The planning of hospital beds is among the most debated problems in healthcare. Despite being an important issue, many initiatives have failed to sustain services improvements, resulting in high costs and also high refusal rates. The stochastic problem involves conflicting criteria, therefore, we propose a Simulation-Optimisation approach to solve it. The Evolutionary Algorithm NSGA-II drives the process

Background Despite attempts to reform the healthcare delivery system in the Middle East, expectations for its progress have been—and for some still are—somewhat slow. Objective This study reviewed progress in the use and adoption of telemedicine in Middle Eastern countries. The key dimensions affecting the progress of telemedicine in these countries were identified. Method A systematic review of the

Introduction Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) are acknowledged as vital tools to strengthen Primary Health Care (PHC) in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). However, these technologies have been used only for selected services. Moreover, there is limited evidence on how effective these interventions are in improving comprehensive primary health care in LMICs. Therefore, we developed

Background and Objectives Antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) programs aim to optimize antibiotic use and reduce inappropriate prescriptions through a panel of interventions. The implementation of clinical guidelines is a core strategy of antimicrobial stewardship (AMS) programs. Nevertheless, their dissemination and application remain low. Computerised decision support systems (CDSSs) offer new opportunities

Wikipedia contains rich biomedical information that can support medical informatics studies and applications. Identifying the subset of medical articles of Wikipedia has many benefits, such as facilitating medical knowledge extraction, serving as a corpus for language modeling, or simply making the size of data easy to work with. However, due to the extremely low prevalence of medical articles in the

Background and objective The workings of medical educational tools are implemented using a myriad of approaches ranging from presenting static content to immersing students in gamified virtual-reality environments. The objective of this paper is to explore whether and how different approaches for designing medical educational tools affect students’ learning performance. Materials and methods Four versions

Objective Pre-hospital emergency medical services use clinical decision support systems (CDSS) to triage calls. Call handlers often supplement this by making free text notes covering key incident information. We investigate whether machine learning approaches using features from such free text notes can improve prediction of unconscious patients who require conveyance. Materials and methods We analysed

Background With the introduction of privacy regulations such as the California Consumer Privacy Act and the European Union General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), effective data protection in mobile health (mHealth) is rapidly becoming a concern. However, we have a limited understanding of the contexts and mechanisms that affect the likelihood of failures and successes in mHealth data protection

Background There is growing emphasis on the role of digital solutions to support chronic disease management. This has the potential to increase the burden patients experience in managing their health by offloading care from the health system to patients. This paper explores the effects of virtual visits on patient burden using an explicit framework measuring the work patients do to care for their health

Objectives This study used ecological momentary assessment (EMA) to understand how the contextual factors of everyday life affect physical activity in terms of steps measured by wearable activity tracking devices and to identify what factors increase physical activity. In addition, this study investigated and analyzed the user environment and resulting contextual factors in a typical office setting

Background Individualised Action Plans (APs) are a key management tool for paediatric asthma, allergy, anaphylaxis and eczema. They provide salient care instructions for patients and caregivers and are thought to improve disease outcomes, albeit with minimal supporting evidence. Whilst the provision of an AP has become a widely measured healthcare quality marker, the content of the plans provided has

Objective To evaluate the implementation of a novel electronic medical record (EMR) system for management of non-communicable diseases (NCD) (hypertension (HTN) and diabetes mellitus (DM)) in health facilities in informal settlements in Nairobi. Questions of interest were on the use of, perception of the HCWs, and scalability and sustainability of the EMR system. Method The study utilised a descriptive

Electronic cigarettes (e-cigarettes) usage has surged substantially across the globe, particularly among adolescents and young adults. The ever-increasing prevalence of social media makes it highly convenient to access and engage with content on numerous substances, including e-cigarettes. A comprehensive dataset of 560,414 image posts with a mention of #vaping (shared from 1 June 2019 to 31 October

Objectives Home care nursing requires high quality documentation to facilitate communication between health providers. Despite the awareness surrounding the importance of documentation, the home care nursing environment lends itself to incomplete and inaccurate documentation. Our study aims to develop a hierarchical standardized home care nursing statement (S-HCNS) structure that can increase documentation

This paper augments the technology acceptance model (TAM) by empirically investigating the influence of behavioral traits (privacy concerns and trust) and cognitive beliefs (perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use) on patients’ behavioral intention to accept technology in healthcare service delivery. Despite increased emphasis on healthcare service delivery, there has been limited studies as

Background Recurrent venous thromboembolism (RVTE) is a multifactorial disease with occurrence rates which vary from 13 % to 25 % in 5 years after the initial event. Once a patient the first thrombotic event, the probability of recurrence should be determined, as well as the most adequate anticoagulant therapy. To our knowledge based on the published literature, three statistical models have been proposed

Background The effectiveness of online health communities (OHCs) for improving outcomes for health care consumers, health professionals, and health services has already been well investigated. However, research on determinants of OHC users’ activity levels, what is associated with attrition or attraction to these communities, and the impacts of initial posts is limited. Objectives We sought to explore

Background We developed and evaluated a prognostic prediction model that estimates osteoarthritis risk for use by patients and practitioners that is designed to be appropriate for integration into primary care health information technology systems. Osteoarthritis, a joint disorder characterized by pain and stiffness, causes significant morbidity among older Canadians. Because our prognostic prediction

Background and purpose Health information systems (HIS) are expected to be effective and efficient in improving healthcare services, but empirical observation of HIS reveals that most perform poorly in terms of these metrics. Theoretical factors of HIS performance are widely studied, and solutions to mitigate poor performance have been proposed. In this paper we implement effective methods to eliminate

Background Electronic Health Records (EHR) are the foundation of much medical research. However, analyzing the text data of EHRs directly is an challenging task. Therefore, physicians often use questionnaires to first convert text data to structured data. Filling in these questionnaires requires a considerable amount of time and medical knowledge. It is a significant task to develop an algorithm to

Objectives To develop and evaluate a serious game to deliver knowledge about the cleft lip with or without cleft palate (CL/P) protocol used in Craniofacial Center, Chiang Mai University. Methods The game “Cleft Island” was developed then extensively evaluated using different criteria, including the measured knowledge gained by participants, and gameplay experience. A group of 53 fourth and fifth-year

Background Tuberculosis is the leading cause of infectious disease-related death, surpassing even the immunodeficiency virus. Treatment loss to follow up and irregular medication use contribute to persistent morbidity and mortality. This increases bacillus drug resistance and has a negative impact on disease control. Objective This study aims to develop a computational model that predicts the loss

Objective Adoption of electronic medical records (EMRs) does not necessarily translate to proficiency –referred to here as EMR maturity. To realize the full benefit of wide scale EMR adoption, the focus must shift from adoption to advancing mature use. This calls for validated assessment models so that researchers, health system planners and digital health developers can better understand what contributes

Objective The main objective of this paper is the reduction of the COVID-19 pandemic spread by increasing the degree of social distancing by using and upgrading the existing Medical Information System (MIS). Material and methods The existing MIS MEDIS.NET, currently used in the largest health center in the Balkans, has been adapted and further developed. Results During the adaptation of existing MIS

Introduction Neuropathic pain (NP) remains a major debilitating condition affecting more than 26% of breast cancer survivors worldwide. NP is diagnosed using a validated 10-items Douleur Neuropathique - 4 screening questionnaire which is administered 3 months after surgery and requires patient-doctor interaction. To develop an effective prognosis model admissible soon after surgery, without the need

Objective The creation and exchange of patients’ Electronic Healthcare Records have developed significantly in the last decade. Patients’ records are however distributed in data silos across multiple healthcare facilities, posing technical and clinical challenges that may endanger patients’ safety. Current healthcare sharing systems ensure interoperability of patients’ records across facilities, but

Background Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSS) can make patient care more efficient, cost-effective, and guideline-concordant. Many are created by clinicians who understand the challenges, but may publish concepts before considering subtle but important design details. Human-Centred Design (HCD) approaches provide necessary methods ensuring solid CDSS design. This article highlights HCD approaches

Background Reusing routinely recorded data from electronic hospital records (EHR) may offer a less-time consuming, and more real time alternative for monitoring compliance by nurses with a protocol for the safe preparation and administration of injectable medication. However, at present it is unknown if the data necessary to calculate the quality indicators (QIs) are recorded in EHRs, or if these data

Background and Objective In recent years, an increasing number of clinical prediction models have been developed to serve clinical care. Establishing a data-driven prediction model based on large-scale electronic health record (EHR) data can provide a more empirical basis for clinical decision making. However, research on model generalization and continuous improvement is insufficiently focused, which

Introduction One of the factors to influence abandoning breastfeeding is mothers’ use of medications. The www.e-lactancia.org website is a reliable source in Spanish and English for online free-access information about the compatibility of medications with breastfeeding. The aim of this study was to analyse the search profiles, and groups and products, searched the most on this website. Materials and

Introduction The electronic prescribing system (EPS) is now widely used in the USA and largely also in EU member countries. Nevertheless, comparisons of different EPS are very scarce. Whilst the EU strives for cross-border interoperability in healthcare, the aim of this study is to provide a contemporary account of the state of national EPS in such countries. Methods For the sake of consistency the

Objective This article introduces SCALPEL3 (Scalable Pipeline for Health Data), a scalable open-source framework for studies involving Large Observational Databases (LODs). It focuses on scalable medical concept extraction, easy interactive analysis, and helpers for data flow analysis to accelerate studies performed on LODs. Materials and methods Inspired from web analytics, SCALPEL3 relies on distributed

Background The use of social media is widespread globally. It provides a quicker and faster means of efficient exchange of communications. The use of Twitter Applications to seek mental health advice is becoming popular. Objectives This study aims to identify the determinants associated with Twitter use in psychiatric consultations and to assess the level of satisfaction in using the microblogging

Background ERAS protocol compliance is traditionally measured and reported as ‘items compliance’ which is retrospective longitudinal adherence of all patients to an index element. Reporting in this manner is restrictive and cannot impact care in real-time. In order to modify behavior effectively and instantaneously, we seek to introduce the novel concept of “vertical compliance”. Methods Vertical compliance

Objective Ubiquitous computing has supported personalized health through a vast variety of wellness and healthcare self-quantification applications over the last decade. These applications provide insights for daily life activities but unable to portray the comprehensive impact of personal habits on human health. Therefore, in order to facilitate the individuals, we have correlated the lifestyle habits

Background and objective Collecting, integrating, and sharing mental and physical health information can enhance the care process of patients and improve the completeness of patient databases in the health information exchange (HIE) networks. There is a need to encourage patients with physical and mental disorders to share their health information with providers. Data entry interfaces are suggested

Objective The objective of this study was to examine the effect of mobile phone applications (App) based cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) on postpartum depression. Method A non-blinded parallel-group randomized controlled trial was conducted. The study population consisted of women attended to three health care centers in Kerman, Iran. Participants were recruited between September and November 2018

Objective To study the feasibility of evaluating feature importance with Shapley Values and ensemble methods in the context of pharmacoepidemiology and medication safety. Methods We detected medications associated with Alzheimer's disease (AD) by examining the additive feature attribution with combined approach of Gradient Boosting and Shapley Values in the Medication use and Alzheimer's disease (MEDALZ)

Objective Ovarian cancer (OC) is one of the most common types of cancer in women. Accurately prediction of benign ovarian tumors (BOT) and OC has important practical value. Methods Our dataset consists of 349 Chinese patients with 49 variables including demographics, blood routine test, general chemistry, and tumor markers. Machine learning Minimum Redundancy – Maximum Relevance (MRMR) feature selection

Background Despite the importance of pathology testing in diagnosis and disease monitoring, there is little in-depth research about pathology test ordering in general practice and how it impacts patient outcomes. This is in part due to the limited availability of high-quality data. With the now-widespread use of electronic software in general practice comes the potential for electronic patient data

Background The understanding and processing of numerical prognostic information can be challenging for patients who suffer from disease and the stress of a diagnosis. Objective This paper investigates how patients diagnosed with Leukemia respond to different graph representations of prognosis information. Methods We conducted a user-centered design process, for which three experimental prototypes (vertical

Background Severe sepsis and septic shock are still the leading causes of death in Intensive Care Units (ICUs), and timely diagnosis is crucial for treatment outcomes. The progression of electronic medical records (EMR) offers the possibility of storing a large quantity of clinical data that can facilitate the development of artificial intelligence (AI) in medicine. However, several difficulties, such

Objective This research examines how YouTube recommends vaccination-related videos. Materials and methods We used a social network analysis to evaluate how YouTube recommends vaccination related videos to its users. Results More pro-vaccine videos (64.75%) than anti-vaccine (19.98%) videos are on YouTube, with 15.27% of videos being neutral in sentiment. YouTube was more likely to recommend neutral

Background Although barriers exist to secondary use of primary care electronic medical record (EMR) data, the Alliance for Healthier Communities (the Alliance) in Ontario, Canada has successfully created one of the largest structured primary care EMR datasets in Canada. In 2018, the Alliance and the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), an organization that provides comparable and actionable

Objective Many people have a poor understanding of the numerous chemicals in tobacco products that cause severe health harms. The US government must display a list of these harmful chemicals for the public. Online disclosures are one promising solution, but evidence is needed for effective design strategies to encourage interpretation and use of information as intended. Method To examine the impact

Background Emergency departments (ED) are a portal of entry into the hospital and are uniquely positioned to influence the health care trajectories of older adults seeking medical attention. Older adults present to the ED with distinct needs and complex medical histories, which can make disposition planning more challenging. Machine Learning (ML) approaches have been previously used to inform decision-making

Context Constipation occurs in up to 71.7% (33/46) of hospital inpatients taking opioid analgesics. Co-prescribing laxatives with opioid analgesics is recommended to prevent opioid-induced constipation. Objectives This study aimed to examine the effect of an electronic medical record (EMR) design modification to increase laxative co-prescribing among hospitalised inpatients taking opioid analgesics

Importance Speech recognition (SR) is increasingly used directly by clinicians for electronic health record (EHR) documentation. Its usability and effect on quality and efficiency versus other documentation methods remain unclear. Objective To study usability and quality of documentation with SR versus typing. Design In this controlled observational study, each subject participated in two of five simulated

Background Many studies that aim to identify gene biomarkers using statistical methods and translate them into FDA-approved drugs have faced challenges due to lack of clinical validity and methodological reproducibility. Since genomic data analysis relies heavily on these statistical learning tools more than before, it is vital to address the limitations of these computational techniques. Methods Our

BACKGROUND Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a well-established treatment for panic disorder, but many fewer patients receive this treatment compared to medication-based therapy. Mobile app-based interactive CBT using a chatbot can increase patient access to CBT. We performed a preliminary study to determine whether short-term use of a newly developed chatbot is feasible and effective for relieving

BACKGROUND In institutional dementia care, person-centered care improves care processes and the quality of life of residents. However, communication gaps impede the implementation of person-centered care in favor of routinized care. OBJECTIVE We evaluated whether self-organizing knowledge management reduces communication gaps and improves the quality of person-centered dementia care. METHOD We implemented

OBJECTIVE Identify opportunities to improve the interaction between clinicians and Tele-Critical Care (Tele-CC) programs through an analysis of alert occurrence and reactivation in a specific Tele-CC application. MATERIALS AND METHODS Data were collected automatically through the Philips eCaremanager® software system used at multiple hospitals in the Avera health system. We evaluated the distribution

Background There is an increasing trend in using network science methods and algorithms, including community detection methods, in different areas of healthcare. These areas include protein networks, drug prescriptions, healthcare fraud detection, and drug abuse. Counterfeit drugs, off-label marketing issues, and finding the healthcare community structures in a network of hospitals, are examples of

OBJECTIVES Various healthcare stakeholders define quality of care in different ways. Public policy could advocate all these concerns. This study was conducted to identify the main themes on patient safety of stakeholders expressed before and after the Patient Safety Act was enacted in Korea in 2015. DESIGN Longitudinal observational study of the interests of healthcare stakeholders generated between