Innovative Digital Platform Research Articles

Comparison of traditional methods versus digital learning methods among undergraduate medical students in Pakistan

Objective: To explore and compare the use of traditional and digital learning methods among undergraduate medical students. Method: The cross-sectional, qualitative, descriptive study conducted at the Bahria University of Health Sciences, Karachi, from June to December 2023, and comprised undergraduate medical, dental and allied health sciences students. Sample size was calculated using open epi and keeping confidence interval at 95%. Data was collected using in-depth interviews, and focus group discussions. Data was analysed using SPSS 22. Results: Of the 203 subjects, 48 were from the MBBS final year, 46 each from the fourth and third years, 30 from the second year, and 22 from the first year. Rest of them were from allied BDS, DPharm, DPT. Overall, N110 (54%) students favoured mixed methods of learning, N23 (12%) favoured digital alone, and N70 (34%) favoured the traditional methods. A total of 6 focus group discussions were held; N 146 (71.92%) medical students in five groups, and one group of N 57 (28.07%) dental, pharmacy and physical therapy students. The 3 main themes identified were digital methods, traditional methods and mixed methods of learning. Conclusion: The mixed method of learning was favoured by the majority of students. Digital platforms offer a variety of benefits that improve learning, while traditional methods remain valuable for comprehensive study and for building concepts. Key Words: Innovative digital platforms, digital learning, e-learning, traditional learning, medical studies, online learning.

The Importance of Effective Management of Academic Activities to Improve Educational and Organizational Performance

In an ever-changing world, universities need to adopt innovative ways to effectively manage academic activities. A robust and well-designed digital platform can provide students with access to a clear and concise overview of the academic year, including detailed information about the courses they have to attend, their financial situation, exam grades and teaching materials. Such a platform not only enhances students’ educational experience, but also allows them to be more organized and have quick access to the information they need to excel in their studies. StudentHub is an innovative digital platform that aims to address these needs. Designed to provide a complete solution, StudentHub makes it easy to manage academic and administrative activities through an intuitive interface and advanced functionality. It allows students to quickly access course information, financial status and grades, while also providing access to the learning materials they need to study.

Improving Participant Recruitment in Clinical Trials: Comparative Analysis of Innovative Digital Platforms.

Pharmaceutical product development relies on thorough and costly clinical trials. Participant recruitment and monitoring can be challenging. The incorporation of cutting-edge technologies such as blockchain and artificial intelligence has revolutionized clinical research (particularly in the recruitment stage), enhanced secure data storage and analysis, and facilitated participant monitoring while protecting their personal information. This study aims to investigate the use of novel digital platforms and their features, such as e-recruitment, e-consent, and matching, aiming to optimize and expedite clinical research. A review with a systematic approach was conducted encompassing literature from January 2000 to October 2024. The MEDLINE, ScienceDirect, Scopus, and Google Scholar databases were examined thoroughly using a customized search string. Inclusion criteria focused on digital platforms involving clinical trial recruitment phases that were in English and had international presence, scientific validation, regulatory approval, and no geographic limitations. Literature reviews and unvalidated digital platforms were excluded. The selected studies underwent meticulous screening by the research team, ensuring a thorough analysis of novel digital platforms and their use and features for clinical trials. A total of 24 digital platforms were identified that supported clinical trial recruitment phases. In general, most of them (n=22, 80%) are headquartered and operating in the United States, providing a range of functionalities including electronic consent (n=14, 60% of the platforms), participant matching, and monitoring of patients' health status. These supplementary features enhance the overall effectiveness of the platforms in facilitating the recruitment process for clinical trials. The analysis and digital platform findings refer to a specific time frame when the investigation took place, and a notable surge was observed in the adoption of these novel digital tools, particularly following the COVID-19 outbreak. This study underscores the vital role of the identified digital platforms in clinical trials, aiding in recruitment, enhancing patient engagement, accelerating procedures, and personalizing vital sign monitoring. Despite their impact, challenges in accessibility, compatibility, and transparency require careful consideration. Addressing these challenges is crucial for optimizing digital tool integration into clinical research, allowing researchers to harness the benefits while managing the associated risks effectively.

Succeeding in an Era of Volatility: Leadership Strategies for an Uncertain Future

The business landscape has undergone immense changes in recent decades due to factors like globalization, technological disruption, shifting workforce and customer demographics, and economic turbulence, creating a profoundly uncertain and volatile environment that requires constant adaptation for companies to avoid obsolescence. However, by drawing from research on complex adaptive systems and uncertainty management, the article provides strategies for cultivating agile, resilient cultures focused on embracing uncertainty and continuous adaptation to thrive amid unpredictability. Leaders must foster agility through empowering experimentation, risk-taking, and iterative learning from failures to build resilience emphasizing adaptability, interdependence, diversity, communication, and flexibility, while embracing ambiguity recognizes leaders cannot predict the future and respond to new opportunities. Continuous learning and adaptation are also critical using flexible structures, short feedback loops, and scenario planning to identify weaknesses. The article then outlines an adaptive leadership framework to assess an organization's agility, resilience, and change readiness, proposing specific actions to decentralize decision-making, accelerate innovation, strengthen networks, communicate purpose, and conduct regular assessments/reviews, demonstrated through a banking example of innovative digital platforms, startup culture, customer empowerment, and experimentation enabling thriving amid turbulence. By developing cultures focused on continuous transformation over control and adaptability, companies gain strategic flexibility to reconfigure successfully amid unpredictability.

Cross-Gender Performances and Audience Engagement on Douyin

This study explores the cultural and commercial impacts of cross-gender performances on Douyin, one of China's leading short video platforms. These performances not only entertain but also challenge traditional gender norms, engaging predominantly young, urban female audiences. Using a mixed-methods approach, this research combines quantitative data from proprietary analytics tools with qualitative content analyses to delve into how such performances resonate with viewers and influence societal views on gender. Findings indicate that these narratives significantly cater to the emotional and cultural needs of the audience. It fosters a deep connection that transcends mere entertainment. Moreover, the huge number of followers of cross-gender performers in Douyin advances more paths toward commercial success. This is increasingly significant in entertainment today, as strategic marketing often combines with artistic performance. This study underscores the role of innovative digital platforms like Douyin in shaping modern social narratives and highlights their potential in driving both cultural discourse and commercial success in the digital age.

Protocol for a hybrid effectiveness-implementation clinical trial evaluating video-assisted electronic consent vs standard consent for patients initiating and continuing haemodialysis in Australia (eConsent HD)

IntroductionCommunicating complex information about haemodialysis (HD) and ensuring it is well understood remains a challenge for clinicians. Informed consent is a high-impact checkpoint in augmenting patients’ decision awareness and engagement...

Counter Measures to Combat Money Laundering in the New Digital Age

Money Laundering has been a significant concern for governments, law enforcement agencies, and financial institutions worldwide. With the advancement of technology, money laundering techniques have evolved in the digital age, presenting new challenges for authorities and financial institutions. Criminals leverage innovative digital platforms, cryptocurrencies, and virtual assets to launder illicit funds while maintaining anonymity and complexity in their transactions. In this article, we examine the money laundering techniques in the digital age and the challenges posed by these techniques and the implications for the global financial system. Furthermore, the article explores the role of regulatory frameworks, technological solutions, and international cooperation in mitigating the risks associated with digital money laundering. We also explore the countermeasures implemented to detect and prevent these illicit activities. Enhanced Know Your Customer (KYC) regulations, robust transaction monitoring systems, international collaboration, and innovative technologies are among the critical measures to combat digital money laundering.

PreventS-MD®: a New Digital Technology to Maintain Cardiovascular Prevention in Routine Clinical Practice

Stroke, myocardial infarction (MI), and other main non-communicable diseases (NCDs) remain major causes of mortality and disability globally. Up to 80% of cardiovascular events and up to 60% of NCDs are associated with potentially controlled risk factors (RFs). State-of-the-art digital technologies can help bridge the gap between evidence-based prevention methods and their critically low availability in routine clinical practice.
 An innovative digital platform named PreventS-MD® is a specially developed tool for healthcare professionals to be used under time constraints. With PreventS-MD®, clinicians can estimate patient's 10-year cardiovascular risk within several minutes. Then, they automatically get adapted results and recommendations to address identified RFs as well as graphical representation of specific RF contribution to overall stroke and MI risks. If some additional time is available, the clinician and the patient can collaboratively set customized achievable goals to correct modifiable RFs. An integrated analytical module provides healthcare managers with current digital risk profiles of the relevant population to evaluate prevention effectiveness and to forecast the load throughout the healthcare levels.
 PreventS-MD® has several unique advantages, including time-saving design, the function to activate motivated RF correction, individually tailored recommendations, and information on personally changed digital profiles of vascular risks. As cardiovascular diseases and main NCDs have a lot of common RFs, PreventS-MD® implemented into routine clinical practice will utilize a complex approach to the prevention of main NCDs, decreasing both stroke and MI burden and addressing complications of chronic pulmonary and kidney disease, tumors of any type, dementia, etc.

GSSC Now: ESA Thematic exploitation platform for navigation digital transformation. Enhancing GNSS scientific research

As Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) infrastructure expands and more satellites are launched, the number of signals and measurements available to users increases, resulting in a corresponding rise in data generation rates. GNSS receivers with the ability to process triple frequency measurements and multi-constellation reception, have been complemented with the massive deployment of connected, GNSS-enabled devices such as smartphones, wearables, and IoT sensors, triggering the growth of a highly dispersed cloud of GNSS data. This trend observed in other domains presents both challenges and opportunities for applications of GNSS technology.The scientific exploitation of GNSS data involves developing new concepts through the analysis of the aforementioned sources of information. Traditionally, the extraction of insights from GNSS data has relied on searching and downloading datasets from multiple repositories. These datasets provided by numerous organisations are scattered worldwide, containing gems of information difficult to track and discover. This approach hinders research productivity, as scientists are forced to shift their focus from data exploration, analysis, modelling, visualization, and realisation of conclusions to a long list of repetitive and manual tasks of little added value.The GNSS Science Support Centre (GSSC) hosts ESA’s innovative Digital Platform for GNSS, GSSC Now, which integrates a large GNSS repository with cutting-edge features for data exploration and analysis. The paper presents key functionalities of GSSC Now and highlights its value through case studies of real-world GNSS applications. This platform expands established computational limits, placing the data source side-by-side with cloud computing capabilities. The change of paradigm provides scientists with seamless execution of Machine Learning models, interactive algorithms and visualisation tools on a vast repository of GNSS data, removing barriers that hinder research productivity.

KGRCET Notice Board

The KGRCET Notice Board Project introduces a contemporary solution to the longstanding challenge of efficiently disseminating information within organizations and communities. This innovative digital platform harnesses web-based technologies to establish a centralized and user-friendly system for the posting, management, and retrieval of announcements, notices, and updates. This abstract provides a succinct overview of the project's goals, functionalities, and advantages. By substituting traditional physical notice boards with a digital counterpart, the project optimizes information sharing, diminishes paper consumption, and improves accessibility. Users can effortlessly submit, view, and search for notices, ensuring the timely delivery of crucial information to its intended audience. Additionally, the platform can be tailored to meet various needs, spanning educational institutions and corporate offices to residential communities and public organizations. As we delve into the intricacies of this project, we underscore its potential to elevate to a more communication, promote sustainable and interconnected future.

The Intertextual Hub: a platform for intertextual studies of 18th-century France

This article presents a comprehensive overview of the Intertextual Hub, an innovative digital platform designed to facilitate intertextual studies of 18th-century French literature. The platform leverages sophisticated computational methods such as text mining, natural language processing, or machine learning to enable a comprehensive analysis of extensive textual data, a series of approaches known as ‘distant reading’. The Hub incorporates various digital resources, including a vast collection of 18th-century French literary works, laws, decrees and revolutionary pamphlets, all of which are intended to provide a nuanced understanding of the intellectual and cultural landscape of the era. One of the notable challenges the Hub addresses is the disparity in digitisation quality and the inherent differences among various text collections. These challenges include variations in text formats, inconsistencies in metadata, and the diverse nature of the source materials, which range from literary works to official documents. The Hub’s modular architecture, built on the PhiloLogic text analysis engine, accommodates these variances by providing a unified experience for each collection. Researchers are presented with different entry points to explore the multifaceted nature of intertextuality in the period. The platform’s close reading interface is a pivotal aspect, facilitating an immersive and interconnected research experience through guided text exploration. By combining close and distant reading perspectives, users can seamlessly navigate between individual and larger groups of texts through shared themes, concepts or references, thus bridging the gap between these two different modes of reading. In short, the Intertextual Hub aims to foster a deeply interconnected research experience that enhances the understanding of the 18th-century corpus and the intellectual exchanges that shaped the period.

THE DIGITAL EVOLUTION IN HOSPITALITY: A GLOBAL REVIEW AND ITS POTENTIAL TRANSFORMATIVE IMPACT ON U.S. TOURISM

This scholarly inquiry delves into the transformative effects of digital evolution within the global hospitality sector, with a particular emphasis on its implications for U.S. tourism. The purpose of this study is to dissect the transition from traditional service delivery to innovative digital platforms and to evaluate how these advancements benchmark against global practices, particularly within the U.S. context. Employing a comprehensive literature review and a robust comparative analysis, the research adopts a methodological framework that encompasses data collection and analysis, emphasizing the synthesis of existing research and case studies. Key findings reveal a significant shift towards digital integration, enhancing visitor experiences and yielding substantial economic and social benefits. The U.S. hospitality industry, while adopting digital tools, reveals a spectrum of adoption rates and a potential for strategic growth. The study concludes that digitalization is not merely a trend but a fundamental shift in operational, strategic, and customer engagement paradigms. The study recommends sustained digital innovation, underpinned by policies that support technological advancement while safeguarding stakeholder interests. The recommendations underscore the necessity for a forward-thinking approach to policy-making and education, aimed at fostering a digitally proficient workforce. This study serves as a strategic guide for industry stakeholders, suggesting a trajectory towards a resilient and sustainable future in U.S. tourism, setting a global benchmark in hospitality.
 Keywords: Digital Transformation, U.S. Tourism, Hospitality Industry, Strategic Innovation, Sustainable Practices.

A design approach for building a digital platform to augment human abilities based on a more-than-human perspective

AbstractTo acquire information from the real world and respond appropriately to life's circumstances, vision is indispensable for humans. However, due to its ubiquitous nature, we often perceive the world unconsciously, thereby overlooking the opportunity to contemplate the significance of sight. Seeing goes beyond being a mere method of gathering information; it is an act of uncovering new perspectives and engaging in profound exploration. Theories on creative problem-solving strongly advocate for the advantages of adopting multiple viewpoints. By generating a multitude of alternatives through information gleaned from diverse perspectives, we enhance our ability to expand the range of choices available to us, thus facilitating more effective problem-solving. In this paper, we present Posthuman CollectiveEyes, a digital platform that enriches the human act of visual perception by integrating diverse viewpoints such as collective human, augmented human, and nonhuman viewpoints, and constructs posthuman viewpoints from the diverse viewpoints. In the design of Posthuman CollectiveEyes, we adopt the more-than-human perspective, widely employed in the social sciences to analyze the impact of technology on human actions and decision-making in organizations and societies. This perspective enables us to uncover knowledge that conventional human-centered approaches cannot capture, as the objective of Posthuman CollectiveEyes is to expand human cognitive capabilities through enhanced visual perception. The novel contribution of our approach lies in demonstrating that the design of innovative digital platforms aimed at enhancing human abilities necessitates a fresh design approach that incorporates the more-than-human perspective.

Climate Adaptation Measures for Enhancing Urban Resilience

Climate change threatens urban areas globally. Enhancing resilience is crucial, yet the comprehensive clustering of practical climate adaptation measures for use in construction industry decision-making is notably absent. This study investigates and categorizes various climate adaptation measures, justifying each through a lens of risk management, asset management, and previous scientific work. It takes advantage of the innovative digital platform Netobra, which offers an ecosystem for the construction industry, to provide real-world, practical implications of these measures. Informed by the Urban Resilience Evaluation System, ISO 31000 (risk management), and ISO 55000 (asset management), the study sets out to demonstrate the value of these measures in bolstering urban resilience and improving decision-making in the construction industry. Moreover, the study integrates a hotspot detection mechanism for areas at high risk of climate impacts, using multicriteria decision analysis (MCDA)—analytic hierarchy process (AHP) mapping on Netobra. These identified hotspots and corresponding climate adaptation measures will further be incorporated into a Risk-Informed Asset-Centric (RIACT) process, providing valuable insights for climate change mitigation and adaptation strategies in urban development. Through its in-depth analysis, the study aims to contribute to the understanding of how diverse climate adaptation measures can be practically applied in various sectors, thereby enhancing urban resilience and effective risk and asset management.

Strategies and Innovations in the Management of ZISWAF Funds through Digital Platforms for Sustainable Community Development

This research aims to analyze the management of ZISWAF (zakat, infaq, shadaqah, and waqf) funds in Indonesia, to analyze the opportunities and challenges of managing zakat, infaq, shadaqah, and waqf funds in the digital era, and describe the concept of innovation in developing digital platforms for the management of zakat, infaq, shadaqah, and waqf funds for sustainable community development. In recent years, digital technology advancements have had a significant impact on various aspects of life, including the management of zakat, infaq, shadaqah, and waqf funds. More and more charitable organizations and financial institutions are utilizing digital platforms to fundraise and manage zakat, infaq, shadaqah, and waqf funds. The management of zakat, infaq, shadaqah, and waqf funds plays a crucial role in efforts to achieve sustainable community development. Zakat, infaq, shadaqah, and waqf are pillars of Islamic philanthropy that have great potential to address issues of poverty, social inequality, and improve the welfare of the ummah. In the constantly evolving global context, innovation in fundraising is needed to address challenges and leverage existing opportunities. By utilizing digital technology and developing dedicated platforms, the potential of zakat, infaq, shadaqah, and waqf can be significantly enhanced, thereby making a greater impact on achieving sustainable community development. The development of digital platforms is also expected to bring many benefits such as increased accessibility, transparency, and broader community participation. This research is qualitative research that employs a library research approach and deductive analysis techniques. The data sources used in this research are secondary sources such as books, research journals, scientific articles, and official websites containing relevant information on topics such as zakat, infaq, shadaqah, waqf, and digital technology. The results of this research are expected to contribute to the development of effective and innovative digital platforms. The appropriate use of digital technology is expected to increase community participation in the allocation of zakat, infaq, shadaqah, and waqf funds, as well as strengthen transparency and accountability in the management of Islamic philanthropic funds. Furthermore, this research provides guidance and recommendations for further development in fundraising for sustainable community development in the digital era.

Designing innovative digital platforms from both human and nonhuman perspectives

Digital platforms are becoming critical infrastructures for supporting a variety of innovative services that enhance our everyday lives. These platforms need to offer not only rational services but also ludic or slow services that focus on human pleasure. One important aspect of creating innovative digital platforms is that their concrete requirements and potential opportunities are vague before they are designed. Thus, designing, prototyping and evaluating digital platforms iteratively is essential for refining or customizing them, as knowledge is gradually gained throughout these iterations. However, it is costly to develop prototype platforms and evaluate them with traditional methods. A better tool that can be used to reveal these platforms’ potential opportunities by conceiving them in a simple and rapid way is needed. In this paper, we present our journey to develop nine digital platforms that share collective human sight and hearing with the Human-Material-Pleasure (HMP) annotation method, which is a tool that we use to describe the visually structured annotations of multiple digital platforms based on the annotated portfolio method. The most significant part of the paper presents annotated portfolios based on the HMP annotation method for the nine digital platforms that we develop and shows how these annotated portfolios play an essential role in revealing and exploring the potential opportunities of our platforms during the refinement process. We also discuss how the HMP annotation method is used in the context of exploring the potential opportunities of wearable shape-changing robotic devices; these devices have significantly different characteristics from our digital platforms, which allows for showing insights more objectively by extracting diverse insights from an alternative angle.

Information technology market research and launch of a new product — the innovative digital platform "Smart School Pro"

The article presents an assessment of the state of the information technology market, identifies business opportunities for one of the market participants — Educational Technologies LLC, and also proposes a project to bring a new product (the innovative digital platform "Smart School PRO") to the market.

Achievements and prospects for the application of artificial intelligence technologies in medicine: an overview. Part 1

On a global scale, a radical transformation of the healthcare sector is taking place right before our eyes. Health care systems in many countries are changing at an incredible pace under the pressure of innovative digital platforms that have gained popularity under the names of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML). AI systems, powered by massive amounts of data collected from everywhere, are able to guarantee optimal decision making for key players in the healthcare industry, from the pharmaceutical industry to the smallest healthcare providers. This article presents the results of the analysis of achievements and prospects for the use of innovative digital technologies and platforms in modern health care. According to international experts in medicine, it is possible to automate 36% of functions, primarily at the levels of data collection and analysis, and the use of AI technologies can significantly increase the gross profit of firms and organizations in relation to medical activities. There is no doubt about this since information has already become the main driver of management across all sectors of the global economy in general and in the health care sector in particular. The main motivations for the penetration of AI into health care are the escalating costs and the urgent need to limit them, the problem of poor-quality diagnostics (up to 30% of ongoing studies turn out to be unreliable or are misinterpreted) and the desire for standardization and automation of routine functions up to the creation of self-managed diagnostic models. However, the biggest challenge for AI in healthcare is not whether these technologies will be useful enough, but how to ensure that they are quickly and efficiently implemented in everyday clinical practice.

The Power of Open

Abstract Pratham Books is a not-for-profit children’s picture book publisher headquartered in Bangalore, India, with a mission to see ‘a book in every child’s hand’. Pratham Books has been addressing the book famine in India and by extension the world through its low-cost, high-volume, multilingual publishing since 2004. But upon realizing the limitations of print, they moved towards something more audacious – adopting an open licence to create an innovative digital platform, StoryWeaver, that not only housed Pratham Books’ titles but empowered users to use, adapt, download, and translate books as they saw fit to address the gaps in their own spheres and help put books in children’s hands. In just seven years, StoryWeaver has grown 50 times in size and scope, from a repository of 800 books in 24 languages to over 45 000 books in 314 languages. By disrupting traditional publishing models, Pratham Books’ StoryWeaver has shown us what the future of publishing and reading looks like.

2366. Impact of the Febrile Podcast and Learning Resource as an Infectious Diseases Education Platform

Abstract Background Febrile is a digital infectious diseases (ID) learning platform with the aim of providing high quality and accessible ID content. We describe utilization of Febrile as a resource for learning and teaching ID, learner satisfaction, and the perceived impact on clinical practice. Methods Febrile was launched in December 2020 as a trainee-focused resource as shown in Figure 1. Content is also promoted on social media. Podcast analytics are available from the media host, Captivate, which is Interactive Advertising Bureau certified. Website and Twitter engagement was obtained from Google and Twitter Analytics, respectively. An online anonymous survey was conducted to assess educational impact using Likert scales and open answer questions. Results As of April 26 2022, Febrile has produced 39 episodes and has been downloaded > 107,000 times in all 50 United States (US) and 140 countries. Majority of the audience (62%) listens from within the US, see Fig. 2 for geographic distribution. The website has received > 60,000 views, and the Twitter account has garnered > 8,100 followers. A total of 224 participants from 30 countries and 37 US states completed the survey, of whom 78 (35%) were ID fellows in training and 71 (32%) were ID faculty physicians. Breakdown of other respondents is in Fig. 3. Most had listened to either ≥ 21 episodes (57, 25%) or 11–20 episodes (86, 38%). In addition, 72% reported visiting the website and 82% had seen a Febrile infographic. There was a high level of satisfaction with the resources, and 83% of respondents have already recommended Febrile to a colleague (Fig. 3). Enhancing core ID knowledge was the primary driver for listening among other reasons noted in Fig. 4. Two-thirds of respondents indicated that information they learned from Febrile has changed their practice, and 50% have used Febrile as a way to teach others (Fig. 4). Of note, for those considering ID as a career, Febrile had a favorable impact on perception of the specialty (30/34, 88%). Many respondents also indicated Febrile as a source of community (50%, Fig. 4 and 5). Conclusion Febrile is a novel and impactful tool for ID medical education. In addition to providing educational resources, this innovative digital platform holds the potential for meaningful community building and attracting trainees to the field of ID. Disclosures All Authors: No reported disclosures.