Explorative cost-effectiveness analysis of colorectal cancer recurrence detection with next-generation sequencing liquid biopsy in Spain, France, and Germany.

Background: Next-generation sequencing liquid biopsy (NGS-LB) for colorectal cancer (CRC) detection and surveillance remains an expensive technology as economies of scale have not yet been realized. Nevertheless, the cost of sequencing has decreased while sensitivity has increased, raising the question of whether cost-effectiveness (CE) has already been achieved from the perspective of European healthcare systems.

Objectives: This health economic (HE) modeling study explores the CE of NGS-LB for CRC based on direct treatment costs compared to standard care without liquid biopsy in Spain, France, and Germany.

Is there a place for sigmoidoscopy in colorectal cancer screening? A systematic review and critical appraisal of cost-effectiveness models.

Introduction: Screening for colorectal cancer (CRC) is effective in reducing both incidence and mortality. Colonoscopy and stool tests are most frequently used for this purpose. Sigmoidoscopy is an alternative screening measure with a strong evidence base.

Two Routes to Alzheimer's Disease Based on Differential Structural Changes in Key Brain Regions.

Background: Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disorder with homogenous disease patterns. Neuropathological changes precede symptoms by up to two decades making neuroimaging biomarkers a prime candidate for early diagnosis, prognosis, and patient stratification.

Objective: The goal of the study was to discern intermediate AD stages and their precursors based on neuroanatomical features for stratifying patients on their progression through different stages.

A German Smartphone-Based Self-management Tool for Psoriasis: Community-Driven Development and Evaluation of Quality-of-Life Effects.

Background: Psoriasis is a chronic disease characterized by inflammation, increased scaling, itching, and other symptoms. Psoriasis is not contagious, but patients have often felt shunned. Therefore, in addition to psoriasis symptoms, stress, anxiety, and depression can also affect quality of life (QoL).

Quality of Life Assessment for Tonsillar Infections and Their Treatment.

Tonsillar infections are a common reason to see a physician and lead to a reduction in the patients' health-related quality of life (HRQoL). HRQoL may be an important criterion in decision science and should be taken into account when deciding when to perform tonsillectomy, especially for chronic tonsillitis. The aim of this study was to determine the health utility for different states of tonsillar infections.

Readability of English, German, and Russian Disease-Related Wikipedia Pages: Automated Computational Analysis.

Background: Wikipedia is a popular encyclopedia for health- and disease-related information in which patients seek advice and guidance on the web. Yet, Wikipedia articles can be unsuitable as patient education materials, as investigated in previous studies that analyzed specific diseases or medical topics with a comparatively small sample size. Currently, no data are available on the average readability levels of all disease-related Wikipedia pages for the different localizations of this particular encyclopedia.

Additional offer of sigmoidoscopy in colorectal cancer screening in Germany: rationale and protocol of the decision-analytic modelling approach in the SIGMO study.

Introduction: In Germany, statutory insured persons are entitled to a stool test (faecal immunochemical test (FIT)) or colonoscopy for colorectal cancer (CRC) screening, depending on age and sex, yet participation rates are rather low. Sigmoidoscopy is a currently not available screening measure that has a strong evidence base for incidence and mortality reduction. Due to its distinct characteristics, it might be preferred by some, who now reject colonoscopy.

Exploring Structural Uncertainty and Impact of Health State Utility Values on Lifetime Outcomes in Diabetes Economic Simulation Models: Findings from the Ninth Mount Hood Diabetes Quality-of-Life Challenge.

Background: Structural uncertainty can affect model-based economic simulation estimates and study conclusions. Unfortunately, unlike parameter uncertainty, relatively little is known about its magnitude of impact on life-years (LYs) and quality-adjusted life-years (QALYs) in modeling of diabetes. We leveraged the Mount Hood Diabetes Challenge Network, a biennial conference attended by international diabetes modeling groups, to assess structural uncertainty in simulating QALYs in type 2 diabetes simulation models.

Assessment of SARS-CoV-2 Infection among Healthcare Workers of a German COVID-19 Treatment Center.

To date, more than 160 million people have been infected with COVID-19 worldwide. In the present study, we investigated the history of SARS-CoV-2 infection among 3067 healthcare workers (HCW) in a German COVID-19 treatment center during the early phase of the pandemic (July 2020) based on the seroprevalence of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies and self-reported previous PCR results. The results demonstrate a low prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infection ( = 107 [3.

Merging Genomics Public Datasets with Clinical Cancer Registry Data - Lessons Learned.

Publicly available datasets - for example via cBioPortal for Cancer Genomics - could be a valuable source for benchmarks and comparisons with local patient records. However, such an approach is only valid if patient cohorts are comparable to each other and if the documentation is complete and sufficient. In this paper, records from exocrine pancreatic cancer patients documented in a local cancer registry are compared with two public datasets to calculate overall survival.

Digital teaching as an instrument for cross-location teaching networks in medical informatics: opportunities and challenges.

The increasingly digitized healthcare system requires new skills from all those involved. In order to impart these competencies, appropriate courses must be developed at educational institutions. In view of the rapid development of new aspects of digitization, this presents a challenge; suitable teaching formats must be developed successively.

Temporal and Location Variations, and Link Categories for the Dissemination of COVID-19-Related Information on Twitter During the SARS-CoV-2 Outbreak in Europe: Infoveillance Study.

Background: The spread of the 2019 novel coronavirus disease, COVID-19, across Asia and Europe sparked a significant increase in public interest and media coverage, including on social media platforms such as Twitter. In this context, the origin of information plays a central role in the dissemination of evidence-based information about the SARS-CoV-2 virus and COVID-19. On February 2, 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) constituted a "massive infodemic" and argued that this situation "makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they need it.

Barriers and Facilitators to the Implementation of eHealth Services: Systematic Literature Analysis.

Background: The field of eHealth has a history of more than 20 years. During that time, many different eHealth services were developed. However, factors influencing the adoption of such services were seldom the main focus of analyses.

Technology Adoption, Motivational Aspects, and Privacy Concerns of Wearables in the German Running Community: Field Study.

Background: Despite the availability of a great variety of consumer-oriented wearable devices, perceived usefulness, user satisfaction, and privacy concerns have not been fully investigated in the field of wearable applications. It is not clear why healthy, active citizens equip themselves with wearable technology for running activities, and what privacy and data sharing features might influence their individual decisions.

Objective: The primary aim of the study was to shed light on motivational and privacy aspects of wearable technology used by healthy, active citizens.

Integrated personalized diabetes management improves glycemic control in patients with insulin-treated type 2 diabetes: Results of the PDM-ProValue study program.

Aims: Globally, many patients with insulin-treated type-2 diabetes are suboptimally controlled. The PDM-ProValue study program evaluated whether integrated personalized diabetes management (iPDM) has the potential to improve clinical outcomes.

Methods: 101 practices with 907 patients participated in the 12-month, prospective, controlled, cluster-randomized study program.

Digital Teaching and Digital Medicine: A national initiative is needed.

The advancing digitization of the healthcare system requires that in the future digital skills should be communicated to students much more. In addition, digital teaching and learning technologies should be used wherever they offer real benefits over other training scenarios. To meet these challenges, it needs a national initiative "Medical Education in the Digital Age", which should be led by the Society for Medical Education and the German Association for Medical Informatics, Biometry and Epidemiology.

Development and initial Experience of an online Exchange Platform on Sex and Gender Aspects in Medicine: "GenderMed-Wiki".

Knowledge about sex/gender aspects in medicine is often lacking, even though this serves as base for individualized patient-centered care. Thus we developed an online exchange platform on sex and gender aspects in medicine: "GenderMed-Wiki" [www.gendermed-wiki.

Healthy, Sick, Dead - An Educational Blueprint to State Transition Disease Modelling.

Unlabelled: Disease Modelling of chronic diseases such as diabetes or asthma plays an important role in medical decision making. State transition models are the most frequently used method. The objective is to illustrate the elements and the most important underlying procedures for designing a decision analytic Markov model with only three-states.

Accuracy and Adoption of Wearable Technology Used by Active Citizens: A Marathon Event Field Study.

Background: Today, runners use wearable technology such as global positioning system (GPS)-enabled sport watches to track and optimize their training activities, for example, when participating in a road race event. For this purpose, an increasing amount of low-priced, consumer-oriented wearable devices are available. However, the variety of such devices is overwhelming.

A Smartwatch-Driven Medication Management System Compliant to the German Medication Plan.

Medication adherence is an important factor for the outcome of medical therapies. To support high adherence levels, smartwatches can be used to assist the patient. However, a successful integration of such devices into clinicians' or general practitioners' information systems requires the use of standards.

PROSIT Open Source Disease Models for Diabetes Mellitus.

Unlabelled: There has been legitimate criticism with regard to the quality and the transparency of health economic modelling studies. For that reason, the aim of the PROSIT Disease Modelling Community is to develop transparent open source health economic disease models for diabetes mellitus.

Results: Markov type models were developed in the open source spread sheet software OpenOffice Calc for myocardial infarction, stroke, retinopathy, nephropathy, diabetic foot syndrome, and hypoglycemia.

Transition probabilities of HER2-positive and HER2-negative breast cancer patients treated with Trastuzumab obtained from a clinical cancer registry dataset.

Records of female breast cancer patients were selected from a clinical cancer registry and separated into three cohorts according to HER2-status (human epidermal growth factor receptor 2) and treatment with or without Trastuzumab (a humanized monoclonal antibody). Propensity score matching was used to balance the cohorts. Afterwards, documented information about disease events (recurrence of cancer, metastases, remission of local/regional recurrences, remission of metastases and death) found in the dataset was leveraged to calculate the annual transition probabilities for every cohort.

A method for using real world data in breast cancer modeling.

Objectives: Today, hospitals and other health care-related institutions are accumulating a growing bulk of real world clinical data. Such data offer new possibilities for the generation of disease models for the health economic evaluation. In this article, we propose a new approach to leverage cancer registry data for the development of Markov models.

Integrated Personalized Diabetes Management (PDM): Design of the ProValue Studies: Prospective, Cluster-Randomized, Controlled, Intervention Trials for Evaluation of the Effectiveness and Benefit of PDM in Patients With Insulin-Treated Type 2 Diabetes.

Background: Collaborative use of structured self-monitoring of blood glucose (SMBG) data and data management software, utilized within a 6-step cycle enables integrated Personalized Diabetes Management (PDM). The 2 PDM-ProValue studies shall assess the effectiveness of this approach in improving patient outcomes and practice efficiencies in outpatient settings.

Methods: The PDM-ProValue studies are 12-month, prospective, cluster-randomized, multicenter, trials to determine if use of integrated PDM in daily life improves glycemic control in insulin-treated type 2 diabetes patients.

Self-monitoring of blood glucose: one STeP forward?

Introduction: In times of short health care budgets, reimbursement for self-monitoring of blood glucose (SMBG) in diabetes patients without insulin treatment is subject to debate. The Structured Testing Program (STeP) trial found a positive correlation of test frequency and improved hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) levels in poorly controlled type 2 diabetes patients not treated with insulin.

Methods: A structured literature search for other clinical studies reporting on SMBG frequency was performed.