Publications by authors named "Urs-Vito Albrecht"

Incorporating digital medicine into medical education equips students for the evolving landscape of healthcare. This study aimed to assess a digital medicine course developed at Bielefeld University by evaluating student attainment of learning outcomes outlined by Foadi et al. In the course, the students designed a digital application for various medical conditions, taking into account interdisciplinary factors.

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Article Synopsis
  • Modern ballistocardiography (BCG) and seismocardiography (SCG) utilize acceleration sensors to track body movements caused by heartbeat and blood flow, but artifacts from sensor rotations complicate signal interpretation.
  • This observational study seeks to develop strategies for detecting and eliminating these acceleration artifacts from sensor rotation, distinguishing them from genuine heart-induced signals.
  • Data from four healthy participants will be collected during parabolic flights to analyze acceleration and angular velocity changes, leading to hypotheses about improving BCG-SCG methods using advanced multi-sensor technology.
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Background: An integration of digital medicine into medical education can help future physicians shape the digital transformation of medicine.

Objective: We aim to describe and evaluate a newly developed course for teaching digital medicine (the Bielefeld model) for the first time.

Methods: The course was held with undergraduate medical students at Medical School Ostwestfalen-Lippe at Bielefeld University, Germany, in 2023 and evaluated via pretest-posttest surveys.

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Germany's Digital Healthcare Act allows doctors to prescribe digital health applications (DiGAs) for reimbursement. DiGAs must demonstrate safety, data security, and a "positive impact on care" to be listed in the official directory. Previously, data for permanently listed DiGAs was analyzed.

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In recent decades, much work has been implemented in heart rate (HR) analysis using electrocardiographic (ECG) signals. We propose that algorithms developed to calculate HR based on detected R-peaks using ECG can be applied to seismocardiographic (SCG) signals, as they utilize common knowledge regarding heart rhythm and its underlying physiology. We implemented the experimental framework with methods developed for ECG signal processing and peak detection to be applied and evaluated on SCGs.

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Introduction: Hospitalised patients could benefit from the emergence of novel technologies for nursing care. There are numerous technical products available, but these rarely find their way into practice. Further knowledge is required about the circumstances under which technology in nursing is accepted and used.

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Background: Patients with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) are at increased risk of sudden cardiac death (SCD) due to ventricular arrhythmias and other arrhythmias. Screening for arrhythmias is mandatory to assess the individual SCD risk, but long-term electrocardiography (ECG) is rarely performed in routine clinical practice. Intensified monitoring may increase the detection rate of ventricular arrhythmias and identify more patients with an increased SCD risk who are potential candidates for the primary prophylactic implantation of an implantable cardioverter-defibrillator.

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Background: The Digital Healthcare Act, passed in November 2019, authorizes healthcare providers in Germany to prescribe digital health applications (DiGA) to patients covered by statutory health insurance. If DiGA meet specific efficacy requirements, they may be listed in a special directory maintained by the German Federal Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices. Due to the lack of well-founded app evaluation tools, the objectives were to assess (I) the evidence quality situation for DiGA in the literature and (II) how DiGA manufacturers deal with this issue, as reflected by the apps available in the aforementioned directory.

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Introduction: New technologies will be increasingly available for nursing care, including robots, patient mobilisation devices, digital event detection or prevention equipment. Technologies are expected to support nurses, increase patients' safety and reduce costs. Yet, although these technologies will significantly shape patients' experience, we need to learn more about patients' perspectives regarding new technology in care.

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Apps in the "Medicine" category of Apple's App Store were examined concerning the potential stigmatization of people with obesity through word and image language. Only 5/71 potentially stigmatizing apps related to obesity were identified. Stigmatization in this context can occur, for example, through the excessive promotion of very slim people in connection with weight loss-related apps.

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This poster describes the conciliation and approval process of the unified set of criteria for self-declaration of health app quality. The timeline underlines the necessity of transparency and open communication in regulations.

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In this paper, we describe the 5-year trends of COVID-related mobile apps in the Google Play platform obtained by retrospectively analyzing app descriptions. Out of 21764 and 48750 unique apps available free of charge in the "medical" and "health and fitness", there were 161 and 143 COVID-related apps, respectively. The prominentrise in apps' prevalence occurred in January 2021.

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Background: Smartphone apps are increasingly utilised by patients and physicians for medical purposes. Thus, numerous applications are provided on the App Store platforms.

Objectives: The aim of the study was to establish a novel, expanded approach of a semiautomated retrospective App Store analysis (SARASA) to identify and characterise health apps in the context of cardiac arrhythmias.

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Smartphones and health apps are an integral part of everyday life. They are increasingly being used for medical purposes. However, there is no fundamental basis or consensus on the evidence on which decisions are made towards a unified digital strategy.

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17 RCTs for 15 digital health applications (DiGA) permanently listed in the state-regulated register were analyzed descriptively for methodological study aspects relevant to evidence analysis. The analysis revealed that several underlying studies had limitations, at least worthy of discussion, in terms of their power concerning sample size, intervention and control group specifications, drop-out rates, and blinding.

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Google Play and Apple's App Store dominate the mobile health app market. We analyzed the metadata and descriptive texts of apps in the medical category using semi-automated retrospective app store analysis (SARASA) and compared the store offerings in terms of their number, descriptive texts, user ratings, medical device status, diseases, and conditions (both keyword-based). Relatively speaking, the store listings for the selected items were comparable.

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We describe the background, features and functions of a custom application for the acquisition, live presentation, and convenient recording of ballistocardiography data acquired by external accelerometric sensors.

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Background: Efficient digitization in medicine still is in its infancy but undeniably has great potential for current and future challenges in health care. Thus far, the rollout of medical apps has not resulted in widespread use of smartphones in the German health care sector-the reasons for this have not been clarified so far. Nevertheless, the lack of user involvement in the development process and content creation might contribute to low acceptance of these products.

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Background: Although apps are becoming increasingly relevant in healthcare, there is limited knowledge about how healthcare professionals perceive "quality" in this context and how quality principles that can aid them in assessing health-related apps may be prioritised. The objective was to investigate physicians' views of predefined (general) quality principles for health apps and to determine whether a ranking algorithm applied to the acquired data can provide stable results against various demographic influences and may thus be appropriate for prioritisation.

Methods: Participants of an online survey of members of two German professional orthopaedics associations conducted between 02/12/2019 and 02/01/2020 were asked about their perception of a set of quality principles for health apps (i.

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Background: Health-related mobile applications (apps) are rapidly increasing in number. There is an urgent need for assessment tools and algorithms that allow the usability and content criteria of these applications to be objectively assessed. The aim of this work was to establish and validate a concept for orthopedic societies to rate health apps to set a quality standard for their safe use.

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For a decade, seismocardiography (SCG) on smartphones has been an interesting topic within the technical community, but mobile applications for this topic are rare on the market. The transition from laboratory to bedside application seems to have not yet been completed. To possibly increase the chances of a successful implementation, the added value of the method needs to be addressed clearly and backed up by research.

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This paper describes the protocol of the microgravity experiment BEAT (Ballistocardiography for Extraterrestrial Applications and Long-Term Missions). The current study makes use of signal acquisition of cardiac parameters with a high-precision Ballistocardiography (BCG)/Seismocardiography (SCG) measurement system, which is integrated in a smart shirt (SmartTex). The goal is to evaluate the feasibility of this concept for continuous wearable monitoring and wireless data transfer.

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For cardiological datasets acquired via different methodologies, ECG signals that are recorded in parallel allow for relatively accurate matching. Some research issues, e.g.

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Background: Obesity is common in many industrialized nations and often accompanied by related health issues. Furthermore, individuals living with overweight or obesity are often confronted with stigmatization in their daily lives. These problems may be aggravated if the objectivity of health care professionals is compromised due to (unconscious) prejudices.

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