Healthcare Informatics

BACKGROUND: Adopting advanced digital technologies as diagnostic support tools in healthcare is an unquestionable trend accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, their accuracy in suggesting diagnoses remains controversial and needs to be explored. We aimed to evaluate and compare the diagnostic accuracy of two free accessible internet search tools: Google and ChatGPT 3.5. METHODS: To assess the effectiveness of both medical platforms, we conducted evaluations using a sample of 60 clinical cases related to urological pathologies...

The 2019 German Digital Healthcare Act introduced the Digital Health Application program, known in German as 'Digitale Gesundheitsanwendungen' (DiGA). The program has established a pioneering model for integrating Digital Therapeutics (DTx) into a healthcare system with scalable and effective reimbursement strategies. To date, the continuous upward trend enabled by this framework has resulted in more than 374,000 DiGA prescriptions, increasingly cementing its role in the German healthcare system. This perspective provides a synthesis of the DiGA program's evolution since its inception three years ago, highlighting trends regarding prescriptions and pricing as well as criticisms and identified shortcomings...

Background Recognition of patient and family's diverse backgrounds and language preference is critical for communicating effectively. In our hospital's electronic health record (EHR), a patient or family's identified language for communication is documented in a discrete field known as "preferred language." This field serves as an inter-departmental method to identify patients with a non-English preferred language, creating a bolded banner for non-English speakers easily identifiable by healthcare professionals...

Physical inactivity is a growing societal concern with significant impact on public health. Identifying barriers to engaging in physical activity (PA) is a critical step to recognize populations who disproportionately experience these barriers. Understanding barriers to PA holds significant importance within patient-facing healthcare professions like nursing. While determinants of PA have been widely studied, connecting individual and social factors to barriers to PA remains an understudied area among nurses...

Operations management of a hospital unit is a shared activity involving nursing and medical professionals, characterized by suddenly changing situations, constant interruptions, and ad hoc decision-making. Previous studies have explored the informational needs affecting decision-making, but only limited information has been collected regarding factors affecting information management related to the daily operations of hospital units. The aim of this study was to describe the experiences of nursing and medical professionals of information management in the daily operations of hospital units...

The evolution of socio-technological habits together with the widespread demand of post-acute and chronic treatments outside hospital boundaries drove the increased demand of medical informatics experts to develop tools for and support healthcare professionals. The recent COVID-19 pandemic further highlighted the need of physicians able to manage diseases virtually and remotely. Moreover, healthcare professionals need to access to innovative techniques and procedures to manage biomedical data, cloud-based communication, and data sharing procedures, often connected to innovative devices to support an effective precision in the health treatments...

In healthcare, there are various stakeholders who hold different understandings of technology. Cybersecurity risks may also be something these stakeholder have varying perceptions of. This papers explores how cybersecurity risks are understood by two key stakeholder groups in the Norwegian healthcare sector related to welfare technology and personal healthcare devices. Two stakeholder groups (healthcare workers and technology vendors) have been interviewed to gather data on this topic. Key findings highlight that there are differences in how risks are perceived, both in terms of likelihood and in consequence...

Telemonitoring tools have become essential in today's healthcare, representing fundamental resources for chronic disease home management supporting early detection of clinical worsening with great reduction of hospitalization costs. Therefore the investigation of the patient compliance is a key enabling point. We aim to assess how patients with chronic coronary syndromes evaluate a telemonitoring device meant for ongoing health monitoring. Twenty-six patients used the device for a week and subsequently filled out a well-designed questionnaire...

This paper explores the security, privacy, and ethical implications of e-health data in Iran's healthcare network. A framework is proposed to ensure security and privacy in electronic health information processing across various institutions. The framework addresses aspects such as software/hardware, communication networks, patient safety, privacy, confidentiality, online health service regulations, commercial and judicial exploitation, and education/research. The study categorizes these requirements into seven main categories to safeguard health-oriented service recipients' security and privacy...

This paper aims to propose an approach leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) to diagnose thalassemia through medical imaging. The idea is to employ a U-net neural network architecture for precise erythrocyte morphology detection and classification in thalassemia diagnosis. This accomplishment was realized by developing and assessing a supervised semantic segmentation model of blood smear images, coupled with the deployment of various data engineering techniques. This methodology enables new applications in tailored medical interventions and contributes to the evolution of AI within precision healthcare, establishing new benchmarks in personalized treatment planning and disease management...

The growing integration of Internet of Things (IoT) technology within the healthcare sector has revolutionized healthcare delivery, enabling advanced personalized care and precise treatments. However, this raises significant challenges, demanding robust, intelligible, and effective monitoring mechanisms. We propose an interpretable machine-learning approach to the trustworthy and effective detection of behavioral anomalies within the realm of medical IoT. The discovered anomalies serve as indicators of potential system failures and security threats...

Inconsistent disease coding standards in medicine create hurdles in data exchange and analysis. This paper proposes a machine learning system to address this challenge. The system automatically matches unstructured medical text (doctor notes, complaints) to ICD-10 codes. It leverages a unique architecture featuring a training layer for model development and a knowledge base that captures relationships between symptoms and diseases. Experiments using data from a large medical research center demonstrated the system's effectiveness in disease classification prediction...

With the advent of the digital health era, there has emerged a new emphasis on collecting health information from patients and their families using technology platforms that are both empathetic and emotive in their design to meet the needs and situations of individuals, who are experiencing a health event or crisis. Digital empathy has emerged as an aspect of interactions between individuals and healthcare organizations especially in times of crises as more empathetic and emotive digital health platforms hold greater capacity to engage the user while collecting valuable health information that could be used to respond to the individuals' needs...

The design of user interfaces and systems that promote positive emotional interaction and reaction from end users is becoming a critical area in the design of applications and systems for use by the general population. In this paper we describe our work in the creation of a set of empathetic design heuristics that were developed from examination of the literature in this area within the context of healthcare user interface design. The heuristics and their potential application are explored.

The verdict of the UK Supreme Court in the case of Bellman versus Boojum-Snark Integrated Care Trust (2027) will have profound implications for medical practice, medical education, and medical research, as well as the regulation of medicine and allied healthcare fields. Major changes will result from the definition of person-centred care built into the expanded definition of informed and preference-based consent central to the judgment made in favour of Bellman's negligence claim. (For the avoidance of doubt this is a vision paper...

Stroke remains a significant global health burden, with substantial costs and morbidity associated with its occurrence. To address this challenge, STROKE 5.0 proposes a comprehensive approach to stroke care management, integrating advanced digital technologies and clinical expertise. This paper presents the rationale, design, and potential impact of the STROKE 5.0 platform, which aims to optimize stroke care delivery from pre-hospital assessment through acute hospitalization. The platform facilitates early symptom recognition, efficient emergency response, and streamlined hospital management through intelligent decision support systems...

This study focuses on the complex interplay of healthcare, economic factors, and population dynamics, addressing a research gap in regional-level models that integrate diverse features within a temporal framework. Our primary objective is to develop an advanced temporal model for predicting cardiovascular mortality in Russian regions by integrating global and local healthcare features with economic and population dynamics. Utilizing a dataset from the Almazov Center's Department of Mortality Performance Monitoring, covering 94 regions and 752 records from January 1, 2015, to December 31, 2023, our analysis incorporates key parameters such as angioplasty procedures, population morbidity rates, Ischemic Heart Disease (IHD) and Cardiovascular Diseases (CVD) monitoring, and demographic data...

Tuberculosis (TB) remains a significant global health challenge. Indeed, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), TB is classified as the second most common cause of death worldwide due to a single infectious agent in 2022, following COVID-19. To effectively manage tuberculosis patients, it is necessary to ensure accurate diagnosis, prompt treatment initiation, and vigilant monitoring of patients' progress. In 2017, the TB Ge network was implemented and launched in two primary hospitals within the Liguria Region in Italy, with the main purpose to manage tuberculosis infections...

UNLABELLED: Hospital@home is a healthcare approach, where patients receive active treatment from health professionals in their own home for conditions that would normally necessitate a hospital stay. OBJECTIVE: To develop a framework of relevant features for describing hospital@home care models. METHODS: The framework was developed based on a literature review and thematic analysis. We considered 42 papers describing hospital@home care approaches...

OBJECTIVES: The core objectives of this study centre on enhancing the quality of life and well-being of individuals diagnosed with Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases. Our aim is to facilitate the monitoring of patient information, benefiting both caregivers and healthcare professionals. METHODS: As part of the PROCare4Life platform sensorial ecosystem, a web application with six engaging cognitive games focusing on developing cognitive training and stimulating brain activity are developed...