Privacy-Preserving Partner Notification Service to Control Sexually Transmitted Infections.

Partner Notification (PN) processes are typically part of wider combination prevention efforts and focus on the notification of sexual partners to prevent Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs), including Human Immunodeficiency Viruses and viral hepatitis. We present a free, voluntary, anonymous and GDPR-compliant Partner Notification service that offers enhanced security and privacy through a web and mobile application via a unique random codes.

Co-Designing Smartphone Notifications According to the Clinical Routine of Cancer Patients.

Although smartphone-based notifications offer a promising tool to support patient engagement and data collection via mobile health apps, attention must be given to the burden caused by frequent notifications and notification timing. This study presents a personalized mobile notification scheme, designed and developed to optimize reachability, and thus data collection from patients. Engineers, psychologists, oncologists, and patients were involved in various stages of a co-design approach and the presented implementation is currently used in the context of a clinical study.

A GDPR-Compliant Partner Notification Service.

Partner Notification processes focus on the notification of sexual partners to prevent the transmission of Sexually Transmitted Infections (STIs). The INTEGRATE Joint Action provides an integrated platform called RiskRadar, for combination prevention activities targeting STIs, including an anonymous, free and voluntary Partner Notification service. The presented service information flow ensures privacy, security and GDPR compliance which were identified as vital with similar tools.

MyPal ADULT study protocol: a randomised clinical trial of the MyPal ePRO-based early palliative care system in adult patients with haematological malignancies.

Introduction: The systematic collection of electronic patient-reported outcome (ePRO) in the routine care of patients with chronic haematological malignancies such as chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL) and myelodysplasia syndromes (MDS) can constitute a very ambitious but worthwhile challenge. MyPal is a Horizon 2020 Research & Innovation Action aiming to meet this challenge and foster palliative care for patients with CLL or MDS by leveraging ePRO systems to adapt to the personal needs of patients and caregiver(s).

Methods And Analysis: In this interventional randomised trial, 300 patients with CLL or MDS will be recruited across Europe.

RiskRadar: development and pilot results of a technical intervention targeting combination prevention regarding HIV, viral hepatitis, sexually transmitted infections and tuberculosis.

Background: The HIV pandemic impacts the lives of millions and despite the global coordinated response, innovative actions are still needed to end it. A major challenge is the added burden of coinfections such as viral hepatitis, tuberculosis and various sexually transmitted infections in terms of prevention, treatment and increased morbidity in individuals with HIV infection. A need for combination prevention strategies, tailored to high-risk key populations arises and technology-based interventions can be a valuable asset.

Exploring Associations Between Children's Obesogenic Behaviors and the Local Environment Using Big Data: Development and Evaluation of the Obesity Prevention Dashboard.

Background: Obesity is a major public health problem globally and in Europe. The prevalence of childhood obesity is also soaring. Several parameters of the living environment are contributing to this increase, such as the density of fast food retailers, and thus, preventive health policies against childhood obesity must focus on the environment to which children are exposed.

A Twitter discourse analysis of negative feelings and stigma related to NAFLD, NASH and obesity.

Background: People with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) are stigmatized, partly since 'non-alcoholic' is in the name, but also because of obesity, which is a common condition in this group. Stigma is pervasive in social media and can contribute to poorer health outcomes. We examine how stigma and negative feelings concerning NAFLD/NASH and obesity manifest on Twitter.

MyPal-Child study protocol: an observational prospective clinical feasibility study of the MyPal ePRO-based early palliative care digital system in paediatric oncology patients.

Introduction: Electronic patient-reported outcomes (ePROs) have tremendous potential to optimise palliative and supportive care for children with cancer, their families and healthcare providers. Particularly, these children and their families are subjected to multiple strains caused by the disease and its treatment. The MyPal digital health platform is designed to address these complex demands by offering pursuant ePRO-based functionalities via two mobile applications, one developed for children and the other for their parents.

Fast Eating Is Associated with Increased BMI among High-School Students.

Fast self-reported eating rate (SRER) has been associated with increased adiposity in children and adults. No studies have been conducted among high-school students, and SRER has not been validated vs. objective eating rate (OBER) in such populations.

Status and Recommendations of Technological and Data-Driven Innovations in Cancer Care: Focus Group Study.

Background: The status of the data-driven management of cancer care as well as the challenges, opportunities, and recommendations aimed at accelerating the rate of progress in this field are topics of great interest. Two international workshops, one conducted in June 2019 in Cordoba, Spain, and one in October 2019 in Athens, Greece, were organized by four Horizon 2020 (H2020) European Union (EU)-funded projects: BOUNCE, CATCH ITN, DESIREE, and MyPal. The issues covered included patient engagement, knowledge and data-driven decision support systems, patient journey, rehabilitation, personalized diagnosis, trust, assessment of guidelines, and interoperability of information and communication technology (ICT) platforms.

BigO: A public health decision support system for measuring obesogenic behaviors of children in relation to their local environment.

Obesity is a complex disease and its prevalence depends on multiple factors related to the local socioeconomic, cultural and urban context of individuals. Many obesity prevention strategies and policies, however, are horizontal measures that do not depend on context-specific evidence. In this paper we present an overview of BigO (http://bigoprogram.

Formative Evaluation of a Smartphone App for Monitoring Daily Meal Distribution and Food Selection in Adolescents: Acceptability and Usability Study.

Background: Obesity interventions face the problem of weight regain after treatment as a result of low compliance. Mobile health (mHealth) technologies could potentially increase compliance and aid both health care providers and patients.

Objective: This study aimed to evaluate the acceptability and usability and define system constraints of an mHealth system used to monitor dietary habits of adolescents in real life, as a first step in the development of a self-monitoring and lifestyle management system against adolescent obesity.

Electronic Patient-Reported Outcome-Based Interventions for Palliative Cancer Care: A Systematic and Mapping Review.

Purpose: Capitalizing on the promise of patient-reported outcomes (PROs), electronic implementations of PROs (ePROs) are expected to play an important role in the development of novel digital health interventions targeting palliative cancer care. We performed a systematic and mapping review of the scientific literature on the current ePRO-based approaches used for palliative cancer care.

Methods: Following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses statement guidelines, the conducted review answered the research questions: "What are the current ePRO-based approaches for palliative cancer care; what is their contribution/value in the domain of palliative cancer care; and what are the potential gaps, challenges, and opportunities for further research?" After a screening step, the corpus of included articles indexed in PubMed or the Web of Science underwent full text review, which mapped the articles across 15 predefined axes.

Development of a ePRO-Based Palliative Care Intervention for Cancer Patients: A Participatory Design Approach.

This paper describes a qualitative study conducted in the context of developing a novel ePRO (electronic Patient Reported Outcome) based palliative care intervention for cancer patients. The aim of the study was to elicit end-users' needs, judgements of the MyPal system and recommendations for improvement. A participatory design was chosen as the value of this approach has been well established in eHealth systems' design as well as the development of novel healthcare services.

A smartphone application for semi-controlled collection of objective eating behavior data from multiple subjects.

Background & Objective: The study of eating behavior has made significant progress towards understanding the association of specific eating behavioral patterns with medical problems, such as obesity and eating disorders. Smartphones have shown promise in monitoring and modifying unhealthy eating behavior patterns, often with the help of sensors for behavior data recording. However, when it comes to semi-controlled deployment settings, smartphone apps that facilitate eating behavior data collection are missing.

Developing a Smartphone Application to Support Smoking Behavior Change through Social Comparison.

The growing field of mHealth has often dealt with the modification of harmful behaviors, such as smoking, that are associated with medical conditions. Smoking behavior has been targeted by numerous mHealth smoking cessation interventions with the help of a wide range of behavior change support (BCS) techniques. However, the exploitation of the established BCS technique of social comparison by mHealth research on smoking cessation has been limited.

The Extent and Coverage of Current Knowledge of Connected Health: Systematic Mapping Study.

Background: This study examines the development of the connected health (CH) research landscape with a view to providing an overview of the existing CH research. The research field of CH has experienced rapid growth coinciding with increasing pressure on health care systems to become more proactive and patient centered.

Objective: This study aimed to assess the extent and coverage of the current body of knowledge in CH.

Connected Health Services: Framework for an Impact Assessment.

Background: Connected health (CH), as a new paradigm, manages individual and community health in a holistic manner by leveraging a variety of technologies and has the potential for the incorporation of telehealth and integrated care services, covering the whole spectrum of health-related services addressing healthy subjects and chronic patients. The reorganization of services around the person or citizen has been expected to bring high impact in the health care domain. There are a series of concerns (eg, contextual factors influencing the impact of care models, the cost savings associated with CH solutions, and the sustainability of the CH ecosystem) that should be better addressed for CH technologies to reach stakeholders more successfully.

IRProfiler - a software toolbox for high throughput immune receptor profiling.

Background: The study of the huge diversity of immune receptors, often referred to as immune repertoire profiling, is a prerequisite for diagnosis, prognostication and monitoring of hematological disorders. In the era of high-throughput sequencing (HTS), the abundance of immunogenetic data has revealed unprecedented opportunities for the thorough profiling of T-cell receptors (TR) and B-cell receptors (BcR). However, the volume of the data to be analyzed mandates for efficient and ease-to-use immune repertoire profiling software applications.

A Sensor-Enabled Smartphone Application to Collect Eating Behavior Data for Population Screening.

The worldwide extent of obesity and eating disorders (ED) today highlights the necessity for efficient treatment, but also early prevention of eating-related diseases. A promising category of therapeutic and preventive interventions comes from the domain of behavioral informatics (BI), whose purpose is to monitor and modify harmful behaviors - unhealthy eating in the particular case - with the help of information and communication technologies. Smartphones have already shown great promise in delivering such BI interventions in the field of obesity and ED.

Designing the user interfaces of a behavior modification intervention for obesity & eating disorders prevention.

The recent immense diffusion of smartphones has significantly upgraded the role of mobile user interfaces in interventions that build and/or maintain healthier lifestyles. Indeed, high-quality, user-centered smartphone applications are able to serve as advanced front-ends to such interventions. These smartphone applications, coupled with portable or wearable sensors, are being employed for monitoring day to day health-related behaviors, including eating and physical activity.

A computational infrastructure for evaluating Care-Coordination and Telehealth services in Europe.

This paper presents the computational framework that is employed for the analysis of health related key drivers and indicators within ACT, a project aiming to improve the deployment of Care Coordination and Telehealth services/programmes across Europe, through an iterative evidence collection-evaluation-refinement process. An open-source solution is proposed, combining a series of established software technologies. The paper focuses on technical aspects of the framework and presents a worked example of a usage scenario.

A computerized methodology for improved virus typing by PCR-RFLP gel electrophoresis.

The analysis of digitized images from polymerase chain reaction–restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP)gel electrophoresis examinations is a popular method for virus typing, i.e., for identifying the virus type(s) that have infected an investigated biological sample.