Telehealth as a Component of One Health: a Position Paper.

Introduction: One Health (OH) refers to the integration of human, animal, and ecosystem health within one framework in the context of zoonoses, antimicrobial resistance and stewardship, and food security. Telehealth refers to distance delivery of healthcare. A systems approach is central to both One Health and telehealth, and telehealth can be a core component of One Health.

Self-care intervention using mobile apps for sexual and reproductive health in the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region.

Sexual and reproductive health (SRH) concerns physical, mental, and social well-being as related to sexual and reproductive systems. Self-care, which is the ability to promote health without the support of a health-care provider, can advance SRH, especially for fragile populations. Mobile health (mHealth) solutions can be used to raise awareness about SRH.

Recommendations of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) on Education in Biomedical and Health Informatics: Second Revision.

Background: The purpose of educational recommendations is to assist in establishing courses and programs in a discipline, to further develop existing educational activities in the various nations, and to support international initiatives for collaboration and sharing of courseware. The International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) has published two versions of its international recommendations in biomedical and health informatics (BMHI) education, initially in 2000 and revised in 2010. Given the recent changes to the science, technology, the needs of the healthcare systems, and the workforce of BMHI, a revision of the recommendations is necessary.

The Effectiveness of Serious Games for Alleviating Depression: Systematic Review and Meta-analysis.

Background: Depression is a common mental disorder characterized by disturbances in mood, thoughts, or behaviors. Serious games, which are games that have a purpose other than entertainment, have been used as a nonpharmacological therapeutic intervention for depression. Previous systematic reviews have summarized evidence of effectiveness of serious games in reducing depression symptoms; however, they are limited by design and methodological shortcomings.

"Digital Health Diplomacy" in Global Digital Health? A call for critique and discourse.

Actualizing the vision of Global Digital Health is a central issue on the Global Health Diplomacy agenda. The COVID-reinforced need for accelerated digital health progress will require political structures and processes to build a foundation for Global Digital Health. Simultaneously, Global Health Diplomacy uses digital technologies in its enactment.

The impact of e-health system implementation on UNWRA health services: an observational study.

Background: The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) provides primary-health-care services to more than 5 million Palestinian refugees in five operational fields (Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, West Bank, and Gaza) through 144 health centres. UNRWA developed its electronic health records (e-Health) system to improve monitoring and facilitation of health services provided to Palestinian refugees. By the end of 2017, the system had been deployed in 129 health centres, included the health files of 3 million patients, and managed more than 8 million visits per year.

Evidence-Based Health Informatics as the Foundation for the COVID-19 Response: A Joint Call for Action.

Background: As a major public health crisis, the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic demonstrates the urgent need for safe, effective, and evidence-based implementations of digital health. The urgency stems from the frequent tendency to focus attention on seemingly high promising digital health interventions despite being poorly validated in times of crisis.

Aim: In this paper, we describe a joint call for action to use and leverage evidence-based health informatics as the foundation for the COVID-19 response and public health interventions.

Telehealth and the COVID-19 Pandemic: International Perspectives and a Health Systems Framework for Telehealth Implementation to Support Critical Response.

Objectives: Telehealth implementation is a complex systems-based endeavour. This paper compares telehealth responses to (COrona VIrus Disease 2019) COVID-19 across ten countries to identify lessons learned about the complexity of telehealth during critical response such as in response to a global pandemic. Our overall objective is to develop a health systems-based framework for telehealth implementation to support critical response.

Digital Health during COVID-19: Informatics Dialogue with the World Health Organization.

Background: On December 16, 2020 representatives of the International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA), a Non-Governmental Organization in official relations with the World Health Organization (WHO), along with its International Academy for Health Sciences Informatics (IAHSI), held an open dialogue with WHO Director General (WHO DG) Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus about the opportunities and challenges of digital health during the COVID-19 global pandemic.

Objectives: The aim of this paper is to report the outcomes of the dialogue and discussions with more than 200 participants representing different civil society organizations (CSOs).

Methods: The dialogue was held in form of a webinar.

Ethics in Telehealth: Comparison between Guidelines and Practice-based Experience -the Case for Learning Health Systems.

Objectives: To understand ethical issues within the tele-health domain, specifically how well established macro level telehealth guidelines map with micro level practitioner perspectives.

Methods: We developed four overarching issues to use as a starting point for developing an ethical framework for telehealth. We then reviewed telemedicine ethics guidelines elaborated by the American Medical Association (AMA), the World Medical Association (WMA), and the telehealth component of the Health Professions council of South Africa (HPCSA).

Development and Deployment of an e-Health System in UNRWA Healthcare Centers (HCs): The Experience and Evidence.

UNRWA recognized the need to develop and introduce eHealth programme based on needs assessment. The web-based e-Health application was developed and deployed in 116 out of 143 HCs in the five fields of operation. Evaluation of the application revealed positive outcomes in terms of reporting requirements, statistics, time saving, efficiency, drug compliance and workflow in general.

Discussion of "Representation of People's Decisions in Health Information Systems: A Complementary Approach for Understanding Health Care Systems and Population Health".

This article is part of a For-Discussion-Section of Methods of Information in Medicine about the paper "Representation of People's Decisions in Health Information Systems: A Complementary Approach for Understanding Health Care Systems and Population Health" written by Fernan Gonzalez Bernaldo de Quiros, Adriana Ruth Dawidowski, and Silvana Figar. It is introduced by an editorial. This article contains the combined commentaries invited to independently comment on the paper of de Quiros, Dawidowski, and Figar.

Discussion of "The New Role of Biomedical Informatics in the Age of Digital Medicine".

This article is part of a For-Discussion-Section of Methods of Information in Medicine about the paper "The New Role of Biomedical Informatics in the Age of Digital Medicine" written by Fernando J. Martin-Sanchez and Guillermo H. Lopez-Campos [1].

Online eLearning for undergraduates in health professions: A systematic review of the impact on knowledge, skills, attitudes and satisfaction.

Background: Health systems worldwide are facing shortages in health professional workforce. Several studies have demonstrated the direct correlation between the availability of health workers, coverage of health services, and population health outcomes. To address this shortage, online eLearning is increasingly being adopted in health professionals' education.

Offline eLearning for undergraduates in health professions: A systematic review of the impact on knowledge, skills, attitudes and satisfaction.

Background: The world is short of 7.2 million health-care workers and this figure is growing. The shortage of teachers is even greater, which limits traditional education modes.

On the Internet of Things, smart cities and the WHO Healthy Cities.

This article gives a brief overview of the Internet of Things (IoT) for cities, offering examples of IoT-powered 21st century smart cities, including the experience of the Spanish city of Barcelona in implementing its own IoT-driven services to improve the quality of life of its people through measures that promote an eco-friendly, sustainable environment. The potential benefits as well as the challenges associated with IoT for cities are discussed. Much of the 'big data' that are continuously generated by IoT sensors, devices, systems and services are geo-tagged or geo-located.

BabelMeSH and PICO Linguist in Arabic.

BabelMeSH is a multilanguage search for MEDLINE/PubMed. We created a database of Arabic translations of MeSH terms and other medical terms using MySQL and developed a Web interface for searching MEDLINE/PubMed in Arabic. We evaluated the accuracy of BabelMeSH using a list of medical terms from BMJ Clinical Evidence.

Index Medicus for the Eastern Mediterranean region.

The study provides the rationale, history and current status of the Index Medicus for the World Health Organization Eastern Mediterranean Region. The Index is unique in combining the geographic coverage of peer-reviewed health and biomedical journals (408 titles) from the 22 countries of the Region. Compiling and publishing the Index coupled with a document delivery service is an integral part of the WHO Regional Office's knowledge management and sharing programme.