Information School News

The Health, Safety and Workplace Regulations 1992 state that “Sufficient toilet and washing facilities should be provided to allow everyone at work to use them without unreasonable delay”. Yet people who work on the move - like delivery drivers, care workers and tradespeople - often struggle to access the necessary facilities. The Hand Hygiene at Work project , led by Dr Sophie Rutter from the Information School alongside Dr Lauren White from the Sheffield Methods Institute, is looking at this issue and what can be done to address it. There has been a recognised decline in provision of publicly accessible toilets. The project found that this particularly affects workers who are on the move. Seeking out access to toilets often costs workers valuable time as well as money, when factoring in things like extra petrol costs for travelling out of their route to find these facilities. This disproportionately affects those who might urgently need to access facilities such as those who are me...

“We know that people with disabilities experience a lot of inequities in both their health outcomes and the quality of the healthcare that they receive”, says Dr Denis Newman-Griffis, Lecturer in Data Science at the Information School and co-author of ‘ A roadmap to reduce information inequities in disability with digital health and natural language processing ’, a paper published in PLOS Digital Health. This narrative paper is co-authored by Dr Max Hurwitz, Dr Gina McKernan, Dr Amy Houtrow and Dr Brad Dicianno, with whom Dr Newman-Griffis worked during their post-doctoral research in biomedical informatics at the Department of Physical Medicine Rehabilitation at the University of Pittsburgh. It looks at what the sources and causes of this disparity in care experienced by people with disabilities are. Previous research shows that similar disparities are prevalent across race, class, gender and geographical lines as well, but little work has been done specifically in the area of disabil...

The 18th International Symposium for Health Information Management Research (ISHIMR) is being held this year in Kalmar at Linnaeus University. Scientists from all over the world gather to discuss e-health. The overall conference theme for ISHIMR 2020 is "Using digital information for better patient health, care and well-being". The deadline for the submission of poster and paper abstracts has now passed but you can register to attend by clicking here . The deadline for registration is 31st August. The conference is free to attend. We welcome submissions relating to research and development on the conference theme in its broadest sense. The topics of interest for the conference include, but are not restricted to: • Strategies for the Management of Health Data and Information • Health Knowledge Management Strategies • Health Informatics Systems • Clinical Decision Support Systems • Tracking Activities and Health • Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery in Healt...

Dr. Nipon Parinyavuttichai, who graduated with a PhD from the Information School in 2011, recently earned a certificated of recognition from the Thai Health Promotion Foundation (ThaiHealth) for his continuing support for social improvement in Thailand. ThaiHealth is a state agency with the mission to inspire, motivate, coordinate, and empower individuals and organizations in all sectors for the enhancement of health promotion, working towards a healthy society and environment. Dr. Parinyavuttichai‘s latest contribution involves the initiation of a volunteer engagement program from various professional fields to help the Cha-choeng-sao municipality create a 10-year strategic plan to provide older people with better provision in various ares such as healthcare services, education, information technology, architecture and social welfare. Dr. Parinyavuttichai applies information theories learned from the Information School, coupled with other information management strategies...