Pivot Tables Research Articles

Preceptors, Interns, and Newly Registered Pharmacists' Perceptions of New Zealand Pharmacy Graduates' Preparedness to Practice

To determine the perceptions of pharmacy interns and newly registered pharmacists and preceptors regarding the preparedness of graduates to enter professional practice. A questionnaire was developed from the New Zealand Competence Standards for the Pharmacy Profession (pharmacist level), with additional questions on communication skills included. The instrument contained 16 items and was mailed to preceptors (n=141), interns (n=72), and newly-registered pharmacists (n=101). Microsoft Excel (pivot tables) was used to analyse the quantitative responses. The final question asked respondents to provide free-text comments about the questionnaire, graduates and the program and responses were analyzed quantitatively and thematically. The response rates were 54.6% (n = 77) for preceptors, 100% (n = 72) for interns and 45.5% (n = 46), for newly registered pharmacists. The majority of responses (87.6%; n=2,562) were in agreement that the degree had prepared graduates for practice. Overall, preceptor perceptions of graduates' preparedness for practice were less favorable than graduates' self-perceptions of their preparedness. Four themes were identified from the free-text comments: the need for improved skills, more professional attitudes, better English communication, and additional training in extemporaneous compounding. Feedback elicited from graduates and preceptors was helpful in identifying the strengths and weaknesses of a new bachelor of pharmacy (BPharm) program and proved useful in both the accreditation and curriculum revision processes.

Incorporating new technology improves outcomes for heart failure patients

Background: Appropriate care measure compliance and proper patient identification prevent heart failure readmissions. Methods: Proper identification of heart failure patients is needed to perform concurrent chart review and patient education. Electronic Medical Record implementation and use of pivot tables creates a workable list for the Heart Failure Inpatient Teaching Team. The list prioritizes patients based on the following criteria; heart failure diagnosis, BNP level, diuretics, and physician. Identification of patients provides opportunities to review charts and educate patients in real time. Weekly meetings, physician accountability, and sharing of appropriate care measure results led to the team’s success. Results: Patient’s being sent home with accurate discharge instructions improved from 84% to 95% in 2009. When comparing the lists of patients based on the new technology, and those being coded for heart failure, the new list is 98% accurate for the identification of patients. Conclusion: Incorporating new technology improves heart failure disease management programs through education and compliance with appropriate care measures.

Automatic Generation of Web Applications from Visual High-Level Functional Web Components

This paper presents high-level functional Web components such as frames, framesets, and pivot tables, which conventional development environments for Web applications have not yet supported. Frameset Web components provide several editing facilities such as adding, deleting, changing, and nesting of framesets to make it easier to develop Web applications that use frame facilities. Pivot table Web components sum up various kinds of data in two dimensions. They reduce the amount of code to be written by developers greatly. The paper also describes the system that implements these high-level functional components as visual Web components. This system assists designers in the development of Web applications based on the page-transition framework that models a Web application as a set of Web page transitions, and by using visual Web components, makes it easier to write processes to be executed when a Web page transfers to another.

Multidimensional content eXploration

Content Management Systems (CMS) store enterprise data such as insurance claims, insurance policies, legal documents, patent applications, or archival data like in the case of digital libraries. Search over content allows for information retrieval, but does not provide users with great insight into the data. A more analytical view is needed through analysis, aggregations, groupings, trends, pivot tables or charts, and so on. Multidimensional Content eXploration (MCX) is about effectively analyzing and exploring large amounts of content by combining keyword search with OLAP-style aggregation, navigation, and reporting. We focus on unstructured data or generally speaking documents or content with limited metadata, as it is typically encountered in CMS. We formally present how CMS content and metadata should be organized in a well-defined multidimensional structure, so that sophisticated queries can be expressed and evaluated. The CMS metadata provide traditional OLAP static dimensions that are combined with dynamic dimensions discovered from the analyzed keyword search result, as well as measures for document scores based on the link structure between the documents. In addition, we provide means for multidimensional content exploration through traditional OLAP rollupdrilldown operations on the static and dynamic dimensions, solutions for multi-cube analysis and dynamic navigation of the content. We present our prototype, called DBPubs, which stores research publications as documents that can be searched and -most importantly-- analyzed, and explored. Finally, we present experimental results of the efficiency and effectiveness of our approach.

Use of Radcube for Extraction of Finding Trends in a Large Radiology Practice

The purpose of our study was to demonstrate the use of Natural Language Processing (Leximer), along with Online Analytic Processing, (NLP-OLAP), for extraction of finding trends in a large radiology practice. Prior studies have validated the Natural Language Processing (NLP) program, Leximer for classifying unstructured radiology reports based on the presence of positive radiology findings (F (POS)) and negative radiology findings (F (NEG)). The F (POS) included new relevant radiology findings and any change in status from prior imaging. Electronic radiology reports from 1995-2002 and data from analysis of these reports with NLP-Leximer were saved in a data warehouse and exported to a multidimensional structure called the Radcube. Various relational queries on the data in the Radcube were performed using OLAP technique. Thus, NLP-OLAP was applied to determine trends of F (POS) in different radiology exams for different patient and examination attributes. Pivot tables were exported from NLP-OLAP interface to Microsoft Excel for statistical analysis. Radcube allowed rapid and comprehensive analysis of F (POS) and F (NEG) trends in a large radiology report database. Trends of F (POS) were extracted for different patient attributes such as age groups, gender, clinical indications, diseases with ICD codes, patient types (inpatient, ambulatory), imaging characteristics such as imaging modalities, referring physicians, radiology subspecialties, and body regions. Data analysis showed substantial differences between F (POS) rates for different imaging modalities ranging from 23.1% (mammography, 49,163/212,906) to 85.8% (nuclear medicine, 93,852/109,374; p < 0.0001). In conclusion, NLP-OLAP can help in analysis of yield of different radiology exams from a large radiology report database.

Technology Tips: Pivot Tables Can Turn Your Record Keeping Around

Many educators may find themselves in a situation similar to one I experienced in spring 2006. I was teaching an instructional technology course for high school mathematics and science teachers who had a wide variety of experiences in using technology. Some were familiar with graphing calculators, others with spreadsheets. Some had used PowerPoint, some had experience creating Web pages, and some used a computer only for e-mail and word processing. To meet all these teachers' needs and help them develop new skills and understanding while building on their prior experiences, I felt the need to differentiate my assessments. The issue, however, was how to do what is best for each student without letting the paperwork become overwhelming. Fortunately, I had spent a lot of time learning how to use spreadsheets. Thus, I was able to find a way to minimize the time spent on my record keeping while still obtaining practical information that guided my instructional design and aided me in meeting each student's individual needs. This miracle was facilitated by a little-known tool that is standard in Microsoft Excel: the pivot table.

In vitro low-speed side collisions cause injury to the lower cervical spine but do not damage alar ligaments.

Whether injuries to the alar ligaments could be responsible for complaints of patients having whiplash injury in the upper cervical spine is still controversially discussed. It is known that these ligaments protect the upper cervical spine against excessive lateral bending and axial rotation movements. The objective of the present in vitro study was therefore to examine whether the alar ligaments or any other structures of the cervical spine are damaged in side collisions. In a specially designed acceleration apparatus, six human osteoligamentous cervical spine specimens were subjected to incremental 90 degrees side collisions from the right (1 g, 2 g, 3 g, etc.) until structural failure occurred. A damped pivot table accounted for the passive movements of the trunk during collision, and a dummy head (4.5 kg) ensured almost physiological loading of the specimens. For quantification of functional injuries, the three-dimensional flexibility of the specimens was tested in a spine tester before and after each acceleration. In all six specimens, structural failure always occurred in the lower cervical spine and always affected the facet joint capsules and the intervertebral discs. In four specimens, this damage occurred during the 2 g collision, while in the other two it occurred during the 3 g and 4 g collision, respectively. The flexibility mainly increased in the lower cervical spine (especially in lateral bending to both sides) and, to a minor extent, in axial rotation. In vitro low-speed side collisions caused functional and structural injury to discoligamentous structures of the lower cervical spine, but did not damage the alar ligaments. Since the effects of muscle forces were not taken into account, the present in vitro study reflects a worst-case scenario. Injury thresholds should therefore not be transferred to reality.

Knowledge Compass: Opening Windows, Punching Holes in Stovepipes, Forming Communities, Connecting People to People

Knowledge Compass: Opening Windows, Punching Holes in Stovepipes, Forming Communities, Connecting People to People

Effect of Variations in Morphological Data on Calculated Mechanical Energy Cost in Equine Gait

During transport, horses are subjected to acceleration in three dimensions, rapid braking, turning, noise, and other stressors. The animal's ability to make postural corrections may be insufficient to prevent injury or distress, and so knowledge of the compensatory motion patterns of the horse in the trailer is a necessary precondition for smart design of transport systems. A custom two-horse trailer was built for this project. It had a horse compartment 1.85 m wide by 3.95 m long, with adjustable bulkheads and a centre divider separating the horses. The floor was instrumented with 24 shearbeam load cells to measure the vertical load imposed by each horse and its horizontal motion. Two horses were driven on a 56 km trip on both rural and urban roads. Load data were collected at 100 Hz for the 58-minute trip and were filtered with a cut-off frequency of 5 Hz using a Butterworth low-pass filter and then vertical acceleration computed. A pivot table counted sign reversals in the vertical acceleration signal, and vertical displacement was calculated using the fundamental frequency of the resulting acceleration data. Total vertical motion was calculated by making the negative displacements absolute and summing these with the positive displacements, and vertical work done was calculated by multiplying the force by the displacement measures. Horizontal motion was calculated by averaging the transverse and cranio-caudal position of the centre of pressure every second and adding the resultant displacements. Absolute vertical displacement of the two horses was 69.55 m and 97.56 m. In addition to the work done by standing, vertical work done in response to vibration was 322.4 kJ and 443.2 kJ. Horizontal excursion was 227.1 m and 243.0 m. This is a first effort to quantify the additional workload imposed on animals during transport, which will aid in the design of smart transport vehicles that will minimize the stress to horses.

Polaris: a system for query, analysis, and visualization of multidimensional relational databases

In the last several years, large multidimensional databases have become common in a variety of applications, such as data warehousing and scientific computing. Analysis and exploration tasks place significant demands on the interfaces to these databases. Because of the size of the data sets, dense graphical representations are more effective for exploration than spreadsheets and charts. Furthermore, because of the exploratory nature of the analysis, it must be possible for the analysts to change visualizations rapidly as they pursue a cycle involving first hypothesis and then experimentation. In this paper, we present Polaris, an interface for exploring large multidimensional databases that extends the well-known pivot table interface. The novel features of Polaris include an interface for constructing visual specifications of table-based graphical displays and the ability to generate a precise set of relational queries from the visual specifications. The visual specifications can be rapidly and incrementally developed, giving the analyst visual feedback as he constructs complex queries and visualizations.

Personal View

<h3>Background</h3> The District Health Information System 2 (DHIS2) is a tool for collection, validation, analysis and presentation of both individual (tracker) and aggregated data tailored to integrated health information management activities. DHIS2, developed by the Health Information Systems Programme (HISP) in collaboration with University of Oslo, is a modular web-based software package built with open source Java frameworks. Visceral leishmaniasis (VL) is not captured in the DHIS2 regional database, and therefore coming up with the modalities of aggregating available data from clinical trials and general patient records into the DHIS2 national database is crucial for surveillance. <h3>Methods</h3> DHIS2 runs on Tomcat Server and PostgreSQL. We set up the VL surveillance program with different stages: enrolment and demographics, initial treatment outcome and follow-up visits. In this system, a patient is enrolled into the system and data is collected in individual data elements; data Indicators are built to help aggregate the data and thereafter used for report generation. It is programmed to visualise data and display reports in the system dashboard which can then be used to present data. <h3>Results</h3> Piloting DHIS2 has enabled us to set up a system that uses the set indicators programmed to aggregate data, thus able to produce reports on the data and the user is also able to select the type of report in the form of pivot tables, charts and graphs and also in GIS mapped data. <h3>Conclusions</h3> DHIS2 system is an open source that can be customised and expanded to capture detailed individual surveillance data and shared in reports. This data is useful for tracking neglected tropical diseases such as VL. Data can be handled in the following modalities: i) use of off-line data synchronisation. ii) remote data collection using mobile devices iii) data aggregation and organisation iv) data visualisation and presentation through charts, graphs and pivot tables.