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Introduction: The requirement for medical services fluctuates. This study was carried out in order to attempt to extrapolate the service requirements for various cardiology services at Mater Dei Hospital, Malta over the coming five years, based on service demands from previous years.Methods: Past annual data was obtained from hospital records for various services (to 2017). Linear regression was carried out using a bespoke Excel™ spreadsheet in order to extrapolate possible services requirements up to 2022.Results: All services are expected to increase, with forecasts ranging between 41 and 354%, depending on services being considered.Discussion: It is easy to "get on with it" and perform the work required at the workplace but this study has shown that it is equally important to anticipate demands lest lack of planning leads to long and important waiting lists for critical diagnostics and treatments. Health care provision requirements are increasing worldwide. Even using conservative estimates and in the absence of the creation of new services, the demands for extant services are likely to continue to grow. Unless medium term plans are made for hardware, software, physical space and staffing, and the funding thereof, waiting lists for investigations in this speciality are bound to rise. This may be mitigated by novel treatments but since these cannot be predicted, it would be safer and wiser to plan ahead lest we are overwhelmed. This paper has also shown how WASP (Write a Scientific Paper) precepts can be applied to elegantly study a problem and write up a paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: To give an overview of the multicenter Prostate Cancer Outcomes (PCO) study, involving paper-based and web-based collection of patient-reported outcome measures (PROM) in patients undergoing local treatment for prostate cancer in certified centers in Germany. The PCO study is part of the larger Movember-funded TrueNTH Global Registry. The article reports on the study's design and provides a brief progress report after the first 2 years of data collection. Methods: Prostate cancer centers (PCCs) certified according to German Cancer Society requirements were invited to participate in collecting patient-reported information on symptoms and function before and at least once (at 12 months) after treatment. The data were matched with disease and treatment information. This report describes progress in patient inclusion, response rate, and variations between centers relative to online/paper use, and also data quality, including recruitment variations relative to treatment in the first participating PCCs. Results: PCC participation increased over time; 44 centers had transferred data for 3094 patients at the time of this report. Patient recruitment varied widely across centers. Recruitment was highest among patients undergoing radical prostatectomy. The completeness of the data was good, except for comorbidity information. Conclusions: The PCO study benefits from a quality improvement system first established over 10 years ago, requiring collection and harmonization of a predefined clinical dataset across centers. Nevertheless, establishing a PROM routine requires substantial effort on the part of providers and constant monitoring in order to achieve high-quality data. The findings reported here may be useful for guiding implementation in similar initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we describe the challenges of collecting data in the Māori population for automatic detection of schizophrenia using natural language processing (NLP). Existing psychometric tools for detecting are wide ranging and do not meet the health needs of indigenous persons considered at risk of developing psychosis and/or schizophrenia. Automated methods using NLP have been developed to detect psychosis and schizophrenia but lack cultural nuance in their designs. Research incorporating the cultural aspects relevant to indigenous communities is lacking in the design of existing automatic prediction tools and one of the main reasons is the scarcity of data from indigenous populations. This paper explores the current design of the New Zealand health care system and its potential impacts on access and inequities in the Māori population and details the methodology used to collect speech samples of Māori at risk of developing psychosis and schizophrenia. The paper also describes the major obstacles faced during speech data collection, key findings, and probable solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Digitalization in medicine is steadily increasing. Complex treatments, scarce personnel resources and a high level of documentation are a constant burden on healthcare systems. The balancing between correct manual documentation in the digital records and limited staff resources is rarely successful. The aim of this study is to evaluate the adherence between documentation and lack of documentation in the treatment of critical care patients. Material and Methods: For the evaluation, data from the hospital information system (HIS) of several intensive care units (ICU) were examined in conjunction with data collected from a checklist. All boluses of sedatives, analgesics and catecholamines were documented paper based across all shifts and all weekdays and compared with corresponding digital data from the HIS (2019–2022) of previous years. Results: 939 complete digital patient records revealed a massive under-documentation of the medication administration compared to that applied according to the checklist. Only 12% of all administered catecholamines, 11% of α2-agonists, 33% of propofol, 92% of midazolam and 46% of opioids were found in the digital recordings. In comparison, the effect was more pronounced on weekdays compared to weekends. In addition, the highest documentation gap was found in the comparison of early shifts. Comparing neurosurgical vs. internal vs. anesthesiologic ICUs there was a highly significant difference between anesthesiologic ICUs compared with other disciplines (p < 0.0001). Discussion: Our data shows that there is a remarkable documentation gap and incongruence in the area of applied boli. Automated documentation by connecting syringe pumps that enter data directly into the HIS can not only reduce the workload, but also lead to comprehensive and legally required documentation of all administered medication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Driven by a culture of 'data fundamentalism', datafication is being increasingly introduced in health services, sometimes with little transparency and patient engagement. This paper will be drawing on research from the UK in order to critically reflect on the wider impact of health digitalization and issues of digital rights and data justice, which are sometimes overlooked in this field. The case from the UK deals with the effects of datafication in community health services—and more broadly welfare services—within the field of mental health. People with experience of mental-health service using digital health services are in fact made visible, represented and treated differently as a result of their digital activities and records. Theoretically the paper will frame these issues and case studies within the available literature on Digital Sovereignty. The question of digital sovereignty is understood by the authors as central to deal with issues of independence, control and autonomy over the digital self. It raises Issues of transparency and accountability on several levels, from the Government's purchasing of digital tools, to potential impact on health worker and algorithmicized decision making process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and Objectives: Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) continue to experience significant delays in diagnosis and interventions. One of the main factors contributing to this delay is a shortage of developmental-behavioral specialists. Diagnostic evaluation of ASD by primary care pediatricians (PCPs) has been shown to be reliable and to decrease the interval from first concern to diagnosis. In this paper, we present the results of a primary care ASD diagnosis program in which the PCP serves as the primary diagnostician and leverages the infrastructure of the primary care medical home to support the child and family during the pre- and post-diagnostic periods, along with data on parental satisfaction with this model. Methods: Retrospective data from a cohort of patients evaluated through this program were analyzed to determine the mean age at diagnosis and interval from referral for evaluation to diagnosis. We used survey methodology to obtain data from parents regarding their satisfaction with the process. Results: Data from 8 of 20 children evaluated from April 2021 through May 2022 showed a median age of diagnosis of 34.5 months compared to the national average of 49 months. Mean interval from referral for evaluation to diagnosis was 3.5 months. Parental survey responses indicated high satisfaction. Conclusions: This model was successful in shortening the interval from referral to diagnosis resulting in significant decrease of age at diagnosis compared with the national average. Widespread implementation could improve access to timely diagnostic services and improve outcomes for children with ASD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: To be meaningful, a core outcome set (COS) should be relevant to all stakeholders including patients and carers. This review aimed to explore the methods by which patients and carers have been included as participants in COS development exercises and, in particular, the use and reporting of qualitative methods. Methods: In August 2015, a search of the Core Outcomes Measures in Effectiveness Trials (COMET) database was undertaken to identify papers involving patients and carers in COS development. Data were extracted to identify the data collection methods used in COS development, the number of health professionals, patients and carers participating in these, and the reported details of qualitative research undertaken. Results: Fifty-nine papers reporting patient and carer participation were included in the review, ten of which reported using qualitative methods. Although patients and carers participated in outcome elicitation for inclusion in COS processes, health professionals tended to dominate the prioritisation exercises. Of the ten qualitative papers, only three were reported as a clear pre-designed part of a COS process. Qualitative data were collected using interviews, focus groups or a combination of these. None of the qualitative papers reported an underpinning methodological framework and details regarding data saturation, reflexivity and resource use associated with data collection were often poorly reported. Five papers reported difficulty in achieving a diverse sample of participants and two reported that a large and varied range of outcomes were often identified by participants making subsequent rating and ranking difficult. Conclusions: Consideration of the best way to include patients and carers throughout the COS development process is needed. Additionally, further work is required to assess the potential role of qualitative methods in COS, to explore the knowledge produced by different qualitative data collection methods, and to evaluate the time and resources required to incorporate qualitative methods into COS development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Qualitative health research has the potential to answer important applied health research questions to inform nutrition and dietetics practice, education and policy. Qualitative health research is a distinct subdiscipline of qualitative inquiry that purposefully draws upon the context of healthcare and emphasises health and wellness. Methods: Qualitative health research is defined by two parameters: (1) the focus of the study and (2) the methods used. When considering the methods to be used, decisions are required about the type of data to be generated (e.g., transcripts, images and notes) and the process involved in data generation (e.g., interviews, elicitation strategies and observations) to answer the research question(s). Drawing upon examples from nutrition and dietetics literature, this paper provides a framework to support decision‐making for nutrition and dietetics researchers and clinician researchers designing conducting qualitative health research. Results: The guiding questions of the framework include: What types of data will be generated? Who is involved in data generation? Where will data generation occur? When will data generation occur? How will data be recorded and managed? and How will participants' and researchers' emotional safety be promoted? Conclusion: Questions about the types of data, those involved, where and when, as well as how safety can be maintained in data generation, not only support a more robust design and description of data generation methods but also keep the person at the centre of the research. Key points: In the discipline of qualitative health research, researchers purposefully consider the person at the centre of the research; adapt methods to consider the healthcare context; and prioritise individual health, wellness and capabilities.This humanisation of research requires researchers to select strategies that minimise the burden placed on participants and to make methodological decisions informed through consideration of participants' well‐being. This includes attention to the promotion of both participants' and researchers' emotional safety.To guide data generation decision‐making in the design and conduct of qualitative health research studies, a framework is presented with practical considerations on the 'who, what, when, where and how?' associated with data collection procedures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In maternity services, as in other areas of healthcare, increasing emphasis is placed on improving "efficiency" or "productivity". The first step in any efficiency and productivity analysis is the selection of relevant input and output measures. Within healthcare quantifying what is produced (outputs) can be difficult. The aim of this paper is to identify a potential output measure, that can be used in an assessment of the efficiency and productivity of labour and birth in-hospital care in Australia and to assess the extent to which it reflects the principles of woman-centred care.Methods: This paper will survey available perinatal and maternal datasets in Australia to identify potential output measures; map identified output variables against the principles of woman-centred care outlined in Australia's national maternity strategy; and based on this, create a preliminary composite outcome measure for use in assessing the efficiency and productivity of Australian maternity services.Results: There are significant gaps in Australia's maternity data collections with regard to measuring how well a maternity service is performing against the values of respect, choice and access; however safety is well measured. Our proposed composite measure identified that of the 63,215 births in Queensland in 2014, 67% met the criteria of quality outlined in our composite measure.Conclusions: Adoption in Australia of the collection of woman-reported maternity outcomes would substantially strengthen Australia's national maternity data collections and provide a more holistic view of pregnancy and childbirth in Australia beyond traditional measure of maternal and neonate morbidity and mortality. Such measures to capture respect, choice and access could complement existing safety measures to inform the assessment of productivity and efficiency in maternity care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As an emerging form of health care with accelerated growth in recent years, online medical consultation (OMC) has received extensive attention worldwide. Although the number of studies on OMC has increased substantially, few provide a comprehensive and up-to-date review of OMC's research constituents, themes, and trends. This study, therefore, extracted 1,801 OMC-related articles published in English from the Web of Science (WoS) Core Collection database during the past 30 years and employed a bibliometric analysis of WoS and CiteSpace to examine major constituents' distribution, collaboration relationships, themes, and trends. The results indicate that the United States, England, and China contributed the most to the proliferation of OMC studies. The United States had the greatest academic influence and the most collaborative connections, while China demonstrated the sharpest increase and most active development in recent years. However, there is a lack of substantial and close collaboration between researchers worldwide. The main themes of OMC research were Internet hospitals, COVID-19, mixed methods, online health community, and information technology. Researchers have recently shifted their attention to social media, management, efficacy, word of mouth, mental health, and anxiety. This review paper provides researchers and practitioners with a holistic and clear understanding of the features and trends of OMC research. It also identifies potential areas for future OMC research and sheds light on OMC practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Ayushman Bharat Pradhan Mantri Jan Aarogya Yojana (AB PM-JAY) has enabled the Government of India to become a strategic purchaser of health care services from private providers. To generate base cost evidence for evidence-based policymaking the Costing of Health Services in India (CHSI) study was commissioned in 2018 for the price setting of health benefit packages. This paper reports the findings of a process evaluation of the cost data collection in the private hospitals. Methods: The process evaluation of health system costing in private hospitals was an exploratory survey with mixed methods (quantitative and qualitative). We used three approaches–an online survey using a semi-structured questionnaire, in-depth interviews, and a review of monitoring data. The process of data collection was assessed in terms of time taken for different aspects, resources used, level and nature of difficulty encountered, challenges and solutions. Results: The mean time taken for data collection in a private hospital was 9.31 (± 1.0) person months including time for obtaining permissions, actual data collection and entry, and addressing queries for data completeness and quality. The longest time was taken to collect data on human resources (30%), while it took the least time for collecting information on building and space (5%). On a scale of 1 (lowest) to 10 (highest) difficulty levels, the data on human resources was the most difficult to collect. This included data on salaries (8), time allocation (5.5) and leaves (5). Discussion: Cost data from private hospitals is crucial for mixed health systems. Developing formal mechanisms of cost accounting data and data sharing as pre-requisites for empanelment under a national insurance scheme can significantly ease the process of cost data collection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: For Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women, the premature burden of cardiovascular disease is affecting their capacity to fulfil roles in society, and promote the health and wellbeing of future generations. In Australia, there is limited understanding of the difference in primary preventive cardiovascular care experienced by women, despite knowledge of sex and gender differentials in health profile and receipt of guideline-based acute care. This paper sought to explore the health profile and receipt of assessment and management of cardiovascular risk for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women accessing preventive primary health care, and investigate gender differentials. Method: Records of 1200 current clients, 50% women, aged 18–74 years from three Aboriginal Health Services in central and South Australia for the period 7/2018–6/2020 were reviewed. Results: Twelve percent had documented cardiovascular disease. Compared with men, women with no recorded cardiovascular disease had a greater likelihood of being overweight or obese, a waist circumference indicative of risk, diabetes, and depression. Women were less likely to report being physically active. Conclusions: The research concluded that gaps exist in the provision and recording of guideline-recommended primary preventive care regardless of sex. These are stark, given the evident burden. Variance in cardiovascular risk and disparities in care have been documented for women; however, the knowledge about gaps in care is less explored for sub-populations, such as Indigenous populations. This study explores the health profile and receipt of preventive risk assessment and management in primary health services for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women compared with men, finding women and men alike experience gaps in the provision of care to meet identified health needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Precision Medicine is driven by the idea that the rapidly increasing range of relatively cheap and efficient self-tracking devices make it feasible to collect multiple kinds of phenotypic data. Advocates of N = 1 research emphasize the countless opportunities personal data provide for optimizing individual health. At the same time, using biomarker data for lifestyle interventions has shown to entail complex challenges. In this paper, we argue that researchers in the field of precision medicine need to address the performative dimension of collecting data. We propose the fun-house mirror as a metaphor for the use of personal health data; each health data source yields a particular type of image that can be regarded as a 'data mirror' that is by definition specific and skewed. This requires competence on the part of individuals to adequately interpret the images thus provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theoretical frameworks add depth to research and increase the transferability of findings. Unfortunately, theory application within interprofessional research is often ad hoc, superficial and poorly reported. Consequently, there are limited examples for researchers in the field to draw on when selecting and applying theory. In this paper, we explore how a suite of sociomaterial, and sociological theories were selected to guide an ethnographic case study about interprofessional placements. Theory supported development of nuanced data collection tools. This facilitated comprehensive exploration of the factors impacting interprofessional placements, beyond those immediately visible. The use of a combination of theories was well suited to this complex phenomenon. We recommend research methodology training aims to develop researcher facility with theory and more consistent consideration of theory in reporting and quality appraisal tools. This may support more meaningful theory application, generating findings with deeply embedded theoretical foundations in interprofessional research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to review maintenance strategies within the healthcare domain and to discuss practical needs as gaps between research and practice.Design/methodology/approach The paper systematically categorizes the published literature on clinical maintenance optimization and then synthesizes it methodically.Findings This study highlights the significant issues relevant to the application of dependability analysis in healthcare maintenance, including the quantitative and qualitative criteria taken into account, data collection techniques and applied approaches to find the solution. Within each category, the gaps and further research needs have been discussed with respect to both an academic and industrial perspective.Practical implications It is worth mentioning that medical devices are becoming more and more numerous, various and complex. Although, they are often affected by environmental disturbances, sharp technological development, stochastic and uncertain nature of operations and degradation and the integrity and interoperability of the supportability system, the associated practices related to asset management and maintenance in healthcare are still lacking. Therefore, the literature review of applied based research on maintenance subject is necessary to reveal the holistic issues and interrelationships of what has been published as categorized specific topics.Originality/value The paper presents a comprehensive review that will be useful to understand the maintenance problem and solution space within the healthcare context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Social network research offers a means of understanding the complex health care system. • The use of social network research in health care is increasing. • This paper outlines recommendations for network data collection in health services research. • Key ethical challenges of social network research in health care are around confidentiality of respondents. Social network research can help us understand intractable problems central to the challenges of today's health care system: silo-working, bottlenecks, gaps, poor communication, professional isolation, and other social processes with the propensity to compromise patient safety and quality care. In this paper, we discuss practical and ethical challenges to designing and collecting quality network data faced by health services researchers. The paper develops high-utility recommendations to address these challenges. Design decisions are discussed in light of the dynamism and complexity of health care and the need for more longitudinal, mixed-methods network studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to give a deeper understanding of public procurement for innovation and civil preparedness. The paper focuses on how the policy goals of innovation and preparedness are implemented in procurement practice, and explores the issues that affect innovation- and preparedness-oriented procurement.Design/methodology/approach The study is exploratory and based on empirical data from semi-structured interviews with 92 informants in the healthcare, energy and water services sectors in Finland. Interview data were analysed using a coding template, and further categorised to answer the research questions.Findings The study brings to light how procurers perceive the different but overlapping policy goals of innovation and preparedness, and whether and how the policy goals are turned into outcomes in the procurement process.Research limitations/implications The data were collected from case sectors in Finland. However, considering the adoption of European Union legislation, some of the findings are generalisable in other sectors, organisations and countries.Practical implications The paper highlights aspects that can aid procurers, suppliers and policy-makers in understanding how public procurement can be an instrument linking innovation and civil preparedness.Social implications It cannot be overemphasised that populations are exposed to more and, arguably, greater hazards. Public authorities can use innovative solutions and processes in meeting multiple objectives such as everyday societal needs as well as civil preparedness and planning.Originality/value Such research, purposely sampling case sectors providing critical services, has not been undertaken before in Finland. This work provides valuable information for organisations involved in public procurement, innovation and civil preparedness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To report on the findings of a systematic review which examined the experiences and views of older people aged 65 years and over on health professionals’ recognition of sexuality and sexual health and whether these aspects of the person are incorporated into care. Review methods: The review followed the methods laid out by the Joanna Briggs Institute. Eleven electronic databases were searched using the terms sexual*, aged, ageing/aging, attitudes and care in any health‐care setting. Only quantitative and qualitative research and opinion papers written in English and offering unique commentary published between January 2004 and January 2015 were eligible. Results: A total of 999 papers were initially identified and of these, 148 were assessed by two reviewers. Eighteen studies – seven quantitative, eight qualitative and three opinion papers – met the inclusion criteria and were appraised. The importance of sexuality to well‐being, language used, expressing sexuality, discomfort discussing sexuality, inadequate sexuality health education and treatment and deficient communication with health‐care professionals were all identified as significant issues in a range of settings. Fourteen categories and five syntheses summarize the 43 findings. Conclusions: Sexuality remains important for many older people; however, embarrassment, dissatisfaction with treatment, negative attitudes and seeming disinterest by health professionals can all inhibit discussions. Professionals and health‐care services need to adopt strategies and demonstrate characteristics which create environments that are more supportive of sexuality. Issues related to sexuality and sexual health should be able to be discussed without anxiety or discomfort so that older people receive optimal care and treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Developing a sustainable healthcare system directly depends on the level of maturity in environmental, social, and economic practices. Although there are huge number of researches considering environmental, social, and economic aspects, to the best of our knowledge, no approach was found which unifies these dimensions as an integrated method to assess the current status of sustainable development in healthcare organizations. In order to cope with this gap, this article suggests a method for analyzing the sustainability indicator in healthcare systems by manipulating the sustainability dimensions, criteria, and attributes. The following research has collected 62 attributes and 15 criteria for three sustainability dimensions. A new implementation method is also proposed to make this approach applicable in real-world problems. The contributions of this paper can be distinguished as the healthcare system's sustainability level in imprecise conditions is obtained, the capability of identifying the weak points in implementing sustainability aspects is presented, and a new methodology for collecting the fundamental data for measuring the sustainability level in healthcare systems is given. The findings of this paper assist the practitioners and experts to successfully evaluate the sustainability level of healthcare systems and significantly improve the performance of them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electronic health records are valuable for clinical and translational research. Institutions must protect patient privacy and comply with applicable regulations while allowing appropriate access to clinical data for research. The processes that investigators must follow to access clinical data can be substantially different at different institutions. In this paper, we describe the process developed at our institution that has been active for 5 years and was used to satisfy over 200 requests for access to identified clinical data, usually within 1 day for internal requests and 3 days for visiting researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, as the paradigm of medical services has shifted from treatment to prevention, there is a growing interest in smart healthcare that can provide users with healthcare services anywhere, at any time, using information and communications technologies. With the development of the smart healthcare industry, there is a growing need for collecting large-scale personal health data to exploit the knowledge obtained through analyzing them for improving the smart healthcare services. Although such a considerable amount of health data can be a valuable asset to the smart healthcare fields, they may cause serious privacy problems if sensitive information of an individual user is leaked to outside users. Therefore, most individuals are reluctant to provide their health data to smart healthcare service providers for data analysis and utilization purpose, which is the biggest challenge in smart healthcare fields. Thus, in this paper, we develop a novel mechanism for privacy-preserving collection of personal health data streams that is characterized as temporal data collected at fixed intervals by leveraging local differential privacy (LDP). In particular, with the proposed approach, a data contributor uses a given privacy budget of LDP to report a small amount of salient data, which are extracted from an entire health data stream, to a data collector. Then, a data collector can effectively reconstruct a health data stream based on the noisy salient data received from a data contributor. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed approach provides significant accuracy gains over straightforward solutions to this problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Population at risk can benefit greatly from remote health monitoring because it allows for early detection and treatment. Because of recent advances in Internet-of-Things (IoT) paradigms, such monitoring systems are now available everywhere. Due to the essential nature of the patients being monitored, these systems demand a high level of quality in aspects such as availability and accuracy. In health applications, where a lot of data are accessible, deep learning algorithms have the potential to perform well. In this paper, we develop a deep learning architecture called the convolutional neural network (CNN), which we examine in this study to see if it can be implemented. The study uses the IoT system with a centralised cloud server, where it is considered as an ideal input data acquisition module. The study uses cloud computing resources by distributing CNN operations to the servers with outsourced fitness functions to be performed at the edge. The results of the simulation show that the proposed method achieves a higher rate of classifying the input instances from the data acquisition tools than other methods. From the results, it is seen that the proposed CNN achieves an average accurate rate of 99.6% on training datasets and 86.3% on testing datasets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Participation by people of color in research studies is important for generalizability and to mitigate health disparities. Barriers to recruitment are well documented, but less well known is how to succeed. This paper describes successful strategies for recruitment and retention of pregnant Black women for a multisite study of preterm birth. Recruiters provided input on strategies. Participant level strategies include: commitment to being respectful, friendly, and reliable; addressing concerns regarding confidentiality; acknowledging competing priorities; and when possible, matching recruiters by gender and race. Clinical level strategies include: the formation of a good working relationship with the clinical staff; prioritizing clinical care above research activities; and obtaining access to the electronic medical record systems. Protocol level strategies include: a wide enrollment window; coordinating biospecimen collection with the clinical laboratory tests; collecting survey data on an electronic tablet; text messaging; and providing compensation for the time needed to complete study activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advancements in digital technology have transformed our daily lives, bringing everything within reach of our fingertips. In the last few decades, technologies have developed, trying to simulate the functioning of the human brain. The extensive search to simulate the human brain has led to the development of artificial intelligence (AI). AI deals with the computational understanding and ability of computers to mimic the human brain and perform tasks. With emerging technologies, AI has begun to establish the field of health care. The field of medicine and dentistry has encouraged the use of these technologies from data acquisition to even performing virtual surgeries. This paper highlights the role of AI in various fields of dentistry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim: To determine if walking ability and presence of intellectual disability and epilepsy change from childhood to 50 years of age in individuals with cerebral palsy (CP), and if such changes are related to age, sex, or CP subtype.Method: This was a population-based follow-up study of 142 adults born from 1959 to 1978 (82 males, 60 females; mean age 48y 4mo, range 37-58y; 44% unilateral, 35% bilateral, 17% dyskinetic, and 4% ataxic CP) listed in the CP register of western Sweden. We compared childhood data with a follow-up assessment in 2016.Results: At follow-up, walking ability had changed significantly (p<0.001). The proportion of participants walking without aids had decreased from 71% to 62%, and wheelchair ambulation increased from 18% to 25%. Walking ability was related to subtype (p=0.001), but not to age, sex, pain, fatigue, or body mass index. The proportion classified as having intellectual disability had increased from 16% to 22% (p=0.039) and the proportion with epilepsy from 9% to 18% (p=0.015). Of those with childhood epilepsy, 46% were seizure-free without medication.Interpretation: Walking ability and the presence of intellectual disability and epilepsy had changed significantly since childhood. Life-long access to specialized health care is warranted for re-evaluation of impairments, treatment, and assistance. What this paper adds Changes in impairments in individuals with cerebral palsy (CP) over time are related to CP subtype. After 50 years, walking ability in CP may have deteriorated or improved. Intellectual disability in CP may not always be detected in early childhood assessments. Epilepsy in CP may develop after childhood or may be outgrown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Costa Rica is a bright spot of primary healthcare (PHC) performance, providing first-contact accessibility and continuous, comprehensive, coordinated, and patient-centered care to its citizens. Previous research hypothesized that strong data collection and use for quality improvement are central to Costa Rica's success. Using qualitative data from 40 interviews with stakeholders across the Costa Rican healthcare system, this paper maps the various data streams at the PHC level and delineates how these data are used to make decisions around insuring and improving the quality of PHC delivery. We describe four main types of PHC data: individual patient data, population health data, national healthcare delivery data, and local supplementary healthcare delivery data. In particular, we find that the Healthcare Delivery Performance Index-a ranking of the nation's 106 Health Areas using 15 quality indicators-is utilized by Health Area Directors to create quality improvement initiatives, ranging from education and coaching to optimization of care delivery and coordination. By ranking Health Areas, the Index harnesses providers' intrinsic motivation to stimulate improvement without financial incentives. We detail how a strong culture of valuing data as a tool for improving population health and robust training for personnel have enabled effective data collection and use. However, we also find that the country's complex data systems create unnecessary duplication and can inhibit efficient data use. Costa Rica's experience with data collection, analysis, and use for quality improvement hold important lessons for PHC in other public sector systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compassion is a topical issue in nursing, in relation to clinical practice, nurse education and policy. By reviewing the literature focusing on this aspect of nurse education, it was apparent that the experiences of student nurses themselves regarding compassionate care had received little attention. This paper describes a study which aimed to address this gap in the literature. The underpinning methodology used within the study is that of an exploratory-descriptive qualitative (EDQ) design. Following ethical approval, data was collected via individual, semi-structured interviews with fifteen student nurses across four different geographical locations in the West of Scotland. Findings identified that student nurses described compassionate care as 'doing the little things', small acts of kindness which have an impact on the patient or relative. In addition, compassion relies on communication and the building of relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The difficulty of spatial orientation in cities and built environments affects different profiles of people and different ways people search for information to orient themselves. The design of wayfinding systems is the main help in this orientation, so this paper aims to present the development of a wayfinding system, by undergraduate students, for a university hospital, using the Wayfinding Information Behavior method. First, concepts and descriptions of spatial cognition, information behavior, and wayfinding system design are presented. The configuration and application of the data collection method is then described, followed by a brief description of the design steps used by the students. The alternatives obtained are then presented and the main points resulting from the use of the method are discussed. With the results obtained, it is possible to note the potential of the method as a relevant data collection tool for projects of this type. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In many countries, epidemiological surveillance of chronic diseases is monitored by local registries (LR) which do not necessarily cover the whole national territory. This gap has fostered interest in using non-registry databases (e.g., health care or mortality databases) available for the whole territory as proxies for incidence at the local level. However, direct counts from these databases do not provide reliable incidence measures. Accordingly, specific methods are needed to correct proxies and assess their epidemiological usefulness.Methods: This study's objective was to implement a three-stage turnkey methodology using national non-registry data to predict incidence in geographical areas without an LR as follows: constructing a calibration model to make predictions including accurate prediction intervals; accuracy assessment of predictions and rationale for the criteria to assess which predictions were epidemiologically useful; mapping after spatial smoothing of the latter predictions. The methodology was applied to a real-world setting, whereby we aimed to predict cancer incidence, by gender, at the district level in France over the 2007-15 period for 24 different cancer sites, using several health care indicators and mortality. In the present paper, the spatial smoothing performed on predicted incidence of epidemiological interest is illustrated for two examples.Results: Predicted incidence of epidemiological interest was possible for 27/34 solid site-gender combinations and for only 2/8 haematological malignancies-gender combinations. Mapping of smoothed predicted incidence provided a clear picture of the main contrasts in incidence between districts.Conclusions: The methodology implemented provides a comprehensive framework to produce valuable predictions of incidence at a district level, using proxy measures and existing LR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Evidence-based health workforce policies are essential to ensure the provision of high-quality health services and to support the attainment of universal health coverage (UHC). This paper describes the main characteristics of available health workforce data for 74 of the 75 countries identified under the 'Countdown to 2015' initiative as accounting for more than 95% of the world's maternal, newborn and child deaths. It also discusses best practices in the development of health workforce metrics post-2015.Methods: Using available health workforce data from the Global Health Workforce Statistics database from the Global Health Observatory, we generated descriptive statistics to explore the current status, recent trends in the number of skilled health professionals (SHPs: physicians, nurses, midwives) per 10 000 population, and future requirements to achieve adequate levels of health care in the 74 countries. A rapid literature review was conducted to obtain an overview of the types of methods and the types of data sources used in human resources for health (HRH) studies.Results: There are large intercountry and interregional differences in the density of SHPs to progress towards UHC in Countdown countries: a median of 10.2 per 10 000 population with range 1.6 to 142 per 10 000. Substantial efforts have been made in some countries to increase the availability of SHPs as shown by a positive average exponential growth rate (AEGR) in SHPs in 51% of Countdown countries for which there are data. Many of these countries will require large investments to achieve levels of workforce availability commensurate with UHC and the health-related sustainable development goals (SDGs). The availability, quality and comparability of global health workforce metrics remain limited. Most published workforce studies are descriptive, but more sophisticated needs-based workforce planning methods are being developed.Conclusions: There is a need for high-quality, comprehensive, interoperable sources of HRH data to support all policies towards UHC and the health-related SDGs. The recent WHO-led initiative of supporting countries in the development of National Health Workforce Accounts is a very promising move towards purposive health workforce metrics post-2015. Such data will allow more countries to apply the latest methods for health workforce planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is: to report on an experiment in building up inter-organizational collaboration between healthcare organizations; and to identify how structure and some of the components of the strategic community (SC) approach to organizational change can have a long-term impact on inter-organizational collaboration.Design/methodology/approach This paper resulted from participative action-research held from 2007 to 2013. A systematic collection of data (field notes, 746 hours of observations, proceedings, 186 interviews, journals, focus groups, discussion forums) was conducted in the various cycles of the action-research.Findings Adapted to the healthcare sector, the SC has taken the form of a temporary inter-organizational collaboration structure composed of health professionals, first-level managers, general practitioners, specialized doctors, and non-profit organization representatives. The SC approach appeared to be an efficient strategy for taking action.Practical implications The SC approach appeared to be appropriate for cases where the inter-organizational collaboration had clearly declined, where several other attempts had failed, and where the care trajectory involved vulnerable clients who had to travel between different service points for the required care.Originality/value This study illustrates how SC helps to significantly improve inter-organizational collaboration in the healthcare sector. It likewise acknowledges the relevance of Thomson and Perry’s (2006) work in analyzing and emphasizing the dimensions required to ensure successful inter-organizational collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the most traditional economic evaluation manuals, all "relevant" costs should be included in the economic analysis, taking into account factors such as the patient population, setting, location, year, perspective and time horizon. However, cost information may be designed for other purposes. Health care organisations may lack sophisticated accounting systems and consequently, health economists may be unfamiliar with cost accounting terminology, which may lead to discrepancy in terms used in the economic evaluation literature and management accountancy. This paper identifies new tendencies in costing methodologies in health care and critically comments on each included article. For better clarification of terminology, a pragmatic glossary of terms is proposed. A scoping review of English and Spanish language literature (2005-2018) was conducted to identify new tendencies in costing methodologies in health care. The databases PubMed, Scopus and EconLit were searched. A total of 21 studies were included yielding 43 costing analysis. The most common analysis was top-down micro-costing (49%), followed by top-down gross-costing (37%) and bottom-up micro-costing (14%). Resource data were collected prospectively in 12 top-down studies (32%). Hospital database was the most common way of collection of resource data (44%) in top-down gross-costing studies. In top-down micro-costing studies, the most resource use data collection was the combination of several methods (38%). In general, substantial inconsistencies in the costing methods were found. The convergence of top-down and bottom-up methods may be an important topic in the next decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The data collected is based on the responses of forty-four authors/researchers, who have presented fulltext papers published in the International Conference Series on Grey Literature2. The dataset consists of responses to ten questions, two of which are open-ended. Six of the questions are taken from a questionnaire carried out in 2011 within GreyNet's Enhanced Publications Project. The data contain the number of responses and percentages to each question. The questions deal with the author's own empirical research data, its availability, the formats in which it appears, and the author's willingness to archive it and make it openly accessible. Additional questions deal with the respondent's citation and reference to data, their use of data journals in carrying out search and retrieval, and whether they have (co)authored a data paper or data article. The data was collected via SurveyMonkey3, where it remains stored along with a copy in .ods format in the DANS EASY Archive4. The reuse of the questions and data collected from the study in 2011 is likewise based on the same selection used to define the population of the earlier study. The data collected allows for insight into the changing attitudes and practices within GreyNet's research community and renders a use case for other research communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bedded or lying-people pressure-map datasets can be used to identify patients' in-bed postures and can be very useful in numerous healthcare applications. However, the construction of these datasets is not always easy, and many researchers often resort to existing datasets to carry out their experiments and validate their solutions. This systematic review aimed to identify and characterise pressure-map datasets on lying-people- or bedded-people positions. We used a systematic approach to select nine studies that were thoroughly reviewed and summarised them considering methods of data collection, fields considered in the datasets, and results or their uses after collection. As a result of the review, six research questions were answered that allowed a characterisation of existing datasets regarding of the types of data included, number and types of poses considered, participant characteristics and size of the dataset, and information on how the datasets were built. This study might represent an important basis for academics and researchers to understand the information collected in each pressure-map dataset, the possible uses of such datasets, or methods to build new datasets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Children and pregnant women usually have multiple contacts with the health care system. While most conditions can be managed by primary health care (PHC) providers, hospitalisations are nevertheless common and often unjustified. The number of hospitalizations decreased in Romania at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. While this is likely due to the disruption of health services and public health measures established to limit the spread of COVID-19, it also suggests that a proportion of hospitalisations prior to the pandemic were unnecessary. This healthcare system evaluation in Romania quantified unnecessary and unnecessarily prolonged hospitalisations in children, pregnant women and women hospitalised for delivery, and assessed antibiotic and polypharmacy practices in these groups. Methods We conducted the healthcare system evaluation in 10 hospitals across the country. We extracted data from medical records of patients hospitalized between 2019 and 2020. In each hospital, we randomly selected 40 medical records for each of the following groups: children 2-59 months of age, pregnant women, and women hospitalised for delivery. Clinical data were compared against WHO standards indicating a need for inpatient treatment or antibiotic therapy. Results Among 209 children and 349 pregnant women, unnecessary hospitalisations accounted for 57.9% and 56.2% of hospitalisations, respectively. Among necessary hospitalisations, a large proportion was unnecessarily prolonged, including 44.4% (n = 32/72) in children, 23.3% (n = 34/146) in pregnant women, and 45.8% (n = 110/240) in women after delivery. The proportion of unnecessary and unnecessarily prolonged hospitalisations did not differ between the pre-pandemic, the lockdown, and the post-lockdown periods. Antibiotics were prescribed to 53.1% (n = 43/81) of children with diarrhoea, while 50.8% (n = 61/120) of women with caesarean section received an unjustified prolonged course of antibiotics. Children and women were commonly prescribed unnecessary medications. Conclusions Findings of this evaluation should inform evidence-based decisions and actions for strengthening PHC and the healthcare system structure and improving the management of common diseases in mothers, newborns, and children. The evaluation should be repeated periodically to monitor progress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Data extracted from electronic patient records (EPRs) within practice management software systems are increasingly used in veterinary research. The use of real patient data gives the potential to generate research that can readily be applied to clinical practice. The use of veterinary EPRs for research in the United Kingdom is hindered by the number of different Practice Management System (PMS) providers used by practices, as obtaining and combining data from different systems electronically can be problematic. The use of extensible mark up language (XML) to extract clinical data for research would potentially resolve the compatibility issues between systems. The aim of this study was to establish and validate a method for the extraction of small animal patient records from a veterinary PMS that could potentially be used across multiple systems. An XML schema was designed to extract clinical information from EPRs. The schema was tested and validated in a test system, and was then tested in a real small animal practice where data was extracted for 16 weeks. A 10% sample of the extracted records was then compared to paper copies provided by the practice. Results: All 21 fields encoded by the XML schema, from all of the records in the test system, were extracted with 100% accuracy. Over the 18 week data collection period 4946 records, from 1279 patients, were extracted from the small animal practice. The 10% printed records checked and compared with the XML extracted records demonstrated all required data was present. No unrequired, sensitive information e.g. costs or services/products or personal client information was extracted. Conclusions: This is the first time a method for data extraction from EPRs in veterinary practice using an XML schema has been reported in the United Kingdom. This is an efficient and accurate way of extracting data which could be applied to all PMSs nationally and internationally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to produce a high-quality measure of the nature of healthcare resources available in China’s Township Health Centers (THCs), paying particular attention to equity between high- and low-income areas.Design/methodology/approach This study makes use of data from a nearly nationally representative survey in rural China conducted by the Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2011. The samples of towns were selected randomly from 25 counties located in five provinces from different regions of China. Data were collected through questionnaires and direct observation.Findings The THCs located in rich areas have higher levels of human resources than poor areas. THCs in rich areas also have more fixed assets than those in poor areas. In fact, even though the Chinese Ministry of Health mandates that all THCs have certain basic levels of medical equipment and facilities, many THCs in poor areas do not have them. The allocation of mandated equipment is unequal.Practical implications These findings suggest that China’s government should pay more attention to THCs located in poor areas, especially in light of new initiatives to improve health care in poor rural areas.Originality/value This is the first nationally representative study to employ rigorous empirics to investigate the extent of inequality in allocation of resources within THCs across China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The collection of data within the primary health care facilities in Iran is essentially paperbased. It is focused on family's health, monitoring of non-infectious and infectious diseases. Clearly due to the paper-based nature of the tasks, timely decision making at most can be difficult if not impossible. As part of an on-going electronic health record implementation project at Tehran University of Medical Sciences, for the first time in the region, based on a comprehensive pilot project, four urban healthcare facilities are connected to their headquarters and beyond, covering all aspects of primary health care, for the last four years. Without delving into the technical aspects of its software engineering processes, the progress of the implementation is reported, selection of summarized data is presented, and experience gained thus far are discussed. Four years passed and if time is any important reason to go by, then it is safe to accept that the software architecture and electronic health record structural model implemented are robust and yet extensible. Aims and duration of a pilot study should be clearly defined prior to start and managed till its completion. Resistance to change and particularly to information technology, apart from its technical aspects, is also based on human factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intelligent agents and healthcare have been intimately linked in the last years. The intrinsic complexity and diversity of care can be tackled with the flexibility, dynamics and reliability of multi-agent systems. The purpose of this review is to show the feasibility of applying intelligent agents in the healthcare domain and use the findings to provide a discussion of current trends and devise future research directions. A review of the most recent literature (2009-2014) of applications of agents in healthcare is discussed, and two classifications considering the main goal of the health systems as well as the main actors involved have been investigated. This review shows that the number of published works exhibits a growing interest of researchers in this field in a wide range of applications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hospitals at home are increasingly offering outpatient parenteral antimicrobial therapy (OPAT) in an attempt to reduce costly inpatient care, but these settings favour broad-spectrum antibiotics that require less frequent dosing than penicillin. Benzyl penicillin could be delivered via continuous infusion pumps (eCIPs), but studies on their safety and efficacy in OPAT are scarce, and it remains unclear how much the availability of eCIPs increases penicillin use in real-life settings. We examined 462 electronic healthcare records of erysipelas patients treated between January 2018 and January 2022 in a large Finnish OPAT clinic. Average marginal effects from logistic models were estimated to assess how the introduction of eCIPs in December 2020 affected penicillin use and to compare clinical outcomes between patients with and without eCIPs. Introduction of eCIPs increased the predicted probability of penicillin treatment by 36.0 percentage points (95% confidence interval 25.5–46.5). During eCIP implementation, patients who received an eCIP had 73.1 (58.0–88.2) percentage points higher probability than patients without an eCIP to receive penicillin treatment. They also had about 20 percentage points higher probability to be cured at the time of discharge and 3 months after it. Patient and nurse satisfaction regarding eCIPs was very high. Benzyl penicillin eCIP treatment is effective and safe, and substantially increases the use of penicillin instead of broad-spectrum antibiotics. To reduce the risk of antimicrobial resistance, eCIPs could increasingly be promoted for use in OPAT clinics, and there should be adequate education and support in their implementation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: eHealth was widely used during the COVID-19 pandemic. Much attention was given to the technical aspects of eHealth, such as infrastructure and cost, while the soft skill of compassion remained underexplored. The wide belief in compassionate care is more compatible with in-person interactions but difficult to deliver via e-platforms where personal and environmental clues were lacking urges studying this topic. Purpose: to explore the experience of delivering compassionate care via an eHealth platform among healthcare professionals working to contain the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: A qualitative study design with an interpretative phenomenological analysis approach was used. Twenty healthcare professionals (fifteen nurses and five physicians) who provided care using technology platforms, such as telephone hotlines, mobile apps, and social media, were interviewed individually. Ethical considerations: Permission to conduct the study was obtained from the Institutional Review Board. Results: Participants stated that "eHealth enabled compassionate care during the pandemic" by ensuring patient care availability and accessibility. They shared experiences of "communicating compassionate care via eHealth" with suggestions of addressing patients' needs with empathy, adopting a structured protocol to guide eHealth communication, and using more advanced visual-media methods to promote human-to-human interaction. They recommended "setting realistic mutual expectations" considering the limitations of eHealth in handling complex health situations and staffing shortages. Participants considered "low eHealth literacy hinders compassion." Additionally, they recommended the need for "institutional/system-level support to foster compassionate care." Conclusion: Participants recognized the importance of integrating compassion into eHealth services. Promotion of compassionate care requires standardization of eHealth services with institutional and system-level support. This also includes preparing adequate staffing who can communicate compassionate care via eHealth, set realistic expectation, and adjust communication to eHealth literacy level while meeting the needs of their patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Managing diagnostic uncertainty is a major challenge in primary care due to factors such as the absence of definitive tests, variable symptom presentations and disease evolution. Maintaining patient trust during a period of investigative uncertainty, whilst minimising scope for diagnostic error is a challenge. Mismanagement can lead to diagnostic errors, treatment delays, and suboptimal patient outcomes. Objective: Our aim was to explore how UK primary care physicians (GPs) address and communicate diagnostic uncertainty in practice. Design: This qualitative study used video and audio-recordings. Verbatim transcripts were coded with a modified, validated tool to capture GPs' actions and communication in primary care consultations that included diagnostic uncertainty. The tool includes items relating to advice regarding new symptoms or symptom deterioration (sometimes called 'safety netting'). Video data was analysed to identify GP and patient body postures during and after the delivery of the management plan. Participants: All patient participants had a consultation with a GP, were over the age of 50 and had (1) at least one new presenting problem or (2) one persistent problem that was undiagnosed. Approach: Data collection occurred in GP-patient consultations during 2017–2018 across 7 practices in UK during 2017–2018. Key results: GPs used various management strategies to address diagnostic uncertainty, including (1) symptom monitoring without treatment, (2) prescribed treatment with symptom monitoring, and (3) addressing risks that could arise from administrative tasks. GPs did not make management plans for potential treatment side effects. Specificity of uncertainty management plans varied among GPs, with only some offering detailed actions and timescales. The transfer of responsibility for the management plan to patients was usually delivered rather than negotiated, with most patients confirming acceptance before concluding the discussion. Conclusions: We offer guidance to healthcare professionals, improving awareness of using and communicating management plans for diagnostic uncertainty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data on rates, percentages, or proportions arise frequently in many different applied disciplines like medical biology, health care, psychology, and several others. In this paper, we develop a robust inference procedure for the beta regression model, which is used to describe such response variables taking values in (0, 1) through some related explanatory variables. In relation to the beta regression model, the issue of robustness has been largely ignored in the literature so far. The existing maximum likelihood-based inference has serious lack of robustness against outliers in data and generate drastically different (erroneous) inference in the presence of data contamination. Here, we develop the robust minimum density power divergence estimator and a class of robust Wald-type tests for the beta regression model along with several applications. We derive their asymptotic properties and describe their robustness theoretically through the influence function analyses. Finite sample performances of the proposed estimators and tests are examined through suitable simulation studies and real data applications in the context of health care and psychology. Although we primarily focus on the beta regression models with a fixed dispersion parameter, some indications are also provided for extension to the variable dispersion beta regression models with an application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: New Specific Application Domain (SAD) heuristics or design principles are being developed to guide the design and evaluation of mobile applications in a bid to improve on the usability of these applications. This is because the existing heuristics are rather generic and are often unable to reveal a large number of mobile usability issues related to mobile specific interfaces and characteristics. Mobile Electronic Data Capturing Forms (MEDCFs) are one of such applications that are being used to collect health data particularly in hard to reach areas, but with a number of usability challenges especially when used in rural areas by semi literate users. Existing SAD design principles are often not used to evaluate mobile forms because their focus on features specific to data capture is minimal. In addition, some of these lists are extremely long rendering them difficult to use during the design and development of the mobile forms. The main aim of this study therefore was to generate a usability evaluation checklist that can be used to design and evaluate Mobile Electronic Data Capturing Forms in a bid to improve their usability. We also sought to compare the novice and expert developers' views regarding usability criteria.Methods: We conducted a literature review in August 2016 using key words on articles and gray literature, and those with a focus on heuristics for mobile applications, user interface designs of mobile devices and web forms were eligible for review. The data bases included the ACM digital library, IEEE-Xplore and Google scholar. We had a total of 242 papers after removing duplicates and a total of 10 articles which met the criteria were finally reviewed. This review resulted in an initial usability evaluation checklist consisting of 125 questions that could be adopted for designing MEDCFs. The questions that handled the five main categories in data capture namely; form content, form layout, input type, error handling and form submission were considered. A validation study was conducted with both novice and expert developers using a validation tool in a bid to refine the checklist which was based on 5 criteria. The criteria for the validation included utility, clarity, question naming, categorization and measurability, with utility and measurability having a higher weight respectively. We then determined the proportion of participants who agreed (scored 4 or 5), disagreed (scored 1 or 2) and were neutral (scored 3) to a given criteria regarding a particular question for each of the experts and novice developers. Finally, we selected questions that had an average of 85% agreement (scored 4 or 5) across all the 5 criteria by both novice and expert developers. 'Agreement' stands for capturing the same views or sentiments about the perceived likeness of an evaluation question.Results: The validation study reduced the initial 125 usability evaluation questions to 30 evaluation questions with the form layout category having the majority questions. Results from the validation showed higher levels of affirmativeness from the expert developers compared to those of the novice developers across the different criteria; however the general trend of agreement on relevance of usability questions was similar across all the criteria for the developers. The evaluation questions that were being validated were found to be useful, clear, properly named and categorized, however the measurability of the questions was found not to be satisfactory by both sets of developers. The developers attached great importance to the use of appropriate language and to the visibility of the help function, but in addition expert developers felt that indication of mandatory and optional fields coupled with the use of device information like the Global Positioning System (GPS) was equally important. And for both sets of developers, utility had the highest scores while measurability scored least.Conclusion: The generated checklist indicated the design features the software developers found necessary to improve the usability of mobile electronic data collection tools. In the future, we thus propose to test the effectiveness of the measure for suitability and performance based on this generated checklist, and test it on the end users (data collectors) with a purpose of picking their design requirements. Continuous testing with the end users will help refine the checklist to include only that which is most important in improving the data collectors' experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose -- The purpose of this paper is to focus on the availability and demanded locations of health care services in a rural context. The authors analyse subjective experiences because mobility and other individual factors influence the availability of public services. Design/methodology/approach -- Results from a mail survey in southeastern Finland are presented. Data collection was conducted using a random sample of 3,000 people from age 60 to 90 years. A total of 1,121 valid responses were received. Findings -- The acceptable distance to service sites depends on learned behaviour where differences exist between suburban and rural residents. The authors found that service networks can be sparser in rural areas if the service sites are located in the daily activity space of the residents and travel burdens caused by distance and time are adequately solved. However, continuous downscaling of the provision may lead to the loss of health benefits which is harmful for individuals and expensive for society. Research limitations/implications -- Further research should assess a broader variety of residential areas from the perspective of service availability. The results presented do not enable a direct comparison of the service availability between cities and sparsely populated rural areas. Originality/value -- The paper contributes to the debate on access barriers to public service in rural regions. The question of availability of public services is topical because increasing overall demand requires urgent productivity improvements in public services. Currently this is solved by centralisation to search economies of scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital health (DH) in healthcare is more frequently used by line professionals, such nurses and physicians, while executing care processes. However, nowadays research is not able to state if outcomes related to its implementation are unequivocally positive or negative in terms of healthcare performance. In this paper we aim at contributing to this relevant debate by introducing the concept of healthcare resilience in the discourse. Being resilient, namely having the capability to absorb strain and keep working even when things are difficult is crucial to allow healthcare organizations taking negative events on when they, unavoidably, occur. Negative events, such as errors or operational features, threat healthcare performance and patient safety in everyday healthcare practice. We developed a hybrid literature- and empirical-informed conceptual model and tested it by using data collected through a multi-respondent survey. This paper: 1) elaborates on the theory of absorptive capacity (ACAP) and introduces the new concept of patient-specific knowledge ACAP; 2) offers insights about the relationship between DH and ACAP, a relationship not enough analysed; 3) proposes a new way to measure resilience in healthcare. • Healthcare resilience helps contrasting adverse event occurrences. • Patient Specific Knowledge ACAP is the capability to rapidly acquire and exploit knowledge about a specific patient. • PSKACAP mediates the relationship between digital health and hospital resilience. • hybrid literature- and empirical-informed conceptual model. • data collected through a multi-respondent survey (medical doctors and nurses, IT managers, Clinical Risk managers). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]