Information technology

BACKGROUND: In the last 2 decades, new technologies have emerged in health care. The COVID-19 pandemic further accelerated the adoption of technology by both health care professionals and patients. These technologies create remote care practices that bring several benefits to the health care system: easier access to care, improved communication with physicians, and greater continuity of care. However, disparities in the acceptance and use of telehealth tools still exist among patients...

BACKGROUND: The rapid development of industrialization in printed circuit board (PCB) warrants more complexity and integrity, which entails an essential procedure of PCB inspection. X-ray computed laminography (CL) enables inspection of arbitrary regions for large-sized flat objects with high resolution. PCB inspection based on CL imaging is worthy of exploration. OBJECTIVE: This work aims to extract PCB circuit layer information based on CL imaging through image segmentation technique...

INTRODUCTION: One of the targets for the third sustainable development goals is to reduce worldwide maternal mortality ratio (MMR) to less than 70 deaths per 100,000 live births by 2030. To address issues affecting women and the newborns during childbirth and postnatal period, concerted efforts from governments and their stakeholders are crucial to maximize the use of technology to enhance frontline health professionals' skills to provide the emergency obstetric and newborn care (EmONC)...

One aspect of Caenorhabditis elegans that makes it a highly valuable model organism is the ease of use of in vivo genetic reporters, facilitated by its transparent cuticle and highly tractable genetics. Despite the rapid advancement of these technologies, worms must be paralyzed for most imaging applications, and few investigations have characterized the impacts of common chemical anesthetic methods on the parameters measured, in particular biochemical measurements such as cellular energetics and redox tone...

Introduction: One of the challenges faced by the Colombian Health System is to improve access to health services for the dispersed and isolated rural population, particularly in the field of dermatology. This article examines the implementation of a teledermatology service using a PC and camera versus smartphone technology. Methods: A total of 542 teledermatology visits were conducted, involving 478 patients, in addition to 64 visits for clinical follow-up for patients as per the dermatologist's recommendation...

BACKGROUND: New digital technology presents new challenges to health care on multiple levels. There are calls for further research that considers the complex factors related to digital innovations in complex health care settings to bridge the gap when moving from linear, logistic research to embracing and testing the concept of complexity. The nonadoption, abandonment, scale-up, spread, and sustainability (NASSS) framework was developed to help study complexity in digital innovations...

BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic rapidly changed the landscape of clinical practice in the United States; telehealth became an essential mode of health care delivery, yet many components of telehealth use remain unknown years after the disease's emergence. OBJECTIVE: We aim to comprehensively assess telehealth use and its associated factors in the United States. METHODS: This cross-sectional study used a nationally representative survey (Health Information National Trends Survey) administered to US adults (≥18 years) from March 2022 through November 2022...

BACKGROUND: Relative motion between the residual limb and socket in individuals with transtibial limb loss can lead to substantial consequences that limit mobility. Although assessments of the relative motion between the residual limb and socket have been performed, there remains a substantial gap in understanding the complex mechanics of the residual limb-socket interface during dynamic activities that limits the ability to improve socket design. However, dynamic stereo x-ray (DSX) is an advanced imaging technology that can quantify 3D bone movement and skin deformation inside a socket during dynamic activities...

BACKGROUND: Type 2 diabetes disproportionately affects South Asian subgroups. Lifestyle prevention programs help prevent and manage diabetes; however, there is a need to tailor these programs for mobile health (mHealth). OBJECTIVE: This study examined technology access, current use, and preferences for health communication among South Asian immigrants diagnosed with or at risk for diabetes, overall and by sex. We examined factors associated with interest in receiving diabetes information by (1) text message, (2) online (videos, voice notes, online forums), and (3) none or skipped, adjusting for sociodemographic characteristics and technology access...

Informal caregivers often provide transfer assistance to individuals with disabilities; however, repeated transfers are associated with a high risk of musculoskeletal pain and injury, and training and education around transfers is minimal. The purpose of this study was to develop and assess the content validity of a new tool, the Caregiver Assisted Transfer Technique Instrument (CATT), which could be used to provide an objective indicator of transfer performance. Item importance, clarity, and appropriateness of responses were rated on a five-point Likert scale by clinicians ( n  = 15), informal caregivers ( n  = 10), and individuals with spinal cord injury ( n  = 5)...

Accurate annotation to single-nucleotide resolution of the transcribed regions in genomes is key to optimally analyse RNA-seq data, understand regulatory events and for the design of experiments. However, currently most genome annotations provided by GenBank generally lack information about untranslated regions. Additionally, information regarding genomic locations of non-coding RNAs, such as sRNAs, or anti-sense RNAs is frequently missing. To provide such information, diverse RNA-seq technologies, such as Rend-seq, have been developed and applied to many bacterial species...

Photonic neural networks (PNNs), utilizing light-based technologies, show immense potential in artificial intelligence (AI) and computing. Compared to traditional electronic neural networks, they offer faster processing speeds, lower energy usage, and improved parallelism. Leveraging light's properties for information processing could revolutionize diverse applications, including complex calculations and advanced machine learning (ML). Furthermore, these networks could address scalability and efficiency challenges in large-scale AI systems, potentially reshaping the future of computing and AI research...

In 1999, the first biosynthetic gene cluster (BGC), synthesizing the virulence factor DHN melanin, was characterized in Aspergillus fumigatus . Since then, 19 additional BGCs have been linked to specific secondary metabolites (SMs) in this species. Here, we provide a comprehensive timeline of A. fumigatus BGC discovery and find that initial advances centered around the commonly expressed SMs where chemical structure informed rationale identification of the producing BGC (e.g., gliotoxin, fumigaclavine, fumitremorgin, pseurotin A, helvolic acid, fumiquinazoline)...

The rapid deployment of virtual primary care visits served as a first-line response to COVID-19 and can now be examined for insights, particularly as virtual care is playing an ongoing role in patient care and consultations. Input from primary care providers directly responsible for virtual care delivery is needed to inform policies and strategies for quality care and interactions. The overarching goal of this research study was to examine the use of virtual care as a mechanism for primary healthcare delivery...

The exoskeleton robot is a wearable electromechanical device inspired by animal exoskeletons. It combines technologies such as sensing, control, information, and mobile computing, enhancing human physical abilities and assisting in rehabilitation training. In recent years, with the development of visual sensors and deep learning, the environmental perception of exoskeletons has drawn widespread attention in the industry. Environmental perception can provide exoskeletons with a certain level of autonomous perception and decision-making ability, enhance their stability and safety in complex environments, and improve the human-machine-environment interaction loop...

Digital health tracking is a source of valuable insights for public health research and consumer health technology. The brain is the most complex organ, containing information about psychophysical and physiological biomarkers that correlate with health. Specifically, recent developments in electroencephalogram (EEG), functional near-infra-red spectroscopy (fNIRS), and photoplethysmography (PPG) technologies have allowed the development of devices that can remotely monitor changes in brain activity. The inclusion criteria for the papers in this review encompassed studies on self-applied, remote, non-invasive neuroimaging techniques (EEG, fNIRS, or PPG) within healthcare applications...

With the rise and development of autonomy and intelligence technologies, UAVs will have increasingly significant applications in the future. It is very important to solve the problem of low-altitude penetration of UAVs to protect national territorial security. Based on an S-57 electronic chart file, the land, island, and threat information for an actual combat environment is parsed, extracted, and rasterized to construct a marine combat environment for UAV flight simulation. To address the problem of path planning for low-altitude penetration in complex environments, a photosensitivity-enhanced plant growth algorithm (PEPG) is proposed...

Polarization imaging and sensing techniques have shown great potential for biomedical and clinical applications. As a novel optical biosensing technology, Mueller matrix polarimetry can provide abundant microstructural information of tissue samples. However, polarimetric aberrations, which lead to inaccurate characterization of polarization properties, can be induced by uneven biomedical sample surfaces while measuring Mueller matrices with complex spatial illuminations. In this study, we analyze the detailed features of complex spatial illumination-induced aberrations by measuring the backscattering Mueller matrices of experimental phantom and tissue samples...

Deep learning technology has been widely adopted in the research of automatic arrhythmia detection. However, there are several limitations in existing diagnostic models, e.g., difficulties in extracting temporal information from long-term ECG signals, a plethora of parameters, and sluggish operation speed. Additionally, the diagnosis performance of arrhythmia is prone to mistakes from signal noise. This paper proposes a smartphone-based m-health system for arrhythmia diagnosis. First, we design a cycle-GAN-based ECG denoising model which takes real-world noise signals as input and aims to produce clean ECG signals...

RNA is an important information and functional molecule. It can respond to the regulation of life processes and is also a key molecule in gene expression and regulation. Therefore, RNA detection technology has been widely used in many fields, especially in disease diagnosis, medical research, genetic engineering and other fields. However, the current RT-qPCR for RNA detection is complex, costly and requires the support of professional technicians, resulting in it not having great potential for rapid application in the field...