Giving MyTool a try, verdict = nice !
I tried Matthias Melcher’s MyTool yesterday which is in beta and found it easy to use, also very useful. I tried it with the text at the bottom of this post. It was a scribbled part history of medical legislation that I put on my health wiki shortly after joining MHRA. Having not got a pharmaceutical background there was a lot legislation, policies, procedures, updates to go through and make sense of etc
At the time I think I chunked the information and tried to make sense that way. Using My Tool would be a great way to get started because as soon as you have pasted it in, the nodes appear, you edit the labels at the top and then they appear on the visualization. You right click to get new nodes and can start making sense by finding common ground between different things as per the attached (not a very spectacular example but gives an idea). Being able to right-click and use colours was useful too. As it’s in beta, if you’re pasting in a lot of text, you may want to remove the line spaces between paragraphs as these will create blank nodes for now.
What I particularly liked was easily draggable nodes, right click for everything instead of looking for buttons and how you don’t have to define too much – it’s a first attempt at making sense like an initial draft so is going to be revised. I think if I was in a similar position of needing to read a lot of material (as is frequently the case with health related anything), this is helpful.
Thanks to Matthias for allowing people to try this tool !
Pharmacopoeias appearing from 16th century onwards
UK
“There were over 50 legislative attempts to address aspects of medical regulation between 1840 and 1886, with the Medical Act of 1858 establishing the General Medical
Council (GMC). The GMC has four main statutory functions: setting standards for good medical practice; assurance of the content and quality of basic medical education; running the registration and licensing system for doctors; and handling complaints and concerns about doctors’ fitness to practise.” http://www.dh.gov.uk/prod_consum_dh/groups/dh_digitalassets/documents/digitalasset/dh_076783.pdf
MHRA established 2003 (Medicines Control Agency + Medical Devices Agency), medical regulation more formalised after Thalidomide experimentation 1950s/60s, Committee on Safety of Drugs 1963, then Medicines Act 1968 – Commmittee on Safety of Medicines, then 2005 – Commission on Health Medicines. Medicines Act required medicines to be licensed before being introduced to UK Market. Since then superseded by European legislation
Europe
EEC 65/65 Council Directive to regulate post thalidomide – similar to Medicines Act. Since then 1975 – 75/318/EEC – “analytical, pharmacotoxicological and clinical standards
and protocols in respect of the testing of proprietary medicinal products” and 75/319/EEC – “law, regulation and administrative action relating to medicinal products” introducing mutual recognition procedure, then 87/22/EEC – centralized procedure. EMA established 1993
US The Evolution of Public Health Regulation, Eleanor D. Kinney Bioterrorism, Public Health and the Law, Law 801: Health Care Law Seminar Professor Vernellia R. Randall
In US, focus on local public health agency for public health issues, initially 1793 Baltimore, then across US in early 19th century. Then moved to states as more was understood about infectious diseases and the spread. Federal Public Health Regulation – three phases
when specific health threats not adequately addressed at local, state levels including Marine Health Service = National Public Health Service in 1912and food and drug safety regulation – food,drug and cosmetic act 1906 which led to FDA
New Deal – establishment of FDA and improved food, drug and cosmetic act 1938 – demonstrated safety of new drugs required, 1930 Ransdell Act – establishment of National Institutes of Health then post WWII – Centers for Disease Control, including Medicare and Medicaid programs, 1979 education & health combined into department of Health and Human Services
workplace health and safety – Occupational Health & Safety Act 1970, established Occupational Health and Safety Administration
“One important issue regarding risk is the irrationality of perceptions of risk, particularly when the risk has attracted media and public concern. Often, in that event, the atmosphere in which agency decisions are made responding to the risk is politically charged and even emotional. Many have argued that public knowledge and pressure disproportionately influence policymakers. Others maintain that interest groups have too much influence in driving the agenda of risks to be addressed and the factors to be considered in their assessment.
Risk assessment is especially important to public health agencies. Almost all public health regulation is about risk to health and safety. Specifically, much of public health regulation addresses ways to reduce risks to health and safety in the environment, workplace, and other settings. Also, much of public health practice involves educating the public about the risks of various practices and habits. Through sound risk assessment, a public health agency can make more accurate determinations of what are the most serious risks on which to focus regulatory attention. A good scientific understanding of the nature of the risk should suggest regulatory techniques that will be the most effective in addressing the risk at a reasonable cost. Public health agencies, in particular, need good data on which to base risk assessment.”
Other International (supported by WHO)
“establishment in 1990 of the International Conference on Harmonization of Technical Requirements for the Registration of Pharmaceuticals for Human Use (ICH), a collaborative initiative between the EU, Japan and the United States with observers from WHO, EFTA and Canada. ICH harmonization focuses primarily on technical requirements for new, innovative medicines. However, countries with limited resources are mostly generic markets and may have difficulties of implementing numerous sophisticated ICH standards. Pharmaceutical regulatory harmonization facilitates the availability of safe, effective and good quality pharmaceuticals”, http://www.who.int/medicines/technical_briefing/tbs/Drug_Regulation_History_Present_Future.pdf
http://www.mhra.gov.uk/Howweregulate/Medicines/index.htm
http://www.who.int/medicines/technical_briefing/tbs/Drug_Regulation_History_Present_Future.pdf
http://library.duke.edu/digitalcollections/mma/timeline/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2601475/?tool=pubmed
http://ec.europa.eu/internal_market/qualifications/policy_developments/legislation_en.htm
carrot smoothie
I’m not a great fan of liquid carrot generally and will happily munch either carrot cake or raw or cooked carrots except for when my face is temporarily out of order, which it is today. Someone gave me a Reggae Reggae cookbook last year – but I also like experimenting randomly, so started to putting lime with all kinds of things.
I didn’t want it to taste to carrotty so added just lime and tapwater. It tasted ok but missing something. So looked online and found options for using either yoghurt http://www.keyingredient.com/recipes/1745174/carrot-lime-smoothie/
or banana & ginger http://memoirmunchies.blogspot.co.uk/2011/05/carrot-ginger-lime-smoothie.html
I had already mixed the smoothie so added some drops of ginger juice and some cinnamon (middle eastern) and mixed with a fork. The flavour mix is fuller now – it could be a bit thicker so something like banana/mango/yoghurt would be an option if wanted. But fwiw:
Results of card sorting
Thank you very much to the two who contributed so far, it’s really helpful to get other perspectives on these and see the results. The Wallwisher one didn’t show any activity but the websort one shows the following:
Interesting to see the split in the items chart and also in the tree graph from the drop downs. Interesting that none of them matched the categories created more than 50% and how information is classified in different ways – particularly when thinking about navigation.
If it was a card sorting exercise done face to face – thinking of one recent one, you would be walking round tables and discussing and moving. With an invited group of participants online this is also possible, with some kind of live chat pad on one side would be helpful. I like the analysis in WebSort and would definitely use the tool again, probably for other activities too. Being able to cut n paste lists in from text or spreadsheet files makes it really quick to create.
when demonstrating a kick goes completely to plan
Funny moment in taekwondo today and Charles said it was one of the best demonstrations he had ever seen. We were in pairs doing various kicks and combinations. Master Rowley talked briefly about the importance of shouting (kihap) when you kick – for moving muscles as well as scaring your opponent. He achieved both !
I was holding a pad for the demonstration and he launched towards me and the next thing I know the pad has gone up in the air in a gigantic arc, nearly hitting the high ceiling and landing exactly in the far corner of the room. And it was a pad which had a strap that I was holding onto. It happens quite regularly in training that different people’s pads go out of their hands but never so high and neatly.
Just brilliant – 100% timing and accuracy – I was glad I wasn’t the pad.
Please can you help with card sorting experiment for 2 minutes?
I would really appreciate your help with either of these options, for the redesign of this website as an intention to make it more collaborative from the beginning:
1. WebSort
I am experimenting with an online card sorting tool You can visit via this link, add a name (pseudonym fine) and using the items on the left hand side, please drag into the middle where you think they might fit. As many as 2 minutes of your time will manage. Link: http://websort.net/s/953766/
If you have never done a card sorting exercise, but played Happy Families or similar as a child, it’s a bit like sorting words into families – there is an option to add comments too. I have never tried this online before so very interesting to see software available. Its free for up to 10 people.
Or
2. Wallwisher
I’ve just added a few of the tags and left it completely open to new suggestions too. Please feel free to move them around, group them or add different ones. Link: http://padlet.com/wall/w1jl86bk5x/wish/10053900
To come up with the list for the card sorting, I used all the categories I had created over the last five or so years and ordered them by most used. Then looked at the tags and compared them to the most popular posts.
As a sidenote, my most popular post on this blog was not written me – which is wonderfully grounding in a martial arts kind of way.
I chose tags which reflected those posts but were different to the categories.
Thank you !
responsive web take-aways
Reading through some of the links in the previous posts and digging further so far, seem to have
Flexible & fluid based on pixel measurements in design. Use of %s and ems. So far so good, e.g. in AydinDesign (2007) I used % and small, smaller rather than fixed pixels (px) some extracts from css
p {
font-size: small;
font-family: georgia;
margin: 0.5%;
text-align: justify;
}
#content {
clear:both;
float:left;
margin: 1%;
padding: 1%;
width: 81%;
font-family: georgia, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;
}
#contentr {
clear:both;
float:left;
width: 99%;
font-size: smaller;
text-align: justify;
}
So what? Well I learnt that it was never useful in 2005 with only about 4 browsers (and no iphones or ipads) to have fixed widths and it’s useful to have a reference point that is relative to others.
Based on the device, the ability to change navigation In the largest state it makes sense for my navigation to be a horizontal list (interaction) at the top (hierarchy), but in the smallest state it might make more sense to move it to the bottom of the layout (hierarchy), or collapse it into a show/hide list (interaction).1
and also thanks to Chris Armstrong for the pointer to responsive.is So font size, navigation and other layout changes can be designed in advance so that the layout is appropriate to the device, changing numbers of columns, horizontal to vertical drop down navigation or limited displays.
and resizing of images to thumbnails etc. In a responsive design WebdesignerWall tutorial, a navigation list is shown which originally has a block display not float left. On AydinDesign I had both
#topmenu ul { width: 99%; float: right; margin-left: 31px; padding: 0; list-style: none; }
#topmenul li {
float:left;
display: block;
width: 7.5%;
margin-left: 11px;
padding: 0.6em;
font-family: georgia, helvetica, arial, sans-serif;
font-weight: bold;
color: #999999;}
#topmenul li a img { border: none; }
#topmenu a { color: #999999; text-decoration: none; }
#topmenu a:hover { float: left; display: block; color: #6633FF; }
Which looked like the below image from the ‘Nicola’ area of the website
Then in the tutorial, a block for the current list is still used, but the other list elements hidden. A maximum width is specified and with the navigation a list which is all with a block display which triggers the switch to a drop down display. If I don’t change anything to my existing code, it automatically drops to a vertical display when shrunk e.g. this picture below shows different stages of minimising the screen resolution
But it doesn’t go to a neat drop-down, it goes to a flat vertical list which would take up quite a bit of screen-space on a smaller device. I eventually got it to display – it’s not in the right place and I’d have to rewrite the whole original style-sheet but in principle I’ve got the idea
1. Armstrong c (2012) The Infinite Grid, Alistapart, available at http://alistapart.com/article/the-infinite-grid
