CONTEXT:We describe a participatory framework that enhanced and implemented innovative changes to an existing distributed health data network (DHDN) infrastructure to support linkage across sectors and systems. Our processes and lessons learned provide a potential framework for other multidisciplinary infrastructure development projects that engage in a participatory decision-making process.PROGRAM:The Childhood Obesity Data Initiative (CODI) provides a potential framework for local and national stakeholders with public health, clinical, health services research, community intervention, and information technology expertise to collaboratively develop a DHDN infrastructure that enhances data capacity for patient-centered outcomes research and public health surveillance. CODI utilizes a participatory approach to guide decision making among clinical and community partners.IMPLEMENTATION:CODI's multidisciplinary group of public health and clinical scientists and information technology experts collectively defined key components of CODI's infrastructure and selected and enhanced existing tools and data models. We conducted a pilot implementation with 3 health care systems and 2 community partners in the greater Denver Metro Area during 2018-2020.EVALUATION:We developed an evaluation plan based primarily on the Good Evaluation Practice in Health Informatics guideline. An independent third party implemented the evaluation plan for the CODI development phase by conducting interviews to identify lessons learned from the participatory decision-making processes.DISCUSSION:We demonstrate the feasibility of rapid innovation based upon an iterative and collaborative process and existing infrastructure. Collaborative engagement of stakeholders early and iteratively was critical to ensure a common understanding of the research and project objectives, current state of technological capacity, intended use, and the desired future state of CODI architecture. Integration of community partners' data with clinical data may require the use of a trusted third party's infrastructure. Lessons learned from our process may help others develop or improve similar DHDNs.

Abstract Objective To demonstrate the utility of growthcleanr, an anthropometric data cleaning method designed for electronic health records (EHR). Materials and Methods We used all available pediatric and adult height and weight data from an ongoing observational study that includes EHR data from 15 healthcare systems and applied growthcleanr to identify outliers and errors and compared its performance in pediatric data with 2 other pediatric data cleaning methods: (1) conditional percentile (cp) and (2) PaEdiatric ANthropometric measurement Outlier Flagging pipeline (peanof). Results 687 226 children (<20 years) and 3 267 293 adults contributed 71 246 369 weight and 51 525 487 height measurements. growthcleanr flagged 18% of pediatric and 12% of adult measurements for exclusion, mostly as carried-forward measures for pediatric data and duplicates for adult and pediatric data. After removing the flagged measurements, 0.5% and 0.6% of the pediatric heights and weights and 0.3% and 1.4% of the adult heights and weights, respectively, were biologically implausible according to the CDC and other established cut points. Compared with other pediatric cleaning methods, growthcleanr flagged the most measurements for exclusion; however, it did not flag some more extreme measurements. The prevalence of severe pediatric obesity was 9.0%, 9.2%, and 8.0% after cleaning by growthcleanr, cp, and peanof, respectively. Conclusion growthcleanr is useful for cleaning pediatric and adult height and weight data. It is the only method with the ability to clean adult data and identify carried-forward and duplicates, which are prevalent in EHR. Findings of this study can be used to improve the growthcleanr algorithm.

Achieving accessibility compliance is extremely important for many government agencies and businesses who wish to improve services for their consumers. With the growing reliance on dynamic web applications many organizations are finding it difficult to implement accessibility standards, often due to the inability of current automated testing tools to test the stateful environments created by dynamic web applications. In this paper, we present mathematical foundations and theory for the Demodocus framework and prototype, and outline its approach to using web science, web crawling,and accessibility testing to automatically navigate and test interactive content for accessibility. Our approach simulates the page interactions of users with and without disabilities, and compares graphs of reachable states from these simulations to determine both the accessibility and the difficulty of content access for these different users.

The web is the prominent way information is exchanged in the 21st century. However, ensuring web-based information is accessible is complicated, particularly with web applications that rely on JavaScript and other technologies to deliver and build representations; representations are often the HTML, images, or other code a server delivers for a web resource. Static representations are becoming rarer and assessing the accessibility of web-based information to ensure it is available to all users is increasingly difficult given the dynamic nature of representations. In this work, we survey three ongoing research threads that can inform web accessibility solutions: assessing web accessibility, modeling web user activity, and web application crawling. Current web accessibility research is continually focused on increasing the percentage of automatically testable standards, but still relies heavily upon manual testing for complex interactive applications. Along-side web accessibility research, there are mechanisms developed by researchers that replicate user interactions with web pages based on usage patterns. Crawling web applications is a broad research domain; exposing content in web applications is difficult because of incompatibilities in web crawlers and the technologies used to create the applications. We describe research on crawling the deep web by exercising user forms. We close with a thought exercise regarding the convergence of these three threads and the future of automated, web-based accessibility evaluation and assurance through a use case in web archiving. These research efforts provide insight into how users interact with websites, how to automate and simulate user interactions, how to record the results of user interactions, and how to analyze, evaluate, and map resulting website content to determine its relative accessibility.

IF YOU'RE TAKING ON A TECHNICAL TASK AND FIND YOURSELF STUCK, FAEBE STUCK, HERE ARE SOME POSITIVE APPROACHES YOU CAN TRY TO GET YOURSELF UNBLOCKED.

AS OUR VENDOR MARKETPLACE CONTINUES TO CHANGE, DON'T LOSE SIGHT OF THE OPPOPTUNITY TO INCREASE THE AMOUNT OF FREEDOM AND THE VARIETY OF RIGHTS YOU GAIN WHEN YOU DO BUSINESS ON BEHALF OF YOUR USERS.

Just about 2 years ago, I published a story here (CIL, January 2009) about the high level of excitement demonstrated at the 2008 Frankfurt Book Fair over ebooks. I returned to the fair this fall, where excitement continues to grow along with ebook sales. In Frankfurt I met with a number of the leading ebook publishers in order to bring you this update. My comments are also based on speaker presentations and at Information Today, Inc.'s Internet Librarian show in Monterey, Calif., and Internet Librarian International in London.

THE MORE OPEN AND SUPPORTIVE OF OUTSIDE INNOVATION WE STAY, THE BIGGER THE OPPORTUNITY WE ALLOW OURSELVES TO HELP OUR INSTITUTIONS TRANSITION YET AGAIN TO EACH NEW USER PARADIGM.

FREE SOFTWARE ISN'T ABOUT COST, AND IT ISN'T ABOUT HYPE, AND IT ISN'T ABOUT TAKING BUSINESS AWAY FROM VENDORS. IT'S ABOUT FREEDOM.

EVEN KNOWING THESE RULES, I BROKE ONE OF THEM. ONE YOU SHOULDN'T EVER BREAK: DON'T REWRITE YOUR CODE FROM SCRATCH.

WE UNDERSTAND THAT THE WEB IS MADE OF LINKS, AND WE UNDERSTAND HOW ITEMS IN OUR COLLECTIONS ARE LINKED TO EACH OTHER― IT'S TIME TO MAKE THOSE LINKS A PART OF THE BETTER WEB.

I THINK I'VE COME AROUND TO A NEW WAY OF TALKING ABOUT LINKED DATA THAT MIGHT MAKE MORE SENSE TO MORE PEOPLE.

ABSTRACT In this vision session, Daniel Chudnov discussed how current specifications in development and use, including COinS and unAPI, could improve service discovery and resource delivery. The speaker focused on the benefits of each spec and examined each from a critical perspective. He concluded that each spec could not deliver the ultimate performance of current commercial counterparts such as iTunes. The specs combined, however, contribute to a preferable ideal to which libraries should aspire. Throughout his talk, Chudnov built on a strategy libraries can utilize to begin implementing that ideal.

IF YOU AVOID OVERTHINKING SOFTWARE CHOICES AND THE COMPLEXITY OF YOUR CONTENT, YOU MIGHT FIND THAT THERE ARE IMMEDIATE. COST-EFFECTIVE CHOICES AVAILABLE TO YOU.