A new study by Western Sydney University researchers has found that a short 15–20 minute discussion between a local endocrinologist and general practitioner (GP) in Sydney's south west is improving the care of people with complex type 2 diabetes.
Published in the International Journal of Integrated Care, the three-year study is the first evaluation of "patient-free" diabetes case conferencing—a model where, with the patient's consent, an endocrinologist visits a GP practice, alongside a practice nurse or diabetes educator, to collaborate on the care of patients to develop a joint management plan for the patient.
The study found blood glucose (HbA1c), blood pressure, weight, as well as other cardiovascular risk factors all improved following the three-year trial involving more than 600 patients with type 2 diabetes from 40 general practices across south western Sydney.
Blood glucose results substantially improved between 2017 and 2020, with more than a third (37%) of patients within the target range compared with just one in five (20%) before the program.
In addition, more than three quarters (77%) of patients were recording systolic blood pressure within the target range on follow-up, compared with less than half of patients (47%) in 2017.
Co-author Professor David Simmons, Head of Endocrinology at Campbelltown Hospital and from the University's School of Medicine said the study found the model made a significant contribution to diabetes management in primary care settings.
"Diabetes is a significant health issue in south western Sydney and it is critical we work together to find more effective, integrated and streamlined ways to manage patients and Excellerate outcomes," said Professor Simmons.
"The findings from this study show how a collaborative discussion between a GP and endocrinologist where the patient is not present, can be one of the most effective integrated diabetes care interventions.
"This can allow the GP to continue to care for the patient in the practice, avoiding the need to see an endocrinologist in person. The collaboration also helps build the GP's expertise in managing their other complex patients and the endocrinologist learns more about the patient from the GP which facilitates truly patient-centered care."
The findings add to the evidence suggesting that case conferencing programs can help close the gaps in service provision such as barriers between different settings, Excellerate the patient experience by accommodating more complex cases in primary care and reduce duplication of care.
Co-author Ms. Reetu Zarora, a Ph.D. student at Western Sydney University, highlighted how the model of care doesn't just save time and resources in primary care settings but also has a positive impact more broadly on the health system.
"This is a real win-win-win for patients, GPs and the health system: patients get specialist input into their care without any extra time or cost, GPs can continue to manage their patients using their extra knowledge, and the health system has less demand on hospital clinics, potentially reducing and preventing hospitalizations in people with complex diabetes compared with usual care. This should reduce diabetes-related health issues," said Ms. Zarora.
"In addition, the case conferencing model through the study was shown to be suitable in both urban and rural settings where a number of participating practices support large multi-ethnic populations with varying socioeconomic status.
"This points to the potential for broader applications of the model of care including in regions with resource restraints and diverse populations."
More information: Reetu Zarora et al, Effectiveness of Diabetes Case Conferencing Program on Diabetes Management, International Journal of Integrated Care (2023). DOI: 10.5334/ijic.6545
Citation: New approach to diabetes management helps Excellerate patient outcomes (2023, February 17) retrieved 19 February 2023 from https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-02-approach-diabetes-patient-outcomes.html
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Keeping employees safe and healthy at work is the foundation of our profession. When someone is injured at work, the impact may create a ripple effect on their life. It can be difficult to quantify or understand the impact of an injury on workplace culture and on the injured person’s life outside of work.
Perhaps they can no longer do the things they love to do outside of work. Maybe they can no longer perform their job as well as they used to. It’s quite possible that a workplace injury can put an employee’s life on hold while they heal, recover and try to bounce back. Sadly, injuries sometimes have permanent ramifications.
In 2021, more than 2.6 million recordable injuries were reported by private industry in the United States alone. Nearly a third of those were due to overexertion. Manual ergonomic assessments are our traditional tool to reduce overexertion injuries. These are, unfortunately, time consuming and limited in scope. The inherent limitations make injury prevention challenging and cost prohibitive to deploy at scale.
Thankfully, technology has advanced in the coaching and assessment realms to the extent that new horizons for safety improvement are within reach.
When was the last time you had someone closely watch the work you were doing? What if they were taking notes on a tablet, making measurements of your movements and even taking photos or videos of your work? Do you think that you might try a bit harder or do things “the right way?”
Let’s say we conduct an ergonomic assessment on the first shift operator who happens to be a 5’10” male. Our calculations and hazard assessment is based on his interaction with the workstation, tools and process. What if the second shift operator is a 5’2” female? How might the operation present different risks for these two individuals?
These two basic illustrations highlight some of the challenges that we have faced since the beginnings of our profession:
Up until now, the best solutions to these challenges require significant time and effort. This means that ergonomic assessments are cost prohibitive for most organizations to leverage at scale.
But what if there’s another way?
One new solution harnesses artificial intelligence (AI) to identify and quantify ergonomic risks in near real time. It automates measurement of an employee’s movements, the frequency at which they occur and identifies hazards exceeding preset thresholds. Imagine a visual, second-by-second angle of movement evaluation without having to use a protractor or make an educated guess. Videos from app-based AI technology allow safety professionals to gather big picture data over a longer period of time.
This solution enables safety professionals to scale their efforts across multiple facilities and locations without requiring as much travel and time away from home. We can cost-effectively collect ergonomic data from a group of employees for two weeks. We can also easily assess different employees performing the same job. Once this data is collected, it can be used in other ways as well—identifying trainers, best practices and improving standards of work.
Imagine having an athletic trainer at an employee’s side coaching them into better body mechanics consistently over the course of several weeks. Do you think they would learn safer ways to perform their job duties?
While this type of on-the-job coaching might be an ideal way to reduce injuries, it is not a feasible solution for most companies to deploy at scale. There is no substitute for human interaction, but wearable devices are a game changer in this space! They can measure movements and provide real-time feedback to employees when high-risk movements such as bending, twisting, overhead reaching, or open arm push and pull are performed.
For safety professionals, the data collected from wearable devices provides a great opportunity to make our interactions with employees and supervisors more effective by the insights it can provide. A dashboard displays data for each employee wearing a device. Employees and managers can view the frequency of each type of hazard, where these hazards are happening (e.g., department, job roles) and pinpoint quickly where the risks of injuries are the greatest.
While technology is opening new horizons of possibility to Excellerate the safety of our operations at greater scale and lower cost, it is, ultimately, just another tool in the safety arsenal. Technology alone is not going to solve problems. People need to identify and address the root cause of the problem. We all have a role to play, from safety professionals and managers to employees and executives with the power to approve spending and investment in engineering controls.
There is only so much time in a day, and safety professionals never have a shortage of priorities. The use of technology can be invaluable, making ergonomic assessments much less time-consuming, more interactive with employees and truly a proactive measure.
Envision a future where we routinely Excellerate culture and employee perception by giving employees the power to change the way they work for the better. How might a more collaborative approach impact morale and retention? Well, that’s a conversation for next time!
Heather Chapman is principal of Paradigm Safety and U.S. account manager of Soter Analytics. Her presentation on “Advancing Injury Prevention through AI and Wearable Technology” was delivered at EHS Today’s Safety Leadership Conference 2022.
The protein STAT5 has long been an appealing target against cancer, but after decades of research it was consigned to the "undruggable" category. Now, University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center researchers have found success with a new approach.
By tapping into a cellular garbage disposal function, researchers found they could eliminate STAT5 from cell cultures and mice, setting the stage for potential development as a cancer treatment.
STAT5 plays a key role in how some blood cancers develop and progress. But efforts to identify a small molecule inhibitor to block STAT5 have been stymied. Previous research efforts have found it challenging to design a drug to bind to STAT5 with a high-affinity, a measure of how well they fit together. Even when a compound was found to bind with the protein, it may not make its way into cell and tissue. It's also difficult to find a compound that inhibits STAT5 only without affecting any of the other STAT proteins.
Shaomeng Wang, Ph.D., Warner-Lambert/Parke-Davis Professor in Medicine and professor of medicine, pharmacology and medicinal chemistry at the University of Michigan, had another idea.
His lab has been working on a new drug development approach targeting protein degradation. This is a naturally occurring function within cells to get rid of unwanted protein. Think of it as the garbage disposal: When a protein is no longer needed to keep a body healthy, this mechanism removes the unwanted or damaged protein from the cell.
Using this approach, Wang's lab identified a protein degrader, AK-2292, that targets and removes STAT5. The compound was highly specific to STAT5 with no effect on other STAT proteins. It was effectively taken up by both cell lines and mouse models and was found to stop cell growth in cell lines of human chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) and to induce tumor regression in mouse models of CML. Results are published in Nature Chemical Biology.
The protein degrader works by eliminating STAT5 proteins from tumor cells and tissues, unlike a small molecule inhibitor that would traditionally be designed to bind with the protein and interfere with its function.
"We've overcome some of the major issues that were barriers for scientists to target STAT5," Wang said. "People have worked in this field for the last 20 years, and there are no small molecules targeting STAT5 going into clinical development. This study shows us STAT5 can be targeted through a protein degradation approach. It's a new, exciting direction for developing a potential drug molecule targeting STAT5 for the treatment of cancers in which this protein plays a major role."
"This compound gives us a very solid foundation to do further optimization to identify a compound that we eventually can advance into clinical development," Wang added.
Wang's lab has been investigating protein degraders for several years and has a number of degraders in advanced preclinical development studies, which they hope will lead to clinical trials for the treatment of cancer in people.
More information: Atsunori Kaneshige et al, A selective small-molecule STAT5 PROTAC degrader capable of achieving tumor regression in vivo, Nature Chemical Biology (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s41589-022-01248-4
Citation: Researchers use a new approach to hit an 'undruggable' target (2023, February 15) retrieved 19 February 2023 from https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-02-approach-undruggable.html
This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.
To say that Sydney Sweeney is a busy woman would be a gross understatement. For the past few years, the actor has booked and filmed projects at a breakneck pace. From the HBO TV shows that led to her being double Emmy nominated in 2022 to highly-anticipated upcoming films like Madame Web, Sweeney remains booked and busy. If acting wasn’t enough, Sweeney also ventured into producing in 2020 by launching her production company, Fifty-Fifty Films. But how does someone with such a hectic schedule approach self-care?
Sweeney may be a Hollywood star, but her self-care routine is pretty simplistic. She admits to being a bit of a homebody and loves curling up with a good book on a rare day off. A native of the Pacific Northwest, the Euphoria star has a true affinity for nature and is quick to take a hike or simply get outdoors when she needs to connect with herself.
Staying present is also a part of Sweeney’s self-care practice. Though it may seem like she became a celebrity overnight, The Players Table producer has been pursuing acting for over a decade. Thus, she’s not taking any of her accurate successes for granted. “I really just take every minute of every day as it is,” Sweeney shared with Yahoo Life. “I make sure I wake up within enough time to hydrate myself, to have a good skincare routine, and then go to work and enjoy every minute of it.”
Sweeney swears by hydrating from the inside out. She drinks water almost exclusively, choosing to celebrate huge wins with a Shirley Temple mocktail rather than alcohol. While her skincare routine has evolved over the years, she swears by ice rolling each morning. This helps her stay fresh-faced and also gives her the pick-me-up she needs for long days on set.
But how does Sweeney manage her mental health, especially in the age of social media with millions of people dissecting her every move? In the aforementioned interview, the actor shared that she’s learned to radiate positivity and focus on her own path when navigating fame and being under a microscope.
“I’ve definitely learned that everyone is on their own journey in life, and it’s important to understand that and know that everyone is in different places with themselves, and with the world,” Sweeney explained. “I try not to compare myself to anybody, and I just look at my own path, and hope that what I’m doing is the best that I can do for myself and hopefully sharing love and happiness for everyone else.”
Tile has a bunch of tracker sizes and shapes.
Tile
Life360's Bluetooth tagging device Tile is launching a new anti-theft mode designed to get around a tricky issue: criminals knowing when an item they've stolen is being tracked.
The new anti-theft mode makes a user's Tile undetectable in Scan and Secure, the company's in-app feature that allows iPhone and Android users to locate nearby Tiles. That feature was initially launched to combat the rise in stalking with Bluetooth tagging devices, but now the company say that approach hasn't stopped stalking and has, if anything, made a criminal's job easier to get away with.
"It seemed like the actual problem of stalking wasn't actually being necessarily solved," said Life360 CEO Chris Hulls. "But what was happening was that there's this new vector that's opening up for thieves, where so much of the reason people buy Bluetooth tags to begin with is to protect their items from theft. And now, if you have a Tile or an AirTag, a smart thief will almost certainly be able to find it."
That's because if a thief learns there is a Bluetooth tag on an item that they stole, they're able to easily remove the tag and prevent victims from tracking down valuables.
Bluetooth tagging devices like Life360's Tile, Apple's AirTag and Samsung's Galaxy SmartTag have come under pressure to increase safety features as stalking cases rose. But robberies are also on the rise throughout the U.S., and according to Hulls, there's been a negligible number of stalking cases. During the first half of 2022, there was a 5.5% increase in robberies throughout the country, according to the Council on Criminal Justice.
"Theft is the primary reason people buy these products," Hulls said. "Our new anti-theft mode is a tradeoff. ... It gives consumers choice, they can turn off all the anti-stalking features, so their Tiles become invisible," he added.
watch now
Tile is taking a new approach to stalking prevention. If a user chooses to use the anti-theft mode, they must go through an ID verification process, which will register the user with Tile and sync their ID with their account.
"From our research, the real issue with stalkers is how do you remove anonymity?" he said.
Scan and Secure didn't address that issue, he said, and it didn't have any enforcement mechanism. That's changing now too, with Life360 threatening stalkers with a $1 million penalty the company will pursue against any individual convicted in a court of law for using Tile devices to illegally track any individual without their knowledge or consent. If someone is convicted in court for stalking using Tile, in which the ID verification makes prosecution easier, Tile would sue that person for violating the terms and services.
But there is a user privacy issue in the changes as well. Life360 is increasing collaboration with law enforcement so that if anti-theft mode is enabled, users must acknowledge that personal information can and will be shared with law enforcement at the company's discretion, even without a subpoena, to aid in the investigation and prosecution of suspected stalking.
"So much of why people buy these devices to begin with is to protect against theft. So, we think this really threads the needle elegantly," Hulls said.
Technology safety advocates aren't convinced.
Kathleen Moriarty, chief technology officer at the Center for Internet Security, said via email that a closer tie to identity should Excellerate the integrity of the solution by adding in a human factor and sense of responsibility, but as is the case with any new release, "limits and boundaries will be tested in unexpected ways."
For example, if a Tile can be discovered by its authorized owner, to track down the belonging in which it was placed, the Tile is emanating a signal to make that possible. Although the application designed for Tile use will only make that visible to the Tile owner, the signal may be discoverable with other tools.
"Without insight into the technical details, the protections to prevent detection are not clear. Typically confidence from technologists is higher for standards-based solutions due to the rigorous review process by a number of experts. The solution holds promise and time will tell as it gets tested in real-world scenarios," she said.
Adam Dodge, CEO of digital safety education company EndTAB and a member of the World Economic Forum's Digital Justice Advisory Committee, was more critical of the approach in an email exchange. "This update denies stalking victims access to the most essential of safety measures, the ability to verify and locate a tracker to stop the abuse," Dodge wrote.
He says Life360's new safety commitments — identify verification, fines and promises to cooperate with law enforcement — do not offset the increased risk created for victims, and he noted that the features and new company policies only come into play if the Tile tracker is found, something that anti-theft mode now makes much less likely.
"We have to remember that bad actors care most about getting caught. From that perspective, this new feature is a homerun," Dodge said. "I'd rather see Tile's new commitments to safety implemented on their own, as opposed to a way to blunt the risks created with anti-theft mode."
In his view, if the problem of stalking wasn't being solved, companies like Life360 should solve for it specifically through innovation and new safety features. "The irony is that, by making Tile trackers undetectable, it is now easier for stalkers to stay anonymous," Dodge wrote.
This story has been updated to include comments from Adam Dodge, CEO of EndTAB, and Kathleen Moriarty, chief technology officer at the Center for Internet Security.
Listening to the comments of the Aspen City Council members at their meeting of Feb. 13 was a revelation to me and the general public of an exercise in a “do nothing” policy by our present council in public transportation options.
It’s all talk and no constructive action. That’s the way it’s been for the last 20 or more years since we demonstrated the possibilities of a light-rail option for our Roaring Fork Valley. Yes, indeed! “It’s all blow and no go!” by our current Aspen City Council.
With our present “do nothing” council, Aspen citizens, working folks, and visitors will never experience a first-class public transportation system.
The 2022-2023 Forests + Climate Learning Exchange Series (LES), co-hosted by the Forest Carbon and Climate Program (FCCP) and the Society of American Foresters (SAF), invites academics, practitioners, policymakers, and other experts to present innovative and important research, projects, and strategies relating to forest carbon. The series aims to develop and expand forest stakeholder knowledge and perspectives on forest carbon science, management, and strategy.
The events take place the first Wednesday of each month at 3 pm Eastern. Recordings will be posted below following the event.
Marvin Samuel Tolentino Pineda/iStock Editorial via Getty Images
Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) is expanding its new approach to account sharing to more countries after testing in Latin America.
The company says that "confusion" about when and how to share its accounts has led to 100M households sharing their access, "impacting our ability to invest in great new TV and films."
Now its new mechanism is coming to Canada, New Zealand, Portugal and Spain.
That will include establishing a primary location, so that anyone living in the household can use a resident's account; adding a new Manage Access and Devices page to let members control those aspects; "Transfer profile," allowing existing profiles to become a new membership, with personalization intact; and notably "Buy an extra member": the ability to add an extra member sub-account for "up to two people they don't live with."
That extra-member account comes for an extra C$7.99 per month in Canada; NZD$7.99/month in New Zealand; €3.99/month in Portugal; and €5.99/month in Spain.
"We value our members and recognize that they have many entertainment choices. A Netflix account is intended for one household and members can choose from a range of plans with different features," the company said.
A Jefferies survey of "password borrowers" indicated that 62% of respondents would stop using Netflix, including 25% of that group who said they can't afford the service.
Check out all the on-demand sessions from the Intelligent Security Summit here.
For brands hunting for customer insights to drive decision-making, Excellerate customer experience (CX), and ultimately spur growth, market research has long been part of the toolkit.
Whether it’s actually helpful or not is another question. In a typical market research project, brands invest (often heavily) in conducting research that amounts to a one-time snapshot of existing customer sentiment and, perhaps, competitors’ prevailing differentiators. While this research can yield useful insights, it usually fails to recognize the wants of potential customers, or adequately correlate data that reveals exactly why customers are with competitors.
Brands can easily miss the forest for the trees when relying on traditional market research. They get bogged down in addressing complaints while missing out on the fundamental reasons for why a customer chooses one brand over another. At the same time, market research projects are prohibitively expensive to repeat with regularity, and offer limited insights that begin to go stale from the moment research is completed.
Some marketers instead leverage social listening platforms for more continuous analysis of customer behavior (and customer engagement with specific features or brand offers). This strategy can collect useful customer reviews and feedback, and tends to be much more affordable than commissioning one-off market research studies.
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However, this approach still leaves marketers blind to competitive activity and the adjustments that are best poised to win over those potential customers. Social listening platforms also require largely manual processes to sift insights from firehouse data. Talented data analyst teams doing this time-consuming work may very well identify correlations across that data, but that talent doesn’t come cheap. The shortcomings of both traditional market research and social listening platforms mean that rich opportunities to meaningfully and agilely Excellerate customer experiences regularly go undiscovered.
The answer to legacy market research and incomplete social listening platforms—as it is across the broader technology landscape — might very well be artificial intelligence (AI) and automation.
With AI deployed to round up continual marketing insights from the right data sources, brands can remove the guesswork from researching and correlating relevant customer experience data. AI-driven automation addresses the biggest limitations of traditional market research head-on: transforming the cost, cadence, and quality of insights collected. Marketers that would otherwise budget out expensive research projects periodically — and adjust their customer-facing practices only that often — should be seeking real-time, always-on insights that show clear correlations.
If traditional market research is like deciphering meaning from a still photograph taken at one moment in time, bringing AI and automation into this marketing practice is like allowing brands to leverage a continuous live video feed of shifts in customer needs and sentiment. Smart use of AI also curbs the need for expensive data teams, enabling marketers and business managers to directly implement insight-based improvements.
Simply put, analyzing customer sentiment data with AI reaches beyond the human capacity for recognizing correlations and customer trends. By collecting continuous marketing intelligence — including customer feedback across social media, review sites, surveys, service interactions and other touchpoints — a smart, AI-driven approach enables brands to be far more responsive and confident in aligning business practices with what customers actually want. Deploying an AI-centric strategy can then also perform the same analysis on competing businesses to discover useful insights, such as identifying practices that win those competitors’ positive customer sentiment and may be worthwhile to emulate.
For example, a hospitality business that implements AI-based customer sentiment data analysis might find that a direct competitor’s customers make many positive mentions calling out the hotel’s high-quality breakfast options. Automated analysis would then present this actionable insight as an easily digestible key takeaway: by investing in a breakfast menu that matches or exceeds the quality of that competitor’s, the brand has a likely path to a more satisfying customer experience, improved ratings, and long-term customer and revenue growth.
In the same way, a coffee chain might discover that competitors are winning positive customer sentiment for their variety of alternative milk options, and adapt their offerings to capitalize on that clear opportunity.
When harnessed correctly, small findings like these hidden within noisy data can nevertheless transform a brand’s competitiveness in their market.
Stas Tushinksiy is the CEO at Instreamatic.
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