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Introduction: The unprecedented covid-19 pandemic has shown the weaknesses of health systems and opened new spaces for e-health and telemedicine. Recent literature states that chatbots, if implemented effectively, could be useful tools for quickly sharing information, promoting healthy behaviors, and helping reduce the psychological burden of isolation. The aim of this project is to develop and test a secure and reliable computerized decision support system (CDSS) in web-app and evaluate its use, usability and its outputs in a pre-specified way., Methods: A multidisciplinary team was recruited to plan and design, based on the SMASS medical CDSS, the scenarios of the COVID-Guide web-app, a self-triage system for patients with suspected covid-19. The output data for the period May-September 2020 from Germany were analyzed., Results: During the period under review, the total number of consultations in Germany was 96,012. 3,415 (3.56%) consultations indicated the need for immediate evaluation, by activating the emergency service (calling an ambulance) - 1,942, equal to 2.02% - or by advising the patient to go to hospital - 1,743, equal to 1.54%., Conclusions: Data seems to show good usability and a consistent number of consultations carried out. Regular use of COVID-Guide could help collect epidemiological data on the spread of (suspected) covid-19 cases, easily and quickly available in all countries where the tool will be used. Using the SSDC could help reduce the load on operators. Furthermore, the use of anonymous and geolocatable clinical data together with the generation of alerts and indicators produced by COVID-Guide could become a useful tool for epidemiological surveillance in the future phases of the pandemic (Telemedical Syndromic Surveillance).

Purpose: There has been an exponential increase in meta-research, especially in the branch dealing with systematic reviews [SRs] and meta-analyses [MAs]. However, the knowledge regarding these topics in geriatric medicine is still poorly explored. We therefore undertook a survey of the current knowledge and needs in meta-research in geriatrics., Methods: A short survey (taking approximately 5 min to complete) was freely available on the European Geriatric Medicine Society (EuGMS) website and disseminated via social networks by the EuGMS and the authors of the survey. The questionnaire was available during the whole year of 2019. The questionnaire specifically addressed demographic information, previous research activities and the knowledge of the participants on meta-research in geriatric medicine., Results: The survey was completed by 291 participants from 36 different countries of about 20,000 EuGMS members (mostly with an age between 55 and 64 years; 51.5% female; mainly from Italy and Germany). Most respondents (65.6%) reported reading more than 20 articles in the past year, but few (36.4%) read more than 10 SRs/MAs. Participants reported that SRs and/or MAs are important in clinical practice: 83.8% giving a score of > 6/10, and 23.0% reporting 10. The large majority of the participants asked for more education in meta-research. In particular, there is need for educational courses for meta-research in geriatric medicine, online or in person, organized by the EuGMS., Conclusion: Our survey shows that interest in SRs/MAs is high, and there is a demand for education on these topics in relation to geriatric medicine.