ICT In Healthcare Research Articles

Emerging power of ICT in healthcare: Insights from survey-based investigation

Emerging power of ICT in healthcare: Insights from survey-based investigation

Use of tele-nursing in primary care: A qualitative study on its negative and positive aspects

ObjectiveTo analyze the opinions of nursing professionals on the current limitations and future potential of digital tools in healthcare. DesignQualitative and descriptive study. LocationThe study took place during an asynchronous MOODLE course on the use of ICT in healthcare, specifically aimed at nursing professionals. ParticipantsThe number of nurses enrolled in the course was 150. MethodsA qualitative study was conducted focusing on the positive and negative aspects that telenursing can offer in the context of a Moodle training in new technologies for nurses. A thematic analysis was carried out following the method proposed by Braun and Clarke. ResultsIn the end 68 nurses participated in the forum. Their statements, opinions and perceptions were analyzed and 28 descriptive codes were obtained and subsequently categorized into positive and negative aspects. ConclusionsNurses positively value the usefulness of digital tools and identify a wide range of benefits of telenursing in daily practice. At the same time, they point out crucial limitations that may slow down the adoption of telenursing, pointing to areas for improvement such as training and digital literacy of both patients and professionals. They consider that telenursing can humanise care, but insist on the need to prevent its use from increasing health inequalities.

The Emerging Role of Wearable Health Technologies in Proactive Disease Prevention

The study gives a complete plan for lowering disease through the use of ICT in personal healthcare. The Health Pattern Recognition (HPR), Dynamic Risk Assessment (DRA), and Personalized Intervention Strategy (PIS) formulas are all parts of this method. They are used to collect, prepare, and use data. This research focuses on cybersecurity using health pattern recognition (HPR), dynamic risk assessment (DRA), and personalized intervention strategies (PIS). PIS offers a comprehensive disease prevention approach in personal healthcare that takes advantage of technological advancements. Because they integrate secure data processing with privacy-preserving machine learning, these aspects assure the safety and validity of health data collected from wearable devices. This option allows for the assessment of medical records. It may be helpful to analyze the technique's accuracy and adherence to established security standards in order to evaluate its application for disease prediction and preventive health management. The HPR program looks at each person's health information to find trends in diseases and other results using machine learning. This helps with early evaluation and healthcare management that avoids problems. DRA keeps a person's risk rating up to date so that it takes into account any changes in their health. After that, people are given choices based on the results and risks that PIS has predicted. Some of the tests that were used to compare the suggested method to industry standards were accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, precision, and the Matthews Correlation Coefficient. The suggested way seems to work because it has better predicting power, fewer fake positives, and more users who are involved in preventive health management.

Utilizing Technology: A Cross-Sectional Study on ICT in Healthcare in Kericho County, Kenya

Introduction: The potential for Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in healthcare is immense, revolutionizing the delivery of medical services and improving patient outcomes. ICT efficiently manages health information, facilitating electronic health records (EHRs) and streamlined communication among healthcare professionals, leading to significant changes, especially in underserved areas.Material and Methods: This cross-sectional study took place between March and April 2023 among healthcare professionals in Kericho County, Kenya. Participants were selected using simple random sampling and completed a self-administered questionnaire. Data on the ICT status of health facilities were collected using a checklist. The qualitative component involved key informant interviews with a health record and information department officer. Collected data were entered into Excel and analysed using R software for quantitative data and thematic analysis for qualitative data.Results: The study engaged 201 participants. Findings showed a 67.66% [95% CI=0.607, 0.741]; p-value<0.0001, uptake of ICT among healthcare workers. Those with computer training were approximately 10 times [OR = 10.867, 95% CI=3.121, 40.99] more likely to utilize ICT in service delivery than those without IT training. Operating at least one healthcare database was associated with over 2 times [OR=2.552, 95% CI=0.7475, 8.7195] higher likelihood of ICT uptake compared to those without this skill. Health facilities with eHealth platforms showed, on average, 38% higher [OR=1.386, 95% CI=0.7661, 2.223] utilization of ICT than those without.Conclusion: IT training for personnel is crucial, ensuring they can operate preferred health management and information systems (HMIS) within the sector. The presence of an IT department and the use of ICT for administrative purposes significantly affected the general uptake of ICT in health facilities. Additionally, infrastructure such as roads, power, and security had a significant association with ICT compliance. Improving these supportive elements will considerably enhance ICT uptake in healthcare.

Digital Technologies in Healthcare: A Systematic Review and Bibliometric Analysis

Digital technologies hold great promise and have the ability to change healthcare and drug development by changing the way we collect, process, and visualize health data. The implementation of digital technologies in healthcare can make the public healthcare more accessible and flexible. This includes patient’s treatment, complications, open data on health, latest biomedical research developments, among other things. Medical services and diagnostic tools are becoming more accessible and available, even in less developed economies. However numerous issues concerning digital health technologies, such as safety, testing, reliability, and ethical considerations, remain unresolved. The aim of the study is to discuss and analyze the recent progress in the application of digital healthcare such as ICT, smart/wearable devices, artificial intelligence, big data, and telemedicine in healthcare. Scopus database was used for the publication search. We merged descriptive analysis and bibliometric analysis to determine the temporal evolution, most productive journals, top authors, most productive countries, and co-occurrence of keywords (to identify well-explored topics) in the available scientific literature concerning digital technology in the healthcare field. Using content analysis, we have determined the research hotspots of the scientific publications during the past five years

EHealth and mHealth in Chronic Diseases-Identification of Barriers, Existing Solutions, and Promoters Based on a Survey of EU Stakeholders Involved in Regions4PerMed (H2020).

Background: In recent years, rapid population ageing has become a worldwide phenomenon. Both electronic health services (eHealth) and mobile health services (mHealth) are becoming important components of healthcare delivery. The market for mHealth is growing extremely fast. However, despite the increasing investment and interest in eHealth, several challenges still need to be overcome to enable broader and more systematic implementation of ICT in healthcare. Methods: This study presents data from the survey “Barriers and facilitators of Personalised Medicine implementation- qualitative study under Regions4PerMed (H2020) project”. In addition, this paper discusses the results of the conference, Health Technology in Connected & Integrated Care, held under the Horizon 2020 project and interregional coordination for a fast and deep uptake of personalised health (Regions4Permed) (July 2020—online conference). The above sections were preceded by an analysis of existing articles. Results: The data obtained from the surveys show that the main barriers to the adoption of eHealth and mHealth are the lack of skills of seniors, but also the lack of user-friendly technology and a simple user interface. Access to individual data while ensuring its security and the lack of digitisation of medical data are also serious issues. In addition, medical digital solutions are overly fragmented due to national legislations that deviate from the General Data Protection Regulation. Conclusions: By using technological solutions, it is possible to improve diagnosis and treatment decisions, and better adapt treatment and reduce its duration and cost. However, there are still barriers to the development of eHealth. Clear recommendations for implementation are needed to enable further development of personalised eHealth and mHealth solutions

The Acceptability of Technology in Health Care Among Older Korean Adults With Multiple Chronic Conditions

Background: Although there are benefits in utilizing ICT in health care, older adults have challenges in employ technologies in their health care management due to the changes in cognitive and physical functions, low motivation to use technology, and low computer/internet literacy (Adebayo et al, 2017; Wildenbos et al, 2018). The purpose of this study is to investigate the acceptance of technology among older Korean adults with multiple chronic conditions and examine factors associating with the acceptance of the technology. Method: The participants were 226 community-dwelling older adults who have more than two chronic conditions. Directed by the senior technology acceptance model (Chen & Chan, 2014), demographics, gerontechnology self-efficacy, gerontechnology anxiety, facilitating conditions, self-reported health conditions, cognitive ability, social relationship, attitude to life and satisfaction, physical functioning, and acceptance of technology were surveyed using a self-reported questionnaire. Findings: Older Korean adults with multiple chronic conditions showed a moderately high technology acceptance score (M = 25.35, SD = 5.28). There were significant differences in the acceptance of technology depending on age (r=-0.241, p<.01), cognitive ability (r=0.225, p<.01), gerontechnology self-efficacy (r=0.323, p<.0001), and facilitating conditions (r=0.288, p<.0001). Conclusion: While older age were associated to the acceptance of technology, gerontechnology self-efficacy which is one’s judgment of their ability to perform a task successfully using gerontechnology and facilitating conditions which are environmental factors that help older adults use gerontechnology easier were positively associated with the acceptance of technology among older Korean adults with multiple chronic conditions.

Future role of AI and ICT in healthcare

Future role of AI and ICT in healthcare

Current status and issues of ICT in health care

Current status and issues of ICT in health care

Consumer Acceptance of eHealth among Rural Inhabitants in Developing Countries (A Study on Portable Health Clinic in Bangladesh)

This paper explores and analyzes the current level of, reasons behind and factors affecting consumer acceptance of Portable Health Clinic (PHC), an e-Health initiative in Bangladesh. Our findings revealed that, 40% of the respondents have idea of using ICT in healthcare while 21% have their own experience of using any of the existing mHealth or eHealth systems. On the other hand, PHC’s acceptance rate among our respondents is 32% i.e. they have received healthcare services from PHC at least once. This research also analyzed consumer’s demographic and socio-economic factors that affect their acceptance of eHealth. Our finding says, consumer’s age, occupation and purchasing power have very strong influence on their acceptance of eHealth services while their gender, level of education, access to cell phone and previous eHealth knowledge have very insignificant or weaker impact.

Adults Use of ICT in Healthcare: The Persuasive Impact of Children

Healthcare as currently practiced and supported is increasingly unaffordable and incapable of dealing with emerging population dynamics in virtually every country in the world. Sustained behaviour change, within which ICT will likely play a prominent role, is required to meet the needs of the future. ICT has the ability enable new approaches and amplify efforts. Towards that end, educated adult children are in a unique position to influence their parents’ use of ICT in healthcare given their inherent ICT familiarity, learned subject matter expertise and family trust. This study uses the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) as a guide to gather and analyze qualitative data from PhD students associated with an ehealth research institute to explore the persuasive impact of educated young adult children on their parents’ use of ICT in healthcare. Results are presented. Implications for theory and practice are addressed.

Nursing students’ attitudes towards ICT in education and clinic in Denmark

It is well known that in an era of emerging use of ICT in nursing education and health care it is important to have knowledge of the attitudes towards ICT within the profession. However, nursing students and nurses have been notoriously reluctant to embrace/implement ICT in their work and studies.This paper focuses on the construction of ICT-habitus amongst bachelor nursing students displayed by four positions of attitudes that describe the ICT-habitus of the group of nursing students included [under consideration] in the study. Quotes from the students are used to support and illustrate the findings. The methodical approach was based on Pierre Bourdieu’s multi-faceted data collection approach and Steiner Kvale’s technical guidelines for interviewing were used for conducting focus group interviews.In order to carry out the construction a mapping of ICT implementation in the Danish primary and secondary education and nursing education from 1970 – 2001 was undertaken. A questionnaire concerning attitudes towards ICT in Healthcare was conducted amongst first year students and focus group interviews were completed. A bibliography and other sources has been included. These datasets made it possible to construct the field of ICT in nursing education and +to construct nursing students' ICT habitus and ICT capital, which was were categorized in four descriptive positions, called "The endorser", "The sceptic", "The adversary" and "The critical".These positions can be used for developing strategies for implementing ICT and development of e-learning in educational and clinical settings for nursing students, thereby contributing with new knowledge and understanding of the ICT-based learning context and the processes within.

Care robots and the future of ICT-mediated elderly care: a response to doom scenarios

The discussion about robots in elderly care is populated by doom scenarios about a totally dehumanized care system in which elderly people are taken care of by machines. Such scenarios are helpful as they attend us to what we think is important with regard to the quality elderly care. However, this article argues that they are misleading in so far as they (1) assume that deception in care is always morally unacceptable, (2) suggest that robots and other information technologies necessarily deceive elderly people by creating a "virtual" world as opposed to a "real" world, (3) assume that elderly people of the future have similar ICT skills and interests as the elderly people of today, and (4) assume a simplistic view of technologies. The article suggests an approach to evaluating care robots and ICT in health care which acknowledges and addresses a number of ethical problems raised by robotic care--for instance disengagement problems--while taking into account that some elderly people may need care that does not treat them as (empirically) autonomous, that many the elderly of the future are likely to be digital natives, and that the task of evaluating technologies in care is more complicated than the discussion of deception suggests.

Automated Prediction of RCT (Root Canal Treatment) Using Data Mining Techniques: ICT in Health Care

With the use of various data mining techniques to be implemented on rapid minor tool, diseases can be detected .This paper makes use of classification technique based on cross validation and decision tree to detect RCT before seeking advice from the doctor. The main aim of this paper is to diagnose whether there is a need of RCT or not with different input values of an attributes. All these symptoms or attributes are analyzed to reach a decision that person with an age greater than 18 and having sensitivity problem have greater chances of root canal treatment. These techniques make the doctors and patients to take an early decision.

Proposed E-Health Service Model by using Smart Phone Apps for Uttarakhand

For E-HEALTH initiatives in Uttarakhand the proposed E-HEALTH service model may allow better sharing of health information among multiple government departments, locally as well as at a distant location. But without coordination of different departments in Uttarakhand we cannot setup good e-health solutions. Priorities of Uttarakhand government for providing E-HEALTH facilities to rural areas are yet to be fulfilled. At present stage less budget from state government for health, and lack of coordination have triggered down trend in health services in rural and hilly areas of Uttarakhand This paper reviews use of ICT applications at different locations in our country and also try to provide a model for Uttarakhand province. Some suggested services using ICT and smart phone apps in healthcare are explained in this paper also. Use of smart phone apps to communicate health associated alerts using SMS services and collect information from rural areas suggested here in this paper.

Past and next 10 years of medical informatics.

More than 10 years ago Haux et al. tried to answer the question how health care provision will look like in the year 2013. A follow-up workshop was held in Braunschweig, Germany, for 2 days in May, 2013, with 20 invited international experts in biomedical and health informatics. Among other things it had the objectives to discuss the suggested goals and measures of 2002 and how priorities on MI research in this context should be set from the viewpoint of today. The goals from 2002 are now as up-to-date as they were then. The experts stated that the three goals: "patient-centred recording and use of medical data for cooperative care"; "process-integrated decision support through current medical knowledge" and "comprehensive use of patient data for research and health care reporting" have not been reached yet and are still relevant. A new goal for ICT in health care should be the support of patient centred personalized (individual) medicine. MI as an academic discipline carries out research concerning tools that support health care professionals in their work. This research should be carried out without the pressure that it should lead to systems that are immediately and directly accepted in practice.

Electronic patient record development in Norway: The case for an evolutionary strategy

With the failure of many large-scale “big-bang” projects, combined with the lack of influence associated with many small-scale projects, we need to look for alternative strategies for implementing ICT in healthcare. One such strategy is to focus on the processes that enable successful scaling of locally developed ICT systems and how these gain a foothold in a larger market. In this paper, we contribute with empirical insight into one such scaling process. We illustrate how scale is both connected to a vendor's strategy of maintaining close user contact and influenced by how the authorities choose to organize the healthcare system. Empirically, the study draws on the establishment and growth of the Norwegian company DIPS ASA over a period of nearly 25 years, which today claims the lion's share of the electronic patient records market in Norwegian hospitals.

A Sociotechnical Approach to Evaluating the Impact of ICT on Clinical Care Environments.

Introduction:Process-supporting information technology holds the potential to increase efficiency, reduce errors, and alter professional roles and responsibilities in a manner which allows improvement in the delivery of patient care. However, clashes between the model of health care work inscribed in these tools with the actual nature of work has resulted in staff resistance and decreased organisational uptake of ICT, as well as the facilitation of unexpected and negative effects in efficiency and patient safety. Sociotechnical theory provides a paradigm against which workflow and transfusion of ICT in healthcare could be better explored and understood.Design:This paper will conceptualise a formative, multi-method longitudinal evaluation process to explore the impact of ICT with an appreciation of the relationship between the social and technical systems within a clinical department.Method:Departmental culture, including clinical work processes and communication patterns will be thoroughly explored before system implementation using both quantitative and qualitative research methods. Findings will be compared with post implementation data, which will incorporate measurement of safety and workflow efficiency indicators.Discussion:Sociotechnical theory provides a paradigm against which workflow and transfusion of ICT in healthcare could be better explored and understood. However, sociotechnical and multimethod approaches to evaluation do not exist without criticism. Inherent in the protocol are limitations of sociotechnical theory and criticism of the multimethod approach; testing of the methodology in real clinical settings will serve to verify efficacy and refine the process.

Revolutionizing the way people work with medical technology

A multidisciplinary human-centred design approach is presented to tackle complex interacting problems with ICT in healthcare. Especially when Human Factors problems are related to multiple levels, i.e., physical, psychological, team, organizational and political, a systems approach is required. By the case of neonatal equipment alarms it is explained how a framework of ‘Human Factors and Design Thinking’ can be used to identify research questions, methods, research domains and research activities. Cognitive systems engineering could play a major role in solving many problems with ICT in healthcare, a domain where cognitive ergonomics and systems ergonomics has been neglected.

Proposal for User-observation Design Assistant System Focused on Field Work

A multidisciplinary human-centred design approach is presented to tackle complex interacting problems with ICT in healthcare. Especially when Human Factors problems are related to multiple levels, i.e., physical, psychological, team, organizational and political, a systems approach is required. By the case of neonatal equipment alarms it is explained how a framework of ‘Human Factors and Design Thinking’ can be used to identify research questions, methods, research domains and research activities. Cognitive systems engineering could play a major role in solving many problems with ICT in healthcare, a domain where cognitive ergonomics and systems ergonomics has been neglected.