological support (IT), administrative support, neurologists’ motivation for work, change in work-life balance, and issues to improve telemedicine in neurology. Descriptive statistics were reported as percentages. <h3>Results:</h3> 110 neurologists participated. Specialties were stroke (21.82%), epilepsy (19.09%), movement disorders (14.55%), and headache (14.55%). (50.91%) of neurologists encounter technological issues in 1%–20% of telemedicine visits. And 94.55% of neurologists rated patient-related technological issues in setting up telemedicine visit is the most common difficulty encountered. Furthermore, 57.27% of neurologists required IT support in 1%–20% of telemedicine visits. 39.09% of neurologists rated improving administrative support, 37. 27% rated integration of video-telephone calls in EMR and 27.27% of neurologists rated facilitating ordering tests as the most important issues in telemedicine in neurology. On motivation for work, 48.18% of neurologists reported no change in their motivation, 30.91% of neurologists reported somewhat decreased motivation, and only 10.00% reported somewhat increased motivation. On work-life balance, 30.00% of neurologists stated it remained the same, 26.36% stated it somewhat decreased and 23.64% stated somewhat improved work-life balance. <h3>Conclusions:</h3> Technological difficulties in telemedicine are common. Improving administrative support and integration of virtual platforms in EMR are potential areas to optimize telemedicine visits. More studies are needed to examine the impact of telemedicine on neurologists’ burnout. <b>Disclosure:</b> Dr. Al-Faraj has nothing to disclose. Mr. Mohtar has nothing to disclose. Mr. Chen has received personal compensation in the range of $5,000-$9,999 for serving as a Consultant for ParaDocs Health. Mr. Jha has received personal compensation in the range of $5,000-$9,999 for serving as a Consultant for ParaDocs Health. Miss LeClair has received research support from The National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) Interdisciplinary Training Grant for Biostatisticians (T32 GM74905).

Experience, facilitators, and barriers to the implementation of a multicomponent programme in older people living in the community, +AGIL Barcelona: A qualitative study.

The +AGIL Barcelona programme is a multicomponent care intervention for frail older adults (FOAs) living in the community. To improve the programme, it is essential to investigate the experience of all participants. Our objective was to explore the perspective of FOA and professionals about the barriers, facilitators, and improvement elements of the development of the +AGIL Barcelona programme. Qualitative descriptive approach. Were included FOA and professionals who participated in the +AGIL Barcelona programme. Three focus groups and four interviews were conducted. These were analyzed following the qualitative method of content analysis. The criteria of scientific rigor of credibility, dependence, and transferability were ensured throughout the study. Three themes and seven sub-themes were developed: facilitators (positive experience and perceived benefits), barriers (self-perceived health status, digital divide, and continuity of the programme at home), and improvements elements (programme continuity and adaptation of technology). All the participants felt satisfied, highlighting aspects such as interpersonal relationships and social contact, face-to-face sessions guided by a physiotherapist, and the functional improvement achieved. Some of the difficulties were the self-perception of frailty, the need for technological support, and continuing the exercise programme at home. The FOA who participated in the +AGIL Barcelona programme perceived direct benefits for their health and physical condition due to the development of self-confidence by being able to perform physical exercise despite their baseline condition, and the professionals experienced an improvement in the quality of care due to work in a multidisciplinary team.

Co-designing opportunities for Human-Centred Machine Learning in supporting Type 1 diabetes decision-making

Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) self-management requires hundreds of daily decisions. Diabetes technologies that use machine learning have significant potential to simplify this process and provide better decision support, but often rely on cumbersome data logging and cognitively demanding reflection on collected data. We set out to use co-design to identify opportunities for machine learning to support diabetes self-management in everyday settings. However, over nine months of interviews and design workshops with 15 people with T1D, we had to re-assess our assumptions about user needs. Our participants reported confidence in their personal knowledge and rejected machine learning based decision support when coping with routine situations, but highlighted the need for technological support in the context of unfamiliar or unexpected situations (holidays, illness, etc.). However, these are the situations where prior data are often lacking and drawing data-driven conclusions is challenging. Reflecting this challenge, we provide suggestions on how machine learning and other artificial intelligence approaches, e.g., expert systems, could enable decision-making support in both routine and unexpected situations.

Prediksi Penyebaran Virus COVID-19 Dari Hasil PCR Menggunakan Metode Naïve Bayes

The Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 that occurred in Indonesia is a complex health problem and requires fast handling and collaborative solutions from various disciplines. Covid-19 patients who receive treatment in hospitals have different conditions and severity. This affects the treatment actions that will be carried out by medical officers. The large number of patients and the lack of medical personnel have resulted in the need for technological support to help classify patient status based on their condition so that treatment is concentrated on patients who are very critical and require rapid treatment. The number of employees at the Jambi District Attorney's Office were exposed to the Covid-19 virus in particular, and it is necessary to predict PCR results. This study applies a prediction technique from the data mining discipline section to classify the status of employees at the Jambi District Attorney's Office who are confirmed to be Covid-19. Classifiers using the Naive Bayes method were applied to build a model based on a dataset of patients infected with Covid-19. The Covid-19 PCR result dataset was obtained from the Jambi District Attorney and was applied using RapidMiner. The model built can predict the confirmed status of Covid-19 based on age, gender, health condition, and vaccinations. The results of this study indicate that the classification of the Naive Bayes method has a high level of accuracy in classifying the confirmed status of Covid-19, namely 97%.

Collaborative Decision-Making: Concepts and Supporting Information and Communication Technology Tools and Systems

Collaboration means in substance that several entities such as humans, computers, robots, enterprises and so on jointly perform a certain task instead of working individually so that a better result could be obtained. Decision-making is a specific form of activity, commonly carried out by human agents, which is meant to eventually select a certain course of action which is expected to result in attaining a desired result. The chapter is meant to present a concise and balanced view of the basic concepts and main classes of supporting information and communication tools and systems regarding decision-making processes carried out by several collaborating human agents called participants. The reasons for collaboration are briefly explained followed by an exposure of collaboration application in the multi-participant decision-making settings. Having presented the classification of decision problems and decision-making units, the main phases of a specific multi-participant form of Herbert Simon’s decision process model are described followed by the presentation of two main forms of close and soft collaboration, namely consensus building and crowdsourcing, respectively. The need for technology support offered to collaborating participants is justified and two main classes of decision supporting systems, namely Decision support systems and the ever more largely used platforms, are addressed. A practical example of an open ended and evolving platform is presented. Open questions about the further role the information and communication tools in multi-participant decision-making processes are eventually formulated from two perspectives, digital humanism and dataism, respectively.

Legal techniques and legal technology: the complex nature of the interaction

The article examines the nature of the interaction of legal technology and legal technology, analyzes international experience on the regulation of the practical application of this toolkit. Legal technology is a special branch of scientific knowledge, with the help of which transformations in law are carried out and it is possible to plan processes for achieving legal prospects in order to implement the most effective and systematic legal practice. The authors theoretically substantiate the process-instrumental nature of legal activity and show that at each stage, stage, certain legal and technical resources are consistently applied. It is possible to deliberately influence legal validity if one chooses not only the type of legal activity, specific procedural and procedural actions, but also correctly selected resources of legal technology. The need for technological support is especially acute when it is necessary to influence complex legal entities in order to optimize management decisions and reduce legal risks from technical and legal and legal technological errors. The authors conclude that one of the significant reasons for the vulnerability of legal activity is the unresolved issue of normative regulation of the requirements of legal technology and the lack of synchronization between legal technology and technology. In this regard, the phenomena associated with the growth of defects in law, a decrease in the technical and legal quality of legislation and the growth of legal anomalies are exacerbated. A significant strategic task is the active interaction of legal policy and legal technology, which will provide the prerequisites for moving to a new level of legal development design. In this aspect, legal technology allows you to implement strategic tasks, create the necessary legal reality. Promising authors see the use of modern information technologies in the legal sphere, which will positively affect the growth of the quality of the legal life of society, the protection of rights and freedoms, ensuring a stable law and order and national security of Russia.

Virtual CARE for Caregivers of PWD: Adapting to the New Normal

Caregivers of persons with dementia (PWD) often experience increases in depression, anxiety, and burden as the disease progresses. In fact, as the PWD’s neuropsychiatric symptoms increase and independence in ADLS decrease, caregivers psychological and physical health outcomes worsen. The literature suggests that caregiver interventions that teach specific skills are more beneficial than psychoeducational interventions, particularly regarding the amelioration of the psychological impacts of informal caregiving. However, because of caregiving demands, caregiver’s own physical limitations, and competing obligations, it can be difficult to attend caregiver support or education programs outside the home. With the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, arranging such interventions became more complex, Therefore, we report on preliminary qualitative outcomes of a study investigating the feasibility and acceptability of converting an in-person, group dementia caregiver education intervention, CARE, to a telehealth platform. We report the findings of two objectives: 1) lessons learned when attempting to convert an in-person group intervention to telehealth and 2) experience and perceived benefit of attending a virtual group from the perspective of the participants of our first two groups. Briefly, our findings demonstrate the strong need for technological support. Participants report positive experience regarding the convenience of attending the group from their home, the benefits of the assigned exercises, and the support they found from other group members. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many to embrace the virtual option as they adapt to a new normal. There are undoubtedly hurdles to overcome, but there are also advantages to be leveraged.

Precision Technologies to Address Dairy Cattle Welfare: Focus on Lameness, Mastitis and Body Condition.

Simple SummaryThe welfare of farm animals is a growing concern in the EU and across the world. In milk production, there is a strong need to assess the welfare of dairy cows. One of the most sound assessment initiatives has been practiced using protocols developed by the Welfare Quality project. These protocols mainly support the assessment of cow welfare with animal-based indicators. However, evaluating these indicators is time-consuming and expensive, so using precision livestock farming (PLF) solutions is a way forward and is becoming a reality in the dairy industry. This review presents advances in PLF solutions, particularly in the last five years, and for assessing the animal-based indicators of lameness, mastitis, and body condition in dairy cattle farming.Specific animal-based indicators that can be used to predict animal welfare have been the core of protocols for assessing the welfare of farm animals, such as those produced by the Welfare Quality project. At the same time, the contribution of technological tools for the accurate and real-time assessment of farm animal welfare is also evident. The solutions based on technological tools fit into the precision livestock farming (PLF) concept, which has improved productivity, economic sustainability, and animal welfare in dairy farms. PLF has been adopted recently; nevertheless, the need for technological support on farms is getting more and more attention and has translated into significant scientific contributions in various fields of the dairy industry, but with an emphasis on the health and welfare of the cows. This review aims to present the recent advances of PLF in dairy cow welfare, particularly in the assessment of lameness, mastitis, and body condition, which are among the most relevant animal-based indications for the welfare of cows. Finally, a discussion is presented on the possibility of integrating the information obtained by PLF into a welfare assessment framework.

A Pilot Program for Training Older Adults to use Telemedicine for Outpatient Geriatric Psychiatry

<h3>Introduction</h3> Digital literacy presents to be a potential barrier to care for patients accessing telehealth services. At the Technology and Aging Lab at McLean Hospital, we identified a need for technology support within the Geriatric Psychiatry division based on a survey disseminated to clinicians during the COVID-19 pandemic. <h3>Methods</h3> In response to this need, research assistants provided technology support to patients with a specialized workflow. When patients were referred to this team, research assistants completed training sessions prior to the next scheduled virtual appointment and provided instructional guides as personalized manuals on the installation and usage of the videoconferencing platform. <h3>Results</h3> The technology support team successfully trained 55% (n=26) of patients to use Zoom unassisted and trained 17% (n=8) of patients successfully after two to four support calls. On average, the average tech support call lasted 53 minutes across all devices. Among the patients that were trained, laptops were used most frequently (n=18), followed by iPhones (n=12) then iPads (n=10). Notably, all patients who had identified neurocognitive disorders were successfully trained. Training patients using computers required more time than training those with smartphones, indicating that technology proficiency is greater in older outpatients with smartphones than those with computers. <h3>Conclusion</h3> Our study shows that providing personalized technology support allows older adult outpatients to successfully access telepsychiatry services. Our findings indicate that increased use of telepsychiatry within geriatric settings compels enhanced support for older patients with digital literacy needs. <h3>Funding</h3> This work was supported in part by a philanthropic grant by the Digital Federal Credit Union.

Нова система досліджень і розробок сухопутних військ США

Потреба технологічного забезпечення модернізації сухопутних військ США призвела до радикального перегляду у 2018 – 2019 роках існуючої у цьому виді військ системи досліджень і розробок

Increasing physical activity in cancer survivors using eHealth: A focus group study.

107 Background: Physical activity (PA) is beneficial in reducing disease and treatment related side‐effects of cancer. However, insufficient PA levels are common among cancer survivors. eHealth may offer an innovative delivery platform to support cancer survivors to increase PA. Few qualitative studies have explored the views of cancer survivors towards eHealth based PA interventions. Our aim was to use cancer survivors’ input to inform the design of a feasibility study of eHealth for PA promotion. Methods: A ten-item scoping questionnaire-based cross-sectional study was administered to 102 cancer survivors. It evaluated their knowledge of PA guidelines, their access to smartphones and interest in eHealth interventions designed to increase PA levels. Questions were refined and evaluated in a follow-up focus group study (7 groups, n=23). Focus groups were audio recorded and transcribed. Transcripts were coded using NVivo software and themes identified by thematic content analysis. Results: In the questionnaire study, only 17.6% (n=18) of participants correctly identified PA guidelines. Sixty-two (60.8%) participants reported having access to a smartphone. Interest in participating in an eHealth intervention was expressed by 56.9% of all participants (n=58) and by 75.8% (n=47) of those with access to a smartphone. Emergent themes from the focus groups included: the physical barriers to PA, the need for PA goals, the importance of both information from healthcare professionals about PA and of a support network (e.g. peer support), the need for technological support and a motivation to improve general health. Conclusions: Very few cancer survivors were aware of the correct PA guidelines. However, over half of our sample was interested in participating in an eHealth intervention for PA, demonstrating that the cancer survivor population is responsive to a PA program delivered using technology. The focus groups have given us insights about the key elements of an effective PA intervention for cancer survivors using eHealth. We are conducting a feasibility study (The IMPETUS study; NCT03036436) of an eHealth intervention targeting PA in cancer survivors; its design was informed by those insights.

The Role of Minimally Invasive Gynecologic Surgery in Sub Saharan Africa

Minimally invasive gynecologic surgery (MIGS) is now firmly established in developed countries where there has been a trend away from traditional open surgery towards laparoscopy given proven benefits of faster recovery time and better cosmesis for patients. However, this same trend has not been observed in regions like sub Saharan Africa (SSA) where resources are limited. Lack of human and material resources, need for technological support, and challenges with training have been postulated as major limitations for wide spread introduction and expansion of MIGS in SSA. Nonetheless, a few institutions in sub Saharan Africa have been able to surmount these challenges to develop MIGS in SSA. This paper reviews the current state of minimally invasive surgery in sub Saharan Africa. We review the role and benefits of expanding minimally invasive surgery in sub Saharan Africa with a focus on management of gynecologic conditions. Finally, we review the challenges associated with MIGS in SSA and provide recommendations on the way forward. There are several published studies on the successful development of minimally invasive surgery in sub -Saharan Africa with similar benefits of shorter hospital stay, quicker recovery, and better cosmesis for patients. These studies also report the challenges with human and material resources and training. There is a large role and need for expansion of minimally invasive surgery in sub Saharan Africa. The challenges of lack of resources, personnel, and training can be surmountable through ingenuity, modeling based on experiences from other low to middle income countries and commitment to the advancement of MIGS for the benefit of women’s health globally.

Explaining Sophistication in Collaborative Technology Use: A Context—Technology Fit Perspective

Organizations are increasingly attempting to leverage their IT infrastructures and gain better benefits from them. Collaborative technology is one such IT-based infrastructural application which enables organizations to increase operational efficiencies and effectiveness of organizational decision making. It is important to identify potential challenges and barriers to collaborative technology adoption and use and therefore create means and mechanisms for anticipating challenges, facing them and removing barriers. Motivated by differences in extent of use of collaborative technology by groups in organizations, this paper uses exploratory cases to analyse IT-supported collaborative decision task situations to understand the factors influencing sophistication of use of collaborative technology. Preliminary qualitative analysis suggests that level of sophistication is fit between three constructs including users’ drive to use technology, the need for technology support and the group’s cultural orientation towards collaboration. Potential group contexts are discussed using the cases as samples. Further development of an integrative framework to understand use of collaborative technology is essential for suggesting more precise and fundamental prescriptive mechanisms.