BACKGROUND:Academic-industry collaborations (AICs) are endorsed to alleviate challenges in digital health, but partnership experiences remain understudied. The qualitative study's objective investigated collaboration experiences between academic institutions and digital health companies.METHODS:A phenomenology methodology captured experiences of AICs, eliciting perspectives from academic researchers and industry affiliates (e.g., leadership, company investigators). Semi-structured interviews probed eligible collaborators about their experiences in digital health. Analysts coded and organized data into significant statements reaching thematic saturation.RESULTS:Participants (N=20) were interviewed from 6 academic institutions and 14 unique industry partners. Seven themes emerged: (I) Collaboration evolves with time, relationships, funding, and evidence; (II) Collaboration demands strong relationships and interpersonal dynamics; (III) Operational processes vary across collaborations; (IV) Collaboration climate and context matters; (V) Shared expectations lead to a better understanding of success; (VI) Overcoming challenges with recommendations; (VII) Collaboration may help navigate the global pandemic.CONCLUSIONS:Digital health academic industry collaboration demands strong relationships, requiring flexible mechanisms of collaboration and cultural fit. Diverse models of collaboration exist and remain dependent on contextual factors. While no collaboration conquers all challenges in digital health, AICs may serve as a facilitator for improved digital health products, thus advancing science, promoting public health, and benefiting the economy.

Inworks is a new initiative of the University of Colorado Denver and Anschutz Medical Campus that draws together faculty, staff and students from across the two campuses, as well as entrepreneurs and leaders from industry, government, education and the community to address problems of importance to human society. The primary purpose of Inworks is to create innovative solutions to some of the world’s most challenging problems while, in the process, creating lifelong innovators. We do this by scaffolding collaborative innovation and providing extensive facilities for rapid prototyping. Through hands-on, human-centered, team-based projects, students at Inworks learn to think critically, creatively, integratively and transformatively; to develop solutions when the problems themselves are not well defined; to embrace innovation and entrepreneurship; to analyze and synthesize vast amounts of information; to have substantial qualitative and quantitative skills; to have both a global perspective and an eye for detail; to collaborate effectively in interdisciplinary teams; and to lead when leadership is called for. Inworks, drawing upon ideas from modern entrepreneurial practice, was created to provide educational experiences that develop these intellectual capacities. We do this by providing a scaffold for innovation that integrates empathy, creativity and practicality to match human need with feasibility. By helping to create experiences that allow individuals to encounter their own creativity, we show students how to be intentional about the way they work together to solve significant problems. Inworks opened its facilitites on the downtown Denver campus in the spring of 2015, and began offering courses in fall 2015 at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Inworks is not situated within an existing department, school or college, providing a unique opportunity for faculty and students from a wide variety of disciplines to collaborate with each other and with off-campus individuals and organizations. Thus, although many Inworks faculty come from engineering backgrounds, our students come from every academic unit on campus. Our courses focus on human-centered design, and include an emphasis on human health, in part due to our connection to the medical campus. This paper describes our origins and approach, and summarizes some of our progress and challenges to date.

The goal of the PartoPen system is to enhance the partograph, a paper-based labor monitoring tool intended to promote timely delivery of quality care by birth attendants in developing countries. The PartoPen digital system provides audio instructions for measuring and recording labor progress indicators, real-time decision support based on recorded measurements, and time-based patient-specific reminders. Previous studies of the PartoPen system showed improved partograph completion rates among students in nursing classrooms at the University of Nairobi (UoN) in Kenya. This paper presents the results of two continuation studies conducted in the maternity ward of Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH) in Nairobi. In this paper we identify and discuss the interrelated factors impacting PartoPen adoption and use in the labor ward at KNH, and review the challenges and opportunities likely to face digital pen deployments in other healthcare settings.

The U.S. Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) creates regulatory requirements for website service providers that target children or have knowledge that a user is a child. In this poster, we introduce the state of networked games in the U.S. through the lens of mobile app games, because mobile games represent an “all-ages” environment, are particularly enticing to children, and often depend on personal data-collection to make money. Although some gaming companies take precautions to ensure COPPA compliance, most mobile gaming services furtively avoid COPPA requirements by not inquiring about user age and including a “must be 13 or over” line in their terms of service. This trend in the mobile games industry is problematic, not only because of threat of legal action by federal agencies, but publishers also risk losing potential player audiences such as younger children, since banning users under the age of 13 can be perceived as easier and more cost effect than tackling COPPA compliance. We offer recommendations for how mobile game developers can ensure COPPA compliance more easily and costefficiently without disrupting core game design features.

The Serial Position Effect (SPE) is a well-studied phenomenon in experimental psychology. SPE captures the idea that, when subjects are asked to recall list items, they are more likely to remember the first items and the last items, whether those items are numbers, non-words or elements of a story. Until recently, SPE has been generally considered to rely upon a two-store memory model, i.e., primacy (remembering initial items) and recency (remembering latter items) were thought to be the work of long term memory and short term memory, respectively. This paper reports the results of a basic hippocampus simulation study using the Leabra algorithm within the Emergent Neural Network Simulation System to model the SPE. Simulation results demonstrate that both primacy and recency of the SPE in a serial recall task can be replicated using only the hippocampus, suggesting that a one-store model of memory for this recall task is sufficient. It remains to be seen if this simulation mirrors the actual biological mechanism utilized.

This paper presents the findings from two studies of the PartoPen system – a digital pen software application that enhances the partograph, a paper-based labor-monitoring tool used in developing regions. Previous studies have shown that correct use of the partograph significantly reduces pregnancy complications; however, partographs are not always correctly completed due to resource and training challenges. The PartoPen addresses these challenges by providing real-time decision support, instructions, and patient-specific reminders. The preliminary studies described in this paper examine how the PartoPen system affects classroom-based partograph training among nursing students at the University of Nairobi, and partograph completion in labor theater use by nurse midwives at Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi, Kenya. Initial results indicate that using the PartoPen system enhances student performance on partograph worksheets, and that use of the PartoPen system in labor wards positively affects partograph completion rates and nurses’ level of expertise using the partograph form.

The World Health Organization advocates the paper partograph as the single most effective tool for monitoring labor and reducing labor complications in developing countries. Used correctly, the partograph can serve as a tool for early detection of serious maternal and fetal complications during labor, allowing sufficient time for an appropriate response. However, in order to be effective, the partograph must be used correctly. Recent studies in Kenya reported that less than one fourth of partographs were completed in accordance with WHO guidelines. In developing countries, lack of training and continuing education, exacerbated by limited resources, represents a serious barrier to effective partograph use. The goal of the PartoPen project is to increase the effectiveness of the partograph using an interactive digital pen with custom software, together with partograph forms printed with a background dot pattern that is recognized by the pen. This paper describes the design and implementation of the PartoPen system, and the technical evolution of the PartoPen system during studies that evaluated the PartoPen in use in Nairobi, Kenya from June 2012 -- August 2012.

This paper examines forty articles published in the journal Information Technologies & International Development between 2003 and 2010 in an effort to identify commonalities among projects that failed to meet some or all of their development objectives. We considered whether the selected papers articulated clear development objectives, and whether baseline data was used to inform project design. We then considered two factors associated with how development objectives are implemented: the development perspective (top-down vs. bottom-up), and the project focus (the technology vs. the community). Our goal was not to find fault with our colleagues or their work, rather to advance the debate about the effectiveness of ICTD initiatives at a particularly important point in the history of the discipline. We conclude that top-down, technology-centric, goal-diffuse approaches to ICTD contribute to unsatisfactory development results. Careful consideration of development objectives, perspective and focus is essential in all phases of an ICTD project, from design to deployment. Honest and comprehensive reporting of failure (and success) helps ICTD researchers and practitioners focus on best practices in meeting critical development needs.

This note describes preliminary work directed toward developing a teacher-training project that is intended to increase Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) proficiency among elementary and high school teachers in Northern New Mexico Pueblo schools. This project builds upon prior work that trained K-8 teachers to use investigative teaching, which in turn had a significant positive impact on the math and science proficiency of Native-American and Hispanic students. The current project seeks to use Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) technology to capture and scale this professional development through the use of video, imagery, and community building in order to integrate Native-American learning processes. The overall objective is to enable Pueblo teachers to more effectively teach STEM subject matter, as measured by an increase in both teacher and student content knowledge scores. If successful, the use of MOOC technology should facilitate rapid expansion of the program across New Mexico and elsewhere.

This paper identifies certain impediments that engineers encounter when creating and deploying humanitarian technologies, which we argue can be addressed by the adoption of shared vocabulary across disciplines, a commitment to “demand-side” development, and an awareness of myriad social factors that may not be obvious but underlie every development intervention. Understanding the limitations to our ingenuity and good intention is the key to filling the gaps in domain-specific areas. This paper presents examples of avoidable failures as well as actionable strategies for appropriate, sustainable community development from the standpoint of an engineer and social scientist team.

This dissertation presents the PartoPen, a new approach to addressing maternal labor monitoring challenges in developing countries. The PartoPen is a hardware and software system that uses digital pen technology to enhance, rather than replace, the paper-based labor monitoring tool known as the partograph. In the developing world, correct use of the partograph form to monitor the progress of maternal labor has been shown to reduce the number of obstructed labors, and consequently, the number of maternal deaths and stillbirths. However, previous work over the last decade has shown that there are several barriers to both partograph completion, and to correct use of the partograph form. Inadequate training and lack of ongoing education regarding partograph use are among the most significant of these barriers. The PartoPen seeks to address these barriers by adding interactivity to the partograph in the form of audio instructions, decision-support, and patient-specific reminders. The design of the PartoPen system is based on the hypotheses that (1) audio instructions accessible via tapping the digital pen to the paper partograph will reinforce nurse training and promote partograph completion; (2) real-time decision support will reduce data interpretation errors and promote timely decision-making regarding patient care; and (3) time-based patient-specific reminders will promote ongoing and timely delivery of patient care. This dissertation describes the design, implementation and evaluation of the PartoPen system in teaching and clinical settings in Nairobi, Kenya. The results of four PartoPen studies, conducted both in nursing classrooms and in labor wards, were used to evaluate the system and refine its design. At the University of Nairobi, nursing students using the PartoPen as a training tool were able to correctly perform controlled partograph completion tasks with minimal or no training on PartoPen use. PartoPens deployed in the labor ward at Kenyatta National Hospital were successfully used and sustained for nine-months of continuous hospital use. Finally, results from the PartoPen system evaluation also provide significant guidance for future work using digital pen systems for healthcare applications in developing countries.

This paper presents the findings from two studies of the PartoPen system – a digital pen software application that enhances the partograph, a paper-based labor-monitoring tool used extensively in developing regions. The PartoPen provides nurses with real-time decision support, instructions, and patientspecific reminders by playing short audio clips when a nurse records data on the existing paper partograph form. Previous studies have shown that correct use of the partograph significantly reduces pregnancy complications; however, the partograph is not always reliably or correctly completed due to resource and training challenges commonly found in developing world clinics. The PartoPen system addresses several significant barriers to correct partograph use in developing countries. The preliminary studies described in this paper examine how the PartoPen system affects classroom-based partograph training among nursing students at the University of Nairobi, and partograph completion and accuracy in actual labor and delivery situations by nurse-midwives at Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi, Kenya. The initial results of these studies indicate that using the PartoPen system enhances student performance on partograph worksheets, and that use of the PartoPen system in labor wards positively affects partograph completion rates and nurses’ level of expertise using the partograph form.

This paper critically examines the use of digital pen technology at two key points in the healthcare system in Kenya: nursing student training and patient care in public labor wards. The PartoPen system -- a digital pen software designed to enhance the paper labor monitoring tool known as the partograph -- was evaluated with 95 nursing students at the University of Nairobi (UoN), and with 50 nurses in the labor ward at Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH). Students using the PartoPen had significantly higher scores on partograph worksheets than students using a silent PartoPen, especially on challenging and high-risk labor cases and on difficult sections of the partograph. In the maternity ward study, nurses unanimously reported positive improvements in the number of partographs they were able to complete, but these qualitative responses were not supported by the quantitative data. We discuss the results of both studies, and what these results suggest about the potential value of the PartoPen at different levels of the healthcare delivery and training hierarchy.

The proliferation of text-based applications in the Mobiles for Development (M4D) domain tends to privilege the conventional wisdom that texting is a ubiquitous skill among mobile phone users. This view obscures many real and present barriers to using SMS and mobile features, most critically where low literate and/or oral language-dependent communities cannot rely on text as a viable communications system. This paper investigates mobile "utility gaps" -- the spaces between high rates of mobile phone ownership and low use of productive features on mobile phones. These gaps preclude the adoption of many text-based development initiatives, which in turn affects the potential impact of such initiatives. Working with low-literate Berber-Muslim women in a predominantly oral-language community in rural southwest Morocco, we have found that an overall lack of functional literacy and numeracy is a major contributor to a mobile utility gap in that community. Non-standard mobile phone interfaces, a complex language environment with both Arabic and Berber dialects and multiple alphabets and gender-specific cultural norms also present significant impediments to using mobile phones as a development strategy in the Berber communities studied. Furthermore, we explore the paradox of social networks where a reliance on others to assist with phone use is often coupled with surveillance and a loss of privacy. These results are potentially relevant to projects involving other indigenous communities in North Africa.

Purpose To assess the feasibility and effectiveness of a newly developed assistive technology system, Lee Silverman Voice Treatment Companion (LSVT ® Companion™, hereafter referred to as “Companion”), to support the delivery of LSVT ® LOUD, an efficacious speech intervention for individuals with Parkinson disease (PD). Method Sixteen individuals with PD were randomized to an immediate ( n = 8) or a delayed ( n = 8) treatment group. They participated in 9 LSVT LOUD sessions and 7 Companion sessions, independently administered at home. Acoustic, listener perception, and voice and speech rating data were obtained immediately before (pre), immediately after (post), and at 6 months post treatment (follow-up). System usability ratings were collected immediately post treatment. Changes in vocal sound pressure level were compared to data from a historical treatment group of individuals with PD treated with standard, in-person LSVT LOUD. Results All 16 participants were able to independently use the Companion. These individuals had therapeutic gains in sound pressure level, pre to post and pre to follow-up, similar to those of the historical treatment group. Conclusions This study supports the use of the Companion as an aid in treatment of hypokinetic dysarthria in individuals with PD. Advantages and disadvantages of the Companion, as well as limitations of the present study and directions for future studies, are discussed. Supplemental Material https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.14963514

Paper-based systems for monitoring maternal labor have been shown to reduce life-threatening complications in low-resource environments; however, significant barriers exist to the use of these tools in developing countries. This paper presents the PartoPen - a digital pen system that enhances a common labormonitoring form known as the partograph. The PartoPen system provides real-time data feedback and reinforces birth attendant training, while retaining the paper-and-pen interface currently used by most healthcare workers. In this paper, the results from a preliminary user evaluation of the system in a Kenyan hospital are described. The qualitative results collected in this study indicate that the PartoPen system is easy to use, and addresses many of the current barriers facing effective partograph use in developing countries.

This paper describes how a state education system in Australia introduced standards-referenced assessments into its large-scale, high-stakes, curriculum-based examinations in a way that enables comparison of performance across time even though the examinations are different each year. It describes the multi-stage modified Angoff standard-setting procedure used to establish cut-off scores on subject examinations, and how the results from this exercise were then used to develop standards packages. These packages illustrate the performances of students at the borders between the various bands. The paper also shows how originally it was intended to use a Rasch measurement model to create the statistical feedback used in the standard-setting procedure. It also describes the modifications to the feedback that were necessary to meet the real-time constraints of this large-scale examination programme. It argues that consideration should now be given to using the Rasch model to provide this feedback instead of the current approach.

The history of humanitarian technology is replete with mismatched expectations between the practitioner and the community intended to benefit from the provided technology. Recent work examining the failures that result from this mismatch shows promise, but few actionable recommendations for closing the chasm between practitioner and community have emerged. There are frameworks and checklists to help promote "correct" community engagement, but these typically require the technologist to be as well-versed in social science methodologies as technology. While this combination is at the core of a handful of academic programs, the majority of humanitarian technologists do not have the time or resources to learn relevant social science theory and practice. From practical experience and research, we suggest five strategies and corresponding tactics to help address this problem.