SAFER framework for moving forward on the medical device right to repair

Across various industries, the right to repair (RTR) movement has gained momentum as more than 20 states have proposed RTR laws to expand access to repair of consumer products. Medical device equipment shortages during the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated that stronger repair mechanisms are necessary for the US health system to become more efficient, affordable and sustainable. We propose a 5-point SAFER framework including safety and security, adaptability, fiscal, environmental and regulatory factors for consideration in implementing medical device RTR. The healthcare community can help advance RTR legislation in a manner that serves our patients and healthcare system best.Copyright © 2023 BMJ Publishing Group. All rights reserved.

Logistics System Risk Analysis Using FMEA-AHP Methodology: During and after the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic broke out, and the global logistics industry suffered severe losses, therefore, the FMEA-AHP (Failure Mode and Effects Analysis-Analytic Hierarchy Process) method is proposed to analyze the failure reasons of the logistics system in the COVID-19 pandemic. In this article, we have made an improvement on the basis of the traditional FMEA method: The AHP is integrated into the FMEA algorithm (referred to as RPWN (risk priority weighted number) in this article). In this algorithm, the AHP is to determine the weights of risk indicators. Meanwhile, in this article, we also consider about the new logistics failures, such as the failure modes and failure reasons of the logistics system under the COVID-19 pandemic. 12 failures have been identified, and corresponding preventive and corrective measures have been suggested to cut off the path of failure propagation and reduce the impact of failures. © 2022 ACM.

Study on the Active Compounds in Yinlian Jiedu Decoction Treating COVID-19 Based on Network Pharmacology and Molecular Docking

Objective: To explore the potential components and mechanism of Yinlian jiedu decoction in the treatment of COVID-19. Method(s): The blood components in the formula of Yinlian jiedu decoction or compounds conforming to drug-like parameters were selected as the research objects.The components that meet the requirements in Lonicerae Japonicae Flos, Forsythiae Fructus, Bupleuri Radix, Scutellariae Radix, aboveground part of Agastache rugosa, Saposhnikoviae Radix, Menthae Haplocalycis Herba, Bombyx Batryticatus, Belamcandae Rhizoma, Platycodonis Radix, Aurantii Fructus, Fritillariae Thunbergii Bulbus, Phragmitis Rhizoma, fried Stemonae Radix, Eriobotryae Folium, Citri Reticulatae Pericarpium, Astragali Radix, Codonopsis Radix, fried Atrictylodis Macrocephalac Rhizoma, Coicis Semen, Salviae Miltiorrhizae Radix et Rhizoma, Chuanxiong Rhizama, Chebulae Fructus, Glycyrrhizae Radix et Rhizoma were searched and predicted through multiple network pharmacological data platforms.The Perl command was used to batch retrieve the upstream gene name of the prediction target in the UniProt database.The target genes were brought into the ClueGO software for GO function enrichment analysis, to explore the core metabolic pathways and signal pathways and clarify the mechanism of the treatment of COVID-19 with Yinlian jiedu decoction. Result(s): The compounds-targets network consisted of 309 compounds and 1 016 corresponding targets.The key targets involved MMP1, FASN, MPO, MMP3, NQO1, MMP12, ALOX5, PTGS2, GCLM, MMP2, EGFR, GSTP1, MET, ACEII, etc.There were 238 GO items in GO functional enrichment analysis(P<0.05), including 202 biological processes(BP), 9 cellular components(CC)and 27 molecular functions(MF).The results of molecular docking showed that puerarin had the best affinity with COVID-19. Conclusion(s): Puerarin in Yinlian jiedu decoction has a direct effect on ACEII.At the same time, multiple components of Yinlian jiedu decoction play a regulatory role in multiple pathways related to respiratory diseases by acting on multiple related targets. Copyright © 2021, Central Station of Chinese Medicinal Materials Information, National Medical Products Administration. All right reserved.

RMS: Removing Barriers to Analyze the Availability and Surge Pricing of Ridesharing Services

Ridesharing services do not make data of their availability (supply, utilization, idle time, and idle distance) and surge pricing publicly available. It limits the opportunities to study the spatiotemporal trends of the availability and surge pricing of these services. Only a few research studies conducted in North America analyzed these features for only Uber and Lyft. Despite the interesting observations, the results of prior works are not generalizable or reproducible because: i) the datasets collected in previous publications are spatiotemporally sensitive, i.e., previous works do not represent the current availability and surge pricing of ridesharing services in different parts of the world;and ii) the analyses presented in previous works are limited in scope (in terms of countries and ridesharing services they studied). Hence, prior works are not generally applicable to ridesharing services operating in different countries. This paper addresses the issue of ridesharing-data unavailability by presenting Ridesharing Measurement Suite (RMS). RMS removes the barrier of entry for analyzing the availability and surge pricing of ridesharing services for ridesharing users, researchers from various scientific domains, and regulators. RMS continuously collects the data of the availability and surge pricing of ridesharing services. It exposes real-time data of these services through i) graphical user interfaces and ii) public APIs to assist various stakeholders of these services and simplify the data collection and analysis process for future ridesharing research studies. To signify the utility of RMS, we deployed RMS to collect and analyze the availability and surge pricing data of 10 ridesharing services operating in nine countries for eight weeks in pre and during pandemic periods. Using the data collected and analyzed by RMS, we identify that previous articles miscalculated the utilization of ridesharing services as they did not count in the vehicles driving in multiple categories of the same service. We observe that during COVID-19, the supply of ridesharing services decreased by 54%, utilization of available vehicles increased by 6%, and a 5 × increase in the surge frequency of services. We also find that surge occurs in a small geographical region, and its intensity reduces by 50% in about 0.5 miles away from the location of a surge. We present several other interesting observations on ridesharing services' availability and surge pricing. © 2022 ACM.

A Deep Learning Framework for Multimodal Course Recommendation Based on LSTM plus Attention

With the impact of COVID-19 on education, online education is booming, enabling learners to access various courses. However, due to the overload of courses and redundant information, it is challenging for users to quickly locate courses they are interested in when faced with a massive number of courses. To solve this problem, we propose a deep course recommendation model with multimodal feature extraction based on the Long- and Short-Term Memory network (LSTM) and Attention mechanism. The model uses course video, audio, and title and introduction for multimodal fusion. To build a complete learner portrait, user demographic information, explicit and implicit feedback data were added. We conducted extensive and exhaustive experiments based on real datasets, and the results show that the AUC obtained a score of 79.89%, which is significantly higher than similar algorithms and can provide users with more accurate recommendation results in course recommendation scenarios.

INBETWEENING AUTO-ANIMATION VIA FOKKER-PLANCK DYNAMICS AND THRESHOLDING

We propose an equilibrium-driven deformation algorithm (EDDA) to simulate the inbetweening transformations starting from an initial image to an equilibrium image, which covers images varying from a greyscale type to a colorful type on planes or manifolds. The algorithm is based on the Fokker Planck dynamics on manifold, which automatically incorporates the manifold structure suggested by dataset and satisfies positivity, unconditional stability, mass conservation law and exponentially convergence. The thresholding scheme is adapted for the sharp interface dynamics and is used to achieve the finite time convergence. Using EDDA, three challenging examples, (I) facial aging process, (II) coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pneumonia invading/fading process, and (III) continental evolution process are computed efficiently.

Research on diagnostic system integrated nucleic acid extraction and detection

With the continuous impact of COVID-19, the demand for rapid genetic diagnosing at the inspection and quarantine site, emergency treatment of sudden infectious diseases and clinical in vitro diagnosis was increasing rapidly. In order to achieve rapid, automatic nucleic acid extraction and detection, an automatic diagnostic system which integrates nucleic acid extraction, amplification and biochip fluorescence detection is designed. The diagnostic system designed based on multidisciplinary intersection of biology, optoelectronics, machinery and computer technology. At first, the nucleic acid extraction part has 1-8 sample flux and uses the principle of the silicon filter can adsorb nucleic acid at different pH to achieve nucleic acid extraction. After the extraction process, the nucleic acid is injected into biochip through robotic arm. There is a specific microarray reaction chamber on the chip, which can be combined with a specific biological substance;Secondly the amplification part used the principle of flat-plate PCR to achieve nucleic acid amplification in the biochip;After amplification, the nucleic acid detection realized under the irradiation of the excitation light at 530nm, the specificity target on the biochip will emit light, thus the fluorescence image scanned by COMS camera and the result analyzed by the software on PC;At last device control, automation and detection of the integrated device realized by the STM32 single-chip microcomputer and CAN communication method to establish a device communication network. The diagnostic system will automate workflow, and provides a result that reports on the detection and interpretation of targets in the samples. The imaging module resolution was less than 10 microns/pixel. The CV value of the sample was less than 10%. The results provide that the diagnostic system can provide more accurate and more automated equipment for nucleic acid extraction, amplification and detection. © 2020 COPYRIGHT SPIE. Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.

Studying proteinuria in COVID-19 to define markers of severity and new treatments

Background: The recent SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has led to ∼375,000 fatalities worldwide as of June 1st. Nearly, 43% of COVID-19 patients have been reported to have proteinuria, which can result from direct podocyte infection, podocytopathy related to cytokine storm, or both. This association between respiratory viruses, proteinuria, and primary kidney disease has also been observed in the context of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), where patients can develop nephrotic syndrome. Therefore, studying primary and virus-dependent models of proteinuria and podocyte injury is critical to shed light into COVID-19 pathobiology, severity of disease and potential treatments. Methods: We accessed transcriptomic data (RNA-seq) for lung cell lines (A549) infected with three different viruses and identified differentially expressed genes (DEGs) for SARS-CoV-2, RSV and IAV. In parallel, we also investigated DEGs for FSGS and MCD using LIMMA R package. We investigated the statistical correlation between the log-fold change of DEGs (Nephroptic syndrome and SARS-COV-2) using R. Pathway analysis was performed using WebGestalt. Possible drugs correcting the skewed gene expression in FSGS and SARS-COV-2 were identified using the Connectivity map (cMAP). Results: 120 gene signatures were specific to SARS-CoV-2. By using gene expression data from glomeruli of FSGS/MCD we identified 902 DEGs for FSGS and 5 for MCD. Out of these, 6 were overlapping and upregulated in COVID-19 and FSGS/MCD (B2M, EIF2AK2, IFI16, IFI27, TCIM and UBE2L6). Strikingly, IFI27 has been recently reported as a marker of disease severity in COVID-19. We found significant positive correlation between the log2 fold change of 94 FSGS/MCD genes intersecting with the 120 COVID-19. The results were specific to glomeruli and to high proteinuric diseases, supporting a common cellular response in lung and podocytes. We then searched the cmap data and identified 59 drugs significantly inversely associated with SARS-COV-2 and 72 for FSGS. Out of these, 7 drugs were in common, representing novel potential drugs for COVID-19 and podocytopathies. Conclusions: Overall, our results suggest transciptional congruency between NS and SARS-COV-2 which can possibly be used to design novel therapies treat these diseases.

[Thoughts on the reform of preventive medicine education in the context of new medicine].

Talent training is the core and foundation of public health system construction. Shortage of talents in the field of disease prevention and public health exposed by COVID-19 pandemic highlights the importance of developing preventive medical education. This article analyzes the challenges of medical education in the dilemma of "separation of medical treatment and prevention", and the new requirements for preventive medical education in the construction of New Medicine under the Healthy China strategy. Four aspects including stepping up the resource allocation and investment, educating responsible public health professionals, the education of all medical students who implement the core competence of public health, and the establishment of a continuing education system for preventive medicine have been considered. A series of specific suggestions are put forward including the establishment of a full-chain closed-loop research system to support the cultivation of top-notch innovative public health talents, strengthening the assessment of core public health capabilities for clinical medical professional admission, formulating a "medical and preventive integration" training program for primary health personnel, and implementing "combination of peace and war" public health personnel reserve system, with the purpose of providing reference for the reform and development of preventive medical education in China.