System Activation Time Research Articles

Questions of informal caregivers of children regarding the postoperative period of cochlear implant.

To identify the main questions of informal caregivers of children with hearing impairments on the postoperative care of cochlear implant. Cross-sectional study developed in a public and tertiary hospital of the state of São Paulo, Brazil. The sample consisted of 48 informal caregivers who were monitoring children subjected to cochlear implant. Data collection took place during the preoperative nursing consultation, by structured interview, between September 2016 and July 2017. The questions identified were categorized by similarity. The questions were related to: rest, dressing, feeding, length of stay, system activation time, infection, removal of stitches, bleeding, medicines, immediate sound stimulation, and pain. The prevalent questions were about rest, dressing, and feeding, and identifying them made it possible to plan and implement a nursing care aimed at the caregiver needs, as well as prepare them for care maintenance after hospital discharge.

MStroke: “Mobile Stroke”—Improving Acute Stroke Care with Smartphone Technology

This study aimed to evaluate the effect of method and time of system activation on clinical metrics in cases utilizing the Stop Stroke (Pulsara, Inc.) mobile acute stroke care coordination application. A retrospective cohort analysis of stroke codes at 12 medical centers using Stop Stroke from March 2013 to May 2016 was performed. Comparison of metrics (door-to-needle time [DTN] and door-to-CT time [DTC], and rate of DTN ≤ 60 minutes [goal DTN]) was performed between subgroups based on method (emergency medical service [EMS] versus emergency department [ED]) and time of activation. Effects were adjusted for confounders (age, sex, National Institutes of Health Stroke Scale [NIHSS] score) using multiple linear and logistic regression. The final dataset included 2589 cases. Cases activated by EMS were more severe (median NIHSS score 8 versus 4, P < .0001) and more likely to receive recombinant tissue plasminogen activator (20% versus 12%, P < .0001) than those with ED activation. After adjustment, cases with EMS activation had shorter DTC (6.1 minutes shorter, 95% CI [-10.3, -2]) and DTN (12.8 minutes shorter, 95% CI [-21, -4.6]) and were more likely to meet goal DTN (OR 1.83, 95% CI [1.1, 3]). Cases between 1200 and 1800 had longer DTC (7.7 minutes longer, 95% CI [2.4, 13]) and DTN (21.1 minutes longer, 95% CI [9.3, 33]), and reduced rate of goal DTN (OR .3, 95% CI [.15, .61]) compared to those between 0000 and 0600. Incorporating real-time prehospital data obtained via smartphone technology provides unique insight into acute stroke codes. Activation of mobile electronic stroke coordination in the field appears to promote a more expedited and successful care process.

Cross-layer optimization for wireless mesh networks with smart antennas

A cross-layer optimization framework for wireless mesh networks is presented where at each node, various smart antenna techniques such as beam-forming, spatial division multiple access and spatial division multiplexing are employed. These techniques provide interference suppression, capability for simultaneous communication with several nodes and transmission with higher data rates, respectively, through multiple antennas. By integrating different combinations of the multi-antenna techniques in physical layer with various constraints from MAC and network layers, three Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) models are presented to minimize the system activation time. Since these optimization problems are complex combinatorial, the optimal solution is approached by a Column Generation decomposition method. The numerical results for different network scenarios with various node densities, number of antennas, transmission ranges and number of sessions are provided. It is shown that the resulted directive, multiple access and multiplexing gains combined with scheduling, effectively increase both the spectrum spatial reuse and the capacity of the links and therefore, enhance the achievable system throughput. Our cross-layer approach is also extended to consider heterogeneous networks and we present a multi-criteria optimization framework to model the design problem where the objective is to jointly minimize the cost of deployment and the system activation time. Our results reveal the benefits of joint design in terms of reducing the cost of deployment while achieving higher system performance.