Background: Diabetes affects millions of people in the United States and poses significant health and economic challenges, but it can be prevented or managed through health behavior changes. Such changes might be aided by voice-activated personal assistants (VAPAs), which offer interactive and real-time assistance through features such as reminders, or obtaining health information. However, there are little data on interest and acceptability of integrating VAPAs into programs such as the National Diabetes Prevention Program (National DPP) or diabetes, self-management, education, and support (DSMES) services.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIndividuals with autism and individuals with dyslexia both show reduced use of previous sensory information (stimuli statistics) in perceptual tasks, even though these are very different neurodevelopmental disorders. To better understand how past sensory information influences the perceptual experience in these disorders, we first investigated the trial-by-trial performance of neurotypical participants in a serial discrimination task. Neurotypical participants overweighted recent stimuli, revealing fast updating of internal sensory models, which is adaptive in changing environments.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) is of great public health importance. Health care workers (HCWs) in various health care facilities especially in developing countries such as Nigeria, are particularly vulnerable to the disease. It is therefore imperative that health care workers adopt the necessary preventive practices to reduce to the barest minimum the risk of infection transmission.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA perceptual phenomenon is reported, whereby prior acoustic context has a large, rapid and long-lasting effect on a basic auditory judgement. Pairs of tones were devised to include ambiguous transitions between frequency components, such that listeners were equally likely to report an upward or downward 'pitch' shift between tones. We show that presenting context tones before the ambiguous pair almost fully determines the perceived direction of shift.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntrospection and language are the cognitive prides of humankind, but their interactions in healthy cognition remain unclear. Episodes of mind-wandering, where personal thoughts often go unnoticed for some time before being introspected, offer a unique opportunity to study the role of language in introspection. In this paper, we show that inner speech facilitates awareness of mind-wandering.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Workers in the quarry industries are exposed to hazards resulting from the inhalation of air borne particulates. The study determined the prevalence of respiratory symptoms and assessed ventilatory functions among quarry workers in Edo state, Nigeria.
Methods: Quarry workers (site workers and office workers) were interviewed using structured questionnaire.
Developing the capacity to effectively carry out public health research is an integral part of health systems at both the national and global levels and strengthening research capacity is recognized as an approach to better health and development in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Especially fields such as sexual and reproductive health (SRH) would require inter-disciplinary teams of researchers equipped with a range of methodologies to achieve this. In November 2013, as part of the International Family Planning Conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, a group of African researchers came together to discuss the gaps and strategies to improve sexual and reproductive health research and research capacity strengthening in Africa.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis work is in line with an on-going effort tending toward a computational (quantitative and refutable) understanding of human neuro-cognitive processes. Many sophisticated models for behavioural and neurobiological data have flourished during the past decade. Most of these models are partly unspecified (i.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe compare health information technology (IT) in the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to norms in the private sector, and we estimate the costs and benefits of selected VA health IT systems. The VA spent proportionately more on IT than the private health care sector spent, but it achieved higher levels of IT adoption and quality of care. The potential value of the VA's health IT investments is estimated at $3.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPersonal health records (PHRs) are a rapidly expanding area in medical informatics due to the belief that they may improve healthcare delivery and control costs of care. To truly understand the full potential value of a technology, a cost analysis is critical.However, little evidence exists on the value potential of PHRs, and a cost model for PHRs does not currently exist in the literature.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFToday, the nascent field of personal health records (PHRs) lacks a comprehensive taxonomy that encompasses the full range of PHRs currently in existence and what may be possible. The Center for Information Technology Leadership (CITL) has created a taxonomy that broadly defines a PHR as having both an infrastructure component, which allows for data viewing and sharing, and an application component, allowing for self-management and information exchange. The taxonomy also accounts for different PHR architectures provider, payer, third-party, or interoperable.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFToday, the field of telehealth lacks a comprehensive taxonomy that reflects the variety of remote interactions, technologies used, and personnel involved. The Center for Information Technology Leadership (CITL) has created a taxonomy that categorizes telehealth around four factors: type of telehealth interaction, location of the controlling medical authority, urgency of care, and timing of communication. This comprehensive taxonomy may help to define the field of telehealth and may help with adoption, research, and reimbursement.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTelehealth has great potential to improve access to care, but its adoption in routine healthcare has been slow. The lack of clarity about the value of telehealth implementations has been one reason cited for this slow adoption. The Center for Information Technology Leadership has examined the value of telehealth encounters in which there is a provider both with the patient and at a distance from the patient.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTelehealth has great potential to improve access to care but its adoption in routine health care has been slow. The lack of clarity about the value of telehealth implementations has been one reason cited for this slow adoption. The Center for Information Technology Leadership has examined the value of telehealth encounters in which there is a provider both with the patient and at a distance from the patient.
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