Publications by authors named "Irena Parvanova"

Successful implementation of telehealth platforms requires a detailed understanding of patient's needs, preferences, and attitudes toward a home-based platform. The goal of this study was to identify patient-centered characteristics of a cancer rehabilitation system based on cognitive evaluation of user interface and semi-structured qualitative interviews. Quantitative and qualitative feedback from 29 patients with metastatic urogenital cancer was collected after using a cancer telerehabilitation system.

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The study was aimed at exploring patients' experiences after the completion of a 12-month pulmonary telerehabilitation (PR) program. Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with 16 COPD patients. The interviews were analyzed using a thematic approach to identify patterns and themes.

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This research aimed to develop a model for real-time prediction of aerobic exercise exertion levels. ECG signals were registered during 16-minute cycling exercises. Perceived ratings of exertion (RPE) were collected each minute from the study participants.

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Cancer-related physical impairments and functional decline affect most patients receiving chemotherapy. Despite evidence that exercise can improve these symptoms, access to exercise-based rehabilitation for cancer patients is limited. Providing telerehabilitation services has shown promising results in alleviating these barriers to access.

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As the SARS-CoV-2 virus continues to remain a universal threat on a global scale, a large number of COVID-19 clinical trials and observational studies are being conducted and published. Currently, 9,202 COVID-19 clinical trials have been registered on ClinicalTrials.gov and 293,187 COVID-19 articles were indexed in PubMed.

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The implementation process in the routine clinical care of a new predictive tool based on machine learning algorithms has been investigated using the RE-AIM framework. Semi-structured qualitative interviews have been conducted with a broad range of clinicians to elucidate potential barriers and facilitators of the implementation process across five major domains: Reach, Efficacy, Adoption, Implementation, and Maintenance. The analysis of 23 clinician interviews demonstrated a limited reach and adoption of the new tool and identified areas for improvement in implementation and maintenance.

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One of the major barriers to joining pulmonary rehabilitation (PR) programs is a lack of awareness about its benefits, combined with overall skepticism about regular exercise among COPD patients. Empowering COPD patients with foundational knowledge about PR may potentially facilitate their decision to join a PR program. A virtual reality (VR) app may serve as an engaging and interactive means to deliver PR education; however, the feasibility of this approach in COPD patients is unknown.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study focused on creating machine learning algorithms to classify cycling exercise exertion levels using data from wearable devices.
  • The minimum redundancy maximum relevance algorithm (mRMR) was used to select the most effective features for the classification.
  • Among five machine learning classifiers tested, the Naïve Bayes classifier achieved the highest accuracy with an F1 score of 79%, indicating potential for real-time monitoring of exercise intensity.
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To effectively develop patient-centered interfaces and functionality, it is essential to investigate different viewpoints on pulmonary telerehabilitation. The purpose of this study is to explore the views and experiences of COPD patients after the completion of a 12-month home-based pulmonary telerehabilitation program. Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with 15 COPD patients.

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COVID-19 has caused a worldwide pandemic, accompanied by a high number of deaths and hospitalizations. Multiple preventative vaccines and variety of COVID-19 treatments have been developed and explored. This large volume of scientific work led to an extensive number of COVID-19 publications, which resulted in the necessity to standardize, store, share, and investigate research results in a harmonized manner.

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Purpose: This paper focuses on developing and testing three versions of interactive bike (iBikE) interfaces for remote monitoring and control of cycling exercise sessions to promote upper and lower limb rehabilitation.

Methods: Two versions of the system, which consisted of a portable bike and a tablet PC, were designed to communicate through either Bluetooth low energy (BLE) or Wi-Fi interfaces for real-time monitoring of exercise progress by both the users and their clinical team. The third version of the iBikE system consisted of a motorized bike and a tablet PC.

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Background: Telerehabiliation has been shown to have great potential in expanding access to rehabilitation services, enhancing patients' quality of life, and improving clinical outcomes. Stationary biking exercise can serve as an effective aerobic component of home-based physical rehabilitation programs. Remote monitoring of biking exercise provides necessary safeguards to ensure exercise adherence and safety in patients' homes.

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Informed consent process assures that research study participants are properly informed about the study prior to their consent. Due to the increasing significance of electronic informed consent (eIC) platforms, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, we conducted a scoping review of eIC systems to address the following characteristics: 1) technological features of current eIC platforms, 2) eIC platforms usability and efficacy, and 3) areas for future eIC research. We performed a literature search using publically available PubMed repository, where we included studies discussing an eIC platform or multimedia educational module given to patients prior to signing a consent form.

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Core outcome sets (COS) are necessary to ensure the systematic collection, metadata analysis and sharing the information across studies. However, development of an area-specific clinical research is costly and time consuming. ClinicalTrials.

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The maintenance of biomedical databases requires ongoing and systematic efforts in keeping them up-to-date which may affect long-term sustainability. Since research has become more reliant on publicly available biomedical data collections, it is important to understand factors affecting their longevity. The aim of this article was to explore potential determinants of biomedical database longevity.

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Cancer rehabilitation (CR) has been shown to address physical impairments and progressive disablement experienced by patients with cancer. Access to CR is limited by multiple barriers. Previous studies demonstrated that telemedicine approaches may facilitate access to rehabilitation services however usability and acceptance of cancer telerehabilitation has not been systematically evaluated.

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This study focuses on feedback from domain experts to assess usability and acceptance of the E-Consent electronic consent platform. Quantitative and qualitative data were captured throughout the usability inspection, which was structured around a cognitive walkthrough with heuristics evaluation. Additional surveys measured biobanking knowledge and attitudes and familiarity with informed consent.

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Advancements in cancer research and treatment have highlighted the need for standardization and sharing of cancer stem cell (CSC) data to facilitate research transparency and to promote collaboration within the scientific community. Although previous applications have attempted to gather and disseminate these data, currently no platform organizes the heterogeneous CSC information into a harmonized project-based framework. The aim of our platform, ReMeDy, is to provide an intelligent informatics solution integrating diverse CSC characteristics, outcomes information, and omics data across clinical, preclinical and in vitro studies.

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Recent studies demonstrated that comparative analysis of stem cell research data sets originating from multiple studies can produce new information and help with hypotheses generation. Effective approaches for incorporating multiple diverse heterogeneous data sets collected from stem cell projects into a harmonized project-based framework have been lacking. Here, we provide an intelligent informatics solution for integrating comprehensive characterizations of stem cells with research subject and project outcome information.

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Abstract: Recent regenerative medicine studies have emphasized the need for increased standardization, harmonization and sharing of information related to stem cell product characterization, to help drive these innovative interventions toward public availability and to increase collaboration in the scientific community. Although numerous attempts and numerous databases have been made to manage these data, a platform that incorporates all the heterogeneous data collected from stem cell projects into a harmonized project-based framework is still lacking. The aim of the database, which is described in this study, is to provide an intelligent informatics solution that integrates comprehensive characterization of diverse stem cell product characteristics with research subject and project outcome information.

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Advancements in regenerative medicine have highlighted the need for increased standardization and sharing of stem cell products to help drive these innovative interventions toward public availability and to increase collaboration in the scientific community. Although numerous attempts and numerous databases have been made to store this data, there is still a lack of a platform that incorporates heterogeneous stem cell information into a harmonized project-based framework. The aim of the platform described in this study, ReMeDy, is to provide an intelligent informatics solution which integrates diverse stem cell product characteristics with study subject and omics information.

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Introduction of core outcome sets (COS) facilitates evidence synthesis, transparency in outcome reporting, and standardization in clinical research. However, development of COS may be a time consuming and expensive process. Publicly available repositories, such as ClinicalTrials.

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ClinicalTrials.gov (CTG) provides integrated access to structured records of thousands of randomized clinical trials (RCT). CTG functionality allows download of the entire dataset in XML format for further knowledge discovery and analytics.

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The aim of this study was to examine existing methods for sharing results of stem cell research via online data repositories. To identify the relevant repositories, a PubMed search was conducted using standard MeSH terms which was followed by a web-based search of relevant databases. The search yielded 16 databases created between 2010 and 2019.

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This study seeks to assess usability and acceptance of E-Consent on mobile devices such as tablet computers for collecting universal biobank consents. Usability inspection occurred via cognitive walkthroughs and heuristics evaluations, supplemented by surveys to capture health literacy, patient engagement, and other metrics. 17 patients of varied ages, backgrounds, and occupations participated in the study.

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