HARRISBURG, PA – Welcome to your November 2024 Harrisburg University of Science and Technology (HU) Research Roundup! Our talented faculty have been busy presenting at conferences, publishing boundary-pushing research, and building fruitful partnerships with other schools, agencies, and organizations. It’s been a great month for research and recognition at HU, so let’s get to it!
1. Kelly Boudreau Published in Game Studies Journal
Kelly Boudreau, Ph.D., Program Lead for Game Design and Associate Professor of Media, Games & Culture, has published an original research paper in Replay: The Polish Journal of Game Studies. The paper is entitled, “Beyond Aesthetics: Players, Player-Characters and Interactivity-as-Demand in Cozy Games.”
“I am excited to have my research on the design and played experience of cozy games published in The Polish Journal of Game Studies’ special double issue on cozy games, an underrepresented genre in scholarly work in game studies and design,” said Dr. Boudreau. “This is an open-access journal devoted to interdisciplinary studies on games and game audiences, publishing in both English and Polish.”
As the call for papers articulates, cozy games present a compelling subject for research because of their distinctive aesthetics and their potential for political and activist expression. Some argue that the rising popularity of these games reflects the evolving needs of players who, in navigating the ever-shifting socio-political landscape of the modern world, are less inclined to seek intense emotions in their gaming. Instead, they turn to these games for what is often missing in their daily lives: a sense of calm and stability.
“The paper focuses on cozy game design as it relates to the player-characters’ representations of physical, cognitive, social, and emotional demands in cozy games,” explained Dr. Boudreau. “Through the analytical lens of interactivity-as-demand theory (Bowman, 2021), it is possible to identify and understand the consistency and disconnect of demands as experienced by the player compared to how they are (re)presented on screen, which has potential implications related to the player’s expectations and future design principles of cozy games. With this work being open access, it is my hope that it reaches a broader audience within and beyond academia, to help people understand the design, appeal, and complexity of seemingly ‘simple’ cozy games that play a significant role in the changing landscape of contemporary media culture.”
2. Allison Harris Presents at 2024 MovePA Annual Conference
Allison Harris, PT, DPT, CCS, delivered a presentation at the APTA (American Physical Therapy Association) 2024 MovePA Annual Conference on November 3. The presentation, “Comprehensive Management of Vascular Disease: From Anatomy to Advocacy,” explored the complexity of treating patients with systemic vascular diseases, offering a comprehensive overview of anatomy pathophysiology and contemporary management strategies.
“The idea of this presentation came out of discussions with my colleagues about how to effectively manage patients who have more than one lower extremity vascular impairment (peripheral arterial disease, chronic venous insufficiency, and/or lymphedema) and/or multiple comorbidities,” explained Dr. Harris.
“My colleague, Liz Steele, PT DPT CCS, and I reached out to a lymphedema specialist who we both admired and worked with previously, Rachelle Pretz, PT, DPT, CLT-LANA. The acute care section of the APTA asked us to submit it for their consideration, and we were then invited to speak at the APTA Pennsylvania state chapter’s annual conference, MovePA, in Pittsburgh. This was the perfect venue, because Harrisburg University will host the conference on campus next year.”
Dr. Harris continued, “I was really blown away by the participation of our session attendees. We presented two back-to-back sessions for a total of four hours, with great engagement, discussion, and questions. We then had an opportunity to interact in small groups to show clinicians some of the specialized offloading footwear, wound-care models, and compression wrapping materials, and even practice performing some special tests that we hope will be useful to clinicians as they screen and treat patients with lower extremity vascular disease.”
3. Erik Hefti Publishes Medical AI Research Paper
Erik Hefti, Ph.D., Assistant Professor and Program Lead of Pharmaceutical Sciences, recently led a study that had its original research paper published in Journal of Medical Artificial Intelligence (JMAI). The study is entitled, “Machine Learning Model Better Identifies Patients for Pharmacist Intervention to Reduce Hospitalization Risk in a Large Outpatient Population.”
Rising medication costs, adverse drug events, and preventable hospitalizations place significant strain on the healthcare system. Identifying high-risk patients who could benefit from pharmacist intervention is crucial for reducing hospitalization risks. Fewer hospitalizations enhance care delivery efficiency and improve patient outcomes. The study introduces a novel machine learning (ML) model designed to improve patient intervention selection by predicting hospitalization risk.
The ML model integrates multiple patient metrics (previous hospitalizations, medication adherence, etc.) and leverages historical data. To evaluate its performance, Dr. Hefti and his co-authors tested the ML model on a population and compared it to the traditional polypharmacy-based method.
“Healthcare costs continue to rise each year, leading to stress on patients and healthcare personnel alike,” explained Dr. Hefti. “In this work, we developed an AI approach to better predict which patients are at the highest risk of hospitalization. This approach predicted hospitalization more reliably versus standard practice, opening the door for better focus of healthcare resources on patients most in need.”
Ultimately, the ML model outperformed traditional methods in stratifying hospitalization risk, highlighting its potential for optimizing patient selection for pharmacist intervention. This approach can enhance resource allocation, reduce avoidable hospitalizations, and lower healthcare costs. Over a three-month period, the ML model demonstrated 80 percent accuracy. Compared to polypharmacy-based selection, the ML model identified high-risk patients more effectively, improving the true positive hospitalization rate by 3.5 times. Future applications of this model in larger, more diverse populations could further validate its effectiveness and broaden its utility in improving healthcare efficiency.
4. André L’Huillier Presents Paper at CSSS Annual Conference
André L’Huillier, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Computational Social Science, presented an original research paper at the recent Computational Social Science Society (CSSS) of the Americas Annual Conference in Santa Fe. The presentation was entitled, “Generational Taste Formation and Cultural Markets: A Develecological Approach to Cultural Change.”
“I’m exploring the systemic factors on the evolution of generation’s cultures,” said Dr. L’Huillier. “How do generations or cohorts develop their unique cultural traits? This is an ambitious project to capture a mainstream sociological theory and use it to understand cultural change.”
As the abstract points out, cultural change is a multifaceted process influenced by interactions across various levels of society, ranging from personal experiences to institutional frameworks. The study introduces an agent-based model (ABM) grounded in Bronfenbrenner’s Developmental Ecology(Develecology) to explore generational changes in cultural preferences and media markets. The model simulates how demographic trends, peer socialization, and organizational influences shape individual preferences, which, in turn, drive broader cultural trends over time. This methodology offers potential applications for understanding generational differences, market dynamics, and the mechanisms underlying cultural stability and transformation.
“I began modeling cultural change computationally after my first attempt to use quantitative techniques on the events around the Golden Age of US comic books,” said Dr. L’Huillier. “Now, I’m presenting this as a general model that uses a mainstream sociological theory to simulate the cultural dynamics between generations. Ideally, a model that can benefit researchers, students, and laypeople about the interplay of social systems and how this affects what we end up believing and preferring.”
5. Charles Palmer Joins Leadership Harrisburg Area (LHA) Panel
Charles Palmer, Associate Professor and Program Lead of Interactive Media, recently helped lead the LHA’s Higher Education Panel Discussion. Professor Palmer is a member of the LHA Community Leadership Series Class of 2010.
The goal of these sessions was to provide an understanding of various elements of the higher education system in the region and identify challenges and opportunities based on those observations. A previous session covered K–12.
Topics for this year’s panel discussion included notable outcomes for the region, the greatest threats to student success, overcoming challenges, and the growing need to adapt to a changing student population. According to a post from Shippensburg University, “The discussion included identifying barriers to student success and the innovative programs that are helping to remove those barriers.” Shippensburg President Charles Patterson was another panel facilitator.
Professor Palmer explained, “As a panelist, I was hoping to spread information about Harrisburg University as not only a resource for students, but also as an economic driver with a secondary mission of regional professional development.”
He continued, “It’s interesting how four unique academic institutions, with four unique student populations, share in similar struggles. But most importantly, I was amazed by the variety of entrepreneurial approaches to tackling these challenges. The audience was a cross-section of servant leaders and business professionals from across the region with a true interest in improving opportunities for the next generation.”
6. Michael Seavers Presents at CAQH Connect Conference
Michael Seavers, Ph.D., Assistant Professor and Program Lead for Healthcare Informatics, gave a presentation at the recent Council for Affordable Quality Healthcare (CAQH) Connect Conference. CAQC is a nonprofit organization that seeks to simplify the administration of healthcare; their annual Connect Conference is a gathering of “healthcare industry executives and thought leaders, exploring best practices for data management, data governance, and interoperability in advancing healthcare.”
“The presentation was all about the Coordination of Benefits, better known as COB, in the health insurance industry,” Dr. Seavers explained. “For so many years, the thought has been that COB is all about claims. When a claim comes into a health insurance company, then the company tries to determine if the patient has other health insurance coverage with another payer. My presentation focused on the idea that coordination of benefits in healthcare and health insurance is not a claims issue, but rather an enrollment issue. The industry needs to completely move COB to the enrollment area and out of the claims area. I have been a proponent of this for nearly a decade.”
The benefits of moving COB to the enrollment process include early intervention (addressing COB during enrollment, rather than claims, reduces errors and inefficiencies downstream) and ultimately making enrollment a more proactive process. The enrollment period, particularly at the start of the calendar year, is a critical moment for implementing accurate COB practices.
“My position is that claims is too late in the process,” said Dr. Seavers. “COB is not about claims at all, but about when someone enrolls with a health insurance company. For many people, that means January 1, when their new benefits become effective.”
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