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The dissemination of evidence-based practice in German physiotherapy is limited by several barriers. However, a recent study shows that some German physiotherapists are already successfully implementing such a practice. Based on Everett M. Rogers’ diffusion of innovations theory, this study defined evidence-based practice as an innovation in German physiotherapy to gain insight into therapists’ strategies to overcome these barriers.

The implementation of pharmacogenetic testing into clinical practice has been a slow process so far. Here, we review the implementation of pre-treatment testing of dihydropyrimidine dehydrogenase gene (DPYD) risk variants to prevent early-onset fluoropyrimidine (FP)-related toxicity in cancer patients in Switzerland based on data of a large Swiss diagnostic center. In January 2017, the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health introduced the reimbursement of DPYD testing by the compulsory health insurance in Switzerland based on evidence for the clinical relevance of DPYD-risk variants and the cost-effectiveness of pre-treatment testing, and on the availability of international guidelines. However, we did not observe a strong increase in DPYD testing at our diagnostic center from 2017 to 2019. Only a low number of DPYD-testing requests (28–42 per year), concerning mostly retrospective investigations of suspected FP-toxicity, were received. In contrast, we observed a 14-fold increase in DPYD testing together with a strong shift from retrospective to pre-treatment test requests upon the release of recommendations for DPYD testing prior to FP-treatment in April 2020 by the European Medicines Agency. This increase was mainly driven by three geographic regions of Switzerland, where partner institutions of previous research collaborations regarding FP-related toxicity are located and who acted as early-adopting institutions of DPYD testing. Our data suggest the important role of early adopters as accelerators of clinical implementation of pharmacogenetic testing by introducing these policies to their working environment and educating health workers from their own and nearby institutions.

The innovative diffusion theory indicates that the key to success of businesses is the innovative ideas of the early adopters. Furthermore, the early adopters’ documents on the Internet were extremely rare; the traditional associative analyses in text mining tend to ignore these useful ideas of the early adopters. In this study, a framework was proposed, which uses low-term frequency (TF), low-term frequency with inverse document frequency and low TF with the inverse clusters frequency, to acquire rare connections between low-frequency terms, to extract early adopters’ incipient and innovative ideas. This new proposed framework amplifies the rare chance to find potential terms which are valuable for businesses’ future. Finally, some observed data obtained from the passengers on airplanes or trains were used to extract the innovative ideas from early adopters. By putting the data into a business scenario, a case study was presented and the feasibility of the framework can therefore be checked by experts. A comparison has been made between the proposed framework and chance discovery. The experimental result evidences that the results in the new framework are more effective than the outcomes of chance discovery method to sift out incipient ideas.

As the cost of satellite missions grow, government agencies are working to increase the relevance and usefulness of the Earth science data that they produce. The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) early adopter program seeks to formalize partnerships with users of data early within the satellite planning process to ensure the greatest value of the mission. Scientists who are designing the satellite observing system, those who are developing mission data products, and the community who will use them need to work together to determine how satellite data can better inform decision making. NASA is working to initiate engagement with data users much earlier in the satellite program life so that the user needs can be prioritized, continue to engage with users throughout the development cycle, and then include analysis on societal impact after nominal mission life. The Early Adopter Program allows for broad and early engagement with decision makers by encouraging individuals and institutions with clear uses of data to engage with the mission. Early adopters facilitate feedback on mission products during pre-launch and accelerate the utilization of these products post-launch. This paper provides background and detail on how NASA is working to engage with early adopters, describes the partnership between early adopters and NASA missions, and connects the program to improved societal impacts of its satellite missions.