Digital Commons Network^™

Advances And Challenges In Digitally Connected Point-Of-Care Biosensing, Abdellatif Ait Lahcen, Jegan Rajendran, Gymama Slaughter

Center for Bioelectronics Publications

Point-of-care (POC) biosensors are undergoing a paradigm shift from isolated diagnostic tools to digitally connected, intelligent platforms that enable continuous and decentralized healthcare delivery. This review critically examines recent advances in wearable, implantable, and portable biosensors, highlighting how integration with wireless communication, the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT), and artificial intelligence is transforming their functionality and clinical utility. Particular attention is given to innovations such as smartphone-enabled interfaces, cloud-based analytics, and machine learning-assisted analysis, which collectively enhance sensitivity, specificity, and user accessibility across diverse healthcare settings, from personalized home monitoring and bedside diagnostics to deployment in resource-limited regions. The review …

Electrochemical Hemoglobin Biosensors For Point-Of-Care Diagnostics, Ashwini Dantanarayana, Gymama Slaughter

Center for Bioelectronics Publications

Hemoglobin (Hb) and its glycated variant (HbA1c) are essential clinical biomarkers for diagnosing anemia, acute hemorrhage, and long-term glycemic control. The growing demand for decentralized point-of-care (POC) testing has accelerated the development of rapid, inexpensive, and portable electrochemical sensing platforms. These technologies exploit the intrinsic redox activity of the heme prosthetic group, yet achieving efficient direct electron transfer (DET) remains a fundamental challenge because the electroactive iron center is deeply embedded within the globin structure. This review critically examines recent advances in electrochemical Hb sensing, tracing the evolution of electrode architectures from conventional carbon substrates to nanostructured materials, including graphene, …

Ion-Imprinted Polymer-Based Sensors For Toxic Metal-Ion Detection In Water: Coordination Chemistry, Transduction Strategies, And Environmental Applications, Ghita Yammouri, Gymama Slaughter

Center for Bioelectronics Publications

Toxic metal contamination in aquatic environments remains a persistent threat to human health and ecosystems. Yet, the high cost, infrastructure demands, and centralized nature of conventional analytical methods constrain routine monitoring. Ion-imprinted polymers (IIPs), a subclass of molecularly imprinted polymers, have emerged as promising synthetic recognition materials for metal-ion sensing because they generate coordination-defined binding sites with high selectivity, chemical stability, low cost, and reusability. This review summarizes recent advances in Ion-imprinted polymer (IIP)-based sensing technologies for toxic metal-ion detection in water from 2016 to 2026. It examines the fundamental recognition chemistry of IIPs, major synthesis strategies used to generate …

Performance And Improvement Strategies For Adapting Generative Large Language Models For Electronic Health Record Applications: A Systematic Review, Xinsong Du, Zhengyang Zhou, Yifei Wang, Ya-Wen Chuang, Yiming Li, Richard Yang, Pengyu Hong, David W Bates, Li Zhou

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Purpose: To synthesize performance and improvement strategies for adapting generative LLMs in EHR analyses and applications.

Methods: We followed the PRISMA guidelines to conduct a systematic review of articles from PubMed and Web of Science published between January 1, 2023 and November 9, 2024. Multiple reviewers including biomedical informaticians and a clinician involved in the article reviewing process. Studies were included if they used generative LLMs to analyze real-world EHR data and reported quantitative performance evaluations for an improvement technique. The review identified key clinical applications, summarized performance and the improvement strategies.

Results: Of the 18,735 articles retrieved, 196 met …

Write For Mental Wellness - Writing For Self-Advocacy, Ypsiwrites, #Wishyouknew Washtenaw

YpsiWrites Programming

No abstract provided.

Write For Mental Wellness - Writing For Social Advocacy, Ypsiwrites, #Wishyouknew Washtenaw

YpsiWrites Programming

No abstract provided.

Bridging The Language Gap: Training Medical Students In Interpreter-Mediated Patient Interviews, Monica Agarwal Dpm

School of Podiatric Medicine Publications

No abstract provided.

Information Law Pluralism, Hannah Bloch-Wehba

Faculty Scholarship

Information-intensive activities are reshaping political, social, and economic institutions. As they respond to these shifts, legislators and regulators are embracing information as a regulatory device for tech. Far from limiting themselves to public disclosure, consumer notice, and other traditional mechanisms of fostering transparency and information flows, however, legislators are using other, more nuanced tools to incentivize regulated entities to obtain, generate, and share information.

This Article maps the landscape of the emerging information-based regimes for regulating tech and assesses their conceptual and practical implications. It canvasses an extensive set of recently enacted laws regulating the information economy and shows that, …

Moral Progress In Legal Doctrine, Philip Petrov

Faculty Scholarship

This article integrates the concept of moral progress – here, moral improvement in the thinking and behavior of individuals over time – into the study of legal doctrine. The article first presents a naturalistic account of what moral progress is and describes three of its most historically and analytically important forms: (1) moral circle expansion, (2) moral domain expansion, and (3) increasing sensitivity to proportionality. The article then analyzes three historical developments in U.S. tort law that qualify as instances of moral progress: (1) the partial demise of the “suicide rule” beginning around the 1980s (according to …

Equal Justice & Generative Ai, Milan R. Markovic

Faculty Scholarship

The United States has long suffered from unequal access to justice, with countless low-and middle-income Americans forced to navigate the legal system alone. Recently, prominent judges, lawyers, and scholars have seized on generative AI as a potential corrective. These techno-optimists maintain that ChatGPT and other large language models can demystify the law and address unmet legal needs. Chief Justice John Roberts has proclaimed that AI-based tools "have the welcome potential to smooth out any mismatch between available resources and urgent needs in our court system."

Although AI will be an increasingly important source of legal assistance for underserved populations, the …

Effectiveness Of The Aota Fieldwork Educator Certificate Program: A Cross-Sectional Survey Of Participants, Susan M. Higgins, Tiffany Benaroya

Journal of Occupational Therapy Education

Fieldwork educators are essential in educating future occupational therapy practitioners, yet they are often not formally trained for this role. Fieldwork educator preparation programs may help strengthen educator effectiveness; however, limited research has examined the impact of these programs. The American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA) Fieldwork Educator Certificate Program (FWECP) is a two-day professional development course designed to enhance the supervisory and teaching competencies of fieldwork educators. This study examined the effectiveness of the FWECP from the perspective of participants who completed the program between June 2019 and June 2024. An anonymous retrospective survey was distributed to past participants, yielding …

Hands-On: Integrating Active Learning Into An Upper Extremity Occupational Therapy Elective, Jennifer Radziak, Katie Jones, Kelsey Picha

Journal of Occupational Therapy Education

In an effort to provide students with advanced clinical practice skills, several occupational therapy elective courses were developed. The current article describes an educational innovation that involved an in-person elective course for graduate second year Master of Science in Occupational Therapy students that focused on the upper extremity. The course was team-taught, promoted active learning, and used unique activities to engage students in the learning process. Relevant evidence-based practice literature and clinical guidelines were incorporated into the course to teach students about the treatment of upper extremity conditions. The active learning strategies implemented in the course included fresh donor dissection, …

Health Truth To Power: Professional Collaboration To Bolster Trust Against Misinformation, William M. Sage, Keegan D. Warren

Faculty Scholarship

This Article is about health, leaving aside more general challenges to shared civic information today. The Article begins by surveying the principal challenges for health information in post-pandemic, arguably post-truth America, and then describes briefly the sources and limits of medical professional authority. Noting the double-edged sword of free speech guarantees under the U.S. Constitution, the Article continues by commenting on speaking truth to government, to industry, and to the crowd. Next, the Article considers the physicians’ role in speaking truth to power from the perspective of standard medical professional ethics and identity, comparing it to that of lawyers. Finally, …

Surface Marker Identification To Capture Live Circulating Tumor Cells In Metastatic Triple-Negative Breast Cancer, Bree M Lege, Khushali J Patel, Brendan Panici, Ping Gong, Michael T Lewis, Matthew J Ellis, Chonghui Cheng

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Metastatic triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is highly aggressive and lacks targeted therapies. Circulating tumor cells (CTC) are invaluable for monitoring metastatic tumor progression and treatment response but are difficult to capture because of their rarity and heterogeneity. Surface-based staining for live CTCs is essential to preserve RNA quality in single cells, but current markers tend to perform poorly on more mesenchymal tumor cells such as TNBCs. To enhance live TNBC CTC detection, we developed a workflow for live CTC capture and single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq). Using a mouse model of metastatic TNBC, we identified four new CTC surface markers, AHNAK2, …

Helicobacter Pylori And Cancer: What's The Link?, Elettra Merola, Giovanni Mario Pes, David Yates Graham, Maria Pina Dore

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) is a human bacterial pathogen that causes one of the most common chronic bacterial infections worldwide. The microorganism has been classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer as a Group I carcinogen. While the etiological link to gastric cancer is well established, the precise molecular and cellular mechanisms driving this transformation are highly complex and incompletely understood. Fundamentally, the infection results from the chronic presence of acute on chronic gastric mucosal inflammation. H. pylori pathogenicity is increased by bacterial virulence factors including the cytotoxin-associated gene A (CagA) and Vacuolating cytotoxin A (VacA) …

Good Forestry In The Granite State - 3rd Edition, Cooperative Extension

UNH Cooperative Extension

No abstract provided.

Managing Complexity: Manager-Stakeholder Communication, Relational Dynamics, And The Dual Nature Of Rtw Communication, H. Bertolini, Marc Corbière, Alessia Negrini, Nadine Larivière, Patrizia Villotti, Dominic Prévost, Meryl Caiada, Jason Amorim, Fergal O'Hagan

Études primaires

Purpose

The return to work (RTW) process of worker absent due to common mental disorders (CMD) or musculoskeletal disorders (MSD) represents a complex challenge that involves multiple stakeholders. The aim of this study was to examine how managers perceive the factors that facilitate or hinder communication with other stakeholders during the RTW process.

This qualitative study was based on four focus groups conducted in Canada (Quebec and Ontario) with 18 managers.

Thematic analysis identified five themes related to facilitators and seven themes related to communication obstacles. Among the main facilitators, trust, clarity, and collaboration emerged as key elements …

Le Parcours Des Travailleurs Immigrants Blessés Et Son Incidence Sur L’Alliance Thérapeutique : Une Étude De Cas Longitudinale En Contexte De Réadaptation Au Travail Au Québec, Maude Arsenault, Jessica Dubé, Daniel Côté

Études primaires

Cette étude explore l’incidence du parcours prélésionnel des travailleuses et travailleurs immigrants (TI) blessés sur l’alliance thérapeutique (AT) en réadaptation au travail. À partir d’une ethnographie longitudinale menée dans une clinique québécoise, sept trajectoires ont été analysées selon leurs dimensions migratoires, socioprofessionnelles et linguistiques. Les résultats montrent que le déclassement professionnel, la précarité de l’emploi, les barrières linguistiques et les expériences de racisme fragilisent la construction du lien de confiance et la définition partagée des objectifs de retour au travail. Lorsque l’emploi prélésionnel est perçu comme transitoire ou inadéquat, l’obligation institutionnelle d’y retourner crée une rupture symbolique qui entre en …

On The Use Of Hearing Aid Algorithms In Industrial Noise: Balancing Speech Intelligibility And Hearing Protection, Solenn Ollivier, Fabien Bonnet, Alexis Pinsonnault-Skvarenina, Christian Giguère, Jérémie Voix, Hugues Nélisse

Études primaires

Hearing protection devices (HPDs) are widely used to mitigate the risks of noise-induced hearing loss in industrial environments. However, conventional HPDs can often hinder communication for workers with hearing loss. While those workers may rely on hearing aids in their daily lives, the potential benefits and associated risks of using such devices in noisy workplaces remain unexplored. This study evaluated the effects of different hearing aid signal processing algorithms on speech intelligibility and estimated noise exposure under industrial noise conditions to characterize the balance between communication and protection needed to develop solutions for workers with hearing loss. A digital hearing …

Partnerships To Advance Patient Safety And Address Preventable Harm: Case Studies From International Health Care Leaders, Rachel Bonesteel, Robert Saunders, Tilithia Mcbride, Susan Sheridan, David W Bates, Mark Mcclellan, Charles H Kahn, Eyal Zimlichman

Faculty, Staff and Students Publications

There have been notable improvements in patient safety in recent years; however, significant challenges remain in reducing the incidence of preventable patient harm. Supporting patient safety efforts is increasingly important given increasing complexity of care and changing health needs, especially with aging populations. Emerging technologies and capabilities open new possibilities to address longstanding patient safety problems. For example, predictive analytics to support provider decision-making, increased patient interest in engagement in their care, and artificial intelligence provide opportunities to further reduce harm. Many of these examples support a more proactive approach to patient safety by focusing on anticipating, predicting, and preventing …

Exposing The Work Of The Market Through The Case Of Alternative Provision For English School Students, Nick Pratt, Elizabeth Done, Sam Morahan

School of Law, Humanities and Social Sciences

Pupils in England who for some reason are not able to attend school often find themselves in Alternative Provision (AP). These are special arrangements designed to address their specific needs and help them return to mainstream schooling. AP involves a financial agreement between the provider and the organisation that commissions the provision and thus operates as an explicit form of education market in which educational services are traded directly for financial recompense. We report on a case study of one AP provider in the South-West of England undertaken over a one-year period which generated data through individual, semi-structured interviews and …

An Evidence Review Of Technology Enabled Social Care In The Uk: Report For Cornwall Health Determinants Research Collaboration, Sheena Asthana, Michael Loizou, Marius Varga, Oliver Beer, Rory Baxter, Kieran Green

School of Nursing and Midwifery

The Urgent Need for a Shift from Crisis Intervention to Prevention. As highlighted by the Chief Medical Officer, demographic ageing—particularly acute in coastal areas like Cornwall—necessitates a fundamental shift in care models to allow individuals to live as independently as possible. Currently, the potential of digital technologies to support this aim is not being realised. To maintain wellbeing and reduce demand on statutory services, the system must pivot from reactive crisis management to a greater focus on prevention. While technology can play a pivotal role, it will only succeed if integrated into interoperable, data-driven systems that facilitate early intervention and …

How Does Pre-Registration Child Specific Education Prepare Newly Qualified Nurses’ To Care For Children, Young People, And Their Families? An Empty Narrative Review, Matt Carey, Danielle Edge, Julie Blamires, Mandie Foster, Sarah Neill

School of Nursing and Midwifery

This narrative review investigates the influence of child-specific content within pre-registration nursing programs on newly qualified nurses’ perceptions of preparedness to care for children, young people, and their families. Despite international recognition of the specialised competencies required for pediatric nursing, the proportion and quality of child-focused education across Higher Education Institutions is not clear. The Population, Exposure, Outcome framework provided a comprehensive search strategy applied across eight databases to identify relevant studies that met the inclusion and exclusion criteria. Of 663 records identified, 451 were screened and 25 full texts wereassessed for eligibility by two reviewers. No studies met the …

Exploring The Views Of Children With Cerebral Palsy, Their Parents And Physiotherapists On Participating In A Feasibility Randomised Controlled Trial Testing An Exergaming Device: A Qualitative Study, Rachel Rapson, Jos M. Latour, Jonathan Marsden, Bernie Carter

School of Nursing and Midwifery

Background: This study aimed to understand the experiences and views of children with cerebral palsy, their parents and physiotherapists participating in the ACCEPT feasibility randomised controlled trial, which explored a 10-week physiotherapy intervention using an interactive gaming training device. Design: Qualitative methods included semi-structured interviews, e-diary and photographs. Nine parent–child dyads and three physiotherapists participated. Children were aged between 7 and 16 years; four had co-existing additional needs. Interviews were transcribed. Reflexive thematic analysis was used. Results: Five themes covered the breadth of participants’ experiences: (1) Fitting in therapy; (2) Motivation; (3) New opportunities; (4) Physiotherapists out of their comfort …

The Effectiveness Of Digital Therapeutics Intervention In Oral Anticoagulation Management: A Systematic Review And Meta-Analysis, Jiayue Guo, Lili You, Lu Liu, Xitong Jiao, Debasish Kar, Jitendra Jonnagaddala

Peninsula Medical School

Objective: To summarize the key intervention characteristics and evaluate the effectivenessand safety of digital therapeutics (DTx) in patients receiving oral anticoagulation, witheffectiveness evaluated using time in therapeutic range (TTR), thromboembolic events (TEE),and mortality, and safety evaluated based on bleeding events.Patients and Methods: We searched PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, and the CochraneLibrary from inception to June 20, 2025, and identified ten randomized controlled trialsinvolving 7,237 patients. The criteria required studies to assess software-based DTxsupporting anticoagulation management and report effectiveness or safety outcomes. Studyquality was evaluated using the Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development,and Evaluation (GRADE) framework, and random-effects models were applied.Results: …

Involving Parents In Prevention: A Case Example Of Research And Intervention Development To Improve Financial Well-Being Support, Nick Axford, Gisella Hanley, Rebecca Summers, Kristin Liabo, Amy Bond, Eleanor Bryant, Georgia Smith, Rachel Silcock, Vashti Berry

Peninsula Medical School

The adverse effects on parent and child outcomes of poverty and stressors associated with low income are well established. With notable exceptions, however, the potential role of frontline services in improving family financial well-being is underexplored. This article outlines how patient and public involvement (PPI) was initiated early on in research on financial well-being support (FWbS). It illustrates how research can build on and integrate what parents say about services and how to research them. The involvement work was undertaken in one city in part to inform the adaptation of an income maximisation service to be delivered in local children’s …

Designing A Mobile App For Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: Insights From Lived Experience And Clinical Practice, Rohit Shankar, Richard Laugharne, Michael Loizou, Marius Varga, Sivia Lin, Bojana Daw Srdanovic, Roger Farrell

Peninsula Medical School

Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a disabling anxiety disorder precipitated by severe trauma. Many people with this condition have little access to clinical interventions, especially in low-middle-income countries. For the development of any digital health intervention, it is vital to know the opinions of PLE and clinicians to guide the developers. We conducted two focus groups, one with clinicians (n = 5) and one with people with lived experience (PLE) (n = 11), to gain knowledge of their views on the development of a PTSD App. Transcripts of both focus groups were coded and thematically analysed. The key themes that …

Visual And Rhetorical Analysis Practices In The Sociology Classroom: A Focus On “Zombie” And Derry Girls, Kate Antosik-Parsons, Ann Johnson, Danielle Nielsen, Diane Sabenacio Nititham

Journal of Excellence in College Teaching and Learning

The purpose of this article is to provide a lesson that uses readily available and relatable popular media to address contemporary social issues and ongoing global concerns. Using sociological theories and rhetorical analysis, our three-day activity, “Public Art, Place, and Global Conflict” introduced students to The Troubles, the ethno-national conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted from the late 1960s to 1998. We taught visual media analysis to identify multidimensional social dynamics in the protest song and music video “Zombie” by Irish band The Cranberries (1996), and two episodes of the TV show Derry Girls (2018-2022), a teen sitcom by Lisa …

Am I Top Of The Pops? Does Feedback Of Live Gps Between Sets Of Hurling-Specific Small-Sided Games Improve Subsequent Running And Physiological Performance?, Shane Malone, John Keane, Tom Hargroves, Conor P. Clancy, John David Duggan, Damien Young, Kieran D. Collins

Research Outputs: 2025-Present

The investigation aimed to determine if live feedback of team- and player-specific global positioning system (GPS) running performance data between bouts of hurling small-sided games (SSGs) altered the physical and physiological responses during subsequent bouts of SSGs during a 6-week hurling pre-season period. Twenty-four (n = 24) hurling players (age 25.5 ± 3.2 years; height 177.9 ± 3.2 cm; body mass 83.5 ± 4.5 kg) received either feedback or no feedback during hurling-specific SSGs across a 6-week pre-season period. Teams were assigned to two specific groups, a) GPS live feedback or b) no GPS live feedback (control) for each session, …

Synthesising Cross-Speaker Data For Low-Resource Pathological Speech Recognition With Peft, Kesego Mokgosi, Milad Dadgar, Cathy Ennis, Robert Ross

Research Outputs: 2025-Present

Dysarthric speech recognition is essential for enhancing communication and accessibility for individuals with speech impairments, yet its development is hindered by a scarcity of robust, speaker-specific datasets. This study explores low-resource dysarthric speech recognition through cross-speaker transfer using synthetic data and parameter-efficient fine-tuning (PEFT). We integrate SpeechT5 text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis with x-vector speaker embeddings to generate speaker-specific dysarthric speech, enabling model adaptation while preserving pathological speech characteristics such as prosodic irregularities. Experiments on the TORGO dataset show that mixed cross-synthetic data with LoRA fine-tuning achieves a WER of 0.17, representing a 71.7% improvement over the standard model (0.60 WER) without …