Testing A Tailored, Evidence-based Education Intervention To Enhance Outcomes For Patients Commencing Chemotherapy
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$311,250.00
Summary
This project tests an innovative education program aimed at reducing the physical and psychosocial burden experienced during a course of cancer chemotherapy. The aim of the study is to reduce the burden and distress associated with cancer chemotherapy. Cancer chemotherapy is associated with physical (nausea, fatigue, hair loss, infection) and psychosocial (fear, anxiety, worry about family) effects that cause significant distress. Patients experience a highly level of pre-treatment anxiety and f ....This project tests an innovative education program aimed at reducing the physical and psychosocial burden experienced during a course of cancer chemotherapy. The aim of the study is to reduce the burden and distress associated with cancer chemotherapy. Cancer chemotherapy is associated with physical (nausea, fatigue, hair loss, infection) and psychosocial (fear, anxiety, worry about family) effects that cause significant distress. Patients experience a highly level of pre-treatment anxiety and for many this distress lasts across the course of treatment. Over the past decade there has been a dramatic shift in chemotherapy delivery to the outpatient setting. This means that patients are now responsibile for monitoring their own health at home and may need to use self-care strategies to deal with the many adverse effects of treatment. Pre-treatment education has usually focused on providing information about the facts of treatment, i.e. likelihood of nausea, rather than preparing the patient for the experience of treatment or helping them to manage the self-care demands associated with receiving treatment in the outpatient setting. The innovative education program tested here is the first of its type to draw on high level research evidence about preparing patients for potentially threatening medical procedures, tailoring this education to the individual situation of the patient and coaching the patient to implement evidence-based self-care behaviours and to use stress reduction techniques across the course of treatment.Read moreRead less
Impact and Effectiveness of Personal Ventilation in Open Plan Offices: a study of the Task Air system. Centralised air-conditioning systems are the standard for commercial office buildings in Australia. These systems are energy intensive, typically accounting for around 50% of building energy use. However, lack of occupant control over set temperatures or air movement tends to reduce thermal comfort, which can adversely affect worker productivity. The benefit of this project is that it will qu ....Impact and Effectiveness of Personal Ventilation in Open Plan Offices: a study of the Task Air system. Centralised air-conditioning systems are the standard for commercial office buildings in Australia. These systems are energy intensive, typically accounting for around 50% of building energy use. However, lack of occupant control over set temperatures or air movement tends to reduce thermal comfort, which can adversely affect worker productivity. The benefit of this project is that it will quantify the improvements to occupant comfort and energy savings possible with a PV system. This study will enable PV systems to be evaluated as an alternative to traditional air-conditioning, thereby demonstrating their effectiveness as a means of improving the sustainability rating of commercial office buildings in Australia.Read moreRead less
A Unified Grid Programming Methodology for Global e-Science. This project will contribute to the national benefit in three important ways. First, we will build a set of novel e-Science applications as demonstrator projects in areas of national priority. These will have enormous economic impact in areas ranging from environmental management to health. Second, we will build software infrastructure that will have both commercial and strategic value in its own right. Third, we shall build a critical ....A Unified Grid Programming Methodology for Global e-Science. This project will contribute to the national benefit in three important ways. First, we will build a set of novel e-Science applications as demonstrator projects in areas of national priority. These will have enormous economic impact in areas ranging from environmental management to health. Second, we will build software infrastructure that will have both commercial and strategic value in its own right. Third, we shall build a critical mass of expertise that bridges the physical sciences and computer science. The support provided to this proposal will allow multi-disciplinary teams to address scientific problems of significant scale.Read moreRead less
Unified analysis of steel and composite frame structures subjected to static, thermal, earthquake and blast loading. Understanding the science of extreme loading on engineering structures is essential for their design, and increasingly with terrorism threats there is a need for assessment and strengthening of identified vulnerable critical infrastructure. Rational design paradigms have not yet matured for extreme load scenarios, and they are much-needed to protect life, limb and amenity. Austral ....Unified analysis of steel and composite frame structures subjected to static, thermal, earthquake and blast loading. Understanding the science of extreme loading on engineering structures is essential for their design, and increasingly with terrorism threats there is a need for assessment and strengthening of identified vulnerable critical infrastructure. Rational design paradigms have not yet matured for extreme load scenarios, and they are much-needed to protect life, limb and amenity. Australian research is at the forefront in steel and composite structures, and this project will strengthen Australia's positioning in the discipline by developing transparent design and assessment procedures from an efficient algorithm that delivers hands-on guidance for engineering practitioners.Read moreRead less
Demonstrating the feasibility of designing sustainable buildings using evolutionary systems. The design approach proposed in this research will result in two key areas of national benefit. First, the research will enable Australian built environment design professions to become more competitive in both domestic and international markets. There is a growing demand for environmentally-friendly buildings and the proposed design approach will enable Australian firms to be at the cutting edge of sust ....Demonstrating the feasibility of designing sustainable buildings using evolutionary systems. The design approach proposed in this research will result in two key areas of national benefit. First, the research will enable Australian built environment design professions to become more competitive in both domestic and international markets. There is a growing demand for environmentally-friendly buildings and the proposed design approach will enable Australian firms to be at the cutting edge of sustainable design. Second, the research will enable the Australian built environment to become more sustainable. The proposed approach will enable buildings to be designed that perform well, that are cost effective and that minimise their environmental impact. Read moreRead less
Advanced Non-invasive Cardiovascular Risk Screening In The Community: Practical And Cost Effective?
Funder
National Health and Medical Research Council
Funding Amount
$287,321.00
Summary
This research focuses on the practicalities and cost of mobile, advanced, non-invasive cardiovascular assessments to determine the extent of CVD and clinical risk factors and its likely impact on patterns of treatment and care to “disadvantaged” individuals living in rural and remote regions and Indigenous Australians. The advantage of directly acquiring risk profile information has not been fully explored and its potential to address an “epidemic” of CVD world-wide cannot be overstated.
A scalable debugging framework for petascale computers. Supercomputing underpins a wide range of areas of importance to the Australian economy; mining, agriculture, engineering, medical research and pharmaceutical development to name a few. It is of critical importance that software solutions in these areas behave correctly and do not generate erroneous results. This project will develop software tools and techniques that make it possible to detect and locate errors as software is converted to r ....A scalable debugging framework for petascale computers. Supercomputing underpins a wide range of areas of importance to the Australian economy; mining, agriculture, engineering, medical research and pharmaceutical development to name a few. It is of critical importance that software solutions in these areas behave correctly and do not generate erroneous results. This project will develop software tools and techniques that make it possible to detect and locate errors as software is converted to run on the next generation of 'petascale' supercomputers. We will deploy the tools both commercially through our industry partner, and also on national high performance computing facilities.Read moreRead less
Combining mathematical programming and constraint programming to solve large-scale integrated scheduling problems. This project will target major savings in the airline industry, with resulting benefits for others such as tourism. The efficient use of airline fuel, which will be directly addressed in the project, is very important for the environment. The algorithms developed can improve cost and quality of service for Australian transportation, manufacturing and other industries.
The solut ....Combining mathematical programming and constraint programming to solve large-scale integrated scheduling problems. This project will target major savings in the airline industry, with resulting benefits for others such as tourism. The efficient use of airline fuel, which will be directly addressed in the project, is very important for the environment. The algorithms developed can improve cost and quality of service for Australian transportation, manufacturing and other industries.
The solutions developed within the project will be sold by the industrial partner, CTI, into major companies worldwide, and the technology will be used to develop further products.
Finally the project will extend Australia's lead in constraint programming and expertise in optimisation. This creates a major opportunity for the Australian software industry.
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