Holistic Bandwidth [II] 16, 180, breadth, depth and thoughts initial

If we were able to put the care record into an appropriate text analysis program is there a measure of the conceptual span - the holistic bandwidth of care - somewhere in there? Could there be a disciplinary or task-based mesh, a tag cloud that could be superimposed on Hodges' model to represent care as holistic bandwidth?

Very early on in the web site's history a page was added on the multicontextual nature of health (and social care). This contexts page like the others has not been properly researched, which I recognise is a risk for readers in terms of 'evidence based sources' and a risk for me since of course the Web is a rather public arena to air initial thoughts.

Since the site and this blog are a call for research in this area, I'm sure a search would reveal a literature, but without recourse to said literature I'm not sure how explicitly - my incomplete - notion of holistic bandwidth has been studied in care contexts. On the context page I included several basic diagrams to indicate how Hodges' model might be used as a 'measure'. This page plus the others need revising with a bin (icon) close to hand, in the meantime how can we measure holistic bandwidth?

We could add the problems identified in each care domains, e.g.:

INTRA-interPERSONAL = 3
POLITICAL = 2
SOCIOLOGY = 5
SCIENCES = 6
= 16

Continuing in a fit of numerics we could throw in some multiplication - 3*2*5*6 = 180 ?
'180' is much more impressive than a paltry '16'.

What next...? Could the domain scores be weighted in some way? Is it valid to assign a primary domain? And while we are at it where does self-care fall (intra-interpersonal surely)? Wither the literary heavyweights of severity, chronicity, strengths, recovery and well-being. ...? Oops - how could I forget - dependency measures are nothing new; but the literature bearers are not the issue.

If we still frequently fail to deliver holistic care, then what is holistic bandwidth (actually measuring)? Is it -

• The scope of care [in one or all of - assessment, planning, intervention, evaluation, outcome]?
• Simplicity [breadth]?
• Complexity [breadth and depth]?
• (Rapid) care integration [time, connectedness]?
• Concordance: clinical problems + patient (carer) problems + outcome set?
• ....?

Guide to Monitoring and Evaluating Health Information Products and Services

How can publishers, knowledge managers, program managers, M&E specialists, and health information communicators measure the reach, usefulness, and use of their products and services? One way is to use the 29 indicators in the just published Guide to Monitoring and Evaluating Health Information Products and Services from the Health Information and Publications Network (HIPNET).

Download a free copy [745kb]:

https://www.msh.org/resources/guide-to-monitoring-and-evaluating-health-information-products-and-services

Source: CLICK4HP

Book: Visualizing Information for Advocacy

Here c/o of an Information Systems Forum post is a book on -

Visualizing Information for Advocacy:

an Introduction to Information Design

http://www.tacticaltech.org/

Lupina Award in Health System Dynamics

The Health Policy Special Interest Group (HPSIG) of the System Dynamics Society is proud to announce the -

Lupina Young Researchers Award in Health System Dynamics

- which will be presented for the first time at this summer's 2008 International System Dynamics Conference in Athens, Greece. The award is sponsored by the Lupina Foundation of Toronto, Canada, and will be accompanied by a check in the amount of CAN$5000. The award will be presented to the recipient (or recipients) during the HPSIG meeting on the Sunday afternoon meeting just preceding the conference (July 20th this year), and a brief announcement will also be made to all conference attendees at a plenary session.

This award will be given to people at early stages of their careers to encourage them to do further work in health system dynamics. In the event that the winning paper represents the equal work of two young researchers, or if there is a tie among papers, the cash prize may be subdivided. The work considered for this award must be accepted as a paper for presentation at the International System Dynamics Conference. Papers are self-nominated, and to be eligible, the author(s) must either be in graduate school or have completed their educational training no more than five years prior to paper submission.

Authors need not be members of the System Dynamics Society and may, in fact, specialize in other methodologies and use them in their submitted papers. But their work must:

• Focus on dynamic phenomena in health systems and problems,
• Demonstrate technical quality and clear presentation, and
• Provide original insights derived from a dynamic analysis.

The winner(s) must be present at the Sunday HPSIG meeting to receive their prize, and be willing to discuss their winning work at that meeting.

For (latest ...) Conference details please see -

http://www.systemdynamics.org

[Ever since watching an Open University programme on Catastrophe Theory in Prisons (+New Scientist article?), running early microcomputer fractal graphic programs for hours and reading Gleick's book on Chaos and others; I've been fascinated by dynamic systems. This is a marvellous field for young researchers to explore:
asking new questions of old answers ...]

Serres-Hodges model chapter proof & Oamos

I've received the proof for the book chapter to appear in:

Social Information Technology: Connecting Society and Cultural Issues
edited by Dr. Kidd and Dr. Chen

Exploring Serres’ Atlas, Hodges’ Knowledge Domains
and the Fusion of Informatics and Cultural Horizons

Abstract

This chapter explores the extent to which selected writings of French philosopher Michel Serres and a health care model created by Brian Hodges in the UK can augment and inform the development of social informatics. The volume of Serres’ output contrasts markedly with work devoted to Hodges’ Health Career - Care Domains - Model. Since the concept of health is universal culturally, and informatics disciplines are emerging fields of practice characterised by indistinct boundaries in terms of theory, policy, and practice, various ethnographic and cultural associations will be made. Placing Hodges’ model and Serres' work together is not intended to suggest direct equivalence, other than the common themes this author intends to bring to the attention of the social informatics community. Central to this is the notion of holistic bandwidth, utilising Hodges’ model as a tool to develop and disseminate sociotechnical perspectives.

-<>-

This has been a long road, but it is smashing to see your text nearly there as 'chapter 7'.

Jones, P. (2008) Exploring Serres’ Atlas, Hodges’ Knowledge Domains and the Fusion of Informatics and Cultural Horizons, IN Kidd, T., Chen, I. (Eds.) Social Information Technology Connecting Society and Cultural Issues, Idea Group Publishing, Inc. Chap. 7, pp. 96-109.

To close here is a new media search engine:

http://www.oamos.com/

Holistic Bandwidth [I] - Where's the brush?

Apart from those intervals and instances (times!) when emergency intervention is needed, holistic care is seen as a primary goal in health and social care theory, practice and policy.

IF care is not holistic THEN it could be argued that there is care dissonance.

The high quality non-critical, general efforts in the PHYSICAL [SCIENCES] care domain -

fluids, diet, warmth, pressure sore care, comfort, security, infection control ....

can be compromised by lack of attention to the EMOTIONAL [Intra-INTERPERSONAL] care domain -

respect, empathy, unconditional +ve regard, non-judgemental attitude, time, space, attention ....

- what the patient (carers and others*) expect to follow does not occur.

Rather like cognitive dissonance acute discomfort results when care of the required high quality (holistic, timely, person-centred...) is not applied across the board (h2cm).

(In being human) everyone recognises the BASICs of CARE (discuss?):

It is the remembering that is the problem.

Remembering demands an assured space in the organisational memory - such that staff in those other spaces - wards, clinics, patient's homes, residential homes are able to fulfil the holistic spectrum of care needs.

Dissonance encourages game playing with beliefs [1-n players].

It is very easy and a fairly well understood human trait for us to become pre-occupied with what we do. (As you will have noticed I have a problem with brackets and italics...) When at work (i.e. not day-dreaming) "It is what we do that counts."; but care variances bound to professional disciplines and particular clinical settings should not be wielded as a foil.

So, perhaps this dissonance can be represented as distance:

• patients and carers may not articulate their discomfort - at the time

(and hence is perceived of less consequence to the service - at the time);

• as the distance between concepts and their meanings.

Could this distance provide a measure of holistic bandwidth? No doubt, it already has somewhere in the literature? The first holistic bandwidth metric suggested above is acknowledged in policies around the response to complaints, which stress the need to deal with the complaint there and then if possible. Is this enough and what about the distances between concepts and meanings?

more to follow....

I Googled 'organisational dementia' and found the following reference:
‘Sustaining New Industrial Relations in the Public Sector: The politics of trust and co-operation in the context of organisational dementia and disarticulation’ (with M. Martinez Lucio), in P. Dibben, P. James, I. Roper, and G. Wood (eds.) Modernising Work in Public Services London: Macmillan. 2007.

*There is probably a major cost on staff morale here also.

Domain Specific Languages [II] + a Ruby mixin

Last year in one of those pick-it-up:put-it-down cycles, I surfed into this article on DSLs and Ruby c/o:

Ruby Code & Style Creating DSLs with Ruby
by Jim Freeze, March 16, 2006

Although as mentioned the other week, I'd read - and keep reading! - Chris Pine's intro Ruby book and the Thomas's Pickaxe, much of the code is hard to follow for a beginner - here's a snippet (from page 3 of 4):

[n.b. Some lines below are incomplete due to Blogger's interpretation of the characters]

Again, we update the require statement in dsl-loader.rb to load the mydsl4.rb file and run the loader:

% ruby dsl-loader.rb params.dsl
#
["@parameter", "@name"]

This is all well and good, but what if we don’t know the parameter names in advance? Depending on the use cases for the DSL, parameter names may be generated by the user. Never fear. With Ruby, we have the power of method_missing. A two-line method added to MyDSL will define a DSL attribute with dsl_accessor on demand. That is, if a value is to be assigned to a (thus far) non-existent parameter, method_missing will define the getters and setters and assign the value to the parameter.

% cat mydsl5.rb
require 'dslhelper'

class MyDSL
def method_missing(sym, *args)
self.class.dsl_accessor sym
send(sym, *args)
end

def self.load(filename)
# ... Same as before
end
end

% head -1 dsl-loader.rb
require 'mydsl5'

% ruby dsl-loader.rb params.dsl
#
["@parameter", "@name"]

Once again Olsen's - Design Patterns in Ruby has helped me (to begin to) understand  method-missing (p.184). I swear I heard some clanks as the pieces re-arranged themselves and one or two fell (almost) in place. Having copied Freeze's code into Ruby, it would not run. At least now the code is not as complex looking at it was and reading it through now it makes a lot more sense. I'm really looking forward to trying this again in Eclipse. On that first exposure I had a vague notion of the principle of method-missing, but reading Olsen's book I've a better grasp and may be able to keep hold of this and other Ruby concepts. Believe me that helps in my pick-it-up:put-it-down world.

more to follow ....

Domain Specific Languages [I]

Even after a brief acquaintance with the h2cm web site and W2tQ, you'll appreciate the word domain is both hard and soft-wired into my consciousness. On first discovering Hodges' model, the four quadrants were clearly recognisable as knowledge domains.

As the website evolved and after consulting with Brian Hodges, 'Care Domains' was added to the model's title (which has also paid some dividends in search engine terms).

In the early days of hobbyist programming a major project would be to write a compiler. I'm sure I can recall several magazine articles on this (Practical Computing?); step-by-step of course.

Searching on 'domains' as I frequently do, it was inevitable I would come across DSLs or Domain Specific Languages, which instantly caught my attention. Here are some intros -

http://martinfowler.com/bliki/DomainSpecificLanguage.html

http://www.infoq.com/presentations/domain-specific-languages