Electronic health records and data exchange in the WHO European region: A subregional analysis of achievements, challenges, and prospects.

Electronic health record (EHR) systems are powerful tools that enhance healthcare quality. They improve efficiency, enable data exchange, and ensure authorized access to patient information. In 2022, the World Health Organization Regional Office for Europe (WHO EURO) conducted a survey to assess the digital health capabilities of the 53 Member States.

The Tromsø Study: Lessons Learnt About Searching for Information About Health and Illness.

Introduction: Norway has a high use of e-health.

Methods: This paper summarizes and discusses the published data from the Tromsø 7 Study, conducted between 2015 and 2016, focusing on e-health utilization in the Norwegian population aged 40 and above.

Results: More than half of the participants reported using the Internet for health purposes.

Use of tele-nursing in primary care: A qualitative study on its negative and positive aspects.

Objective: To analyze the opinions of nursing professionals on the current limitations and future potential of digital tools in healthcare.

Design: Qualitative and descriptive study.

Location: The study took place during an asynchronous MOODLE course on the use of ICT in healthcare, specifically aimed at nursing professionals.

Methodological and Quality Flaws in the Use of Artificial Intelligence in Mental Health Research: Systematic Review.

Background: Artificial intelligence (AI) is giving rise to a revolution in medicine and health care. Mental health conditions are highly prevalent in many countries, and the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the risk of further erosion of the mental well-being in the population. Therefore, it is relevant to assess the current status of the application of AI toward mental health research to inform about trends, gaps, opportunities, and challenges.

Analytical exploratory tool for healthcare professionals to monitor cancer patients' progress.

Introduction: Cancer is a primary public concern in the European continent. Due to the large case numbers and survival rates, a significant population is living with cancer needs. Consequently, health professionals must deal with complex treatment decision-making processes.

Artificial intelligence and its impact on the domains of universal health coverage, health emergencies and health promotion: An overview of systematic reviews.

Background: Artificial intelligence is fueling a new revolution in medicine and in the healthcare sector. Despite the growing evidence on the benefits of artificial intelligence there are several aspects that limit the measure of its impact in people's health. It is necessary to assess the current status on the application of AI towards the improvement of people's health in the domains defined by WHO's Thirteenth General Programme of Work (GPW13) and the European Programme of Work (EPW), to inform about trends, gaps, opportunities, and challenges.

A Collective Intelligence Platform to Support Older Cancer Survivors: Towards the Definition of LifeChamps System and Big Data Reference Architecture.

Within the most recent years, most of the cancer patients are older age, which implies the necessity to a better understanding of aging and cancer connection. This work presents the LifeChamps solution built on top of cutting-edge Big Data architecture and HPC infrastructure concepts. An innovative architecture was envisioned supported by the Big Data Value Reference Model and answering the system requirements from high to low level and from logical to physical perspective, following the "4+1 architectural model".

Motivating Physical Activity for Individuals with Intellectual Disability through Indoor Bike Cycling and Exergaming.

People with intellectual disabilities have more sedentary lifestyles than the general population. Regular physical activity is of both medical and social importance, reducing the risk of cardiovascular disease and promoting functioning in everyday life. Exergames have been envisioned for promoting physical activity; however, most of them are not user-friendly for individuals with intellectual disabilities.

Empowering Patients Living With Chronic Conditions Using Video as an Educational Tool: Scoping Review.

Background: Video is used daily for various purposes, such as leisure, culture, and even learning. Currently, video is a tool that is available to a large part of the population and is simple to use. This audio-visual format has many advantages such as its low cost, speed of dissemination, and possible interaction between users.

Special Issue on E-Health Services.

The importance of e-health to citizens, patients, health providers, governments, and other stakeholders is rapidly increasing. E-health services have a range of advantages. For instance, e-health may improve access to services, reduce costs, and improve self-management.

Clustering Cardiovascular Risk Trajectories of Patients with Type 2 Diabetes Using Process Mining.

Patients with type 2 diabetes have a higher chance of developing cardiovascular diseases and an increased odds of mortality. Reliability of randomized clinical trials is continuously judged due to selection, attrition and reporting bias. Moreover, cardiovascular risk is frequently assessed in cross-sectional studies instead of observing the evolution of risk in longitudinal cohorts.

User Centered Design to Improve Information Exchange in Diabetes Care Through eHealth : Results from a Small Scale Exploratory Study.

Heterogeneity of people with diabetes makes maintaining blood glucose control and achieving therapy adherence a challenge. It is fundamental that patients get actively involved in the management of the disease in their living environments. The objective of this paper is to evaluate the use and acceptance of a self-management system for diabetes developed with User Centered Design Principles in community settings.

What do healthcare professionals need to turn risk models for type 2 diabetes into usable computerized clinical decision support systems? Lessons learned from the MOSAIC project.

Background: To understand user needs, system requirements and organizational conditions towards successful design and adoption of Clinical Decision Support Systems for Type 2 Diabetes (T2D) care built on top of computerized risk models.

Methods: The holistic and evidence-based CEHRES Roadmap, used to create eHealth solutions through participatory development approach, persuasive design techniques and business modelling, was adopted in the MOSAIC project to define the sequence of multidisciplinary methods organized in three phases, user needs, implementation and evaluation. The research was qualitative, the total number of participants was ninety, about five-seventeen involved in each round of experiment.

Toward Value-Based Healthcare through Interactive Process Mining in Emergency Rooms: The Stroke Case.

The application of Value-based Healthcare requires not only the identification of key processes in the clinical domain but also an adequate analysis of the value chain delivered to the patient. Data Science and Big Data approaches are technologies that enable the creation of accurate systems that model reality. However, classical Data Mining techniques are presented by professionals as black boxes.

The Potential of Self-Management mHealth for Pediatric Cystic Fibrosis: Mixed-Methods Study for Health Care and App Assessment.

Background: Remote care services and patient empowerment have boosted mobile health (mHealth). A study of user needs related to mHealth for pediatric cystic fibrosis (PCF) identified the set of preferred features mobile apps should support; however, the potential use of PCF apps and their suitability to fit into PCF clinical management remains unexplored.

Objective: We examine whether PCF holds potential for the implementation of mHealth care.

Optimisation of children z-score calculation based on new statistical techniques.

Background: Expressing anthropometric parameters (height, weight, BMI) as z-score is a key principle in the clinical assessment of children and adolescents. The Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) growth charts and the CDC-LMS method for z-score calculation are widely used to assess growth and nutritional status, though they can be imprecise in some percentiles.

Objective: To improve the accuracy of z-score calculation by revising the statistical method using the original data used to develop current z-score calculators.

App Features for Type 1 Diabetes Support and Patient Empowerment: Systematic Literature Review and Benchmark Comparison.

Background: Research in type 1 diabetes management has increased exponentially since the irruption of mobile health apps for its remote and self-management. Despite this fact, the features affect in the disease management and patient empowerment are adopted by app makers and provided to the general population remain unexplored.

Objective: To study the gap between literature and available apps for type 1 diabetes self-management and patient empowerment and to discover the features that an ideal app should provide to people with diabetes.

Integrated IoT intelligent system for the automatic detection of cardiac variability.

Detection of abnormal cardiac events during clinical examination is a matter of chances, as such events may not happen at that precise moment. We therefore propose the implementation and evaluation of a mobile based system that allows a real-time detection of cardiovascular problems related to heart-rate variability. Our approach is to integrate an Internet of Things eHealth kit based on Arduino and validated algorithms for heart rate variability to build a low-cost, reliable and scalable solution.

Towards the development of physiological models for emotions evaluation.

In the last decades numerous researches have revealed a strong link between emotions and several physiological responses. However, the automatic recognition of emotions still remains a challenge. In this work we describe a novel approach to estimate valence, arousal and dominance values from various biological parameters (derived from electrodermal activity, heart rate variability signal and electroencephalography), by means of multiple linear regression models.

Wearable Sensors Integrated with Internet of Things for Advancing eHealth Care.

Health and sociological indicators alert that life expectancy is increasing, hence so are the years that patients have to live with chronic diseases and co-morbidities. With the advancement in ICT, new tools and paradigms are been explored to provide effective and efficient health care. Telemedicine and health sensors stand as indispensable tools for promoting patient engagement, self-management of diseases and assist doctors to remotely follow up patients.

A dashboard-based system for supporting diabetes care.

Objective: To describe the development, as part of the European Union MOSAIC (Models and Simulation Techniques for Discovering Diabetes Influence Factors) project, of a dashboard-based system for the management of type 2 diabetes and assess its impact on clinical practice.

Methods: The MOSAIC dashboard system is based on predictive modeling, longitudinal data analytics, and the reuse and integration of data from hospitals and public health repositories. Data are merged into an i2b2 data warehouse, which feeds a set of advanced temporal analytic models, including temporal abstractions, care-flow mining, drug exposure pattern detection, and risk-prediction models for type 2 diabetes complications.

Combining multivariate statistics and the think-aloud protocol to assess Human-Computer Interaction barriers in symptom checkers.

Symptom checkers are software tools that allow users to submit a set of symptoms and receive advice related to them in the form of a diagnosis list, health information or triage. The heterogeneity of their potential users and the number of different components in their user interfaces can make testing with end-users unaffordable. We designed and executed a two-phase method to test the respiratory diseases module of the symptom checker Erdusyk.