ABSTRACT
Technology uses among medical examiner and coroner (MEC) offices in the United States are not well characterized, yet technology is essential to job-performing duties. Resources, operational infrastructure, and MECs' policies and procedures that affect technology use should be better understood. MEC offices need access to technologies like internet, case management systems (CMSs), databases, and advanced imaging to perform their basic duties. A current state of the technologies MEC offices use to complete a death investigation is presented by analyzing data from the 2018 Census of Medical Examiner and Coroner Offices. This analysis shows the New England division reported the most internet and CMS access. Many offices reported limited access to, and low participation in, databases for assessing and sharing case data. Offices serving populations >250,000 have more access to the internet, CMSs, databases, and advanced imaging. Although MEC office technology use has improved over time, it is still disparate.
ABSTRACT
We describe a new approach for developing and validating cognitive process models. In our methodology, graphical models (specifically, hidden Markov models) are developed both from human empirical data on a task and synthetic data traces generated by a cognitive process model of human behavior on the task. Differences between the two graphical models can then be used to drive model refinement. We show that iteratively using this methodology can unveil substantive and nuanced imperfections of cognitive process models that can then be addressed to increase their fidelity to empirical data.
