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Rising collection costs sometimes necessitate tough decisions regarding cancellation of popular products. In 2015–2016, the East Tennessee State University Medical Library subscribed to UpToDate and DynaMed Plus, both clinical point-of-care products, with the understanding that one product would be canceled at the fiscal year end. The librarian team undertook a year-long community engagement campaign to inform library users about the pending product cancellation decision. Ultimately, DynaMed Plus was selected and UpToDate was cancelled. The campaign generated user engagement with the decision making, along with perceived benefits including increased awareness of the library's budget constraints, increased discussion of scholarly publishing, and greater faculty/student knowledge of evaluating evidence-based products.

Elsevier is a leading publisher of medical content, and ClinicalKey is the company's latest endeavor to aggregate multiple resources in one easily searchable interface. ClinicalKey merges medical education with clinically relevant information. This review will provide an overview of the contents, search options, features and limitations of this database.

ClinicalAccess is a clinical decision support tool released in early 2014. It incorporates some familiar aspects of other clinical decision support tools while adding new elements to its interface, such as the ability for users to submit their own questions. Answers provided by ClinicalAccess are supported by evidence and references from McMaster Plus, other McGraw-Hill products, and links to articles in PubMed, amongst other resources.

Rapid, point-of-care infectious disease diagnostics have the potential to dramatically improve health care provision in low-income world regions. However, the development of technologies such as electrochemical DNA biosensors is hindered by slow turnaround times from design to working prototype. In order to facilitate biosensor development, a rapid prototyping method has been applied to the fabrication of wrinkled nano-/micro-structured electrodes in this work. An electrocatalytic DNA hybridization detection scheme is optimized for use with the wrinkled electrodes by adjusting the concentrations of redox agents FiCN and RuHex. Characterization of the electrodes by electrochemical and fluorescence-based methods showed tunability of important detection-related parameters – namely, the density of DNA probe molecules and the hybridization-induced electrocatalytic signal change – by altering parameters of deposition time, molar fraction of DNA probes relative to diluent molecules, and thickness of the wrinkled gold film. / Thesis / Master of Applied Science (MASc)

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No description available.

Diseases are often diagnosed by detection of disease-specific biomarkers in fluid samples. However, many state-of-the-art detection methods require a lab with complex machinery, trained operators, and/or lengthy analysis time. In contrast, point-of-care (POC) devices are brought to the patient's location, they are easy to use, and results are obtained almost immediately. Many current POC devices are too difficult to be used without a skilled assistant, and although many are able to detect analytes above a threshold value, they give little or no quantitative information. This work presents the development of polymer-based microfluidic devices capable of sensing and quantifying biomarkers in fluid samples in a straightforward manner using a novel biomarker assay termed "flow valve diagnostics". In this assay, an antibody-modified polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) microchannel constricts due to the binding force between antibodies and antigens, stopping fluid flow. The flow distance is measured and correlated to antigen concentration. This detection method is an improvement over other methods because it is an innovative, non-instrumented, label-free, easy-to-use approach. These devices are small, portable, disposable, inexpensive, and thus ideal for use in POC testing. I have successfully fabricated flow valve devices with standard micromachining techniques, including photolithography, replica molding with PDMS, and plasma oxidation. Following fabrication, I compared two methods for attaching receptor biomolecules (e.g., antibodies) to the microchannel surfaces: non-specific adsorption and silanization with 3-glycidoxytrimethoxypropylsilane (GOPS). I used laser-induced fluorescence to determine that silanization with GOPS was the better method for biomolecule attachment. Finally, I tested antibody-modified flow valve devices with target antigens to determine if the antibody/antigen binding force was strong enough to cause channel pinching and flow stoppage. By modifying the device design and using higher antigen concentrations, I was able to show that flow valve devices can detect antigens in a concentration-dependent manner. Future work to improve the device design and to modify and test these devices with different receptor/target pairs will bring flow valve diagnostics closer to becoming a valuable asset in biomarker detection and POC testing.