Comput Struct Biotechnol J
December 2024
Healthcare services and products are rapidly changing due to the development of new technologies, offering relevant solutions to improve patient outcomes. Patient-Generated Health Data and knowledge-sharing across the European Union (EU) has a great potential of making healthcare provision more effective and efficient by putting the patient at the centre of the healthcare process. While such initiatives have been taken before, a uniting and overarching approach is still missing.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Research on rare diseases focuses less on caregivers, who play an important role in meeting the medical and social needs of the people they care for. Caregivers of people with rare diseases face negative outcomes due to problems with diagnosis, caring for complex conditions and expensive treatments. However, the factors that affect their quality of life are poorly understood.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Rare diseases in Europe are defined as diseases with a prevalence of less than 5 per 10,000 people. Despite their individual rarity, the total number of rare diseases is considerable. Rare diseases are often chronic and complex, affecting physical, mental, and neurological health.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA better understanding of patients' adherence to treatment is a prerequisite to maximize the benefit of healthcare provision for patients, reduce treatment costs, and is a key factor in a variety of subsequent health outcomes. We aim to understand the state of the art of scientific evidence about which factors influence patients' adherence to treatment. A systematic literature review was conducted using PRISMA guidelines in five separate electronic databases of scientific publications: PubMed, PsycINFO (ProQuest), Cochrane library (Ovid), Google Scholar, and Web of Science.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Measuring the safety culture in Healthcare is an important step in improving patient safety. One of the most commonly used instruments to measure the safety climate is the Safety Attitudes Questionnaire (SAQ). The aim of the current study was to establish the validity and reliability of the Slovenian version of the SAQ for the operating room SAQ-OR.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHigher-level classifications often must account for monotypic taxa representing depauperate evolutionary lineages and lacking synapomorphies of their better-known, well-defined sister clades. In a ranked (Linnean) or unranked (phylogenetic) classification system, discovering such a depauperate taxon does not necessarily invalidate the rank classification of sister clades. Named higher taxa must be monophyletic to be phylogenetically valid.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Digital health interventions offer new methods for delivering healthcare, with the potential to innovate healthcare services. Key performance indicators play a role in the evaluation, measurement, and improvement in healthcare quality and service performance. The aim of this scoping review was to identify current knowledge and evidence surrounding the development of key performance indicators for digital health interventions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntegrating HIV-related care with treatment for substance use disorder provides an opportunity to better meet the needs of people living with these conditions. People with substance use disorder are rendered especially vulnerable by prevailing policies, structural inequalities, and stigmatisation. In this Series paper we analyse existing literature and empirical evidence from scoping reviews on integration designs for the treatment of HIV and substance use disorder, to understand barriers to and facilitators of care integration and to map ways forward.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe present study examines the role of personality traits, interpersonal relationships, and sociodemographic factors on perceived stress, related to COVID-19, and compliance with measures to mitigate its spread. Data were collected in the midst of the 'first wave' lockdown, with the survey completed in full by 963 participants. We measured stress, directly related to the pandemic, rather than general stress, and were able to distinguish between symptoms of emotional, behavioural, cognitive, physical stress, and alienation with high concordance.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNaturwissenschaften
October 2021
Adult body size, development time, and growth rates are components of organismal life histories, which crucially influence fitness and are subject to trade-offs. If selection is sex-specific, male and female developments can eventually lead to different optimal sizes. This can be achieved through developmental plasticity and sex-specific developmental trajectories.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Providing diagnostic and treatment information to patients is a core clinical skill, but evidence for the effectiveness of different information-giving strategies is inconsistent. This systematic review aimed to investigate the reported effects of empirically tested communication strategies for providing information on patient-related outcomes: information recall and (health-related) behaviors.
Methods: The databases MEDLINE, Embase, PsycINFO (Ovid), Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, and relevant bibliographies were systematically searched from the inception to April 24, 2020, without restrictions, for articles testing information-giving strategies for physicians (PROSPERO ID: CRD42019115791).
Unlabelled: The current COVID-19 pandemic caught the decision makers in many countries sub-optimally prepared to respond. To better cope with similar situations in the future, it is vital to understand the major predictors of health-beneficial behavior and adherence to imposed mitigation measures and guidelines. To tailor the promotion of government-imposed measures, it is important to understand how the sociodemographic background combined with personality traits affect the perception and responsiveness of people.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAims: To achieve better treatment decisions, type 2 diabetes patients need to be empowered also through knowledge increase. The aim of this study was to evaluate and compare the level of knowledge and overall perceptions of type 2 diabetes within the elderly diabetic patients before and after the National Diabetes Prevention and Care Development Programme 2010-2020.
Methods: Diabetes knowledge test was used in two cross-sectional studies in 2011 and 2020 where the samples of type 2 diabetes patients 65+ were surveyed.
Diversity, inclusion and interdisciplinary collaboration are drivers for healthcare innovation and adoption of new, technology-mediated services. The importance of diversity has been highlighted by the United Nations' in SDG5 "Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls", to drive adoption of social and digital innovation. Women play an instrumental role in health care and are in position to bring about significant changes to support ongoing digitalization and transformation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHeterogeneity in species diversity is driven by the dynamics of speciation and extinction, potentially influenced by organismal and environmental factors. Here, we explore macroevolutionary trends on a phylogeny of golden orbweavers (spider family Nephilidae). Our initial inference detects heterogeneity in speciation and extinction, with accelerated extinction rates in the extremely sexually size dimorphic Nephila and accelerated speciation in Herennia, a lineage defined by highly derived, arboricolous webs, and pronounced island endemism.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFbelieve that there is much to learn from the experiences of low and middle income countries in co-producing knowledge and working with communities to find feasible and acceptable solutions to healthcare concerns
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: To systematize the scientific knowledge of empirically tested strategies for verbally providing medical information in patient-physician consultations.
Methods: A scoping review searching for terms related to physician, information, oral communication, and controlled study. Four pairs of reviewers screened articles.
Background: Measurements of health-related quality of life (HRQoL) among celiac disease patients using a validated questionnaire have been lacking in Slovenia. This study aims to measure HRQoL in celiac disease (CD) patients using EQ-5D internationally validated questionnaire and comparing it to the HRQoL of the general population.
Methods: In this cross sectional analysis all of the approximately 2000 members of the Slovenian Celiac Society were invited to take part.
The COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented global crisis. Many countries have implemented restrictions on population movement to slow the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 and prevent health systems from becoming overwhelmed; some have instituted full or partial lockdowns. However, lockdowns and other extreme restrictions cannot be sustained for the long term in the hope that there will be an effective vaccine or treatment for COVID-19.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFVicariance and dispersal events, combined with intricate global climatic history, have left an imprint on the spatiotemporal distribution and diversity of many organisms. Anelosimus cobweb spiders (Theridiidae), are organisms ranging in behavior from solitary to highly social, with a cosmopolitan distribution in temperate to tropical areas. Their evolutionary history and the discontinuous distribution of species richness suggest that 1) long-distance overwater dispersal and 2) climate change during the Neogene (23-2.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Preventing adverse events is one of the most important issues in health care.
Purpose: The purpose of this systematic review was to determine the impact of person-centered interventions on patient outcomes in an acute care setting.
Methods: The review was conducted according to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses statement.
Eur J Obstet Gynecol Reprod Biol
July 2019
Objective: Celiac disease is associated with higher risk of infertility, recurrent abortions, and adverse outcomes in pregnancy and in puerperium. The aim of the study was to analyse the association between celiac disease and reproductive disorders in the group of celiac patients and compare these to healthy controls.
Methods: A retrospective case-control matched study.
Objective: Celiac disease (CD) is an autoimmune disorder associated with numerous health problems, including reproductive disorders. This study was performed to analyze the association between CD and the menstrual cycle in a group of patients with CD and compare these patients' characteristics with those of healthy women.
Methods: The study included 145 patients with CD (age, 15-51 years) and 162 healthy women (age, 18-55 years).
Objective: To provide an overview of documented studies and initiatives that demonstrate efforts to manage and improve alarm systems for quality in healthcare by human, organisational and technical factors.
Methods: A literature review, a grey literature review, interviews and a review of alarm-related standards (IEC 60601-1-8, IEC 62366-1:2015 and ANSI/Advancement of Medical Instrumentation HE 75:2009/2013) were conducted. Qualitative analysis was conducted to identify common themes of improvement elements in the literature and grey literature reviews, interviews and the review of alarm-related standards.