Health technological innovation has helped to improve health care delivery and patient outcomes. However, the proliferation of health care technology has accompanied burgeoning health care costs and evoked social, ethical, legal, and political concerns. Health technology assessment (HTA) is the systematic evaluation of properties, effects and/or other impacts of health care technology. The main purpose of HTA is to inform persons of technology-related policy making in health care. There is great variation in the scope, selection of methods and level of detail in the practice of HTA. This paper will introduce the basic concepts and methods of HTA in order to help those who are interested in conducting HTA.
Random allocation to intervention groups remains the best method of ensuring that the groups being compared are similar at the onset of study and of avoiding removing selection bias between groups of patients. The success of randomization depends on two interrelated processes. First, an unpredictable allocation sequence must be generated based on a random procedure. Second, strict implementation of that sequence must be secured through an assignment mechanism called allocation concealment to prevent those involved in a trial from knowing upcoming assignments. Inadequate allocation concealment can lead to clinicians scheduling patient’s assignment and compromising the unpredictable allocation sequence.
The feature extraction and feature selection are the important issues in pattern recognition. Based on the geometric algebra representation of vector, a new feature extraction method using blade coefficient of geometric algebra was proposed in this study. At the same time, an improved differential evolution (DE) feature selection method was proposed to solve the elevated high dimension issue. The simple linear discriminant analysis was used as the classifier. The result of the 10-fold cross-validation (10 CV) classification of public breast cancer biomedical dataset was more than 96% and proved superior to that of the original features and traditional feature extraction method.
Interstitial lung disease is the most common pulmonary complication in patients with inflammatory myopathy, with a high case fatality rate, unknown pathogenesis, and complex clinical manifestations, and the treatment is difficult. Early and timely treatment can improve the patient’s clinical symptoms and inhibit the development of the disease. The present treatment protocols can be mainly summarized as the commonly used drugs (corticosteroids, azathioprine, cyclophosphamide, mycophenolate mofetil, and intravenous immunoglobulin) and new drugs (cyclosporin A, tacrolimus, biological agents, and anti-fibrosis drug), etc. In this paper, the treatment progress of inflammatory myopathy-related interstitial lung disease and different myositis antibody-related interstitial lung disease in recent years at home and abroad is reviewed, so as to provide a basis for clinical treatment.
Systematic reviews provide information about the effectiveness of interventions by identifying, appraising, and summarizing the results of otherwise unmanageable quantities of primary research in an effort to provide valid, reliable evidence for health decision-making and clinical practice. They differ from traditional reviews produced by "content experts" in that they use a replicable, scientific and explicit approach that seeks to minimize bias. They are particularly useful when there is uncertainty regarding the potential benefits or harm of an intervention and when there are variations in practice. Poor quality systematic reviews may mislead policy-makers and clinicians. This paper will introduce the basic methods of Cochrane systematic reviews in order to help those who are interested in conducting systematic review.
Background Mortality and morbidity of acute myocardial infarction remains high. Intravenous magnesium started early after the onset of myocardial infarction is a promising adjunctive treatment that may limit infarct size, prevent serious arrhythmias, and reduce mortality. Several earlier trials and meta-analyses demonstrated a mortality rate reduction with magnesium treatment, but one mega trial found no benefit. Objective To examine the effect of intravenous magnesium versus control on early mortality and morbidity, stratified by time since onset of symptoms (lt;6 hours, 6+ hours), use of thrombolysis (used, not used), dose of magnesium used (lt;75 mmol, 75+ mmol). Search strategy We search the Cochrane controlled trial register (CCTR) of Cochrane Library, Medline and Embase. We also search Chinese Biomedical Disk (CBM disk) to identify the Chinese trials. Each database will be searched from its starting date to the first-half year of 2002. Selection criteria All randomized controlled trials that compared intravenous magnesium with placebo in the presence or absence of fibrolytic therapy in addition to routine treatment are eligible if they reported mortality and clinical events within 35 days of onset, regardless of language. Methods of review A data abstraction form will be specifically developed to extract information from the eligible articles. The quality assessment of RCT will be focused on method of treatment assignment, blinding of participants and investigators, control of selection bias after treatment assignment. The selection of studies, data extraction and assessment of methodological quality will be performed independently by two reviewers. Disagreements will be resolved through discussion, when necessary, in consultation with a third reviewer. Publication bias, heterogeneity and sensitivity analysis will be performed. The odds ratio (OR) will be used to pooling the effect if appropriate.
Objective To evaluate the effectiveness of teaching evidence-based medicine (EBM). Methods 1. Introducing EBM teaching material in Chinese. 2. Offering EBM course in medical college of Sichuan University. 3. Problem-based,self-directed teaching methods. 4. A variety of test method. Results 36 Cochrane systematic review titles were registered, 17 Cochrane systematic review protocols were published in Cochrane Library, 6 Cochrane systematic reviews were published in Cochrane Library. 62 EBM research papers were published on Chinese Journal of EBM. Feedback of teaching EBM from postgraduates: 77.6%, 22.4% postgraduates consider this EBM course is very helpful and helpful for them respectively; 14.3%, 80% postgraduates achieve completely the goal and achieve the goal in greater part by this EBM course respectively; the reason of not achieving the goal is a lack of time to read and attend the course. 61.2%-80% and 16.3%-32.7% postgraduates consider the teaching contents is very good and good respectively; 61.2%-75.5% and 12.3%-28.6% postgraduates consider this teaching model is very good and good respectively; 44.9% postgraduates hope to increase hours of EBM course, increase discusses, increase EBM practice in future; 10.2% postgraduates consider the questions of test are hard to solve. Conclusion This EBM course is effective.