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Archive for the ‘Curation methodology’ Category

 

The Methodology of Curation for Scientific Research Findings

Author and Curator: Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN, Editor-in-Chief, BioMed e-Series of e-Books

 

 

This article became the Part One in Volume Two of e-Series A: Cardiovascular Diseases

 

Cardiovascular Original Research:

Cases in Methodology Design for Content Co-Curation

The Art of Scientific & Medical Curation

Justin D Pearlman, MD, PhD, FACC

Larry H Bernstein, MD, FCAP

and

Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN

http://pharmaceuticalintelligence.com/biomed-e-books/series-a-e-books-on-cardiovascular-diseases/volume-two-cardiovascular-original-research-cases-in-methodology-design-for-content-co-curation/

 

1.1 The Methodology Explained

 

Part 1 serves as an introduction to the Writing Methodology to be shared by the subsequent FIVE  volumes (and was used in Volume One.)  These volumes are created by applying the Curation Methodology explained by examples in Volume Two. The entire e-Series A: Cardiovascular Diseases, which consists of Seven Volumes of CURATIONS, were all created from critique and synthesis of Original Scientific Research Articles published in the Peer Reviewed literature.

 

 

Series A Content Consultant: Justin D Pearlman, MD, PhD, FACC

 

 

Since 4/2012, Leaders in Pharmaceutical Business Intelligence, is developing an innovative methodology for the facilitation of Global access to Biomedical knowledge rather than the access to sheer search results on Scientific subject matters in the Life Sciences and Medicine. For the methodology to attain this complex goal it is to be dealing with popularization of ORIGINAL Scientific Research via Content Curation of Scientific Research Results by Experts, Authors, Writers using the critical  thinking process of expert interpretation of the original research results.

 

We make a distinction between Curation by a Single Curator and Co-Curation by Several Experts, Authors, Writers.

 

1.1.1 Curation by a Single Curator

 

One curator edifies the e-Reader via his/hers OWN creative mental processes of knowledge synthesis following the personal creative mental process of analytical critique of the subject matter. The outcome is a new FORM of writing Science and of writing about Science, as well as, a new FORM of framework been created for the organization of the interrelations exposed in the analytical phase of a dialectically generated original synthesis. This process has multi phases:

 

  • the conception of the structure of the knowledge presented,
  • culling in the midst of inclusion/exclusion dialectics, and finally
  • the exposition of the Curator’s own original synthetic statements of the new Art, a new conceptual perspective on Science.

 

1.1.2  Co-Curation by Several Experts, Authors, Writers

 

A similar process to the one in Curation by a Single Curator is taking place and  is been applied. However, the Co-Curation, brings on stage several players. The Actors in the Scientific Writers Theater,  all own scientific knowledge and master the process of creation of a new Synthesis for most writing engagements. Since the Co-curators are educated in different disciplines, they are skillfully providing interpretations for others’ and their own new conception of ideas. Thus, they are developing new views of the original scientific results presented in peer reviewed journals, just the leading ones in every field. The Co-Curators, their creation represents a new layer of comprehension for the subject matter derived from intersecting mental processes coming into being by cross fertilizations of ideas.

 

Example #1:

 

Action Potential, a well define concept in Physiology. For us,  Action Potential was a conceptual creation for the process of Co-Curation. Dr. Lev-Ari, requesting Dr. Bernstein to elaborate creatively, on the function of actin in cytoskeleton mobility, he did,  THEN a new conceptual creation process emerged and had YIELDED the following article:

 

Identification of Biomarkers that are Related to the Actin Cytoskeleton

 

Curator: Larry H Bernstein, MD, FCAP

 

Example #2:

 

The e-Reader reads first

 

High Serum Calcium Linked to Developing Diabetes: IRAS Study

 

 Sep 24, 2013

 

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/811536

 

The e-Reader reads second the curation of that Source Interview

 

Diabetes-risk Forecasts: Serum Calcium in Upper-Normal Range (>2.5 mmol/L) as a New Biomarker

 

The e-Reader will compare which of the two is more beneficial for the e-Reader.

 

We believe that the curation of the Source Interview has remarkable value added analysis that the Reader can benefit from.

 

The unique process as described for the Single Curator and for Co-Curation, above, will be demonstrated, in this volume with an emphasis on Co-Curation,  by presentation of concrete cases, as we applied the methodology of curation by one or by several Experts, Authors, Writers in the field of Cardiovascular Diseases.

 

1.1.3 Editor’s Curation of an electronic Table of Contents (eTOCs) of an e-Book or a Hardcover Volume

 

The Voice of Content Consultant Justin D. Pearlman, MD, PhD, FACC

 

The superstructure of curations includes multiple additional creative elements:

 

1. eTOCs stands for electronic Table of Contents, a fresh thought-provoking organizing themes link a path to a diverse trail of publications (analogous to creating a path in the forest)
2. Extracts highlighting notable elements of publications that mark a path
3. Voice of Expert commentary providing context and direction

 

The Electronic Table of Contents (eTOCs) serves several functions:
1. eTOCs collates information from multiple sources into coherent themes
2. eTOCs enables multiple pathways to information, including both Longitudinal and cross-sectional organizational themes.
3. eTOCs presents nested pathways through the forest, including nesting of topics by overreaching theme, chapters, Curations, reports and references.
4. eTOCs assemblies of thought provide fresh vistas that promote innovation and rethinking

 

Example

 

 

1.2 The Creation Process of a Curation as an Alternative Model for Scientific Publishing

 

  • We culled the scene for Cardiovascular Original Research in +24 Journals,
  • We pre-select domains of research to cover:

 

The Etiology of the Disease, the Risks of dysfunction at cellular, tissue, organelle, organ, anatomy, physiology, pathophysiology and diagnostics for all of the above.

 

  • We interpret the Disease Management Options in a comprehensive fashion, exposing the e-Reader to an integrative approach for the treatment of Cardiovascular Disease.

 

1.3 FIVE steps in the Creation Process of a Curation

 

 

1.3.1  CURATION and Co-CURATION of Scientific articles in conjunction with Experts, Authors, Writers critique and synthesis

 

Examples

 

  • Erythropoietin (EPO) and Intravenous Iron (Fe) as Therapeutics for Anemia in Severe and Resistant CHF: The Elevated N-terminal proBNP Biomarker

 

Larry H. Bernstein, MD, FCAP and Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN

 

http://pharmaceuticalintelligence.com/2013/12/10/epo-as-therapeutics-for-anemia-in-chf/

 

 

Vivek Lal, MBBS, MD, F.Cl.R,  Justin D Pearlman, MD, PhD, FACC
 and Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN

 

http://pharmaceuticalintelligence.com/2013/09/23/do-novel-anticoagulants-affect-the-ptinr-the-cases-of-xarelto-rivaroxaban-and-pradaxa-dabigatran/

 

  • Alternative Designs for the Human Artificial Heart: The Patients in Heart Failure – Outcomes of Transplant (donor)/Implantation (artificial) and Monitoring Technologies for the Transplant/Implant Patient in the Community

 

Larry H. Bernstein, MD, FCAP, Justin D Pearlman, MD, PhD, FACC
 and Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN

 

http://pharmaceuticalintelligence.com/2013/08/05/alternative-designs-for-the-human-artificial-heart-the-patients-in-heart-failure-outcomes-of-transplant-donorimplantation-artificial-and-monitoring-technologies-for-the-transplantimplant-pat/

 

 

1.3.2  Assembly of articles into e-Books using ONE of a Kind electronic Table of Contents (eTOCs) architecture

 

Example of an electronic Table of Contents for an e-Book

 

 

Curators: Larry H Bernstein, MD, FCAP and Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN

This e-Book has the following Parts:

PART 1
Genomics and Medicine

Introduction to Volume Three

1.1  Genomics and Medicine: The Physician’s View
1.2  Ribozymes and RNA Machines – Work of Jennifer A. Doudna
1.3  Genomics and Medicine: Contributions of Genetics and Genomics to Cardiovascular Disease Diagnoses

1.4 Genomics Orientations for Individualized Medicine, Volume One

1.4.1 CVD Epidemiology, Ethnic subtypes Classification, and Medication Response Variability: Cardiology, Genomics and Individualized Heart Care: Framingham Heart Study (65 y-o study) & Jackson Heart Study (15 y-o study)

1.5  Genomics in Medicine – Establishing a Patient-Centric View of Genomic Data

PART 2
Epigenetics – Modifiable Factors Causing Cardiovascular Diseases

2.1 Diseases Etiology

2.1.1 Environmental Contributors Implicated as Causing Cardiovascular Diseases
2.1.2 Diet: Solids and Fluid Intake and Nutraceuticals

2.1.3 Physical Activity and Prevention of Cardiovascular Diseases

2.1.4 Psychological Stress and Mental Health: Risk for Cardiovascular Diseases

2.1.5 Correlation between Cancer and Cardiovascular Diseases

2.1.6 Medical Etiologies for Cardiovascular Diseases: Evidence-based Medicine – Leading DIAGNOSES of Cardiovascular Diseases, Risk Biomarkers and Therapies
2.1.7 Signaling Pathways
2.1.8 Proteomics and Metabolomics

2.2 Assessing Cardiovascular Disease with Miomarkers

2.2.1 Issues in Genomics of Cardiovascular Diseases
2.2.2 Endothelium, Angiogenesis, and Disordered Coagulation
2.2.3 Hypertension BioMarkers
2.2.4 Inflammatory, Atherosclerotic and Heart Failure Markers
2.2.5 Myocardial Markers

2.3  Therapeutic Implications: Focus on Ca(2+) signaling, platelets, endothelium

2.3.1 The Centrality of Ca(2+) Signaling and Cytoskeleton Involving Calmodulin Kinases and Ryanodine Receptors

2.3.2 Platelets in Translational Research ­ 2

2.3.3 The Final Considerations of the Role of Platelets and Platelet Endothelial Reactions in Atherosclerosis

2.3.4 Nitric Oxide Synthase Inhibitors (NOS-I)

2.3.5 Resistance to Receptor of Tyrosine Kinase

2.3.6 Oxidized Calcium Calmodulin Kinase and Atrial Fibrillation

2.3.7 Advanced Topics in Sepsis and the Cardiovascular System at its End Stage

2.4 Comorbidity of Diabetes and Aging

2.4.1 Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology: 1700 MIs and 2300 coronary heart disease events among about 29 000 eligible patients

PART 3
Determinants of Cardiovascular Diseases Genetics, Heredity and Genomics Discoveries

Introduction

3.1 Why cancer cells contain abnormal numbers of chromosomes (Aneuploidy)

3.1.1 Aneuploidy and Carcinogenesis

3.2 Functional Characterization of Cardiovascular Genomics: Disease Case Studies @ 2013 ASHG

3.3 Leading DIAGNOSES of Cardiovascular Diseases covered in Circulation: Cardiovascular Genetics, 3/2010 – 3/2013

3.3.1: Heredity of Cardiovascular Disorders

3.3.2: Myocardial Damage

3.3.3: Hypertention and Atherosclerosis

3.3.4: Ethnic Variation in Cardiac Structure and Systolic Function

3.3.5: Aging: Heart and Genetics

3.3.6: Genetics of Heart Rhythm

3.3.7: Hyperlipidemia, Hyper Cholesterolemia, Metabolic Syndrome

3.3.8: Stroke and Ischemic Stroke

3.3.9: Genetics and Vascular Pathologies and Platelet Aggregation, Cardiac Troponin T in Serum

3.3.10: Genomics and Valvular Disease

3.4  Commentary on Biomarkers for Genetics and Genomics of Cardiovascular Disease

PART 4
Individualized Medicine Guided by Genetics and Genomics Discoveries

4.1 Preventive Medicine: Cardiovascular Diseases

4.1.1  Personal Genomics for Preventive Cardiology Randomized Trial Design and Challenges

4.2 Gene-Therapy for Cardiovascular Diseases

4.2.1 Genetic Basis of Cardiomyopathy

4.3 Congenital Heart Disease/Defects

4.4 Pharmacogenomics for Cardiovascular Diseases

4.4.1 Hypertension Susceptibility Loci and Blood Pressure Response to Antihypertensives

4.4.2 Genetic Determinants of Statin-Induced Low-Density Lipoprotein Cholesterol Reduction

4.4.3 Comprehensive Whole-Genome and Candidate Gene Analysis for Response to Statin Therapy in the Treating to New Targets (TNT) Cohort

4.4.4 Genetic Variation in the β2 Subunit of the Voltage-Gated Calcium Channel and Pharmacogenetic Association With Adverse Cardiovascular Outcomes

4.4.5 Hepatic Metabolism and Transporter Gene Variants Enhance Response to Rosuvastatin in Patients With Acute Myocardial Infarction – The GEOSTAT-1 Study

 

 

1.3.3 Assembly of e-Books into e-Series

 

Example

 

 

Series A Content Consultant: Justin D Pearlman, MD, PhD, FACC

 

 

 

1.3.4 Publishing of e-Series on Amazon.com

 

The BioMedicine e- Book Series has published of the following e-Books Titles with Amazon KINDLE:

 

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DINFFYC

 

Volume One: Perspectives on Nitric Oxide in Disease Mechanisms (2013) 

 

1.3.5 Distribution of e-Series to Professional Associations via their Internet websites

 

The Plan includes the following Associations:

 

 

In 2013 and Beyond, we are launching a Series of e-Books (electronic Books) in BioMedicine made up by articles published in this Open Access Online Scientific Journal.

 

BioMedicine e-Series Editor-in-Chief, Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN has created over 800 articles in an inventory of 1,506 available on 12/30/2013 on http://pharmaceuticalintelligence.com. The Open Access Online Scientific Journal was launched on 4/2012.

 

BioMed e-Series was launched by Dr. Lev-Ari on 10/2013:

 

BioMed e-Series – Five Titles

 

Scientific Journal Site Statistics

Date |Views to Date |# of articles |NIH Clicks |Nature Clicks

07/29/2013   217,356 1,138 1,389 705
12/01/2013   287,645 1,428 1,676 828
02/09/2014   325,039 1,665 1,793 892
03/05/2014   338,958 1,717 1,830 965
03/21/2014   347,667 1,750 1,838 974

03/31/2014  352,683 1,768 1,869 991

05/12/2014  373.696  1,878  1,944  1,035

06/18/2014  393,111  1,992  1,982  1,087

7/27/2014  418,570  2,098  2.050  1,124

9/2/2014  444,222  2,226  2,104  1,170

10/9/2014 471,117  2,337  2,147  1,216

Date             |    Views to Date |# of articles |NIH Clicks |Nature Clicks

11/4/2014  492,736          2,471           2,194           1,234

 

1.4 Other Alternative Types to the Academic Publishing Model includes the following:

 

Alternative #1

 

PeerJ MODEL for Open Access Online Scientific Journal

 

Alternative #2

Read Cube

http://www.readcube.com/#features

Alternative #3

eLife is a collaboration between the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Max Planck Society, the Wellcome Trust, and over 200 of the world’s most talented biomedical scientists.

http://www.elifesciences.org/about/

SOURCE for Alternative Models to Academic Publishing

 

1.5 Methodology of Curation Applied to Medical Research Findings

 

Creation of Scientific knowledge involved development of numerous avenues for exposition of the scientific product, among them, scientific articles in Sceintific Journals, Books, Addresses by Leader Scientists, multimedia presentations (Audio and Video), Expert Panel Discussions, Correspondence among Scientists, archive of experiment results, thematic Literature surveys, Libraries of Open Source Code, Shareable Libraries of Annotated Genomics Research, to mention the main ones.

 

 

1.5.1 The Voice of Content Consultant on The Methodology of Curation

 

Justin D Pearlman, MD, PhD, FACC

 

The explosion of information by numerous media, hardcopy and electronic, written and video, has created difficulties tracking topics and tying together relevant but separated discoveries, ideas, and potential applications. Some methods to help assimilate diverse sources of knowledge include a content expert preparing a textbook summary, a panel of experts leading a discussion or think tank, and conventions moderating presentations by researchers. Each of those methods has value and an audience, but they also have limitations, particularly with respect to timeliness and pushing the edge. In the electronic data age, there is a need for further innovation, to make synthesis, stimulating associations, synergy and contrasts available to audiences in a more timely and less formal manner. Hence the birth of curation.

 

Curation is a process that collates numerous avenues of exposition on scientific products including Journal articles, monographs, textbooks, lectures, video and other media presentations, panel discussions, correspondence among scientists, archives of experiment results, thematic Literature surveys, personal experiences and shared libraries of data.

 

Curations represent summaries, highlights, critiques and synthesis of information, with an emphasis on the frontiers. So far there are three types of curation we offer:

 

(1) single curation, whereby a domain expert assembles seminal articles, outcomes, and context to summarize new directions, point out interrelations and implications, especially those not included in the components of the assembly.

 

(2) directed curation, whereby an Editor collates data, selects initial topics and assigns expert reviews to a team of experts.

 

(3) co-curation, whereby a theme or task sparks a collation of previously disparate works to promote new insights and thought stimulations with a team of curators serving as guides.

 

This volume presents examples of curation and co-curation which hopefully will stimulate new thoughts about the topics, as well thoughts about the novel methods of information promotion.

 

 

Below, the Curation Process is been contrasted with the Art of Scientific Creation. This contrast is in full analogy to the comparison of Primary Research(Creation of Scientific Knowledge) with Secondary Research (Critique and Synthesis of Original Scientific knowledge using the Methodology of Curation.)

 

 

1.5.2  Curation is Uniquely Distinguished by the Historical Exploratory Ties that Bind

 

Larry H Bernstein, MD, FCAP

 

A. The Scientific Creation

 

Important features and criteria that contribute to scientific curation of medical, biological, and pharmaceutical research, including structural and functional content from the sciences of anatomy, physiology, physics and chemistry.

 

The principles that I seek to realized is a foundation in the body of knowledge thatprecedes the discovery or innovation.  Is the discovery essential, but unnoticed because of unlinkings to prior established concepts.  This is extremely difficult to cull out, but it has had a recurrent history.  It might be easiest to refer to examples in physics, such as, the unique Nobel Prize discovery of pseudo-crystals that has had an impact on materials science. But actually, in the history of mathematics, astronomy, and physics, and later in anatomy and physiology, we have an “audit trail” in writings from the Hellenistic period, interrupted by the dark ages and the Bubonic Plague, and a reawakening in the period preceding and through the enlightenment and reformation. This carried significant risks for great thinkers in a society that changes slowly, and with repeated interruptions throughout all periods by wars.  One might say that this has no relevance to curation, but repeatedly, libraries and museums preserved discovery that could be re-examined later. Thus, we can’t discard the brilliance of Hipparchos, whose influence on Ptolemy is known, and who discovered the centrality of the Sun to our universe, even though the extent to which he accepted societal belief in astrology is at best limited.  The work of Copernicus later was under great duress, but gave precedence to Galileo and Newton.

 

The Hellenistic period also gave us Euclid and Archimedes, which was critical for the development of mathematics and measurement, and El Gibr’ gave us algebra. In his time, Archimedes found no-one who he could share his ideas with other than Conon, who died too early, but he was later read by Omar Kayyam,  Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo and Newton.  The Greek diagrams used by Archimedes of Syracuse were a major contribution to cognition and inference.  The Archimedes Palimpses, which were given to us as by the priest-scribe, Ioannes Myronas in 1229, is historically a major contribution revealing Archimedes work in the Method. There is the center of gravity of a triangle, and the treatise on Balancing Planes, from which he deduces that if you place two objects on a balance on which the distances are movable from the fulcrum, the distance of the lighter object is five times the distance of the heavier object.  The rule is that weights balance when they are reciprocal to their distance. Then there is Fermat’s Last Theorem, unsolved problem for centuries since the seventeenth century.The theorem state that while the square of a whole number can can be broken down into two other squares of whole numbers the same cannot be done for cubes or any higher power. The theorem took seven years to write, with a ynother year to edit.The principle was incorporated into the Pythagorean Theorem, and in 1955 two japanese mathematicians made a far reaching conjecture that paved the way to the solution by Andrew Wiles at Princeton in 1995.

 

Notably, the great mathematician, Gauss, who published Disquisition on Mathematics in 1801, on  number theory at age 24, refused to engage in the solution, but his work in complex analysis, based on earlier work by Euler involving imaginary numbers was crucial to the 20th century understanding.Perhaps another apt example is Einstein’s general theory of relativity, the prediction of gravitational radiation bringing a new attention to the tiny ripples in space-time that has opened our eyes to modern cosmology. Finally, we find that a small piece of our universe is viewed as a chunk of Hilbert space, developing as a nest of interacting probability waves. The waves of Hilbert space are actually the waves Schroedinger derived before we had the tools to observe their behavior.The mathematics of entanglement identifies the high-probability areas of a joint-Hilbert space developed from the interaction having consistent histories. This has led to the description of Schroedinger’s principle, the things that we consider to be real are stable persistent patterns. This gives rise to debate about many worlds.

 

We leave the seemingly esoteric world of problems in mathematics and theoretic physics and return to the world of biochemistry, molecular biology, genomics, proteomics and allied medical sciences.

 

The scientific underpinnings of biology and medicine transitioned from a largely observational and descriptive phase in the 19th century with the scientifc leadership of Rudolph Virchow, Louis Pasteur, Robert Koch, John Hunter, Edward Jennings, Walter Reed, Karl Landsteiner, and Thomas Hunt Morgan.  Pasteur, Koch, Landsteiner and Morgan were outstanding experimentalists.  The latter two were to receive Nobel Prizes that began in 2001.  The idea of a more fundamental basis for biological sciences was concerned with studying the chemical structures and processes of biological phenomena that involve the basic units of life, and it developed out of the related fields of biochemistry, genetics, and biophysics. The primary focus became the study of proteins and nucleic acids—i.e., the macromolecules that are essential to life processes. A great impetus was provided by enabling the three-dimensional structure of these macromolecules through such techniques as X-ray diffraction and electron microscopy. In seeking to understand the molecular basis of genetic processes; molecular biologists map the location of genes on specific chromosomes, associate these genes with particular characters of an organism, and use recombinant DNA technology to isolate, sequence, and modify specific genes.

 

The above is tied to a dominance of Western scientific discovery, as seen in the recipients of the Nobel Prize, but it is only a two dimensional view. Here another type of graphical display would be more informative, and it has been developed. I might consider a separation by type for physics, chemistry and medicine, leaving out the others, and then, in combination. I would bet that there are interactions.

 

For instance – 2001 – Roentgen, Physics; Pierre and Marie Curie, Physics; E.O. Lawrence, Chemistry, Berkeley Radiation Lab; Max Planck, following on Boltzmann and on Josiah Willard Gibbs (pre-Nobel) work. Then you have radiology and radioisotope chemistry and photosynthesis, Martin Kamen. Of course, modern physiology and metabolism traces back to the work on oxygen, carcon dioxide, and heat, adiabatic systems, and leads to the calorimeter, the Warburg apparatus, which credits Pasteur’s work 60 years earlier. The fruit fly genetics was an impetus for cracking the genetic code, but the impetus for that was both from Gregor Mendel and Charles Darwin, and then the mathematical work of Pearson and of Fischer. The work on the chemical bond by Linus Pauling really opened up a foundation for understanding organic and inorganic reactions based on atomic orbital theory that was essential for pursuit of the double helix. This was so important that it unlocked the structure of polymeric proteins through the disulfide bond, and also metalloprotein complexes (heme, …). Wouldn’t it be incredible to map the Nobel work to seminal work done in the 100 years before the Prize with different colored arrows to show stromg and weaker associations? This is in a strong sense, a method of CURATION (as opposed to creation), that is very important for a fundamental grasp of the growth of and ties in the development of the knowledgebase.

 

Wouldn’t it be incredible to map the Nobel work to seminal work done in the 100 years before the Prize with different colored arrows to show stromg and weaker associations? This is in a strong sense, a method of CURATION (as opposed to creation), that is very important for a fundamental grasp of the growth of and ties in the development of the knowledge-base.

 

Such a discussion in depth is the curation that is intended for http://pharmaceuticalintelligence.com/biomed-e-books/series-e-titles-in the strategic-plan-for-2014-1015/2014-milestones-in-physiology-discoveries-in-medicine

 

 

B. Scientific Findings 

 

Critique, Synthesis and Interpretation in Context –The Art of Curation

 

Dr. Lev-Ari continued her work, beyond Volume Two, above, on Curation as a Methodology for Critique of the Scientific Frontier and developed an effective method for synthesis of scientific milestones in the following selective list of articles:

 

e-Recognition via Friction-free Collaboration over the Internet: “Open Access to Curation of Scientific Research by Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN

 

Digital Publishing Promotes Science and Popularizes it by Access to Scientific Discourse by Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN

 

Synthetic Biology: On Advanced Genome Interpretation for Gene Variants and Pathways: What is the Genetic Base of Atherosclerosis and Loss of Arterial Elasticity with Aging

 

The Heart: Vasculature Protection – A Concept-based Pharmacological Therapy including THYMOSIN

 

Paradigm Shift in Human Genomics – Predictive Biomarkers and Personalized Medicine – Part 1

 

The Fatal Self Distraction of the Academic Publishing Industry: The Solution of the Open Access Online Scientific Journals

 

For a complete list of her Curations, go to

 

 

Other related articles published in this Open Access Online Scientific Journal include the following: 

 

The amazing history of the Nobel Prize, told in maps and charts
http://pharmaceuticalintelligence.com/2013/12/31/the-amazing-history-of-the-nobel-prize-told-in-maps-and-charts/

 

Quantum Biology And Computational Medicine
Curator: Larry H. Bernstein, MD, FCAP
http://pharmaceuticalintelligence.com/2013/04/03/quantum-biology-and-computational-medicine/

 

Metabolite Identification Combining Genetic and Metabolic Information: Genetic association links unknown metabolites to functionally related genes
Reporter: Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN
http://pharmaceuticalintelligence.com/2012/10/22/metabolite-identification-combining-genetic-and-metabolic-information-genetic-association-links-unknown-metabolites-to-functionally-related-genes/

 

Breast Cancer, drug resistance, and biopharmaceutical targets
Reporter: Larry H Bernstein, MD
http://pharmaceuticalintelligence.com/2012/09/18/breast-cancer-drug-resistance-and-biopharmaceutical-targets/

 

The Initiation and Growth of Molecular Biology and Genomics – Part I
Curator: Larry H Bernstein, MD, FCAP
http://pharmaceuticalintelligence.com/2013/02/08/the-initiation-and-growth-of-molecular-biology-and-genomics/

 

Nitric Oxide and Sepsis, Hemodynamic Collapse, and the Search for Therapeutic Options
Curator, Reporter, EAW: Larry H Bernstein, MD, FCAP
http://pharmaceuticalintelligence.com/2012/10/20/nitric-oxide-and-sepsis-hemodynamic-collapse-and-the-search-for-therapeutic-options/

 

Sepsis, Multi-organ Dysfunction Syndrome, and Septic Shock: A Conundrum of Signaling Pathways Cascading Out of Control
Curator and Author: Larry H Bernstein, MD, FCAP
http://pharmaceuticalintelligence.com/2012/10/13/sepsis-multi-organ-dysfunction-syndrome-and-septic-shock-a-conundrum-of-signaling-pathways-cascading-out-of-control/

 

How Methionine Imbalance with Sulfur-Insufficiency Leads to Hyperhomocysteinemia
Curator: Larry H Bernstein, MD, FACP
http://pharmaceuticalintelligence.com/2013/04/04/sulfur-deficiency-leads_to_hyperhomocysteinemia/

 

Vegan Diet is Sulfur Deficient and Heart Unhealthy
Larry H. Bernstein, MD, FCAP, Curator
http://pharmaceuticalintelligence.com/2013/11/17/vegan-diet-is-sulfur-deficient-and-heart-unhealthy/

 

Portrait of a great scientist and mentor: Nathan Oram Kaplan
Author: Larry H. Bernstein, MD
http://pharmaceuticalintelligence.com/2013/01/26/portrait-of-a-great-scientist-and-mentor-nathan-oram-kaplan/

 

REFERENCES

 

1. George Sarton. A History of Science: Hellenistic Science and Culture in the last three centuries B.C. 1959. Harvard University Press. Cambridge, MA, USA.
2. Reviel Netz & William Noel. The Archimedes Codex: How a medieval prayer book is revealing the true genius of antiquity’s greatest scientist. 2007. Da Capo Press.
Perseus Books Group, Philadelphia, PA, USA.
3. Amir D Aczel. Fermat’s last theorem: Unlocking the secret of an ancient methematical problem.  Four Walls Eight Windows. 1996. New York, NY, USA.
4. Colin Bruce. Schroedinger’s Rabbits: the many worlds of quantum.  2004. Joseph Henry Press. Washington, DC, USA.
5. Marcia Bartusiak. Einstein’s Unfinished Symphony: listening to the sounds of spac^2 E-time.  The Berkley Publishing Group, New York, NY, USA.

 

SOURCES on Curation and Science

 

 

 

« Curation is the new research, »… et le nouveau média, Benoit Raphael, 2011

 

http://benoitraphael.com/2011/01/17/curation-is-the-new-search/

 

La curation : la révolution du webjournalisme?, non-fiction.fr

 

http://www.nonfiction.fr/article-4158-la_curation__la_revolution_du_webjournalisme_.htm

 

La curation : les 10 raisons de s’y intéresser, Pierre Tran

 

http://pro.01net.com/editorial/529947/la-curation-les-10-raisons-de-sy-interesser/

 

Curation : quelle valeur pour les entreprises, les médias, et sa « marque personnelle »?, Marie-Laure Vie

 

http://marilor.posterous.com/curation-et-marketing-de-linformation

 

Cracking Open the Scientific Process, Thomas Lin, New York Times

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/17/science/open-science-challenges-journal-tradition-with-web-collaboration.html?_r=4&pagewanted=1

 

La « massification » du web transforme les relations sociales, Valérie Varandat, INRIA

 

http://www.inria.fr/actualite/actualites-inria/internet-du-futur

 

Internet a révolutionné le métier de chercheur, AgoraVox

 

http://www.agoravox.fr/actualites/technologies/article/internet-a-revolutionne-le-metier-103514

 

Gérer ses références numériques, Université de Genève

 

http://www.unige.ch/medecine/udrem/Unit/actualites/biblioManager.html

 

Notre liste Scoop-it : Scientific Social Network, MyScienceWork

Read Full Post »

Scientific Curation Fostering Expert Networks and Open Innovation: Lessons from Clive Thompson

Life-cycle of Science 2

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Curators and Writer: Stephen J. Williams, Ph.D. with input from Curators Larry H. Bernstein, MD, FCAP, Dr. Justin D. Pearlman, MD, PhD, FACC and Dr. Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN

(this discussion is in a three part series including:

Using Scientific Content Curation as a Method for Validation and Biocuration

Using Scientific Content Curation as a Method for Open Innovation)

 

Every month I get my Wired Magazine (yes in hard print, I still like to turn pages manually plus I don’t mind if I get grease or wing sauce on my magazine rather than on my e-reader) but I always love reading articles written by Clive Thompson. He has a certain flair for understanding the techno world we live in and the human/technology interaction, writing about interesting ways in which we almost inadvertently integrate new technologies into our day-to-day living, generating new entrepreneurship, new value.   He also writes extensively about tech and entrepreneurship.

October 2013 Wired article by Clive Thompson, entitled “How Successful Networks Nurture Good Ideas: Thinking Out Loud”, describes how the voluminous writings, postings, tweets, and sharing on social media is fostering connections between people and ideas which, previously, had not existed. The article was generated from Clive Thompson’s book Smarter Than you Think: How Technology is Changing Our Minds for the Better.Tom Peters also commented about the article in his blog (see here).

Clive gives a wonderful example of Ory Okolloh, a young Kenyan-born law student who, after becoming frustrated with the lack of coverage of problems back home, started a blog about Kenyan politics. Her blog not only got interest from movie producers who were documenting female bloggers but also gained the interest of fellow Kenyans who, during the upheaval after the 2007 Kenyan elections, helped Ory to develop a Google map for reporting of violence (http://www.ushahidi.com/, which eventually became a global organization using open-source technology to affect crises-management. There are a multitude of examples how networks and the conversations within these circles are fostering new ideas. As Clive states in the article:

 

Our ideas are PRODUCTS OF OUR ENVIRONMENT.

They are influenced by the conversations around us.

However the article got me thinking of how Science 2.0 and the internet is changing how scientists contribute, share, and make connections to produce new and transformative ideas.

But HOW MUCH Knowledge is OUT THERE?

 

Clive’s article listed some amazing facts about the mountains of posts, tweets, words etc. out on the internet EVERY DAY, all of which exemplifies the problem:

  • 154.6 billion EMAILS per DAY
  • 400 million TWEETS per DAY
  • 1 million BLOG POSTS (including this one) per DAY
  • 2 million COMMENTS on WordPress per DAY
  • 16 million WORDS on Facebook per DAY
  • TOTAL 52 TRILLION WORDS per DAY

As he estimates this would be 520 million books per DAY (book with average 100,000 words).

A LOT of INFO. But as he suggests it is not the volume but how we create and share this information which is critical as the science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon noted “Ninety percent of everything is crap” AKA Sturgeon’s Law.

 

Internet live stats show how congested the internet is each day (http://www.internetlivestats.com/). Needless to say Clive’s numbers are a bit off. As of the writing of this article:

 

  • 2.9 billion internet users
  • 981 million websites (only 25,000 hacked today)
  • 128 billion emails
  • 385 million Tweets
  • > 2.7 million BLOG posts today (including this one)

 

The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly of the Scientific Internet (The Wild West?)

 

So how many science blogs are out there? Well back in 2008 “grrlscientist” asked this question and turned up a total of 19,881 blogs however most were “pseudoscience” blogs, not written by Ph.D or MD level scientists. A deeper search on Technorati using the search term “scientist PhD” turned up about 2,000 written by trained scientists.

So granted, there is a lot of

goodbadugly

 

              ….. when it comes to scientific information on the internet!

 

 

 

 

 

I had recently re-posted, on this site, a great example of how bad science and medicine can get propagated throughout the internet:

http://pharmaceuticalintelligence.com/2014/06/17/the-gonzalez-protocol-worse-than-useless-for-pancreatic-cancer/

 

and in a Nature Report:Stem cells: Taking a stand against pseudoscience

http://www.nature.com/news/stem-cells-taking-a-stand-against-pseudoscience-1.15408

Drs.Elena Cattaneo and Gilberto Corbellini document their long, hard fight against false and invalidated medical claims made by some “clinicians” about the utility and medical benefits of certain stem-cell therapies, sacrificing their time to debunk medical pseudoscience.

 

Using Curation and Science 2.0 to build Trusted, Expert Networks of Scientists and Clinicians

 

Establishing networks of trusted colleagues has been a cornerstone of the scientific discourse for centuries. For example, in the mid-1640s, the Royal Society began as:

 

“a meeting of natural philosophers to discuss promoting knowledge of the

natural world through observation and experiment”, i.e. science.

The Society met weekly to witness experiments and discuss what we

would now call scientific topics. The first Curator of Experiments

was Robert Hooke.”

 

– from The History of the Royal Society

 

Royal Society CoatofArms

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge.

(photo credit: Royal Society)

(Although one wonders why they met “in-cognito”)

Indeed as discussed in “Science 2.0/Brainstorming” by the originators of OpenWetWare, an open-source science-notebook software designed to foster open-innovation, the new search and aggregation tools are making it easier to find, contribute, and share information to interested individuals. This paradigm is the basis for the shift from Science 1.0 to Science 2.0. Science 2.0 is attempting to remedy current drawbacks which are hindering rapid and open scientific collaboration and discourse including:

  • Slow time frame of current publishing methods: reviews can take years to fashion leading to outdated material
  • Level of information dissemination is currently one dimensional: peer-review, highly polished work, conferences
  • Current publishing does not encourage open feedback and review
  • Published articles edited for print do not take advantage of new web-based features including tagging, search-engine features, interactive multimedia, no hyperlinks
  • Published data and methodology incomplete
  • Published data not available in formats which can be readably accessible across platforms: gene lists are now mandated to be supplied as files however other data does not have to be supplied in file format

(put in here a brief blurb of summary of problems and why curation could help)

 

Curation in the Sciences: View from Scientific Content Curators Larry H. Bernstein, MD, FCAP, Dr. Justin D. Pearlman, MD, PhD, FACC and Dr. Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN

Curation is an active filtering of the web’s  and peer reviewed literature found by such means – immense amount of relevant and irrelevant content. As a result content may be disruptive. However, in doing good curation, one does more than simply assign value by presentation of creative work in any category. Great curators comment and share experience across content, authors and themes. Great curators may see patterns others don’t, or may challenge or debate complex and apparently conflicting points of view.  Answers to specifically focused questions comes from the hard work of many in laboratory settings creatively establishing answers to definitive questions, each a part of the larger knowledge-base of reference. There are those rare “Einstein’s” who imagine a whole universe, unlike the three blind men of the Sufi tale.  One held the tail, the other the trunk, the other the ear, and they all said this is an elephant!
In my reading, I learn that the optimal ratio of curation to creation may be as high as 90% curation to 10% creation. Creating content is expensive. Curation, by comparison, is much less expensive.

– Larry H. Bernstein, MD, FCAP

Curation is Uniquely Distinguished by the Historical Exploratory Ties that Bind –Larry H. Bernstein, MD, FCAP

The explosion of information by numerous media, hardcopy and electronic, written and video, has created difficulties tracking topics and tying together relevant but separated discoveries, ideas, and potential applications. Some methods to help assimilate diverse sources of knowledge include a content expert preparing a textbook summary, a panel of experts leading a discussion or think tank, and conventions moderating presentations by researchers. Each of those methods has value and an audience, but they also have limitations, particularly with respect to timeliness and pushing the edge. In the electronic data age, there is a need for further innovation, to make synthesis, stimulating associations, synergy and contrasts available to audiences in a more timely and less formal manner. Hence the birth of curation. Key components of curation include expert identification of data, ideas and innovations of interest, expert interpretation of the original research results, integration with context, digesting, highlighting, correlating and presenting in novel light.

– Justin D Pearlman, MD, PhD, FACC from The Voice of Content Consultant on The  Methodology of Curation in Cardiovascular Original Research: Cases in Methodology Design for Content Co-Curation The Art of Scientific & Medical Curation

 

In Power of Analogy: Curation in Music, Music Critique as a Curation and Curation of Medical Research Findings – A Comparison, Drs. Larry Bernstein and Aviva Lev-Ari likens the medical and scientific curation process to curation of musical works into a thematic program:

 

Work of Original Music Curation and Performance:

 

Music Review and Critique as a Curation

Work of Original Expression what is the methodology of Curation in the context of Medical Research Findings Exposition of Synthesis and Interpretation of the significance of the results to Clinical Care

… leading to new, curated, and collaborative works by networks of experts to generate (in this case) ebooks on most significant trends and interpretations of scientific knowledge as relates to medical practice.

 

In Summary: How Scientific Content Curation Can Help

 

Given the aforementioned problems of:

        I.            the complex and rapid deluge of scientific information

      II.            the need for a collaborative, open environment to produce transformative innovation

    III.            need for alternative ways to disseminate scientific findings

CURATION MAY OFFER SOLUTIONS

        I.            Curation exists beyond the review: curation decreases time for assessment of current trends adding multiple insights, analyses WITH an underlying METHODOLOGY (discussed below) while NOT acting as mere reiteration, regurgitation

 

      II.            Curation providing insights from WHOLE scientific community on multiple WEB 2.0 platforms

 

    III.            Curation makes use of new computational and Web-based tools to provide interoperability of data, reporting of findings (shown in Examples below)

 

Therefore a discussion is given on methodologies, definitions of best practices, and tools developed to assist the content curation community in this endeavor.

Methodology in Scientific Content Curation as Envisioned by Aviva lev-Ari, PhD, RN

 

At Leaders in Pharmaceutical Business Intelligence, site owner and chief editor Aviva lev-Ari, PhD, RN has been developing a strategy “for the facilitation of Global access to Biomedical knowledge rather than the access to sheer search results on Scientific subject matters in the Life Sciences and Medicine”. According to Aviva, “for the methodology to attain this complex goal it is to be dealing with popularization of ORIGINAL Scientific Research via Content Curation of Scientific Research Results by Experts, Authors, Writers using the critical thinking process of expert interpretation of the original research results.” The following post:

Cardiovascular Original Research: Cases in Methodology Design for Content Curation and Co-Curation

 

http://pharmaceuticalintelligence.com/2013/07/29/cardiovascular-original-research-cases-in-methodology-design-for-content-curation-and-co-curation/

demonstrate two examples how content co-curation attempts to achieve this aim and develop networks of scientist and clinician curators to aid in the active discussion of scientific and medical findings, and use scientific content curation as a means for critique offering a “new architecture for knowledge”. Indeed, popular search engines such as Google, Yahoo, or even scientific search engines such as NCBI’s PubMed and the OVID search engine rely on keywords and Boolean algorithms …

which has created a need for more context-driven scientific search and discourse.

In Science and Curation: the New Practice of Web 2.0, Célya Gruson-Daniel (@HackYourPhd) states:

To address this need, human intermediaries, empowered by the participatory wave of web 2.0, naturally started narrowing down the information and providing an angle of analysis and some context. They are bloggers, regular Internet users or community managers – a new type of profession dedicated to the web 2.0. A new use of the web has emerged, through which the information, once produced, is collectively spread and filtered by Internet users who create hierarchies of information.

.. where Célya considers curation an essential practice to manage open science and this new style of research.

As mentioned above in her article, Dr. Lev-Ari represents two examples of how content curation expanded thought, discussion, and eventually new ideas.

  1. Curator edifies content through analytic process = NEW form of writing and organizations leading to new interconnections of ideas = NEW INSIGHTS

i)        Evidence: curation methodology leading to new insights for biomarkers

 

  1. Same as #1 but multiple players (experts) each bringing unique insights, perspectives, skills yielding new research = NEW LINE of CRITICAL THINKING

ii)      Evidence: co-curation methodology among cardiovascular experts leading to cardiovascular series ebooks

Life-cycle of Science 2

The Life Cycle of Science 2.0. Due to Web 2.0, new paradigms of scientific collaboration are rapidly emerging.  Originally, scientific discovery were performed by individual laboratories or “scientific silos” where the main method of communication was peer-reviewed publication, meeting presentation, and ultimately news outlets and multimedia. In this digital era, data was organized for literature search and biocurated databases. In an era of social media, Web 2.0, a group of scientifically and medically trained “curators” organize the piles of data of digitally generated data and fit data into an organizational structure which can be shared, communicated, and analyzed in a holistic approach, launching new ideas due to changes in organization structure of data and data analytics.

 

The result, in this case, is a collaborative written work above the scope of the review. Currently review articles are written by experts in the field and summarize the state of a research are. However, using collaborative, trusted networks of experts, the result is a real-time synopsis and analysis of the field with the goal in mind to

INCREASE THE SCIENTIFIC CURRENCY.

For detailed description of methodology please see Cardiovascular Original Research: Cases in Methodology Design for Content Co-Curation The Art of Scientific & Medical Curation

 

In her paper, Curating e-Science Data, Maureen Pennock, from The British Library, emphasized the importance of using a diligent, validated, and reproducible, and cost-effective methodology for curation by e-science communities over the ‘Grid’:

“The digital data deluge will have profound repercussions for the infrastructure of research and beyond. Data from a wide variety of new and existing sources will need to be annotated with metadata, then archived and curated so that both the data and the programmes used to transform the data can be reproduced for use in the future. The data represent a new foundation for new research, science, knowledge and discovery”

— JISC Senior Management Briefing Paper, The Data Deluge (2004)

 

As she states proper data and content curation is important for:

  • Post-analysis
  • Data and research result reuse for new research
  • Validation
  • Preservation of data in newer formats to prolong life-cycle of research results

However she laments the lack of

  • Funding for such efforts
  • Training
  • Organizational support
  • Monitoring
  • Established procedures

 

Tatiana Aders wrote a nice article based on an interview with Microsoft’s Robert Scoble, where he emphasized the need for curation in a world where “Twitter is the replacement of the Associated Press Wire Machine” and new technologic platforms are knocking out old platforms at a rapid pace. In addition he notes that curation is also a social art form where primary concerns are to understand an audience and a niche.

Indeed, part of the reason the need for curation is unmet, as writes Mark Carrigan, is the lack of appreciation by academics of the utility of tools such as Pinterest, Storify, and Pearl Trees to effectively communicate and build collaborative networks.

And teacher Nancy White, in her article Understanding Content Curation on her blog Innovations in Education, shows examples of how curation in an educational tool for students and teachers by demonstrating students need to CONTEXTUALIZE what the collect to add enhanced value, using higher mental processes such as:

  • Knowledge
  • Comprehension
  • Application
  • Analysis
  • Synthesis
  • Evaluation

curating-tableA GREAT table about the differences between Collecting and Curating by Nancy White at http://d20innovation.d20blogs.org/2012/07/07/understanding-content-curation/

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

University of Massachusetts Medical School has aggregated some useful curation tools at http://esciencelibrary.umassmed.edu/data_curation

Although many tools are related to biocuration and building databases but the common idea is curating data with indexing, analyses, and contextual value to provide for an audience to generate NETWORKS OF NEW IDEAS.

See here for a curation of how networks fosters knowledge, by Erika Harrison on ScoopIt

(http://www.scoop.it/t/mobilizing-knowledge-through-complex-networks)

 

“Nowadays, any organization should employ network scientists/analysts who are able to map and analyze complex systems that are of importance to the organization (e.g. the organization itself, its activities, a country’s economic activities, transportation networks, research networks).”

– Andrea Carafa insight from World Economic Forum New Champions 2012 “Power of Networks”

 

Creating Content Curation Communities: Breaking Down the Silos!

 

An article by Dr. Dana Rotman “Facilitating Scientific Collaborations Through Content Curation Communities” highlights how scientific information resources, traditionally created and maintained by paid professionals, are being crowdsourced to professionals and nonprofessionals in which she termed “content curation communities”, consisting of professionals and nonprofessional volunteers who create, curate, and maintain the various scientific database tools we use such as Encyclopedia of Life, ChemSpider (for Slideshare see here), biowikipedia etc. Although very useful and openly available, these projects create their own challenges such as

  • information integration (various types of data and formats)
  • social integration (marginalized by scientific communities, no funding, no recognition)

The authors set forth some ways to overcome these challenges of the content curation community including:

  1. standardization in practices
  2. visualization to document contributions
  3. emphasizing role of information professionals in content curation communities
  4. maintaining quality control to increase respectability
  5. recognizing participation to professional communities
  6. proposing funding/national meeting – Data Intensive Collaboration in Science and Engineering Workshop

A few great presentations and papers from the 2012 DICOSE meeting are found below

Judith M. Brown, Robert Biddle, Stevenson Gossage, Jeff Wilson & Steven Greenspan. Collaboratively Analyzing Large Data Sets using Multitouch Surfaces. (PDF) NotesForBrown

 

Bill Howe, Cecilia Aragon, David Beck, Jeffrey P. Gardner, Ed Lazowska, Tanya McEwen. Supporting Data-Intensive Collaboration via Campus eScience Centers. (PDF) NotesForHowe

 

Kerk F. Kee & Larry D. Browning. Challenges of Scientist-Developers and Adopters of Existing Cyberinfrastructure Tools for Data-Intensive Collaboration, Computational Simulation, and Interdisciplinary Projects in Early e-Science in the U.S.. (PDF) NotesForKee

 

Ben Li. The mirages of big data. (PDF) NotesForLiReflectionsByBen

 

Betsy Rolland & Charlotte P. Lee. Post-Doctoral Researchers’ Use of Preexisting Data in Cancer Epidemiology Research. (PDF) NoteForRolland

 

Dana Rotman, Jennifer Preece, Derek Hansen & Kezia Procita. Facilitating scientific collaboration through content curation communities. (PDF) NotesForRotman

 

Nicholas M. Weber & Karen S. Baker. System Slack in Cyberinfrastructure Development: Mind the Gaps. (PDF) NotesForWeber

Indeed, the movement of Science 2.0 from Science 1.0 had originated because these “silos” had frustrated many scientists, resulting in changes in the area of publishing (Open Access) but also communication of protocols (online protocol sites and notebooks like OpenWetWare and BioProtocols Online) and data and material registries (CGAP and tumor banks). Some examples are given below.

Open Science Case Studies in Curation

1. Open Science Project from Digital Curation Center

This project looked at what motivates researchers to work in an open manner with regard to their data, results and protocols, and whether advantages are delivered by working in this way.

The case studies consider the benefits and barriers to using ‘open science’ methods, and were carried out between November 2009 and April 2010 and published in the report Open to All? Case studies of openness in research. The Appendices to the main report (pdf) include a literature review, a framework for characterizing openness, a list of examples, and the interview schedule and topics. Some of the case study participants kindly agreed to us publishing the transcripts. This zip archive contains transcripts of interviews with researchers in astronomy, bioinformatics, chemistry, and language technology.

 

see: Pennock, M. (2006). “Curating e-Science Data”. DCC Briefing Papers: Introduction to Curation. Edinburgh: Digital Curation Centre. Handle: 1842/3330. Available online: http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/briefing-papers/introduction-curation– See more at: http://www.dcc.ac.uk/resources/briefing-papers/introduction-curation/curating-e-science-data#sthash.RdkPNi9F.dpuf

 

2.      cBIO -cBio’s biological data curation group developed and operates using a methodology called CIMS, the Curation Information Management System. CIMS is a comprehensive curation and quality control process that efficiently extracts information from publications.

 

3. NIH Topic Maps – This website provides a database and web-based interface for searching and discovering the types of research awarded by the NIH. The database uses automated, computer generated categories from a statistical analysis known as topic modeling.

 

4. SciKnowMine (USC)- We propose to create a framework to support biocuration called SciKnowMine (after ‘Scientific Knowledge Mine’), cyberinfrastructure that supports biocuration through the automated mining of text, images, and other amenable media at the scale of the entire literature.

 

  1. OpenWetWare– OpenWetWare is an effort to promote the sharing of information, know-how, and wisdom among researchers and groups who are working in biology & biological engineering. Learn more about us.   If you would like edit access, would be interested in helping out, or want your lab website hosted on OpenWetWare, pleasejoin us. OpenWetWare is managed by the BioBricks Foundation. They also have a wiki about Science 2.0.

6. LabTrove: a lightweight, web based, laboratory “blog” as a route towards a marked up record of work in a bioscience research laboratory. Authors in PLOS One article, from University of Southampton, report the development of an open, scientific lab notebook using a blogging strategy to share information.

7. OpenScience Project– The OpenScience project is dedicated to writing and releasing free and Open Source scientific software. We are a group of scientists, mathematicians and engineers who want to encourage a collaborative environment in which science can be pursued by anyone who is inspired to discover something new about the natural world.

8. Open Science Grid is a multi-disciplinary partnership to federate local, regional, community and national cyberinfrastructures to meet the needs of research and academic communities at all scales.

 

9. Some ongoing biomedical knowledge (curation) projects at ISI

IICurate
This project is concerned with developing a curation and documentation system for information integration in collaboration with the II Group at ISI as part of the BIRN.

BioScholar
It’s primary purpose is to provide software for experimental biomedical scientists that would permit a single scientific worker (at the level of a graduate student or postdoctoral worker) to design, construct and manage a shared knowledge repository for a research group derived on a local store of PDF files. This project is funded by NIGMS from 2008-2012 ( RO1-GM083871).

10. Tools useful for scientific content curation

 

Research Analytic and Curation Tools from University of Queensland

 

Thomson Reuters information curation services for pharma industry

 

Microblogs as a way to communicate information about HPV infection among clinicians and patients; use of Chinese microblog SinaWeibo as a communication tool

 

VIVO for scientific communities– In order to connect this information about research activities across institutions and make it available to others, taking into account smaller players in the research landscape and addressing their need for specific information (for example, by proving non-conventional research objects), the open source software VIVO that provides research information as linked open data (LOD) is used in many countries.  So-called VIVO harvesters collect research information that is freely available on the web, and convert the data collected in conformity with LOD standards. The VIVO ontology builds on prevalent LOD namespaces and, depending on the needs of the specialist community concerned, can be expanded.

 

 

11. Examples of scientific curation in different areas of Science/Pharma/Biotech/Education

 

From Science 2.0 to Pharma 3.0 Q&A with Hervé Basset

http://digimind.com/blog/experts/pharma-3-0/

Hervé Basset, specialist librarian in the pharmaceutical industry and owner of the blog “Science Intelligence“, to talk about the inspiration behind his recent book  entitled “From Science 2.0 to Pharma 3.0″, published by Chandos Publishing and available on Amazon and how health care companies need a social media strategy to communicate and convince the health-care consumer, not just the practicioner.

 

Thomson Reuters and NuMedii Launch Ground-Breaking Initiative to Identify Drugs for Repurposing. Companies leverage content, Big Data analytics and expertise to improve success of drug discovery

 

Content Curation as a Context for Teaching and Learning in Science

 

#OZeLIVE Feb2014

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ty-ugUA4az0

Creative Commons license

 

DigCCur: A graduate level program initiated by University of North Carolina to instruct the future digital curators in science and other subjects

 

Syracuse University offering a program in eScience and digital curation

 

Curation Tips from TED talks and tech experts

Steven Rosenbaum from Curation Nation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpncJd1v1k4

 

Pawan Deshpande form Curata on how content curation communities evolve and what makes a good content curation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QENhIU9YZyA

 

How the Internet of Things is Promoting the Curation Effort

Update by Stephen J. Williams, PhD 3/01/19

Up till now, curation efforts like wikis (Wikipedia, Wikimedicine, Wormbase, GenBank, etc.) have been supported by a largely voluntary army of citizens, scientists, and data enthusiasts.  I am sure all have seen the requests for donations to help keep Wikipedia and its other related projects up and running.  One of the obscure sister projects of Wikipedia, Wikidata, wants to curate and represent all information in such a way in which both machines, computers, and humans can converse in.  About an army of 4 million have Wiki entries and maintain these databases.

Enter the Age of the Personal Digital Assistants (Hellooo Alexa!)

In a March 2019 WIRED article “Encyclopedia Automata: Where Alexa Gets Its Information”  senior WIRED writer Tom Simonite reports on the need for new types of data structure as well as how curated databases are so important for the new fields of AI as well as enabling personal digital assistants like Alexa or Google Assistant decipher meaning of the user.

As Mr. Simonite noted, many of our libraries of knowledge are encoded in an “ancient technology largely opaque to machines-prose.”   Search engines like Google do not have a problem with a question asked in prose as they just have to find relevant links to pages. Yet this is a problem for Google Assistant, for instance, as machines can’t quickly extract meaning from the internet’s mess of “predicates, complements, sentences, and paragraphs. It requires a guide.”

Enter Wikidata.  According to founder Denny Vrandecic,

Language depends on knowing a lot of common sense, which computers don’t have access to

A wikidata entry (of which there are about 60 million) codes every concept and item with a numeric code, the QID code number. These codes are integrated with tags (like tags you use on Twitter as handles or tags in WordPress used for Search Engine Optimization) so computers can identify patterns of recognition between these codes.

Now human entry into these databases are critical as we add new facts and in particular meaning to each of these items.  Else, machines have problems deciphering our meaning like Apple’s Siri, where they had complained of dumb algorithms to interpret requests.

The knowledge of future machines could be shaped by you and me, not just tech companies and PhDs.

But this effort needs money

Wikimedia’s executive director, Katherine Maher, had prodded and cajoled these megacorporations for tapping the free resources of Wiki’s.  In response, Amazon and Facebook had donated millions for the Wikimedia projects.  Google recently gave 3.1 million USD$ in donations.

 

Future postings on the relevance and application of scientific curation will include:

Using Scientific Content Curation as a Method for Validation and Biocuration

 

Using Scientific Content Curation as a Method for Open Innovation

 

Other posts on this site related to Content Curation and Methodology include:

The growing importance of content curation

Data Curation is for Big Data what Data Integration is for Small Data

6 Steps to More Effective Content Curation

Stem Cells and Cardiac Repair: Content Curation & Scientific Reporting

Cancer Research: Curations and Reporting

Cardiovascular Diseases and Pharmacological Therapy: Curations

Cardiovascular Original Research: Cases in Methodology Design for Content Co-Curation The Art of Scientific & Medical Curation

Exploring the Impact of Content Curation on Business Goals in 2013

Power of Analogy: Curation in Music, Music Critique as a Curation and Curation of Medical Research Findings – A Comparison

conceived: NEW Definition for Co-Curation in Medical Research

The Young Surgeon and The Retired Pathologist: On Science, Medicine and HealthCare Policy – The Best Writers Among the WRITERS

Reconstructed Science Communication for Open Access Online Scientific Curation

 

 

Read Full Post »

Larry H Bernstein, MD, FCAP, Reporter and Curator

http://pharmaceyticalinnovation.com/7/10/2014/A new relationship identified in preterm stress and development of autism or schizophrenia/

 

This is a fascinating study.  It is of considerable interest because it deals with several items that need to be addressed with respect to neurodevelopmental disruptive disorders.  It leaves open some aspects that are known, but not subject to investigation in the experiments.  Then there is also no reporting of some associations that are known at the time of deveopment of these disorders – autism spectrum, and schizophrenia.  Of course, I don’t know how it would be possible to also look at prediction of a possible relationship to later development of mood disorders.

  1. The placenta functions as an endocrine organ in the conversion of androsteinedione to testosterone during pregnancy, which is delivered to the fetus.
  2. The conversion is by a known enzymatic pathway – and there is a sex difference in the depression of testosterone in males, females not affected.
  3. There is a greater susceptibility of males to autism and schizophrenia than of females, which I as reader, had not known, but if this is true, it would lend some credence to a biological advantage to protect the females of animal species, and might raise some interest into what relationship it has to protecting multitasking for females.
  4. It is well known that the twin studies that have been carried out determined that in identical twins, there is discordance as a rule.  Those studies are old, and they did not examine whether the other identical twin might be anywhere on the autism spectrum disorder (not then termed “spectrum”.
  5. However, there is a clear effect of stress on “gene expression”, and in this case we are looking at enzymation suppression at the placental level affecting trascriptional activity in the male fetus.  The same genetic signature exists in the male genetic profile, so we are not looking at a clear somatic mutation in this study.
  6. There is also much less specific an association with the MTHFR gene mutation at either one or two loci. This would have to be looked at as a possible separate post translational somatic mutation.
  7. Whether there is another component expressed later in the function of the zinc metalloproteinase under stress in the affected subject is worth considering, but can’t be commented on with respect to the study.

Penn Team Links Placental Marker of Prenatal Stress to Neurodevelopmental Problems 

By Ilene Schneider          July 8, 2014

When a woman experiences a stressful event early in pregnancy, the risk that her child will develop autism spectrum disorders or schizophrenia increases. The way in which maternal stress is transmitted to the brain of the developing fetus, leading to these problems in neurodevelopment, is poorly understood.

New findings by University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine scientists suggest that an enzyme found in the placenta is likely playing an important role. This enzyme, O-linked-N-acetylglucosamine transferase, or OGT, translates maternal stress into a reprogramming signal for the brain before birth. The study was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health.

“By manipulating this one gene, we were able to recapitulate many aspects of early prenatal stress,” said Tracy L. Bale, senior author on the paper and a professor in the Department of Animal Biology at Penn Vet. “OGT seems to be serving a role as the ‘canary in the coal mine,’ offering a readout of mom’s stress to change the baby’s developing brain. Bale, who also holds an appointment in the Department of Psychiatry, co-authored tha paper with postdoctoral researcher Christopher L. Howerton, for PNAS.

OGT is known to play a role in gene expression through chromatin remodeling, a process that makes some genes more or less available to be converted into proteins. In a study published last year in PNAS, Bale’s lab found that placentas from male mice pups had lower levels of OGT than those from female pups, and placentas from mothers that had been exposed to stress early in gestation had lower overall levels of OGT than placentas from the mothers’ unstressed counterparts.

“People think that the placenta only serves to promote blood flow between a mom and her baby, but that’s really not all it’s doing,” Bale said. “It’s a very dynamic endocrine tissue and it’s sex-specific, and we’ve shown that tampering with it can dramatically affect a baby’s developing brain.”

To elucidate how reduced levels of OGT might be transmitting signals through the placenta to a fetus, Bale and Howerton bred mice that partially or fully lacked OGT in the placenta. They then compared these transgenic mice to animals that had been subjected to mild stressors during early gestation, such as predator odor, unfamiliar objects or unusual noises, during the first week of their pregnancies.

The researchers performed a genome-wide search for genes that were affected by the altered levels of OGT and were also affected by exposure to early prenatal stress using a specific activational histone mark and found a broad swath of common gene expression patterns.

They chose to focus on one particular differentially regulated gene called Hsd17b3, which encodes an enzyme that converts androstenedione, a steroid hormone, to testosterone. The researchers found this gene to be particularly interesting in part because neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism and schizophrenia have strong gender biases, where they either predominantly affect males or present earlier in males.

Placentas associated with male mice pups born to stressed mothers had reduced levels of the enzyme Hsd17b3, and, as a result, had higher levels of androstenedione and lower levels of testosterone than normal mice.

“This could mean that, with early prenatal stress, males have less masculinization,” Bale said. “This is important because autism tends to be thought of as the brain in a hypermasculinized state, and schizophrenia is thought of as a hypomasculinized state. It makes sense that there is something about this process of testosterone synthesis that is being disrupted.”

Furthermore, the mice born to mothers with disrupted OGT looked like the offspring of stressed mothers in other ways. Although they were born at a normal weight, their growth slowed at weaning. Their body weight as adults was 10 to 20 percent lower than control mice.

Because of the key role that that the hypothalamus plays in controlling growth and many other critical survival functions, the Penn Vet researchers then screened the mouse genome for genes with differential expression in the hypothalamus, comparing normal mice, mice with reduced OGT and mice born to stressed mothers.

They identified several gene sets related to the structure and function of mitochrondria, the powerhouses of cells that are responsible for producing energy. And indeed, when compared by an enzymatic assay that examines mitochondria biogenesis, both the mice born to stressed mothers and mice born to mothers with reduced OGT had dramatically reduced mitochondrial function in their hypothalamus compared to normal mice. These studies were done in collaboration with Narayan Avadhani’s lab at Penn Vet. Such reduced function could explain why the growth patterns of mice appeared similar until weaning, at which point energy demands go up.

“If you have a really bad furnace you might be okay if temperatures are mild,” Bale said. “But, if it’s very cold, it can’t meet demand. It could be the same for these mice. If you’re in a litter close to your siblings and mom, you don’t need to produce a lot of heat, but once you wean you have an extra demand for producing heat. They’re just not keeping up.”

Bale points out that mitochondrial dysfunction in the brain has been reported in both schizophrenia and autism patients. In future work, Bale hopes to identify a suite of maternal plasma stress biomarkers that could signal an increased risk of neurodevelopmental disease for the baby.

“With that kind of a signature, we’d have a way to detect at-risk pregnancies and think about ways to intervene much earlier than waiting to look at the term placenta,” she said.

 

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PCCI’s 7th Annual Roundtable “Crowdfunding for Life Sciences: A Bridge Over Troubled Waters?”

Reporter: Stephen J. Williams, Ph.D.

Article ID #130: PCCI’s 7th Annual Roundtable “Crowdfunding for Life Sciences: A Bridge Over Troubled Waters?” May 12 2014 Embassy Suites Hotel, Chesterbrook PA 6:00-9:30 PM. Published on 4/17/2014

WordCloud Image Produced by Adam Tubman

 

http://www.rxpcci.com/meetings.htm

Monday, May 12 2014 Embassy Suites Hotel, Chesterbrook PA 6:00 -9:30 PM

Pharmaceutical Consulting Consortium International Inc. presents their 7th annual Roundtable on Crowdfunding for the Life Sciences and how this funding mechanism applies to early stage life science companies and changes the funding landscape. The conference will examine the types of crowdfunding out there and attempts to answer many questions including:

  • Which one is right for which new companies at which stage of the funding process?
  • And how will choosing the right or wrong one influence follow-on funders and funding rounds?
  • Will the advent of crowdfunding speed up the investment process?
  • Will it really bridge the yawning “valley of death”?

The panel is made up of notables and practitioners who will be called upon to deal with the pros and cons of crowdfunding in real life and let them discuss how all this is likely to apply to life science entrepreneurs and investors.

The panel includes:

  1. Mark Roderick, Attorney Flaster/Greenberg PC (Moderator)
  2. Valerie Gaydos, President, Capital Growth (represents angel/venture community)
  3. Samuel Wertheimer, Chief Investment Officer, Poliwogg Darrick Mix
  4. Duane Morris, LLP (journalist who covers crowdfunding

Register by clicking on www.rxpcci.com and following directions The event will be webcast.

Leaders in Pharmaceutical Business Intelligence had recently launched a new, real-time based methodology for meeting coverage using social media as a platform to foster discussion and commentary.

This methodology is described in the following post REAL TIME Cancer Conference Coverage: A Novel Methodology for Authentic Reporting on Presentations and Discussions launched via Twitter.com @ The 2nd ANNUAL Sachs Cancer Bio Partnering & Investment Forum in Drug Development, 19th March 2014 • New York Academy of Sciences • USA

This new method was successfully used and curated at the 2nd Annual Sachs Cancer Bio Partnering &Investment Forum at the New York Academy of Sciences and will be featured at the forthcoming Sachs Global Conferences in 2014 and 2015.

Related articles on this site include:

conceived: NEW Definition for Co-Curation in Medical Research

Cancer Biology and Genomics for Disease Diagnosis, Volume One Pre-ePub Announcement

Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) as Biomarkers in Cancer Detection: • Alnion Ranked #1 in “Top 10 Israeli medical advances to watch in 2014”.

Investing and inventing: Is the Tango of Mars and Venus Still on

SACHS Associates, London – Planning Forthcoming Conferences: 2014 – 2015

 

 

 

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Post Acute Care – Driver of Variation in Healthcare Costs

Reporter and Curator: Larry H. Bernstein, MD, FCAP

and

Curator and Editor: Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN

The following is a report summarizing the findings of two major articles in the New England J Med by Robert Mechanic, MBA, on the findings of the Institute of Medicine study of drivers of Medical Care cost variation.  This is a seminal piece of work that is already creating a roadmap for hospital cost reduction and hospital evaluation based on reduction of readmissions combined with appropriate discharges not exceeding expected length of stay.  This type of study is not new, but it has taken a new direction.  The studies 25 years ago directed at regional variation in physician practices contributed to the studies at the Yale School of Business Administration by Robert Fetter’s group that developed the Diagnosis Related Groups (DRG) model formulation, pioneering in the engineering design of healthcare management.  The study was the first of its kind, and it was implemented as a demonstration project in New Jersey and then became the current basis for reimbursement.  At the same time, there are numerous studies of practice variation and variation in hospital costs, most prominently carried out at Dartmouth, University of Pennsylvania, and at the Intermountain Healthcare System, which made huge and continuing contributions to improvements in healthcare quality and efficiency.

cost1  per capita costs and life expectancy across all 34 OECD member countries using OECD data from 2009.

hhs_medicare_docs   participating in and billing Medicare

obamacare-political-cartoon

1. Post-Acute Care — The Next Frontier for Controlling Medicare Spending

Robert Mechanic, M.B.A.

N Engl J Med 2014; 370:692-694 February 20, 2014 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp1315607

 

2. Post-Acute Care Reform — Beyond the ACA

D. Clay Ackerly, M.D., and David C. Grabowski, Ph.D.

N Engl J Med 2014; 370:689-691 February 20, 2014 DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp1315350

 

Post-Acute Care — The Next Frontier for Controlling Medicare Spending

 Introduction

A striking conclusion from the Institute of Medicine’s recent report on geographic variation in Medicare spending is that post-acute care is the largest driver of overall variation.1 Medicare pays for post-acute care — short-term skilled nursing and therapy services for patients recovering from acute illness (typically after a hospitalization), provided by home health agencies, skilled nursing facilities (SNFs), inpatient rehabilitation hospitals, and long-term care hospitals. In 2012, Medicare spending for these services exceeded $62 billion. For patients who are hospitalized for exacerbations of chronic conditions such as congestive heart failure, Medicare spends nearly as much on post-acute care and readmissions in the first 30 days after a patient is discharged as it does for the initial hospital admission

(see graph in

http://www.nejm.org/na101/home/literatum/publisher/mms/journals/content/nejm/2014/nejm_2014.370.issue-8/nejmp1315607/20140214/images/small/nejmp1315607_f1.gif

30-day episodes

Medicare Acute and Post-Acute Care Payments for 30-Day Episodes That Began with a Hospitalization, 2008)

Post-acute care spending for surgical episodes is somewhat lower but still substantial. Medicare payments for post-acute care have grown faster than most other categories of spending. For example, total Medicare spending for patients hospitalized with myocardial infarction, congestive heart failure, or hip fracture grew by 1.5 to 2.0% annually between 1994 and 2009, while spending on post-acute care for those patients grew by 4.5 to 8.5% per year.2

Under fee-for-service reimbursement, acute care providers have had little financial incentive to invest in systems to ensure effective transitions to post-acute care or to support post-acute care providers when recently hospitalized patients have complications. Medicare’s recent readmission penalties have begun focusing hospitals’ attention on these issues. But Medicare’s new bundled-payment and shared-savings programs provide much stronger incentives to integrate acute and post-acute care.

Hospital and Post-Acute Care Facility Coordination

Hospitals and physicians participating in bundled-payment or shared-savings programs will need to establish meaningful partnerships with all types of post-acute care providers. Partnerships with SNFs are particularly important, since they account for about half of Medicare’s post-acute care spending. Apart from geographic location, hospitals will focus on three basic characteristics when considering SNF partners:

  • capacity to effectively care for Medicare patients with complex needs,
  • ability to provide high-quality care efficiently, and
  • willingness to actively collaborate on care coordination.

Hospitals will favor SNFs with a proven record of performance and should assess each nursing home in the context of the complexity of its cases. Under bundled payments, one relevant measure of both quality and efficiency is rehospitalization. In 2011, a quarter of nursing homes had risk-adjusted rehospitalization rates of 23% or greater for five potentially avoidable conditions, while a quarter had rates below 15%.4

Equally important for new partnerships is a willingness to actively collaborate on quality improvement and care coordination. Establishment of a clinical point person at both the hospital and the nursing homes would help facilitate rapid responses to unexpected changes in patient status. Finally, such partnerships will need to establish regular and transparent performance reporting.  In order to achieve the next level of performance, physician groups and hospitals will increasingly establish preferred networks of post-acute care providers. Although they cannot require patients to use these providers, they may be able to make a convincing case based on the quality, service level, and continuity of care that a strong partnership can offer.

It is ironic that an extended admission prior to discharge may be advantageous in the emerging bundled payment system.  Other steps hospitals can take to reduce post-acute care spending under a bundled-payment system don’t preclude those with extra bed capacity keeping some Medicare patients in the hospital longer and discharging them to home health care rather than a nursing home or rehabilitation facility; the extra cost of extending a hospital stay by an additional day or two is far less than the average cost of a nursing home admission. According to one study involving 12,000 patients, the incremental cost incurred on the last full day of hospitalization was just 2.4% of the average total cost per admission.5

Post-acute care providers need to make a compelling case for their value, and those that establish preferred relationships with major hospitals and physician groups will generate additional volume and thus be able to maintain revenue levels as they shorten lengths of stay.

REFERENCES

  1. Newhouse JP, Garber AM. Geographic variation in Medicare services. N Engl J Med2013;368:1465-1468
  2. Chandra A, Dalton MA, Holmes J. Large increases in spending on postacute care in Medicare point to the potential for cost savings in these settings. Health Aff (Millwood)2013;32:864-872
  3. Gage B, Morley M, Ingber M, Smith L. Post-acute care episodes: expanded analytic file. Waltham, MA: RTI International, June 2011.
  4. Kramer A, Fish R, Min S. Community discharge and rehospitalization outcome measures (fiscal year 2011). A report by staff from Providigm, LLC, for the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, April 2013

http://medpac.gov/documents/Apr13_CommunityDischarge_CONTRACTOR.pdf.

5.  Taheri PA, Butz DA, Greenfield LJ. Length of stay has minimal impact on the cost of hospital admission. J Am Coll Surg 2000;191:123-130

Post-Acute Care Reform — Beyond the ACA

 The Case of Mrs. T

Mrs. T. is an 88-year-old woman who lives alone, has a history of congestive heart failure and osteoarthritis. She was found lethargic and sent to the emergency department, where she was discovered to be in renal failure and was admitted to the hospital for fluids and monitoring. Her hospitalist concluded that she had accidentally overdosed on Lasix (furosemide). On hospital day 2, Mrs. T. was having difficulty ambulating, although her cognition and renal function had improved and she felt “back to her old self” and was eager to go home.

The hospitalist had two primary options. He could keep Mrs. T. in the hospital another night, although she was medically stable and had no further diagnostic or medical needs. That would cost the hospital money under Medicare’s system of fixed payments for diagnosis-related groups, but it would give Mrs. T. more time to recover her strength and extend her stay to the 3 days required to qualify her for a stay in a Medicare skilled nursing facility (SNF) if needed.1

Alternatively, the hospitalist could send Mrs. T. home, holding the Lasix to prevent a repetition of the cause of this admission and arranging for a follow-up evaluation by a visiting nurse. Home health agencies are expected to provide an admission visit within 48 hours after discharge, and they receive a fixed payment from Medicare for a 60-day episode of care.  This option presented a higher risk of falls and further medication errors, but it served the hospital’s interest in limiting lengths of stay and Mrs. T.’s desire to return home.

Both options presented a high likelihood of readmission, and neither one encouraged the provision of a high-quality, high-value mix of acute and post-acute care services. Why were there no better options?

This presents a conundrum because Medicare has paid hospitals and post-acute care providers separately, without regard to the quality and efficiency achieved across an entire episode of care. When patients’ discharge plans made without adequate factoring in of clinical reasons, it contributes to the inefficient use of post-acute care and the high rate of readmissions.2,3  A significant factor in this anomaly is that the decrease in length of hospital stay and the increase in use of post-acute care after the implementation of Medicare’s hospital inpatient prospective payment system (see graph

http://www.nejm.org/na101/home/literatum/publisher/mms/journals/content/nejm/2014/nejm_2014.370.issue-8/nejmp1315350/20140214/images/small/nejmp1315350_f1.gif

length of hospital stay and the increase in use of post-acute care

Use of Hospital Care and Post-Acute Care over Time.).

Demonstrations currently being evaluated under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) incentivize a more efficient mix of acute and post-acute care services. For example, under a bundled-payment system, hospitals and post-acute care providers are paid for a fixed “bundle” of services around a hospital episode, including post-hospitalization care. In an accountable care organization (ACO) with risk-based payment, networks of providers can share in savings if they reduce the total cost of care for a defined patient population and meet a series of quality metrics. Under both approaches, provider systems have incentives to deliver cost-effective acute and post-acute care services and prevent costly readmissions.

 Three issues may impede the delivery of high-value services over an entire episode of care.

First, the ACA reforms retain some burdensome payment regulations and rules that will hinder the delivery of the highest-value mix of services. ACOs cannot change most of Medicare’s fee-for-service payment regulations in purchasing post-acute care. These regulations include

  • the 3-day rule for qualifying for Medicare-covered SNF care;
  • fixed payment for a 60-day episode of home health care, which hinders flexibility in tailoring services to patients’ needs; and
  • a rule for inpatient rehabilitation facilities requiring that 75% of cases fall within 13 diagnostic categories, which limits the number and types of patients admitted to these facilities.4

Second, merely aligning financial incentives between providers of acute and post-acute care will not improve quality and reduce costs for episodes of care. True coordination of care — defined as the organization of services among the hospital, physicians, post-acute care provider, and patient to encourage the delivery of the highest-value services — is required to ensure the best possible outcomes. Potential models for coordinated acute and post-acute care might encompass team-based care and transition programs, cross-continuum case-management interventions, improved patient and family engagement, communication protocols for providers across settings to share both clinical and social information by means of interoperable health information technologies, and focused investments in clinical coverage in post-acute care settings (e.g., telemedicine or transitional medicine teams). Most of these on-the-ground activities, however, are in their infancy.

Third, even with payment changes and improved coordination, providers are often “flying blind” when attempting to tailor a care plan to a patient’s and family’s needs. Simply put, we have insufficient understanding about which post-acute care setting (e.g., home with or without services, SNF, or other care facility) benefits which types of patient — which makes it impossible to match patients to the setting that best suits their needs and maximizes the likelihood of the best outcomes. This lack of knowledge is attributable to both insufficient data and poor quality measures. Optimizing post-acute care delivery will require a common data instrument but also new quality measures for such care. For example, one important measure of quality would be the risk-adjusted rate of rehospitalization in a given post-acute care setting.5

 A look backward and forward

In the case described above, the hospitalist was left with our system’s only two discharge options. Imagine how Mrs. T.’s care might have been different. With her care covered under an ACO or as part of a bundled-payment program, her providers would have financial incentives to provide the right care, in the right place, at the right time. If the additional efforts we’ve described above had been successfully implemented, the hospitalist could have used evidence on the comparative value of alternative post-discharge options to choose the most suitable mix of inpatient and post-acute care services without worrying about payment rules and with the support of organizational tools for coordinated care.

REFERENCES

  1. Lipsitz LA. The 3-night hospital stay and Medicare coverage for skilled nursing care. JAMA2013;310:1441-1442
  2. Jencks SF, Williams MV, Coleman EA. Rehospitalizations among patients in the Medicare fee-for-service program. N Engl J Med 2009;360:1418-1428[Erratum, N Engl J Med 2011;364:1582.]
  3. Institute of Medicine. Variation in health care spending: target decision making, not geography. Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2013.
  4. Medicare Payment Advisory Commission. Medicare post-acute care reforms. Washington, DC: Statement of Mark E. Miller before the Subcommittee on Health, Committee on Ways and Means, U.S. House of Representatives June 14, 2013.
  5. Mor V, Intrator O, Feng Z, Grabowski DC. The revolving door of rehospitalization from skilled nursing facilities. Health Aff (Millwood) 2010;29:57-64

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Power of Analogy: Curation in Music, Music Critique as a Curation and Curation of Medical Research Findings – A Comparison

Curator: Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN

 

UPDATED on 8/19/2018

This is the best curation on Music I read to date

Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN

LEONARD BERNSTEIN AT 100 Celebrating the legendary composerconductor’s string works and unbridled loyalty to the music By Thomas May

https://memeteria.files.wordpress.com/2018/07/august-2018-st280.pdf

 

On 2/11/2014 I read The Hub Review: Concert with a key by Thomas Gravey. I was inspired to develop an Analogy between his Review and the work we do.

This article has three parts:

Part 1: Six Components in the Analogy 

Part 2: Equivalence in the Analogy 

Part 3: Curation in Music (Component #1) and Music Review as a Curation (Component #2)

 

Part 1

Six Components in the Analogy

Component #1: Curation in Music

Component #1: Detailed, below

Work of Original Music Curation and Performance: The Celebrity Series Concert on 1/31/2014 in Boston, MA, which I attended.

#Boston premiere of ‘Old Friend’ tonight at New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall at Kirill’s recital, which includes works by #Haydn, #Schumann (‘Carnaval’), and #Mussorgsky (‘Pictures at an Exhibition’).

Component #2: Music Review and Critique as a Curation

Component #2: Detailed, below

Music Review and Critique as a Curation it represents a very fine example of Music Critique as a Curation written by Thomas Garvey on 2/8/2014 for the 1/31/2014, Celebrity Series concert in Jordan Hall by Kirill Gerstein, Component #1, above

http://hubreview.blogspot.com/2014/02/concert-with-key.html#links

Component #3, #4, #5, #6 – Curations in Medical Research

Component #3: Detailed, here

Work of Original Expression what is the methodology of Curation in the context of Medical Research Findings Exposition of Synthesis and Interpretation of the significance of the results to Clinical Care

Dr. A. Lev-Ari‘s definition of the Methodology of Curation

conceived: NEW Definition for Co-Curation in Medical Research

Component #4: Detailed, here

Work of Original Expression of the function and use of Curation methodology for Medical Research Findings Exposition of Synthesis and Interpretation of the significance of the results to Clinical Care

Dr. JD Pearlman‘s metaphoric expression of the Curation Methodology

In the Summary to Volume Two 

Cardiovascular Original Research: Cases in Methodology Design for Content Co-Curation – The Art of Scientific & Medical Curation

Dr. Pearlman writes:

This volume introduces a fresh look at keeping abreast of cardiovascular disease. In particular it explains and exemplifies the how and why of curation as a methodology for discourse. Curation is designed to edify and facilitate awareness and cohesive access to biomedical knowledge otherwise buried in subspecialty scientific journals in the Life Sciences and Medicine. Particular themes of focus include discovery, innovation and translation to clinical care, including linkages and underpinnings that might otherwise be mislabeled as esoteric. Key components of curation include expert identification of data, ideas and innovations of interest, expert interpretation of the original research results, integration with context, digesting, highlighting, correlating and presenting in novel light.

The superstructure of curations includes multiple additional creative elements:

  • eTOCs stands for electronic Table of Contents: fresh thought-provoking organizing themes link a path to a diverse trail of publications (analogous to creating a path in the forest)
  • Extracts highlighting notable elements of publications that mark a path
  • Voice of Expert commentary providing context and direction

The Electronic Table of Contents (eTOCs) serves several functions:

  • eTOCs collates information from multiple sources into coherent themes
  • eTOCs enables multiple pathways to information, including both Longitudinal and cross-sectional organizational themes.
  • eTOCs presents nested pathways through the forest, including nesting of topics by overreaching theme, chapters, Curations, reports and references.
  • eTOCs assemblies of thought provide fresh vistas that promote innovation and rethinking

In ekistics (urban design) Francis Bacon emphasized the importance of pathways linked to purpose, recommending a landmark magnet as an attractor for pursuits along a created path. Analogously, if the continually expanding collective knowledge embodied in subspecialty publications represents a forest of data and ideas, then Curation creates pathways in that forest that serve not only to keep the reader from getting lost, but also, as recommended by Francis Bacon, creates pathways that serve attractive purposes, with special vistas, highlights, themes, coherence, motivations and purposes.

CONTEXT (for each, Causes, Risks, Biomarkers and Therapeutics): See Volumes 1,2,3,4,5,6 

Component #5: Detailed, here

Work of Original Expression of two examples for the Writing Tatent and the Curation Talent applied in Medical writings by a Surgeon and by a Pathologist

Dr. A. Lev-Ari’s Curation of an article that demonstrates the Art of Praise for the Physician as a Author and Writer of proze of high literary merit on subjects in Science and Medicine:

The Young Surgeon and The Retired Pathologist: On Science, Medicine and HealthCare Policy – The Best Writers Among the WRITERS

Component #6: Detailed, here

Music in the Service of Clinical Care

Dr. A. Lev-Ari’s Curation of an article on the Function of Music in Restoration of Wellness from a Disease Stage

The Role of the Harp and of Music in Medical Recovery

More Harp Music

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tiye0BqxJS4 

Part 2

Equivalence in the Analogy

Analogy Defined

(from Greek ἀναλογία, analogia, “proportion”[1][2]) is a cognitive process of transferring information or meaning from a particular subject (the analogue or source) to another particular subject (the target), or a linguistic expression corresponding to such a process. In a narrower sense, analogy is an inference or anargument from one particular to another particular, as opposed to deduction, induction, and abduction, where at least one of the premises or the conclusion is general. The word analogy can also refer to the relation between the source and the target themselves, which is often, though not necessarily, a similarity, as in the biological notion of analogy.

Analogy has been studied and discussed since classical antiquity by philosophers, scientists and lawyers. The last few decades have shown a renewed interest in analogy, most notably in cognitive science.

SOURCE of the definition

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analogy

Equivalence in the Analogy

[Component #1] is analogous to [Component #6] = [Component #6] is analogous to [Component #1]

[Component #2] is analogous to [Component #4] = [Component #4] is analogous to [Component #2]

[Components #3, #5] are analogous to [Components #1, #4] and [Component #2]

 

Component #1: Work of Original Music Curation and Performance:

Component #2: Music Review and Critique as a Curation

Component #3: Work of Original Expression what is the methodology of Curation

Component #4: Work of Original Expression of the function and use of Curation methodology for Medical Research

Component #5:  Work of Original Expression of two examples for the Writing Tatent and the Curation Talent applied in Medical writings by a Surgeon and by a Pathologist

Component #6: Music in the Service of Clinical Care

 

Part 3

Curation in Music (Component #1) and

Music Review as  a Curation (Component #2)

Component #1: Curation in Music

Work of Original Music Curation and Performance: The Celebrity Series Concert on 1/31/2014 in Boston, MA, which I attended.

#Boston premiere of ‘Old Friend’ tonight at New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall at Kirill’s recital, which includes works by #Haydn, #Schumann (‘Carnaval’), and #Mussorgsky (‘Pictures at an Exhibition’).

The Boston Globe tells the tale of how ‘Old Friend’, a piece Kirill commissioned from composer Timo Andres, came into fruition.You can hear the #Boston premiere of ‘Old Friend’ tonight at New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall at Kirill’s recital, which includes works by #Haydn, #Schumann (‘Carnaval’), and #Mussorgsky (‘Pictures at an Exhibition’).Tickets: http://www.celebrityseries.org/CS_performers_2013_14/gerstein.htm

‘Old Friend’ is formed over a piano and some coffee – The Boston Globe
As Kirill Gerstein remembers it, it was over coffee early in 2011 that he asked composer Timothy Andres to write a…

SOURCE

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Kirill-Gerstein/101570384501

Component #2: Music Review as a Curation

Music Review and Critique which represents a very fine example of a Curation in Music Critique written by Thomas Garvey for the 1/31/2014, Celebrity Series concert in Jordan Hall by Kirill Gerstein, Component #1, above

http://hubreview.blogspot.com/2014/02/concert-with-key.html#links

Saturday, February 8, 2014

Concert with a key

Kirill Gerstein
Rarely has a performance been curated with such subtle thematic skill as Kirill Gerstein’s at Celebrity Series last weekend.
Its calling card was the Boston premiere of current wunderkind Timo Andres’ “Old Friend,” a kind of millennial fantasia on Chopin’s Third Scherzo.  You know the Chopin – it’s a dazzler split between two apparent emotional poles, one grumbling at the bottom of the keyboard, the other chiming at the top; the piece is perhaps most memorable for the sparkling arpeggios that rain over the conflicted theme that sounds at the point where the two modes meet in the middle.

Andres teases that opposition into a vast structure in “Old Friend” – but more on that later. The point I want to make now is that Andres’ title unlocks the design of Gerstein’s whole concert – or concert à clef, if you will. For the pianist had clearly taken Andres’ insight into Chopin’s scherzo as the key to his entire program, and had thought long and hard not only about the theme of “friendship” (particularly lost friendship) in life and art, but about the musical values that undergird its expression.Hence the opening choice of Haydn’s familiar Variations in F Minor. It too, of course, is a double variation: an initial melancholy voice in F minor is slowly entwined by a lighter song in F major; two “friends,” if you will, of opposed temperaments. The voices dance in ever more elaborate patterns until the second is abruptly cut off, and a coda of poignant force rings down the curtain on the piece. Legend has it that this shock was inspired by the unexpected death of Haydn’s friend Maria Anna von Genzinger, with whom he had struck up a passionate correspondence. And the Variations do have a sweetly epistolary quality; one voice seems to “reply” to the other almost by post. But Gerstein took that sense of distance a bit far; he played with a measured precision that came off as slightly dry – although the outpouring of emotion at the end of the affair, if you will, was genuine, and genuinely moving.In the next offering, Schumann’s Carnaval, the theme of friendship evoked in music was even more overt. For the program of Carnaval – now worked out by scholars from Schumann’s notes and titles – is a cavalcade of the composer’s friends, both real and imaginary, through which move two lovers, Ernestine von Fricken and Schumann’s eventual wife, Clara (along with real-life musical idols like Paganini). The piece seems structureless to the uninitiated (and, well, it is!) – but there is clearly some sort of romantic showdown at its core; many believe Schumann’s eventual rejection of Ernestine in favor of Clara is prefigured in its variations. But then Chopin shows up, and the party grinds on. I admit Carnaval never quite sustains my interest throughout its meandering length; but I also admit that Gerstein’s version was among the most compelling I’ve heard.  From its opening flourish, the pianist seemed in superb control of its many voices, and even the sense of their overlapping interpenetration, and the musical haze that surrounds them.  And Gerstein carried off the finale, in which the whole artsy crowd marches out to confront the Philistines, in very high style indeed.After intermission came the premiere from Andres, who delivered the most musically abstracted vision of friendship yet. Of course, this time the friend was itself a piece of music – Chopin’s scherzo (rather than the composer himself) – and music about music is almost always inherently abstract. Andres basically took the most famous feature of the scherzo – those cascades of arpeggios – and doubled them, so that “Old Friend” rippled up from the bottom of the keyboard as well as down from its top, in a series of interlocking minimalist cells drawn from Chopin’s harmonic material. The cells moved in and out of phase, and various points of intersection or inversion were constantly shifting – still, Andres seemed unable to transcend the limits of his schema, and the eventual emergence of the scherzo’s own phrases seemed like a slight anticlimax (as we could see them coming from so very far away).

Hartmann’s “Catacombs of Paris”

Thus “Old Friend” at times felt like pianism for pianists, a kind of giant tinkertoy – still, its construction was virtuosic, and its technical demands challenging indeed (the composer himself is an astonishingly facile pianist, and he clearly intended this as his own exploration of the grand manner – a kind of maximal minimalism!). For his part, Gerstein played its rumbling, chiming cadences for all they were worth; Andres wrote the piece for him, and he had to have been pleased with this performance.

Finally, galloping after the premiere came one of the great keyboard warhorses – Mussorgsky’sPictures at an Exhibition. If you’re wondering at the friendship connection here, recall that the paintings in question were by a close friend and artistic associate of the composer – the architect/artist Viktor Hartmann. And in keeping with the slightly funereal theme of much of the concert, these famous tone poems were intended as both valedictory and obituary; for the exhibition that Mussorgsky evokes (and which included works from his own collection) was, tragically, a posthumous one, as the artist died of an aneurysm at the early age of 39.

Hartmann’s “Great Gate” of Kiev was never realized.

I always make it a point to recommend that concertgoers who are only familiar with Ravel’s celebrated orchestration seek out a performance of the original score (preferably in its first form – as here – rather than Rimsky-Korsakov’s corrected edition). It’s not often heard, as its demands are punishing, particularly in the final two “pictures,” but it is an eye-opener. Perhaps inevitably, the dazzling color of the Ravel somehow spectacularizes, and perhaps even slightly de-personalizes, everything inPictures; certainly on the keyboard, for instance, it is far easier to limn the shifting response of the “Promenade” theme as it moves from vignette to vignette.

Although of course the viewer of these pictures eventually seems to step right into them; his voice first materializes deep within “Catacombs” – where perhaps he is calling to Hartmann himself – before later opening out into its own apotheosis in “The Great Gate of Kiev” (the artist’s sketch for the project, at left) – which in a way is both a gate to Heaven, through which we can imagine the artist’s spirit soaring, and a portal into the deeply Russian artistic consciousness that Mussorgsky and Hartmann dreamed of together.

To be honest, I felt that Gerstein was finally tiring a bit as the bells chimed their welcome in “Great Gate,” but it hardly mattered, as so much of his performance had proved so very exciting (perhaps it’s worth noting at this point the pianist’s own Russian roots). Just a few highlights were the subtly singing line of “The Old Castle,” the note of tragedy sounding beneath “Goldenberg and Schmuyle,” and the haunted murmur of “Con Mortuis in Lingua Mortua.” This was truly a masterly performance of a masterpiece, so no wonder the crowd called the pianist back for an encore. Gerstein chose Rachmaninoff’s Op. 3, No. 3, “Mélodie,” – a last nostalgic bouquet, simple and sweet – and perhaps meant for yet another friend cut down too soon.

Posted by at 3:54 PM 
Thomas Garvey – A local reviewer for several years, I was cast from my perch at the Boston Globesome time ago, but quickly learned I could write about my hometown’s culture with more freedom and accuracy on the Web than I ever could at the Globe. And as local reviews grow ever more watered-down (as the press becomes more and more desperate to hang onto advertising – and readers), it has become obvious this town needs an independent, unfettered critic who’s not interested in tossing softballs to the suburbs (or the academy), And I guess I’m just dumb enough to take the job. You can reach me with invites, praise, screeds, etc., at hubreview@hotmail.com.
SOURCE

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Pathophysiological Effects of Diabetes on Ischemic-Cardiovascular Disease and on Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)

Pathophysiological Effects of Diabetes on Ischemic-Cardiovascular Disease and on Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)

Curator:  Larry H. Bernstein, MD, FCAP

Article ID #106: Pathophysiological Effects of Diabetes on Ischemic-Cardiovascular Disease and on Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). Published 1/15/2014

WordCloud Image Produced by Adam Tubman

This is a multipart article that develops the pathological effects of type-2 diabetes in the progression of a systemic inflammatory disease with a development of neuropathy, and fully developing into cardiovascular disease.  It also identifies a systemic relationship to the development of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

The more we learn about diabetes, we learn about its generalized systemic effects.

This article has the following SIX Parts:

Part 1. Role of Autonomic Cardiovascular Neuropathy in Pathogenesis of ischemic heart disease in patients with diabetes mellitus

Part 2. A Longitudinal Cohort Study of the Cardiovascular Experience of Individuals at High Risk for Diabetes

Part 3.  Clinical significance of cardiovascular dysmetabolic syndrome

Part 4.   Waist circumference a good indicator of future risk for type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease

Part 5.   How to use C-reactive protein in acute coronary care

Part 6.  Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and glucose metabolism: a bitter sweet symphony

INTRODUCTION

Type 2 diabetes mellitus is a common chronic disease which develops insidiously over time, and is associated with obesity, nutritional imbalance (high fructose beverages, high starch and processed foods, carbohydrate excess intake, and an imbalance of proinflammatory to anti-inflammatory polyunsaturated  fatty acids), which makes it an acquired and manageable disease.  The long term effects of T2DM is played out on cardiovascular disease and stroke-risk, obstructive sleep apnea, progressive renal insufficiency, development of neuropathy, congestive heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, all of which are occuring related to an systemic inflammatory condition that proceeds for some time prior to the identification of overt diabetes.
A detailed story of a significant part of these associations continues in the SIX Part series.

Part 1. Role of Autonomic Cardiovascular Neuropathy in Pathogenesis of ischemic heart disease in patients with diabetes mellitus

This article is an abstract only of a related publication of the pathogenesis of autonomic neuropathy in diabetics leading to ischemic heart disease.

Subjects: Medicine (General), Medicine, Medicine (General),
Health Sciences Authors: Popović-Pejičić Snježana, Todorović-Đilas Ljiljana, Pantelinac Pavle
Publisher: Društvo lekara Vojvodine Srpskog lekarskog društva
Publication: Medicinski Pregled 2006; 59(3-4): Pp 118-123 (2006) ISSN(s): 0025-8105  Added to DOAJ: 2010-11-11
http://dx.doi.org/10.2298/MPNS0604118P  http://www.doiserbia.nb.rs/img/doi/0025-8105/2006/0025-81050604118P.pdf

Keywords: diabetes mellitus, autonomic nervous system diseases, heart diseases, myocardial ischemia, comorbidity

Introduction.

Diabetes is strongly associated with macrovascular complications, among which

  • ischemic heart disease is the major cause of mortality.

Autonomic neuropathy increases the risk of complications, which calls for an early diagnosis. The aim of this study was to determine

  • both presence and extent of cardiac autonomic neuropathy,

in regard to the type of diabetes mellitus, as well as

  • its correlation with coronary disease and
  • major cardiovascular risk factors.

Material and methods. We have examined 90 subjects, classified into three groups, with 30 patients each: those with type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes and control group of healthy subjects. All patients underwent

  • cardiovascular tests (Valsalva maneuver, deep breathing test, response to standing, blood pressure response to standing sustained, handgrip test),
  • electrocardiogram,
  • treadmill exercise test and
  • filled out a questionnaire referring to major cardiovascular risk factors: smoking, obesity, hypertension, and dyslipidemia.

Results. Our results showed that cardiovascular autonomic neuropathy was

  • more frequent in type 2 diabetes,
  • manifesting as autonomic neuropathy.

In patients with autonomic neuropathy, regardless of the type of diabetes,

  • the treadmill test was positive, i.e. strongly correlating with coronary disease.

In regard to coronary disease risk factors,

  • the most frequent correlation was found for obesity and hypertension.

Discussion

Cardiovascular autonomic neuropathy is considered to be the principal cause of arteriosclerosis and coronary disease. Our results showed that the occurrence of cardiovascular autonomic neuropathy increases the risk of coronary disease due to dysfunction of autonomic nervous system.

Conclusions

Cardiovascular autonomic neuropathy is a common complication of diabetes that significantly correlates with coronary disease. Early diagnosis of cardiovascular autonomic neuropathy points to increased cardiovascular risk, providing a basis for preventive and therapeutic measures.

Part 2. A Longitudinal Cohort Study of the Cardiovascular Experience of Individuals at High Risk for Diabetes

This second part is a description of a longitudinal cohort study of individuals at high-risk for diabetes.  Unlike the SSA study, the study is not focused on protein-energy malnutrition.

Protocol for ADDITION-PRO: a longitudinal cohort study of the cardiovascular experience of individuals at high risk for diabetes recruited from Danish primary care

Subjects: Public aspects of medicine, Medicine, Public Health, Health Sciences
Authors: Johansen NB, Hansen Anne-Louise S, Jensen TM, Philipsen A, Rasmussen SS, Jørgensen ME, Simmons RK, Lauritzen T, Sandbæk A, Witte DR
Publisher: BioMed Central    Date of publication: 2012 Dec Published in: BMC Public Health 2012; 12(1): 1078    ISSN(s): 1471-2458   Added to DOAJ: 2013-03-12 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-12-1078       http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/12/1078

Keywords: Diabetes, Cardiovascular disease, Primary care, Complications, Microvascular, Impaired fasting glucose, Impaired glucose intolerance, Aortic stiffness, Physical activity, Body composition

Background

Screening programmes for type 2 diabetes inevitably find more individuals at high risk for diabetes than people with undiagnosed prevalent disease. While well established guidelines for the treatment of diabetes exist, less is known about treatment or prevention strategies for individuals found at high risk following screening. In order to make better use of the opportunities for primary prevention of diabetes and its complications among this high risk group, it is important to

  • quantify diabetes progression rates and to examine
  • the development of early markers of cardiovascular disease and
  • microvascular diabetic complications.

We also require a better understanding of the

  • mechanisms that underlie and drive early changes in cardiometabolic physiology.

The ADDITION-PRO study was designed to address these issues among individuals at different levels of diabetes risk recruited from Danish primary care.

Methods/Design

ADDITION-PRO is a population-based, longitudinal cohort study of individuals at high risk for diabetes. 16,136 eligible individuals were identified at high risk following participation in a stepwise screening programme in Danish general practice between 2001 and 2006.

  • All individuals with impaired glucose regulation at screening,
  • those who developed diabetes following screening, and
  • a random sub-sample of those at lower levels of diabetes risk

were invited to attend a follow-up health assessment in 2009–2011 (n = 4,188), of whom 2,082 (50%) attended. The health assessment included

  • detailed measurement of anthropometry,
  • body composition,
  • biochemistry,
  • physical activity and
  • cardiovascular risk factors including aortic stiffness and central blood pressure.

All ADDITION-PRO participants are being followed for incident cardiovascular disease and death.

Discussion

The ADDITION-PRO study is designed to increase

  • understanding of cardiovascular risk and
  • its underlying mechanisms among individuals at high risk of diabetes.

Key features of this study include

  • (i) a carefully characterised cohort at different levels of diabetes risk;
  • (ii) detailed measurement of cardiovascular and metabolic risk factors;
  • (iii) objective measurement of physical activity behaviour; and
  • (iv) long-term follow-up of hard clinical outcomes including mortality and cardiovascular disease.

Results will inform policy recommendations concerning cardiovascular risk reduction and treatment among individuals at high risk for diabetes. The detailed phenotyping of this cohort will also allow a number of research questions concerning early changes in cardiometabolic physiology to be addressed.

Part 3.  Clinical significance of cardiovascular dysmetabolic syndrome

This study also addresses the issue of diabetes insulin resistance leading to cardiovascular dysmetabolic syndrome.

Subjects: Diseases of the circulatory (Cardiovascular) system,
Specialties of internal medicine, Internal medicine, Medicine, Cardiovascular, Medicine (General), Health Sciences
Authors: Deedwania Prakash C Publisher: BioMed Central            Date of publication: 2002 Jan
Published in: Trials 2002; 3: 1(2)   ISSN(s): 1468-6708  Added to DOAJ: 2004-06-03
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1468-6708-3-2   http://cvm.controlled-trials.com/content/3/1/2

Keywords: cardiovascular dysmetabolic syndrome, coronary heart disease, diabetes mellitus, hyperinsulinemia, insulin resistance

Although diabetes mellitus is predominantly a metabolic disorder,

  • recent data suggest that it is as much a vascular disorder.
  • Cardiovascular complications are the leading cause
    • of death and disability in patients with diabetes mellitus.

A number of recent reports have emphasized that

  • many patients already have atherosclerosis in progression
  • at the time they are diagnosed with clinical evidence of diabetes mellitus.

The increased risk of atherosclerosis and cardiovascular complications in diabetic patients is related to

  • the frequently associated dyslipidemia, hypertension, hyperglycemia, hyperinsulinemia, and endothelial dysfunction.

The evolving knowledge regarding the variety of

  • metabolic,
  • hormonal, and
  • hemodynamic abnormalities in patients with diabetes mellitus

has led to efforts designed for early identification of individuals at risk of subsequent disease. It has been suggested that

  • insulin resistance, the key abnormality in type II diabetes,
  • often precedes clinical features of diabetes by 5–6 years.

Careful attention to the criteria described for the cardiovascular dysmetabolic syndrome

  • should help identify those at risk at an early stage.

The application of nonpharmacologic as well as newer emerging pharmacologic therapies can have beneficial effects

  • in individuals with cardiovascular dysmetabolic syndrome and/or diabetes mellitus
  • by improving insulin sensitivity and related abnormalities.

Early identification and implementation of appropriate therapeutic strategies would be necessary

  • to contain the emerging new epidemic of cardiovascular disease related to diabetes.

Part 4.   Waist circumference a good indicator of future risk for type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease

Subjects: Public aspects of medicine, Medicine, Public Health, Health Sciences
Authors: Siren Reijo, Eriksson Johan G, Vanhanen Hannu
Publisher: BioMed Central      Date of publication: 2012 Aug
Published in: BMC Public Health 2012; 12: 1(631)    ISSN(s): 1471-2458   Added to DOAJ: 2013-03-12
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-12-631    http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/12/631

Keywords: Waist circumference, Type 2 diabetes, Cardiovascular disease, Middle-aged men

Background

Abdominal obesity is a more important risk factor than overall obesity in

  • predicting the development of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

From a preventive and public health point of view it is crucial that

  • risk factors are identified at an early stage,
  • in order to change and modify behaviour and lifestyle in high risk individuals.

Methods

Data from a community based study was used to assess

  • the risk for type 2 diabetes,
  • cardiovascular disease and
  • prevalence of metabolic syndrome in middle-aged men.

In order to identify those with increased risk for type 2 diabetes and/or cardiovascular disease

  • sensitivity and specificity analysis were performed, including
  • calculation of positive and negative predictive values, and
  • corresponding 95% CI for eleven different cut-off points,
    • with 1 cm intervals (92 to 102 cm), for waist circumference.

Results

A waist circumference ≥94 cm in middle-aged men,

  • identified those with increased risk for type 2 diabetes
  • and/or for cardiovascular disease

with a sensitivity of 84.4% (95% CI 76.4% to 90.0%), and a specificity of 78.2% (95% CI 68.4% to 85.5%). The positive predictive value was 82.9% (95% CI 74.8% to 88.8%), and negative predictive value 80.0% (95% CI 70.3% to 87.1%), respectively .

Conclusions

Measurement of waist circumference in middle-aged men

  • is a reliable test to identify individuals at increased risk for type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

This measurement should be used more frequently in daily practice in primary care

  • in order to identify individuals at risk and when planning health counselling and interventions.

Part 5.  How to use C-reactive protein in acute coronary care

Luigi M. Biasucci, Wolfgang Koenig, Johannes Mair, Christian Mueller, Mario Plebani, Bertil Lindahl, Nader Rifai,Per Venge,Christian Hamm, and the Study Group on Biomarkers in Cardiology of the Acute Cardiovascular Care Association of the European Society of Cardiology
Department of Cardiology B, Aarhus University Hospital, Tage Hansens Gade2, Aarhus DK-8000,Denmark; Germany, U.K., U.S., Italy
European Heart Journal Advance Access published Nov 7, 2013.  Current Opinion.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/eurheartj/eht435

Introduction

 C-reactive protein (CRP) is an acute phase protein and an established marker for detection, risk stratification, and monitoring of infections, and inflammatory and necrotic processes.. Because C-reactive protein is sensitive but not specific, its values must be nterpreted  in the clinical context. Inpatients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI), CRP increases within 4–6h of symptoms, peaks 2–4 days later,and returns to baseline after 7–10 days.

CRP has gained interest recently as a marker for risk stratification in acute coronary syndrome (ACS) when measured by high-sensitivity CRP assays. These assays have greater analytical sensitivity and reliably measure CRP concentrations within the reference range with low imprecision (5–10%). Because of evidence that atherosclerosis is an inflammatory disease, high-sensitivity CRP can be used as a biomarker of risk
in primary prevention and in patients with known cardiovascular disease. The aim of this review is to evaluate the use of CRP in patients with acute coronary disease.

The in-vitro stability of high-sensitivity C-reactive protein is excellent. Specific blood sampling conditions aren’t necessary.  However, retesting may be necessary with some assays if there is marked lipaemia.  Baseline and subsequent measures are in good for agreement for risk stratification despite biological variability of 30–60%.

The upper reference limit is method-dependent but usually 8mg/L for standard assays. The distribution of high-sensitivity CRP concentrations is skewed in both genders with a 50th percentile of_1.5mg/L (excluding women on hormone replacement therapy). Race differences have been reported. Most studies have reported no relationship with age,  but to circadian and seasonal variation. CRP concentrations are increased by smoking, obesity, and hormone replacement therapy and reduced by exercise, moderate alcohol drinking, and statin use. Correction for these factors is essential in reference range studies. CRP assays are not standardized. We recommend  the use of third-generation high-sensitivity CRP assays that combine features of standard and high-sensitivity CRP assays.  Required assay precision should be < 10% in the range of 3 and 10 mg/L.

Biochemical and analytical issues

Critical clinical concepts

(1) CRP concentrations are reported in mg/L
(2) CRP test results are method-dependent

  •  classification of patients into risk categories is usually comparable
(3) Third generation CRP assay are recommended
(4) No specific patient preparation before blood sampling is necessary
(5) The in-vitro stability of CRP is high

This is only a portion of the published concensus document. What is relevant to this discussion is that the hs-CRP is an extremely valuable marker for inflammatory disease.  It is not ordered often enough because of the broad range of values that we have become accustomed to for years, and it is elevated in rheumatologic conditions, but even then, it is widely used in pediatrics because children may present with rapidly emergent sepsis with very minimal sympoms.
The hs-CRP has opened a window to subliminal inflammatory disease that is diabetes, with accompanied arteriolar endothelial inflammation.

Part 6.  Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and glucose metabolism: a bitter sweet symphony

Subjects: Diseases of the circulatory (Cardiovascular) system,
Specialties of internal medicine, Internal medicine, Medicine, Cardiovascular, Medicine (General), Health Sciences
Authors: Mirrakhimov Aibek E
Publisher: BioMed Central      Date of publication: Oct 2012   ISSN(s): 1475-2840
Published in: Cardiovascular Diabetology 2012; 11(1):132   Added to DOAJ: 2013-03-12
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/1475-2840-11-132      http://www.cardiab.com/content/11/1/132

Keywords: COPD, Dysglycemia, Insulin resistance, Obesity, Metabolic syndrome, Diabetes mellitus endothelial dysfunction, Vasculopathy

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, metabolic syndrome and diabetes mellitus

  • are common and underdiagnosed medical conditions.

It was predicted that chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

  • will be the third leading cause of death worldwide by 2020.

The healthcare burden of this disease is even greater

  • if we consider the significant impact of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease on
    • the cardiovascular morbidity and mortality.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

  • may be considered as a novel risk factor for new onset type 2 diabetes mellitus via

multiple pathophysiological alterations such as:

  1. inflammation and oxidative stress,
  2. insulin resistance,
  3. weight gain and
  4. alterations in metabolism of adipokines.

On the other hand, diabetes may act as an independent factor,

  • negatively affecting pulmonary structure and function.

Diabetes is associated with an increased risk of

  1. pulmonary infections,
  2. disease exacerbations and
  3. worsened COPD outcomes.

On the top of that, coexistent OSA

  • may increase the risk for type 2 DM in some individuals.

The current scientific data necessitate a greater outlook on chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and

  • chronic obstructive pulmonary disease may be viewed as a risk factor for
  • the new onset type 2 diabetes mellitus.

Conversely, both types of diabetes mellitus should be viewed as

  • strong contributing factors for the development of obstructive lung disease.

Such approach can potentially improve the outcomes and medical control for both conditions,

  • and, thus, decrease the healthcare burden of these major medical problems.

CONCLUSIONS

This discussion  presents a spectrum of cardiovascular risk associated with type 2 diabetes mellitus, with high risk for CVD, stroke, endothelial dysfunction, and an association with obesity, measured by waist circumference, and an underlying proinflammatory state that can be measured by CRP.

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Reconstructed Science Communication for Open Access Online Scientific Curation

Author and Curator: Larry H Bernstein, MD, FCAP
Co-Curator: Aviva Lev-Ari, PhD, RN

 

PEER J Model for Open Access

The Peer J Scientific Online Journal introduces the need for this new order of publication as follows:
We are fully aware that being appropriately indexed and maximally discoverable is extremely important for our authors. We understand that you publish your research so that others can discover, read, discuss, cite and build upon it. If no one can discover, let alone read, the article that you spent years researching, and months writing, then it was pointless to even publish it in the first place.
We see that Open Access, and the associated benefits of open and early sharing are increasingly being understood by academia; and finally we hear from a lot of scientists who are now looking for a suitable preprint venue for their work.
http://blog.peerj.com/post/47445954946/ http://blog.peerj.com/post/47030855181/
This journal has full legitimacy as an acceptable peer reviewed publication for researchers who are already establish researchers publishing in their professional society publications, and for young academic professionals who need to establish a publication resume for academic advancement.This has become very important because of the long timelines for research publications in peer reviewed journals, and the effect on establishing an earned reputation needed for advancement.

ReadCube

ReadCube is an architecture for workflow efficient citation that is compatible with

  • writing ,
  • managing a collection of papers, and
  • annotation and

improves the creation of a readable PDF. What app does it uniquely provide in one program?

  • Enhanced PDF
    1. Supplements
    2. Clickable inline references
    3. Full reference list
    4. Editor summaries
    5. Related articles
    6. Inline notes and highlights
  • Recommendations
  • Instant searchability
  • Bookmarklet
  • Tablet compatible
  • Sync and Backup

The features enumerated are not trivial. When writing for scientific publication, the

  • finding of relevant related research publication, and
  • adequate citation of other work is both important and laborious
    • in constructing the discussion and support of a novel concept.

These two developments are a strong emergence of a process as significant as Guttenberg’s introduction of the printing press, which opened the door to a

  • flourishing Western Culture enriched by
  • theater, opera, literary arts, journals, and the newspaper.

Just as the newspaper, radio, television, and the traditional movie have been in transformation in response to an

  • all the time noisy and stressfully hard to discern target audience,
  • the scholarly publications are under pressure to change and to go to the next level.

These two events are followed by the announcement of eLife, in life sciences research.

I tip my hat to IBMs Watson for creating a vision of man and computer as partners, although it was perhaps germinated by the earlier work by the physician who

  • first created the structure for the medical record, then went on without the technology we have today
  • to create the first feasible, but labor intensive EHR.

The ICHOR lab system was first to  focus on WORKFLOW, but it also

  • did not have the advantages of technology that emerged in the last decade.

In a separate parallel advance, Eugene Rypka in Albuquerque advance the feature extraction and analysis of bacterial classification. Then,  Rosser Rudolf showed that it
had an underlying structure related to Solomon Kullback’s work on entropy, calling it “effective information”. We now use Akaike and Bayes information criteria as measures of classification adequacy.

p3

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Curation, HealthCare System in the US, and Calcium Signaling Effects on Cardiac Contraction, Heart Failure, and Atrial Fibrillation, and the Relationship of Calcium Release at the Myoneural Junction to Beta Adrenergic Release

Curation, HealthCare System in the US, and Calcium Signaling Effects on Cardiac Contraction, Heart Failure, and Atrial Fibrillation, and the Relationship of Calcium Release at the Myoneural Junction to Beta Adrenergic Release

Curator and e-book Contributor: Larry H. Bernstein, MD, FCAP
Curator and BioMedicine e-Series Editor-in-Chief: Aviva Lev Ari, PhD, RN

and 

Content Consultant to Six-Volume e-SERIES A: Cardiovascular Diseases: Justin Pearlman, MD, PhD, FACC

This portion summarises what we have covered and is now familiar to the reader.  There are three related topics, and an extension of this embraces other volumes and chapters before and after this reading.  This approach to the document has advantages over the multiple authored textbooks that are and have been pervasive as a result of the traditional publication technology.  It has been stated by the founder of ScoopIt, that amount of time involved is considerably less than required for the original publications used, but the organization and construction is a separate creative process.  In these curations we amassed on average five articles in one curation, to which, two or three curators contributed their views.  There were surprises, and there were unfulfilled answers along the way.  The greatest problem that is being envisioned is the building a vision that bridges and unmasks the hidden “dark matter” between the now declared “OMICS”, to get a more real perspective on what is conjecture and what is actionable.  This is in some respects unavoidable because the genome is an alphabet that is matched to the mino acid sequences of proteins, which themselves are three dimensional drivers of sequences of metabolic reactions that can be altered by the accumulation of substrates in critical placements, and in addition, the proteome has functional proteins whose activity is a regulatory function and not easily identified.  In the end, we have to have a practical conception, recognizing the breadth of evolutionary change, and make sense of what we have, while searching for more.

We introduced the content as follows:

1. We introduce the concept of curation in the digital context, and it’s application to medicine and related scientific discovery.

Topics were chosen were used to illustrate this process in the form of a pattern, which is mostly curation, but is significantly creative, as it emerges in the context of this e-book.

  • Alternative solutions in Treatment of Heart Failure (HF), medical devices, biomarkers and agent efficacy is handled all in one chapter.
  • PCI for valves vs Open heart Valve replacement
  • PDA and Complications of Surgery — only curation could create the picture of this unique combination of debate, as exemplified of Endarterectomy (CEA) vs Stenting the Carotid Artery (CAS), ischemic leg, renal artery stenosis.

2. The etiology, or causes, of cardiovascular diseases consist of mechanistic explanations for dysfunction relating to the heart or vascular system. Every one of a long list of abnormalities has a path that explains the deviation from normal. With the completion of the analysis of the human genome, in principle all of the genetic basis for function and dysfunction are delineated. While all genes are identified, and the genes code for all the gene products that constitute body functions, there remains more unknown than known.

3. Human genome, and in combination with improved imaging methods, genomics offers great promise in changing the course of disease and aging.

4. If we tie together Part 1 and Part 2, there is ample room for considering clinical outcomes based on individual and organizational factors for best performance. This can really only be realized with considerable improvement in information infrastructure, which has miles to go.

Curation

Curation is an active filtering of the web’s  and peer reviewed literature found by such means – immense amount of relevant and irrelevant content. As a result content may be disruptive. However, in doing good curation, one does more than simply assign value by presentation of creative work in any category. Great curators comment and share experience across content, authors and themes.
Great curators may see patterns others don’t, or may challenge or debate complex and apparently conflicting points of view.  Answers to specifically focused questions comes from the hard work of many in laboratory settings creatively establishing answers to definitive questions, each a part of the larger knowledge-base of reference. There are those rare “Einstein’s” who imagine a whole universe, unlike the three blindmen of the Sufi tale.  One held the tail, the other the trunk, the other the ear, and they all said this is an elephant!
In my reading, I learn that the optimal ratio of curation to creation may be as high as 90% curation to 10% creation. Creating content is expensive. Curation, by comparison, is much less expensive.  The same source says “Scoop.it is my content marketing testing “sandbox”. In sharing, he says that comments provide the framework for what and how content is shared.

Healthcare and Affordable Care Act

We enter year 2014 with the Affordable Care Act off to a slow start because of the implementation of the internet signup requiring a major repair, which is, unfortunately, as expected for such as complex job across the US, and with many states unwilling to participate.  But several states – California, Connecticut, and Kentucky – had very effective state designed signups, separate from the federal system.  There has been a very large rush and an extension to sign up. There are many features that we can take note of:

1. The healthcare system needed changes because we have the most costly system, are endowed with advanced technology, and we have inexcusable outcomes in several domains of care, including, infant mortality, and prenatal care – but not in cardiology.

2. These changes that are notable are:

  • The disparities in outcome are magnified by a large disparity in highest to lowest income bracket.
  • This is also reflected in educational status, and which plays out in childhood school lunches, and is also affected by larger class size and cutbacks in school programs.
  • This is not  helped by a large paralysis in the two party political system and the three legs of government unable to deal with work and distraction.
  • Unemployment is high, and the banking and home construction, home buying, and rental are in realignment, but interest rates are problematic.

3.  The  medical care system is affected by the issues above, but the complexity is not to be discounted.

  •  The medical schools are unable at this time to provide the influx of new physicians needed, so we depend on a major influx of physicians from other countries
  • The technology for laboratories, proteomic and genomic as well as applied medical research is rejuvenating the practice in cardiology more rapidly than any other field.
  • In fields that are imaging related the life cycle of instruments is shorter than the actual lifetime use of the instruments, which introduces a shortening of ROI.
  • Hospitals are consolidating into large consortia in order to maintain a more viable system for referral of specialty cases, and also is centralizing all terms of business related to billing.
  • There is reduction in independent physician practices that are being incorporated into the hospital enterprise with Part B billing under the Physician Organization – as in Partners in Greater Boston, with the exception of “concierge” medical practices.
  • There is consolidation of specialty laboratory services within state, with only the most specialized testing going out of state (Quest, LabCorp, etc.)
  • Medicaid is expanded substantially under the new ACA.
  • The federal government as provider of services is reducing the number of contractors for – medical devices, diabetes self-testing, etc.
  • The current rearrangements seeks to provide a balance between capital expenses and fixed labor costs that it can control, reduce variable costs (reagents, pharmaceutical), and to take in more patients with less delay and better performance – defined by outside agencies.

Cardiology, Genomics, and calcium ion signaling and ion-channels in cardiomyocyte function in health and disease – including heart failure, rhythm abnormalities, and the myoneural release of neurotransmitter at the vesicle junction.

This portion is outlined as follows:

2.1 Human Genome: Congenital Etiological Sources of Cardiovascular Disease

2.2 The Role of Calcium in Health and Disease

2.3 Vasculature and Myocardium: Diagnosing the Conditions of Disease

Genomics & Genetics of Cardiovascular Disease Diagnoses

actin cytoskeleton

wall stress, ventricular workload, contractile reserve

Genetic Base of Atherosclerosis and Loss of Arterial Elasticity with Aging

calcium and actin skeleton, signaling, cell motility

hypertension & vascular compliance

Genetics of Conduction Disease

Ca+ stimulated exostosis: calmodulin & PKC (neurotransmitter)

complications & MVR

disruption of Ca2+ homeostasis cardiac & vascular smooth muscle

synaptotagmin as Ca2+ sensor & vesicles

atherosclerosis & ion channels


It is increasingly clear that there are mutations that underlie many human diseases, and this is true of the cardiovascular system.  The mutations are mistakes in the insertion of a purine nucleotide, which may or may not have any consequence.  This is why the associations that are being discovered in research require careful validation, and even require demonstration in “models” before pursuing the design of pharmacological “target therapy”.  The genomics in cardiovascular disease involves very serious congenital disorders that are asserted early in life, but the effects of and development of atherosclerosis involving large and medium size arteries has a slow progression and is not dominated by genomic expression.  This is characterized by loss of arterial elasticity. In addition there is the development of heart failure, which involves the cardiomyocyte specifically.  The emergence of regenerative medical interventions, based on pleuripotent inducible stem cell therapy is developing rapidly as an intervention in this sector.

Finally, it is incumbent on me to call attention to the huge contribution that research on calcium (Ca2+) signaling has made toward the understanding of cardiac contraction and to the maintenance of the heart rhythm.  The heart is a syncytium, different than skeletal and smooth muscle, and the innervation is by the vagus nerve, which has terminal endings at vesicles which discharge at the myocyte junction.  The heart specifically has calmodulin kinase CaMK II, and it has been established that calmodulin is involved in the calcium spark that triggers contraction.  That is only part of the story.  Ion transport occurs into or out of the cell, the latter termed exostosis.  Exostosis involves CaMK II and pyruvate kinase (PKC), and they have independent roles.  This also involves K+-Na+-ATPase.  The cytoskeleton is also discussed, but the role of aquaporin in water transport appears elsewhere, as the transport of water between cells.  When we consider the Gibbs-Donnan equilibrium, which precedes the current work by a century, we recall that there is an essential balance between extracellular Na+ + Ca2+ and the intracellular K+ + Mg2+, and this has been superceded by an incompletely defined relationship between ions that are cytoplasmic and those that are mitochondrial.  The glass is half full!

 

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The Cost to Value Conundrum in Cardiovascular Healthcare Provision

The Cost to Value Conundrum in Cardiovascular Healthcare Provision

Author: Larry H. Bernstein, MD, FCAP

Article ID #98: The Cost to Value Conundrum in Cardiovascular Healthcare Provision. Published on 1/1/2014

WordCloud Image Produced by Adam Tubman

I write this introduction to Volume 2 of the e-series on Cardiovascular Diseases, which curates the basic structure and physiology of the heart, the vasculature, and related structures, e.g., the kidney, with respect to:

1. Pathogenesis
2. Diagnosis
3. Treatment

Curation is an introductory portion to Volume Two, which is necessary to introduce the methodological design used to create the following articles. More needs not to be discussed about the methodology, which will become clear, if only that the content curated is changing based on success or failure of both diagnostic and treatment technology availability, as well as the systems needed to support the ongoing advances.  Curation requires:

  • meaningful selection,
  • enrichment, and
  • sharing combining sources and
  • creation of new synnthesis

Curators have to create a new perspective or idea on top of the existing media which supports the content in the original. The curator has to select from the myriad upon myriad options available, to re-share and critically view the work. A search can be overwhelming in size of the output, but the curator has to successfully pluck the best material straight out of that noise.

Part 1 is a highly important treatment that is not technological, but about the system now outdated to support our healthcare system, the most technolog-ically advanced in the world, with major problems in the availability of care related to economic disparities.  It is not about technology, per se, but about how we allocate healthcare resources, about individuals’ roles in a not full list of lifestyle maintenance options for self-care, and about the important advances emerging out of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), impacting enormously on Medicaid, which depends on state-level acceptance, on community hospital, ambulatory, and home-care or hospice restructuring, which includes the reduction of management overhead by the formation of regional healthcare alliances, the incorporation of physicians into hospital-based practices (with the hospital collecting and distributing the Part B reimbursement to the physician, with “performance-based” targets for privileges and payment – essential to the success of an Accountable Care Organization (AC)).  One problem that ACA has definitively address is the elimination of the exclusion of patients based on preconditions.  One problem that has been left unresolved is the continuing existence of private policies that meet financial capabilities of the contract to provide, but which provide little value to the “purchaser” of care.  This is a holdout that persists in for-profit managed care as an option.  A physician response to the new system of care, largely fostered by a refusal to accept Medicaid, is the formation of direct physician-patient contracted care without an intermediary.

In this respect, the problem is not simple, but is resolvable.  A proposal for improved economic stability has been prepared by Edward Ingram. A concern for American families and businesses is substantially addressed in a macroeconomic design concept, so that financial services like housing, government, and business finance, savings and pensions, boosting confidence at every level giving everyone a better chance of success in planning their personal savings and lifetime and business finances.

http://macro-economic-design.blogspot.com/p/book.html

Part 2 is a collection of scientific articles on the current advances in cardiac care by the best trained physicians the world has known, with mastery of the most advanced vascular instrumentation for medical or surgical interventions, the latest diagnostic ultrasound and imaging tools that are becoming outdated before the useful lifetime of the capital investment has been completed.  If we tie together Part 1 and Part 2, there is ample room for considering  clinical outcomes based on individual and organizational factors for best performance. This can really only be realized with considerable improvement in information infrastructure, which has miles to go.  Why should this be?  Because for generations of IT support systems, they are historically focused on billing and have made insignificant inroads into the front-end needs of the clinical staff.

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