Publications by authors named "Melek Somai"

Large language models (LLMs) have emerged as a popular resource for generating information relevant to a user query. Such models are created through a resource-intensive training process utilizing an extensive, static corpus of textual data. This static nature results in limitations for adoption in domains with rapidly changing knowledge, proprietary information, and sensitive data.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: Transitions of care are pivotal, vulnerable times as patients are discharged from the hospital. Telephonic care coordination is standard care, but labor intensive. We implemented a patient postdischarge digital engagement (PDDE) program to scale coordination.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Few data exist that highlight areas where telemedicine shines or struggles from the patient perspective. We conducted a retrospective analysis of patient experience data from 19,465 visits using a logistic regression to model the odds a virtual visit addressed a patient's medical needs. Patient age (80 years: OR 0.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: While patient interest in telehealth increases, clinicians' perspectives may influence longer-term adoption. We sought to identify facilitators and barriers to continued clinician incorporation of telehealth into practice.

Methods: A cross-sectional 24-item web-based survey was emailed to 491 providers with ≥50 video visits (VVs) within an academic health system between 1 March 2020 and 31 December 2020.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • - Metformin, a diabetes medication, shows potential anti-aging effects and may influence the onset of dementia, although previous studies have yielded mixed results.
  • - Using a causal inference approach in clinical trials, the study found that metformin use is linked to lower overall mortality and a reduced risk of developing dementia compared to another diabetes drug, sulfonylureas.
  • - Additionally, laboratory tests revealed that metformin can decrease levels of two proteins associated with Alzheimer's disease in brain cells, suggesting it could protect against dementia through mechanisms other than just controlling blood sugar levels.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

To understand disease, scientists are producing comprehensive omics datasets. However, the majority of these are Eurocentric. Recently, the inclusion of patients from Asia and the Middle East in genomic analyses uncovered unique loci linked to COVID-19 severity.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Telemedicine has been an essential form of care since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, telemedicine may exacerbate disparities for populations with limited digital literacy or access, such as older adults, racial minorities, patients of low income, rural residences, or limited English proficiency. From March 2020 to March 2022, this retrospective cohort study analyzed the use of in-person, phone/message, and telemedical care at a single tertiary care center in an oncology department.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Importance: Health care systems have implemented remote patient monitoring (RPM) programs to manage patients with COVID-19 at home, but the associations between participation and outcomes or resource utilization are unclear.

Objective: To assess whether an RPM program for COVID-19 is associated with lower or higher likelihood of hospitalization and whether patients who are admitted present earlier or later for hospital care.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This retrospective, observational, cohort study of RPM was performed at Froedtert & Medical College of Wisconsin Health Network, an academic health system in southeastern Wisconsin.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: Use the RE-AIM framework to examine the implementation of a patient contextual data (PCD) Tool designed to share patients' needs, values, and preferences with care teams ahead of clinical encounters.

Materials & Methods: Observational study that follows initial PCD Tool scaling across primary care at a Midwestern academic health network. Program invitations, enrollment, patient submissions, and clinician views were tracked over a 1-year study period.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Although telemedicine has been an important conduit for clinical care during the COVID-19 pandemic, not all patients have been able to meaningfully participate in this mode of health care provision. Challenges with accessing telemedicine using consumer technology can interfere with the ability of patients and clinicians to meaningfully connect and lead to significant investments in time by clinicians and their staff. In this narrative case, we identify issues related to patients' use of technology, make comparisons between telehealth adoption and the deployment of electronic health records, and propose that building intuitive and supported digital care experiences for patients is required to make virtual care sustainable.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Importance: Telemedicine provides patients access to episodic and longitudinal care. Policy discussions surrounding future support for telemedicine require an understanding of factors associated with successful video visits.

Objective: To assess patient and clinician factors associated with successful and with failed video visits.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: The telemedicine industry has been experiencing fast growth in recent years. The outbreak of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) further accelerated the deployment and utilization of telemedicine services. An analysis of the socioeconomic characteristics of telemedicine users to understand potential socioeconomic gaps and disparities is critical for improving the adoption of telemedicine services among patients.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Depression and anxiety disorders are prevalent mental health conditions; yet they are often unrecognized, under-addressed and/or under-treated, and specialty treatment for these conditions is oftentimes difficult to access. By acting either as a bridge to therapy or as a form of therapy, digital tools, such as those that provide internet-based cognitive behavioral therapy (iCBT), may help clinicians support their patients' mental health needs. At one academic health system, a digital mental health program was deployed in primary care and outpatient behavioral health programs to help patients meet needs identified through screening or clinical visits.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Patient contextual data (PCD) are often missing from electronic health records, limiting the opportunity to incorporate preferences and life circumstances into care. Engaging patients through tools that collect and summarize such data may improve communication and patient activation. However, differential tool adoption by race might widen health care disparities.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Patients and physicians engaging together in the electronic health record (EHR) during clinical visits may provide opportunities to both improve patient understanding and reduce medical errors.

Objective: To assess the potential impact of a patient EHR display intervention on patient quality and safety. We hypothesized that if patients had a dedicated display with an explicit invitation to follow clinicians in the EHR that this would identify several opportunities to engage patients in their care quality and safety.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Patient-centered care is respectful of and responsive to individual patient preferences, needs, and values. To provide patient-centered care, clinicians need to know and incorporate patients' context into their communication and care with patients. Patient contextual data (PCD) encompass social determinants of health and patients' needs, values, goals, and preferences relevant to their care.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

This cross-sectional study examines the association of patient use of a free online symptom checker tool with patient plans for seeking medical care.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: ClinicalTrials.gov is one of the largest trials' registries in the world.

Objective: To leverage the ClinicalTrials.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Advances in predictive analytics and machine learning supported by an ever-increasing wealth of data and processing power are transforming almost every industry. Accuracy and precision of predictive analytics have significantly increased over the past few years and are evolving at an exponential pace. There have been significant breakthroughs in using Predictive Analytics in healthcare where it is held as the foundation of precision medicine.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The UK is one of the largest funders of health research in the world, but little is known about how health funding is spent. Our study explores whether major UK public and charitable health research funders support the research of UK-based scientists producing the most highly-cited research. To address this question, we searched for UK-based authors of peer-reviewed papers that were published between January 2006 and February 2018 and received over 1000 citations in Scopus.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

In order to ensure the continued, safe administration of pharmaceuticals, particularly those agents that have been recently introduced into the market, there is a need for improved surveillance after product release. This is particularly so because drugs are used by a variety of patients whose particular characteristics may not have been fully captured in the original market approval studies. Even well-conducted, randomized controlled trials are likely to have excluded a large proportion of individuals because of any number of issues.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: In 2012 the World Health Organization reported 8.7 million new cases of Tuberculosis worldwide, causing 1.4 million deaths (1).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF