Current Healthcare Technologies Research Articles

Healthcare in Asymmetrically Smart Future Environments: Applications, Challenges and Open Problems

The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) offers promising ways to meet healthcare needs of patients recovering in their own homes and other environments. Interconnected and resilient smart systems offer innovative and cost-effective ways of supporting patients by capitalizing on available devices and networking infrastructure. However, future environments will not be uniformly smart, and there will be asymmetries where our environments’ (home, work, etc.) resources and capabilities differ. Technological solutions will need to adapt to such asymmetries and provide high-quality service and equitable healthcare. This article presents a systematic mapping study that explores opportunities and challenges in building next-generation IoMT smart systems for future environments. The study spans academic literature published in the decade from 2011 to 2021, profiling it from three distinct perspectives: Smart Systems, Future Environments, and Tech-Assisted Health. Each perspective was explored via a Domain Expert-Driven Systematic Mapping protocol to establish where the research is focused and to identify research gaps. From an initial search of 495 studies, 113 were mapped to a set of predefined ontology classes, spanning 6 strategic focus categories. The mapping identified sensing technologies for medical vitals and sensor fusion technologies to combine measurements for more complex analysis, cloud platforms, and connectivity challenges; health conditions that have received the most attention in healthcare smart systems; issues and opportunities in handling large data volumes in integrated smart systems; as well as security and privacy challenges. We find that future middleware frameworks will require a greater degree of interoperability and maturity to fully deliver value. Promising middleware and integration frameworks will require significant adaption and refinement to coexist effectively with current healthcare technologies. Privacy and security are critical factors in healthcare but are currently poorly supported by IoT infrastructures, especially across multiple environments.

Technology Applications in Tracking 2019-nCoV and Defeating Future Outbreaks: Iraqi Healthcare Industry in IoT Remote.

A serious effect on people's life, social communication, and surely on medical staff who were forced to monitor their patients' status remotely relying on the available technologies to avoid potential infections and as a result reducing the workload in hospitals. this research tried to investigate the readiness level of healthcare professionals in both public and private Iraqi hospitals to utilize IoT technology in detecting, tracking, and treating 2019-nCoV pandemic, as well as reducing the direct contact between medical staff and patients with other diseases that can be monitored remotely.A cross-sectional descriptive research via online distributed questionnaire, the sample consisted of 113 physicians and 99 pharmacists from three public and two private hospitals who randomly selected by simple random sampling. The 212 responses were deeply analyzed descriptively using frequencies, percentages, means, and standard deviation.The results confirmed that the IoT technology can facilitate patient follow-up by enabling rapid communication between medical staff and patient relatives. Additionally, remote monitoring techniques can measure and treat 2019-nCoV, reducing direct contact by decreasing the workload in healthcare industries. This paper adds to the current healthcare technology literature in Iraq and middle east region an evidence of the readiness to implement IoT technology as an essential technique. Practically, it is strongly advised that healthcare policymakers should implement IoT technology nationwide especially when it comes to safe their employees' life.Iraqi medical staff are fully ready to adopt IoT technology as they became more digital minded after the 2019-nCoV crises and surely their knowledge and technical skills will be improved spontaneously based on diffusion of innovation perspective.

Electrical and Label-Free Detection of T-Cell Activation Against COVID-19: A Method Towards Point-of-Care Monitoring of Immune System

Despite great progress in biotechnology, COVID19 has revealed the inadequacy of current healthcare technologies to contain an infectious outbreak, specifically in rapid infection recognition to facilitate containment. Wide deployment of testing methods such as viral RNA (antigen) PCR and antibody detection have provided some relief in this regard; however, current technologies still require many hours to provide results. Thus, there remains a critical need for fast, sensitive, low-cost point-of-care (POC) biosensing assays to report on the infection status and immunity of patients. Emerging data on the importance of T-cell responses in generating long-term immunity against COVID19 has highlighted T-cell activation detection as a potential way for real-time monitoring native and acquired immunity. However, current approaches for T-cell stimulation monitoring are complex, laborious, time-consuming, and costly.Here we provide proof-of-principle experiments which indicate that an electrical and label-free detection method based on CMOS-compatible silicon nanowire ion-selective field-effect transistors (SNW-ISFET) can act as a fast, sensitive, reliable, and low-cost approach to monitor T-cell response to pathogens such COVID-19. This technology enables direct detection of COVID-19-specific T-cells directly from patient blood, with potential utility as a POC diagnostic device. Detection of antigen-specific T-cell activation from clonal human T-cells lines utilizing CD8-restricted peptide-MHC complexes has been demonstrated using SNW-ISFET devices. The cell concentration was varied to achieve a clear understanding about the device sensitivity, detection limit, and reliability (Figure 1). SNW-ISFET structures were applied to detect T-cell activation in clonal T-cell lines and whole peripheral blood mononuclear cell (PBMC) with multiple cell concentrations (Figure 2). Reference experiments were applied to ensure the device reliability and sensing mechanism (Figure 3). These findings show that SNW-FETs platform are promising candidates for antigen-specific T-cell activation detection from whole blood. Figure 1

The perception and intention to adopt female-focused healthcare applications (FHA): A comparison between healthcare workers and non-healthcare workers

Objective To explore differences in perception and acceptance levels of Female-focused Healthcare Applications (FHA). This study will focus on the different demographic data between female healthcare and non-healthcare workers. Method Questionnaires were used in a revised technology acceptance model entitled as the Female-focused Acceptance Model (FAM) to examine the perception and acceptance of the test subjects, using a quantitative method. Results Within Singapore 1071 females participated in the study (71.4% response rate). The sample comprised of 241 healthcare workers (HC) and 830 non-healthcare (NHC) workers. The questionnaires were distributed to participants, by research administrators across the country, such as the National University Hospital Women's Clinics and the National Healthcare Group polyclinics. Regression analyses were performed to explain how different predictors may be correlated to each other in terms of significance. Both groups of women who believe that FHA is easy to use are confident that it will have beneficiary outcomes ( p < 0.001) and intend to use FHA (HC: p = 0.012, NHC: p < 0.001). The HC group who were in education to the university level intend to use FHA ( p = 0.047). The NHC group who have a good impression of current healthcare technologies ( p < 0.001) or were in education to a higher level ( p = 0.025) intend to use FHA. NHC who are not influenced by their family and friend's views of FHA feel that the devices would be useful ( p = 0.013). NHC who are satisfied with current healthcare technologies ( p = 0.048), or have previous experience of using medical devices ( p = 0.033) think FHA would be easy to use. Conclusion This study shows that FAM works well for detecting social variables which may influence “female” acceptance (with the R square values of the FAM ranging from 54% to 68%). It presents design implications for future FHA – The direct support from HC coupled with the user-friendly personal device ensures that the technology is an effective enabler for personal well-being and self-managed healthcare. In order to encourage women to adopt and use these applications, there is a need to communicate the potential usefulness of the applications to women. To encourage the pregnant women to use FHA (in the area of prenatal care), issues such as their experience with medical devices and social status should be considered. The findings and their implications presented here were obtained from a single study that targeted a possible user group in Singapore. Further research could be carried out in the future to access similar issues across broader cultural and social horizons.

Peptides as potent antimicrobials tethered to a solid surface: Implications for medical devices

AbstractMedical devices are an integral part of therapeutic management; despite their importance, they carry a significant risk of microbial infection. Bacterial attachment to a medical device is established by a single, multiplying organism, leading to subsequent biofilm formation. To date, no preventative measures have impacted the incidence of device-related infection. We report the bidirectional covalent coupling of an engineered cationic antimicrobial peptide (eCAP), WLBU2, to various biological surfaces is accomplished. These surfaces included (i) a carbohydrate-based gel matrix, (ii) a complex polymeric plastic bead, and (iii) a silica-calcium phosphate nanocomposite associated with bone reconstruction. WLBU2-conjugated surfaces are shown to retain potent antimicrobial activity related to bacterial surface adhesion. This study provides proof of principle that covalently coating laboratory and bone-regenerating materials with eCAPs has the potential for decreasing infection rates of implanted devices. These findings have important consequences to the patient management component of our current health care technology.

The challenge of integrating the healthcare enterprise

Clinical engineers face technical challenges and opportunities in healthcare technology as results of changing focus in healthcare and the computerization and interconnection of medical devices and systems. Combined, these trends will increasingly move us away from the traditional "bricks and mortar" hospitals and physician's offices and move us toward their virtual successors. Ultimately, diagnosis and treatment will take place at an earlier stage. A major challenge to achieving this goal has been the diversity of current healthcare technologies and the paucity of technical standards for exchanging useful information between different medical devices. The consequence is a technical "Tower of Babel", where these disparate devices lack a common means of communication. The answer to this challenge is an initiative known as Integrating the Healthcare Enterprise (IHE). IHE brought together healthcare information and medical imaging systems industry members "to agree upon, document, and demonstrate standards-based methods of sharing information in support of optimal patient care". By developing integration profiles that detail core processes such as scheduled workflow, image presentation, information access, record retrieval, reporting, and charge posting and adopting existing standards. IHE defines guidelines that medical device manufacturers can follow to ensure their device will interface and effectively communicate with a device from another manufacturer. IHE holds promise to transform the existing technical "Tower of Babel" into sets of integration profiles that will facilitate interoperability of medical devices. The success of IHE will lead to technological integration and thereby meet one of the most critical challenges as healthcare systems move to the next level.