The ACTIV-6 Stakeholder Advisory Committee: a model for virtual engagement in decentralized clinical trials.

Introduction: Engaging patients, caregivers, and other stakeholders to help guide the research process is a cornerstone of patient-centered research. Lived expertise may help ensure the relevance of research questions, promote practices that are satisfactory to research participants, improve transparency, and assist with disseminating findings.

Methods: Traditionally engagement has been conducted face-to-face in the local communities in which research operates.

AMIA Board White Paper: AMIA 2017 core competencies for applied health informatics education at the master's degree level.

This White Paper presents the foundational domains with examples of key aspects of competencies (knowledge, skills, and attitudes) that are intended for curriculum development and accreditation quality assessment for graduate (master's level) education in applied health informatics. Through a deliberative process, the AMIA Accreditation Committee refined the work of a task force of the Health Informatics Accreditation Council, establishing 10 foundational domains with accompanying example statements of knowledge, skills, and attitudes that are components of competencies by which graduates from applied health informatics programs can be assessed for competence at the time of graduation. The AMIA Accreditation Committee developed the domains for application across all the subdisciplines represented by AMIA, ranging from translational bioinformatics to clinical and public health informatics, spanning the spectrum from molecular to population levels of health and biomedicine.

Locoregional Therapy With Curative Intent Versus Primary Liver Transplant for Hepatocellular Carcinoma: Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.

Background: Locoregional therapy with curative intent (CLRT) followed by salvage liver transplantation (SLT) in case of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) recurrence is an alternative to primary liver transplantation (LT) in selected patients with HCC.

Methods: We performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of studies comparing the survival of patients treated with CLRT versus LT, stratified by the stage of liver disease, extent of cancer, and whether SLT was offered or not.

Results: We included 48 studies involving 9835 patients (5736 patients with CLRT and 4119 patients with primary LT).

A Retrospective Evaluation of Response to Vitamin D Supplementation in Obese Versus Nonobese Patients.

Objective: To evaluate the impact of body mass index (BMI) on vitamin D status following ergocalciferol therapy.

Methods: A retrospective evaluation of patients aged 18 years and older with a baseline serum 25(OH)D < 30 ng/mL who received prescription ergocalciferol 50 000 IU at any dose between July 2009 and November 2011 was conducted. Patients were included if pre- and posttreatment 25(OH)D levels were available within 3 months of therapy.

Development of an evidence-based clinical practice guideline on linear growth measurement of children.

Growth is an important indicator of child health; however, measurements are frequently inaccurate and unreliable. This article reviews the literature on linear growth measurement error and describes methods used to develop and evaluate an evidence-based clinical practice guideline on the measurement of recumbent length and stature of infants, children, and adolescents. Systematic methods were used to identify evidence to answer clinical questions about growth measurement.

Predicting outcomes of hospitalization for heart failure using logistic regression and knowledge discovery methods.

The purpose of this study is to determine the best prediction of heart failure outcomes, resulting from two methods -- standard epidemiologic analysis with logistic regression and knowledge discovery with supervised learning/data mining. Heart failure was chosen for this study as it exhibits higher prevalence and cost of treatment than most other hospitalized diseases. The prevalence of heart failure has exceeded 4 million cases in the U.

Albumin versus crystalloid therapy in the management of hepatorenal syndrome: a model for using meta analysis in cost effectiveness studies and the design of clinical trials.

We applied traditional methods of gathering, integrating and summarizing findings of current literature, with new approaches for assessing the cost effectiveness of two treatments for hepatorenal syndrome (HRS). Findings of this cost effectiveness study are used to form a proposal for a multi-center prospective clinical trial, to assess the economic and clinical benefits of albumen versus crystalloid therapy in the care of these patients. Our initial findings suggest that albumin therapy is superior to standard crystalloid therapy, in the treatment of HRS patients.