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Introduction: Pregnancy and child birth are universally celebrated events. The factors affecting the fetal outcome mainly lie within the premises of the antenatal period. The emergence of mobile telephone technology and its universal reach has improved service delivery, and information transfer. Thus, this study was planned to attempt improvement in the ante-natal care of pregnant women using an interactive voice response system (IVRS) with the ultimate aim of improving the maternal and fetal outcome, mainly in the form of low birth weight (LBW) rates. Methodology: The study was a community-based randomized intervention study. A total of 796 pregnant females of gestational age ≤16 weeks were recruited and followed up till delivery. The target population was from the urban slums of Jaipur. These areas are covered by Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme for the provision of basic child and maternal service. Results: Out of 796 recruited pregnant females, 722 singleton deliveries were analysed. 98.5% of pregnancy outcomes were in the form of live births and the rest were stillbirths. Among live births, 23.9% were low birth weight (21.4% in the intervention v/s 26.7% in the control area). A difference of 5% was observed in low birth occurrence between the two groups. Institutional deliveries were higher and caesarean sections, abortion, still birth, and congenital malformation among delivered were found to be lower in the intervention group as compared to the control group. The intervention group had a higher number of ANC visits and the difference was statistically significant. The maternal health indicators were slightly better in the intervention group. The number of iron-folic acid (IFA) tablets consumed and the number of pregnant females consuming them was also higher in the intervention group and was statistically significant. Conclusion: Intervention group as a result of intervention by mHealth and IVRS had better indicators of maternal and f

Background: Digital health can support health care in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) by overcoming problems of distance, poor infrastructure and the need to provide community practitioners with specialist support. We used five RESPIRE countries as exemplars (Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan) to identify the digital health solutions that are valuable in their local setting, worked together with local clinicians and researchers to explore digital health policy, electricity/ICT infrastructure, and socio-cultural factors influencing users' ability to access, adopt and utilise digital health. Methods: We adopted the Joanna Briggs Institute's scoping review protocol and followed the Cochrane Rapid Review method to accelerate the review process, using the Implementation and Operation of Mobile Health projects framework and The Extended Technology Acceptance Model of Mobile Telephony to categorise the results. We conducted the review in four stages: (1) establishing value, (2) identifying digital health policy, (3) searching for evidence of infrastructure, design, and end-user adoption, (4) local input to interpret relevance and adoption factors. We used opensource national/international statistics such as the World Health Organization, International Telecommunication Union, Groupe Speciale Mobile, and local news/articles/government statistics to scope the current status, and systematically searched five databases for locally relevant exemplars. Results: We found 118 studies (2015-2021) and 114 supplementary online news articles and national statistics. Digital health policy was available in all countries, but scarce skilled labour, lack of legislation/interoperability support, and interrupted electricity and internet services were limitations. Older patients, women and those living in rural areas were least likely to have access to ICT infrastructure. Renewable energy has potential in enabling digital health care. Low usage mobile data and voice service packages are relatively affordable options for mHealth in the five countries. Conclusions: Effective implementation of digital health technologies requires a supportive policy, stable electricity infrastructures, affordable mobile internet service, and good understanding of the socio-economic context in order to tailor the intervention such that it functional, accessible, feasible, user-friendly and trusted by the target users. We suggest a checklist of contextual factors that developers of digital health initiatives in LMICs should consider at an early stage in the development process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Parasitological investigations were conducted on hill-stream fish Tor tor (HAM.) to describe the distribution patterns of nematode parasite Rhabdochona (Rhabdochona) nemachili (Rautela and Malhotra, 1982). Study showed that the parasite was more overdispersed in March 2015 and January 2016 followed by November in both the years while in other months the degree of overdispersion was low. Frequency distribution of Rhabdochona (Rhabdochona) nemachili in Tor tor was tested on Poisson series and for goodness of fit to the negative binomial distribution. Agreement with Poisson series was good (p < 0.001). Fishes with zero infection dominated the sample in greater number of months during infection periods. The values of variance to mean ratio suggested that the Negative Binomial Distribution would be a great model for the distribution of this parasite. Agreement between the original distribution and the negative binomial, as tested by X2 (Goodness of fit) was good. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report results of the studies relating to the development of an efficient biosensor for non-invasive detection of CYFRA-21-1 cancer biomarker. We used a low dielectric constant material (nanostructured yttrium oxide, nY2O3) for the fabrication of the biosensing platform. The nY2O3 was synthesized via solvothermal process and functionalized using 3-aminopropyl triethoxy silane (APTES). Electrophoretic deposition (EPD) of the functionalized nanomaterial (APTES/nY2O3) onto an indium tin oxide (ITO)-coated glass electrode was conducted at a DC potential of 50 V for 60 s. The EDC-NHS chemistry was used for covalent immobilization of −COOH bearing monoclonal anti-CYFRA-21-1 onto −NH2 groups of APTES/nY2O3/ITO electrode. To avoid the non-specific interaction on the anti-CYFRA-21-1/APTES/nY2O3/ITO immunoelectrode, bovine serum albumin (BSA) was used. X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) were utilized for structural and morphological studies, whereas Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) was used for the bonding analysis. Cyclic voltammetry (CV) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) techniques were used for electrochemical characterization and response studies of fabricated electrodes. The fabricated immunosensor (BSA/anti-CYFRA-21-1/APTES/nY2O3/ITO) exhibited linearity in the range of 0.01–50 ng·mL−1, sensitivity of 226.0 Ω·mL·ng−1, and lower detection limit of 0.01·ng·mL−1. A reasonable correlation was observed between the results obtained using this biosensor and concentration of CYFRA-21-1 measured through ELISA (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay) technique in salivary samples of oral cancer patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Digital health can support health care in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) by overcoming problems of distance, poor infrastructure and the need to provide community practitioners with specialist support. We used five RESPIRE countries as exemplars (Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan) to identify the digital health solutions that are valuable in their local setting, worked together with local clinicians and researchers to explore digital health policy, electricity/ICT infrastructure, and socio-cultural factors influencing users' ability to access, adopt and utilise digital health., Methods: We adopted the Joanna Briggs Institute's scoping review protocol and followed the Cochrane Rapid Review method to accelerate the review process, using the Implementation and Operation of Mobile Health projects framework and The Extended Technology Acceptance Model of Mobile Telephony to categorise the results. We conducted the review in four stages: (1) establishing value, (2) identifying digital health policy, (3) searching for evidence of infrastructure, design, and end-user adoption, (4) local input to interpret relevance and adoption factors. We used open-source national/international statistics such as the World Health Organization, International Telecommunication Union, Groupe Speciale Mobile, and local news/articles/government statistics to scope the current status, and systematically searched five databases for locally relevant exemplars., Results: We found 118 studies (2015-2021) and 114 supplementary online news articles and national statistics. Digital health policy was available in all countries, but scarce skilled labour, lack of legislation/interoperability support, and interrupted electricity and internet services were limitations. Older patients, women and those living in rural areas were least likely to have access to ICT infrastructure. Renewable energy has potential in enabling digital health care. Low usage mobile data and voice service packages are relatively affordable options for mHealth in the five countries., Conclusions: Effective implementation of digital health technologies requires a supportive policy, stable electricity infrastructures, affordable mobile internet service, and good understanding of the socio-economic context in order to tailor the intervention such that it functional, accessible, feasible, user-friendly and trusted by the target users. We suggest a checklist of contextual factors that developers of digital health initiatives in LMICs should consider at an early stage in the development process., Competing Interests: Disclosure of interest: The authors completed the ICMJE Disclosure of Interest Form (available upon request from the corresponding author) and declare that the views expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the NIHR or the UK Government., (Copyright © 2022 by the Journal of Global Health. All rights reserved.)