Indoor Healthcare Research Articles

Risk of Testing Positive for COVID-19 among Healthcare and Healthcare-Related Workers.

Understanding the risk factors associated with COVID-19 infection among healthcare workers is crucial for infection prevention and control. The aim of this study was to examine the risk of testing positive for COVID-19 among a multicenter cohort of workers, taking into account their occupational roles (medical professionals, staff in operational and administrative roles, or laboratory personnel) in healthcare settings. The data analyzed in this study included 2163 individuals with suggestive COVID-19 symptoms who underwent laboratory testing. The incidence rate in the study sample was calculated to be 15.3 cases per 10,000 person-days. The results from the multiple regression model indicated that job roles were not significantly associated with the risk of testing positive. However, age and the duration of the pandemic were identified as significant risk factors, with increasing age and longer pandemic duration being associated with a higher risk of testing positive. Additionally, vaccination was found to reduce the risk of testing positive. These findings provide valuable insights into COVID-19 transmission among indoor healthcare workers, highlighting the influence of age, pandemic duration, and vaccination on infection risk. Further research is needed to develop evidence-based strategies aimed at protecting healthcare workers and preventing virus spread in healthcare settings.

On the Pandemic Trail: Planning Post-Covid Outdoor and Indoor Healthcare

Human Settlements and Ecological Footprints: As such, the ecosystems are the planet's life-support systems for the human species and all other forms of life. The ecological alterations in turn may lead to irreparable climate change, and have repercussions on human health, which are complex. The ecological alterations affect the distribution of patterns of human settlement, nutritional and health status, and disease patterns including pandemics. COVID-19 Pandemic and the Clinical Fallouts: There have been turbulent times with the novel pandemic COVID-19, engulfing, imprisoning, and debilitating the humanity all over the Globe. The unabated transmission of the virus led to immense human suffering and overwhelmed healthcare facilities. The disease has high infectivity and fatality, and the survivors have propensity to suffer with organopathies and exacerbation of other pre-existing diseases. Changing Healthcare Scenario and Options: The fallouts of COVID-19 pandemic have been striking. The pandemic has been a reality check for various provisions of available healthcare. As the existing healthcare facilities were unable to cope with the sudden surge leading to an intense pressure on the system, the pandemic has acted as a transformation catalyst and accelerated transformation in healthcare including remote and Hospitalat-Home care. Planning Healthcare for Post-Covid illness: The COVID-19 now persists as endemic in most places with the infection affecting those with a high-risk. Presently, a heightened awareness is required for diagnosing post-Covid symptoms and complications. There are needed specialized OPD services for diagnostic workup, treatment, and regular follow up, along with a dedicated indoor facility for profiling the post-Covid illness, treatment, and intensive care.

SARS-CoV-2 and other airborne respiratory viruses in outdoor aerosols in three Swiss cities before and during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus, Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has been affecting the world since the end of 2019. While virus-laden particles have been commonly detected and studied in the aerosol samples from indoor healthcare settings, studies are scarce on air surveillance of the virus in outdoor non-healthcare environments, including the correlations between SARS-CoV-2 and other respiratory viruses, between viruses and environmental factors, and between viruses and human behavior changes due to the public health measures against COVID-19. Therefore, in this study, we collected airborne particulate matter (PM) samples from November 2019 to April 2020 in Bern, Lugano, and Zurich. Among 14 detected viruses, influenza A, HCoV-NL63, HCoV-HKU1, and HCoV-229E were abundant in air. SARS-CoV-2 and enterovirus were moderately common, while the remaining viruses occurred only in low concentrations. SARS-CoV-2 was detected in PM10 (PM below 10µm) samples of Bern and Zurich, and PM2.5 (PM below 2.5µm) samples of Bern which exhibited a concentration positively correlated with the local COVID-19 case number. The concentration was also correlated with the concentration of enterovirus which raised the concern of coinfection. The estimated COVID-19 infection risks of an hour exposure at these two sites were generally low but still cannot be neglected. Our study demonstrated the potential functionality of outdoor air surveillance of airborne respiratory viruses, especially at transportation hubs and traffic arteries.

Wandering Eyes: Using Gaze-Tracking Method to Capture Eye Fixations in Unfamiliar Healthcare Environments.

This study aims to investigate the elements of wayfinding in indoor complex healthcare environments. The study replicates Ghamari and Pati's 2018 study to identify the environmental attributes that attract eye fixation during wayfinding by objectively tracking eye movements and fixation as healthy subjects navigate through a complex, unfamiliar indoor healthcare setting. The study addressed what do people look at while navigating in unfamiliar healthcare environments? What are the relative time periods of eye fixations on different visual environmental elements of the healthcare-designed environments? And what role do visual environmental attributes in healthcare facilities, such as configuration, color, art, directories, maps, furniture, and so on, play during the wayfinding process. Twenty-four adults in different genders and various age groups participated in this study and navigated five routes with different degrees of difficulty. The sequence of the destinations in this study was randomized. The data were collected by tracking gaze fixations while human subjects navigated an indoor complex healthcare environment. The findings show that identifying signs (29.1%), informative signs (20.8%), and architectural features (11.3%) constituted the most frequent elements attracting gaze, substantially more than the other classes of information. Four types of signage (identifying signs, informative signs, directional, and safety/regulatory signs) were accounted for 62.3% of the total gaze fixation time. The comparison of the ordered list based on frequencies and time of eye fixations on various elements developed in Ghamari and Pati's study shows a vast degree of similarities.

Cascaded WLAN-FWA Networking and Computing Architecture for Pervasive In-Home Healthcare

Pervasive healthcare is a promising assisted-living solution for chronic patients. However, current cutting-edge communication technologies are not able to strictly meet the requirements of these applications, especially in the case of life-threatening events. To bridge this gap, this article proposes a new architecture to support indoor healthcare monitoring, with a focus on epileptic patients. Several novel elements are introduced. The first element is the cascading of a WLAN and a cellular network, where IEEE 802.11ax is used for the wireless local area network to collect physiological and environmental data in-home and 5G-enabled Fixed Wireless Access links transfer them to a remote hospital. The second element is the extension of the network slicing concept to the WLAN, and the introduction of two new slice types to support both regular monitoring and emergency handling. Moreover, the inclusion of local computing capabilities at the WLAN router, together with a mobile edge computing resource, represents a further architectural enhancement. Local computation is required to trigger not only health-related alarms but also the network slicing change in case of emergency; in fact, proper radio resource scheduling is necessary for the cascaded networks to handle healthcare traffic together with other promiscuous everyday communication services. Numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach while highlighting the performance gain achieved with respect to baseline solutions.

Intelligent IoT Framework for Indoor Healthcare Monitoring of Parkinson’s Disease Patient

Parkinson's disease is associated with high treatment costs, primarily attributed to the needs of hospitalization and frequent care services. A study reveals annual per-person healthcare costs for Parkinson's patients to be $21,482, with an additional $29,695 burden to society. Due to the high stakes and rapidly rising Parkinson's patients' count, it is imperative to introduce intelligent monitoring and analysis systems. In this paper, an Internet of Things (IoT) based framework is proposed to enable remote monitoring, administration, and analysis of patient's conditions in a typical indoor environment. The proposed infrastructure offers both static and dynamic routing, along with delay analysis and priority enabled communications. The scheme also introduces machine learning techniques to detect the progression of Parkinson's over six months using auditory inputs. The proposed IoT infrastructure and machine learning algorithm are thoroughly evaluated and a detailed analysis is performed. The results show that the proposed scheme offers efficient communication scheduling, facilitating a high number of users with low latency. The proposed machine learning scheme also outperforms state-of-the-art techniques in accurately predicting the Parkinson's progression.

Single-LED Multichannel Optical Transmission With SCMA for Long Range Health Information Monitoring

This paper proposes a prototype single light-emitting diode (LED) multiple-channel transmission system with visible light communication (VLC) for electromagnetic wave-free indoor healthcare monitoring. Sparse code multiple access (SCMA) is employed for the transfer of multiple medical data with higher bandwidth efficiency in real time. Multiuser data spread to time domain chips with non-orthogonal codebook are simultaneously transmitted using a single LED, where each chip signal is transmitted as a difference voltage level, and LED illumination is detected by a single photodiode (PD). The received signal, which includes multiuser data, is separated by the message passing algorithm with high reliability, and is simultaneously rearranged for transmission to a user interface (PC or mobile). The collected multiple data are then monitored in real time and analyzed for the appropriate medical care service. With SCMA, VLC can achieve higher bandwidth efficiency (50%–200%). Furthermore, the proposed system is designed with a simple structure (single LED to single PD) for practical deployment, and multiple medical signals can be monitored via a designed user interface in real time.

Single cell multiple-channel VLC with 3-level amplitude-based CDMA

Abstract In this paper, we present a practical multi-channel transmission system with visible light communication (VLC) for electromagnetic-wave-free indoor healthcare service. Code division multiple access (CDMA) was employed for the transfer of multiple medical datasets in real-time with a simple system design. Multi-user datasets were spread to time-domain chips using an orthogonal codebook, and simultaneously transmitted using a single light-emitting diode (LED). The LED device transmits an energy-normalized chip signal based on only three different voltage levels, with the light source going into an optical detector. The received signal, which includes code-division multiplexed data, is separated by an orthogonal code and concurrently rearranged for transmission to a user interface (PC or mobile). The obtained multiple datasets were monitored in real-time and analyzed for appropriate medical services.

Single cell three-channel wavelength division multiplexing in visible light communication.

This paper examines the design of a prototype of a single cell three-channel visible light communication (VLC) based on wavelength division multiplexing for a radio frequency (RF)-free indoor healthcare. For a low complexity application, a single red green blue (RGB)-type white light-emitting diode (LED) and a single color sensor are adopted. An active low pass filter is utilized for robust light detection to eliminate ambient light and low frequency noise. The incoming tri-color lights are separated by an adopted color sensor and simultaneously demodulated by a receiver processor. Then, the collected data are monitored in real-time and analyzed to provide the necessary medical attention to the concerned patient.

Multiple bio-monitoring system using visible light for electromagnetic-wave free indoor healthcare

In this paper, a multiple biomedical data transmission system with visible light communication (VLC) is proposed for an electromagnetic-wave-free indoor healthcare. VLC technology has emerged as an alternative solution to radio-frequency (RF) wireless systems, due to its various merits, e.g., ubiquity, power efficiency, no RF radiation, and security. With VLC, critical bio-medical signals, including electrocardiography (ECG), can be transmitted in places where RF radiation is restricted. This potential advantage of VLC could save more lives in emergency situations. A time hopping (TH) scheme is employed to transfer multiple medical-data streams in real time with a simple system design. Multiple data streams are transmitted using identical color LEDs and go into an optical detector. The received multiple data streams are demodulated and rearranged using a TH-based demodulator. The medical data is then monitored and managed to provide the necessary medical care for each patient.

Guest Editorial

Guest Editorial

Approaches to prevent the patients with chronic airway diseases from exacerbation in the haze weather.

Haze weather is becoming one of the biggest problems in many big cities in China. It triggers both public anxiety and official concerns. Particulate matter (PM) plays the most important role in causing the adverse health effects. Chemical composition of PM2.5 includes primary particles and secondary particles. The toxicological mechanisms of PM2.5 to the human body include the oxidative stress, inflammation and carcinogenesis. Short or long-term exposure to PM (especially PM2.5) can cause a series of symptoms including respiratory symptoms such as cough, wheezing and dyspnea as well as other symptoms. There are positive associations between PM2.5 and mortality due to a number of causes. PM2.5 is considered to contribute to the onset of asthma, the exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in haze weather. Some approaches including outdoor health care, indoor health care and preventive medications can prevent the patients with chronic airway diseases from exacerbations.

A proposed UAV for indoor patient care.

Indoor flight, obstacle avoidance and client-server communication of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) raises several unique research challenges. This paper examines current methods and associated technologies adapted within the literature toward autonomous UAV flight, for consideration in a proposed system for indoor healthcare administration with a quadcopter. We introduce Healthbuddy, a unique research initiative towards overcoming challenges associated with indoor navigation, collision detection and avoidance, stability, wireless drone-server communications and automated decision support for patient care in a GPS-denied environment. To address the identified research deficits, a drone-based solution is presented. The solution is preliminary as we develop and refine the suggested algorithms and hardware system to achieve the research objectives.

Potential exposure of children to environmental microorganisms in indoor healthcare and educational settings

Surveillance of environmental bacteria was performed in order to investigate the differences in number, identity and distribution in three indoor locations where children spend time; a hospital ward, outpatient’s area and a classroom. Surface total viable counts (TVCs) and swabs for molecular analysis of bacteria present were taken at each location. TVCs were higher in the classroom and outpatient area than on the ward and on items that were located in physically higher positions. High touch sites had lower bacterial counts. Sequence and biochemical data showed the presence of potential pathogens at all locations. The bacterial profile of the three locations was different and may reflect the functional use of the space and the people who use that space.

RFID-based indoor location tracking to ensure the safety of the elderly in smart home environments

In recent years, the number of elderly people living alone has grown rapidly. This increases the need for indoor healthcare services that help elderly residents live a safe and independent life. Th...