Journal of Digital Health

A review of digital maternal health promotion to optimise access and utilization of care services in sub-Saharan Africa

Tue, 20 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0800

In sub-Saharan Africa, maternal mortality rates remains high among women as the vulnerable demographics of reproductive age and breastfeeding mothers compared to other parts of the world. The situation is exacerbated by the region’s underperforming healthcare systems. Although digital health interventions have increased since the emergence of COVID-19 pandemic to enhance health promotion in terms of maternal health vulnerability, the access to and utilization of care services, the record of positive impacts remains limited. The objective of this paper was to analyse the status of digital maternal health promotion in supporting female of reproductive age, first-time and nursing mothers to access and utilise maternal healthcare services during their perinatal and postpartum periods in underserved settings of sub-Saharan Africa. A literature review of peer-reviewed publications between 2020 and 2023 was conducted by searching online databases using keywords and filtering the results using a set of inclusion and exclusion criteria. Findings indicate that digital maternal health promotion is increasingly enabling access to hard-to-reach populations, but the utilization of associated care services remains relatively low. Particularly, mHealth and asynchronous audio-visual digital media are critical for delivering maternal health educational content to the targeted populations, including their partners, and are most likely to increase utilization of maternal care services. Digital promotion of maternal health requires multi-stakeholder collaboration to address the limiting socio-economic, cultural and technical factors that determine access to and utilization of care services during the perinatal and postpartum period, if mortality rates are to be reduced towards the sustainable development goal for good health and well-being.

From clinic to screen: A narrative review of telehealth in pediatric chronic disease management

Atefeh Shamsi — Mon, 08 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0800

Background: Telehealth integrates traditional hospitalization into modern healthcare by utilizing digital devices, especially for pediatric chronic diseases. This new approach has promoted convenient home care by providing individualized support to healthcare providers, children, and their families to facilitate constant management of physiological follow-up, prevention of complication and cost-effective services.

Objectives: This paper investigated the studies of Iranian telehealth concerning pediatric chronic diseases and aimed to explore the benefits and challenges of telehealth and provided recommendations to improve implementation.

Methods: We identified fifteen relevant studies through comprehensive database searches. These studies were analyzed in terms of different types of pediatric chronic diseases and the characteristics, outcomes, benefits and challenges of telehealth.

Results: Telehealth could potentially transform pediatric care by facilitating home-based, personalized assistance. It enabled continuous physiological follow-up, complication prevention, and cost-effective services that bridge the frequent face-to-face follow up gaps in healthcare. Telehealth studies identified technological, regulatory and infrastructure challenges as the direct factors that inhibit the growth of telehealth services.

Conclusion: Telehealth integration to traditional care offered advantages, including enhanced access, personalized care and cost-effectiveness. However, it was crucial to overcome challenges of technology, regulation and infrastructure. Investing in telehealth enhancement and developing strategies to address these obstacles can significantly improve healthcare outcomes for children with chronic diseases and reshape pediatric care.

Cloud based adaptive learning system: virtual reality and augmented reality assisted educational pedagogy development on clinical simulation

Sat, 09 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0800

An adaptive learning system provides support for student’s academic progress by varying learning routes and pedagogical contents to satisfy various students’ unique academic needs. The primary goal of this research work is to enhance and expand occupational efficiency through the use of technological pedagogical content knowledge (TPCK) frameworks in nursing education. The authors developed an adaptive federated cloud computing learning system in order to better prepare students for the demands of real-world professional practice. The article examined the use of virtual reality(VR) and augmented (AR) technologies in nursing education and developed an instrument that skillfully combines knowledge from the reputable literature on clinical competencies with the peculiarities and ingenuousness particular to virtual simulations. Designated for the remote sharing and utilization of combined educational resources, cloud computing is a distributed information communication technology (ICT) infrastructure built on the Internet of Things (IoT) framework. To increase the occupational efficiency among the nurses and midwives, an educational simulation applied in a way that gamifies the curriculum component for interactive educational pedagogy will be necessary. As a completely integrated part of the curriculum, simulation has proven to be beneficial for nursing students at all levels of instruction. Nursing educators have a plethora of options at their disposal to introduce simulation-based learning approaches into their curricula in the modern era. A three-dimensional (3D) interactive environment that provides users with a sense of spatial presence is created through computer technology, which is an immersive digital ecosystem of VR and AR utilized to improve teaching and learning in nursing education. In this study, the authors offered a cost- effective clinical simulation laboratory for clinical students, nurses, midwives, and practicing healthcare professionals in a manner that ensures constant learning and occupational efficiency by adopting the TPCK model in its central discussion and implementation. The TPCK model has demonstrated how to recognize the boundaries between technological components and pedagogical structures as well as how they are connected when creating facts in nursing education.

AI-based big data analysis of user-generated content to understand adherence in oral hormone receptor-positive advanced breast cancer treatment: A literature review and patient-centered approach using natural language processing

Stefanie Scholz, Christian Winkler, Svenja Niescken — Tue, 13 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0800

Background: Understanding patients' adherence needs is crucial for the success of therapies, particularly for chronic illnesses and cancer. The shift from intravenous to oral anticancer medication enhances patient independence but may threaten adherence. This study aims to identify patients' concerns and needs for treatment of oral hormone receptor-positive for advanced breast cancer (CDK4/6 inhibitors).

Methodology: A comprehensive literature review on factors influencing patient adherence was conducted, followed by AI-based big data analyses of user-generated content. Techniques such as natural language processing and machine learning-based word embeddings were applied to achieve a patient-centered understanding of adherence.

Results: The literature review shows that adherence is often overlooked in clinical research due to the impracticality of long-term monitoring in most trial designs. This highlights the need for alternative methods such as real-world data and AI-based analyses to understand patients' long-term adherence to treatment. Key factors influencing adherence to oral breast cancer treatment include the cost-benefit ratio in terms of survival and quality of life, realistic expectations regarding side effects, social support and personalized care. AI analysis of user-generated content supports these findings and reveals more frequent discussions on non-adherence in early breast cancer stages. Semantic graphs and topic modeling also identified additional patient concerns and informational needs for better patient communication.

Conclusions: Enhancing patient-centeredness is crucial for improving adherence and persistence to oral treatment for breast cancer. The increased autonomy provided by oral medications offers a significant opportunity for healthcare providers to empower patients in managing their treatment. Comprehensive support, including addressing emotional and psychological issues, is essential, especially in advanced breast cancer stages.