Feasibility of clinical newborn metabolic screening in a high-volume maternity center in Nepal.

Background: Strategic action plans around newborn health evaluation are needed, to address the high neonatal mortality rate in Nepal. Surveillance systems, like Newborn Metabolic Screening (NBS), could reveal unrecognized drivers of neonatal death. NBS is not routinely performed in Nepal.

The Tango to Modern Collaboration and Patient-Centric Value Generation in Health Care - a real-world guide from practitioners for practitioners.

Background: Value-Based Health Care (VBHC) represents a pivotal shift from volume-based to outcome-driven quality metrics centered on patient-valued outcomes. This approach requires collaboration across all participants in the health care value chain; providers, payers, pharma, policymakers and patients (collectively known as the 5Ps). Despite substantial theoretical endorsement of VBHC's potential for improving health outcomes and system efficiency, empirical evidence detailing its practical implementation remains limited.

Collaborative dynamics and shared motivation: exploring tobacco control policy development in Zambia.

In Zambia, efforts to produce a tobacco control policy have stalled for over a decade, and the country is not yet close to developing one. Limited studies have explored the dynamics in this policy process and how they affect the attainment of policy goals and outcomes. This study explored how collaborative dynamics within tobacco control policy development shaped shared motivation among stakeholders in Zambia.

Real-world federated learning in radiology: hurdles to overcome and benefits to gain.

Objective: Federated Learning (FL) enables collaborative model training while keeping data locally. Currently, most FL studies in radiology are conducted in simulated environments due to numerous hurdles impeding its translation into practice. The few existing real-world FL initiatives rarely communicate specific measures taken to overcome these hurdles.

Data Infrastructure for Improvement in Perioperative Medicine: Experience at a London Tertiary Hospital.

Adoption of electronic health record systems offers an opportunity to collate massive volumes of complex information about patient care. Healthcare data can inform performance management, enable predictive analytics and enhance strategic decision making. A data-driven approach to improving patient care is vital to address the growing burden of morbidity and mortality associated with major surgery.

Halting and re-issuing of the Zambia community health strategy (2017-2021): a retrospective analysis of the policy process and implications for community health systems.

Background: Over the years, low-and middle-income countries have adopted several policy initiatives to strengthen community health systems as means to attain Universal Health Coverage (UHC). In this regard, Zambia passed a Community Health Strategy in 2017 that was later halted in 2019. This paper explores the processes that led to the halting and re-issuing of this strategy with the view of drawing lessons to inform the development of such strategies in Zambia and other similar settings.

Factors Contributing to Patient Satisfaction Among VA Medical Center and Non-VA Medical Center Hospitals.

Introduction: Veteran satisfaction of care within the Veterans Affairs is typically very high. Yet recommendation ratings of VA medical center (VA) hospitals as measured by Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems are generally lower than non-VA hospitals.Therefore, it was our objective to assess Veteran satisfaction and recommendation scores and then examine whether satisfaction correlates to recommendation.

Putting the pieces together: towards an integrative framework for healthcare performance.

Purpose: In the past few decades, performance measuring systems have become important managerial tools for healthcare organizations. Healthcare performance metrics are a useful tool in understanding how healthcare organizations achieve their goals while satisfying the needs of their patients and conforming to national and international standards. Various efforts have been made to assess healthcare performance.

Departmental Metrics to Guide Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion for Academic Family Medicine Departments.

Problem: Equity, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) efforts have accelerated over the past several years, without a traditional guidebook that other missions often have. To evaluate progress over time, departments of family medicine are seeking ways to measure their current EDI state. Across the specialty, unity regarding which EDI metrics are meaningful is absent, and discordance even exists about what should be measured.

Coverage and predictors of the uptake of the mass drug administration of praziquantel chemotherapy for schistosomiasis in a selected urban setting in Zambia.

The burden of schistosomiasis in Zambia has remained high over the years. The World Health Assembly recommended adequate mass drug administration coverage for schistosomiasis using Praziquantel chemotherapy for school-aged children and all at-risks adults. We aimed at investigating the coverage and the factors associated to the uptake for MDA for schistosomiasis in Ng'ombe township of Lusaka, Zambia.

Predicting benefit from immune checkpoint inhibitors in patients with non-small-cell lung cancer by CT-based ensemble deep learning: a retrospective study.

Background: Only around 20-30% of patients with non-small-cell lung cancer (NCSLC) have durable benefit from immune-checkpoint inhibitors. Although tissue-based biomarkers (eg, PD-L1) are limited by suboptimal performance, tissue availability, and tumour heterogeneity, radiographic images might holistically capture the underlying cancer biology. We aimed to investigate the application of deep learning on chest CT scans to derive an imaging signature of response to immune checkpoint inhibitors and evaluate its added value in the clinical context.

The role of principled engagement in public health policymaking: the case of Zambia's prolonged efforts to develop a comprehensive tobacco control policy.

Background: The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) requires countries to develop and implement multi-sectoral tobacco control strategies, including policies and legislation. Zambia, potentially faced by a rising problem of tobacco smoking, signed the FCTC in 2008 but has been unable to enact a tobacco policy for over a decade.

Objective: This study explores the role of 'principled engagement', a key element of the theoretical framework for collaborative governance, in Zambia's delayed success to develop a comprehensive tobacco control policy.

US regulatory considerations for low field magnetic resonance imaging systems.

Although there has been a resurgence of interest in low field magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) systems in recent years, low field MRI is not a new concept. FDA has a long history of evaluating the safety and effectiveness of MRI systems encompassing a wide range of field strengths. Many systems seeking marketing authorization today include new technological features (such as artificial intelligence), but this does not fundamentally change the regulatory paradigm for MR systems.

Measuring the Burden of Infodemics: Summary of the Methods and Results of the Fifth WHO Infodemic Management Conference.

Background: An infodemic is excess information, including false or misleading information, that spreads in digital and physical environments during a public health emergency. The COVID-19 pandemic has been accompanied by an unprecedented global infodemic that has led to confusion about the benefits of medical and public health interventions, with substantial impact on risk-taking and health-seeking behaviors, eroding trust in health authorities and compromising the effectiveness of public health responses and policies. Standardized measures are needed to quantify the harmful impacts of the infodemic in a systematic and methodologically robust manner, as well as harmonizing highly divergent approaches currently explored for this purpose.

Poor adherence to antiretroviral therapy among adult people living with HIV initiated during the COVID-19 epidemic waves - observations at the University Teaching Hospital in Lusaka, Zambia.

Background: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)-related disruptions in healthcare services and clinical outcomes have been predicted and documented. However, little is known about how antiretroviral therapy (ART) adherence disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic have manifested amidst the 'Undetectable = Untransmittable' campaign initiative. Using a patient's viral load as a proxy for medication adherence, our study aimed to determine the adherence to ART on first-line medications among adult people living with human immunodeficiency virus (PLWHIV) at the University Teaching Hospital in Lusaka, Zambia during the pandemic.

Acceptability and associated factors of indoor residual spraying for malaria control by households in Luangwa district of Zambia: A multilevel analysis.

The global burden of malaria has increased from 227 million cases in 2019 to 247 million cases in 2020. Indoor residual spraying (IRS) remains one of the most effective control strategies for malaria. The current study sought to measure the acceptability level and associated factors of indoor residual spraying.

Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) disease diagnostic error in low-resource health care: Observations from a hospital-based cross-sectional study.

Although the global burden of ear, nose and throat (ENT) diseases is high, data relating to ENT disease epidemiology and diagnostic error in resource-limited settings remain scarce. We conducted a retrospective cross-sectional review of ENT patients' clinical records at a resource-limited tertiary hospital. We determined the diagnostic accuracy and appropriateness of patient referrals for ENT specialist care using descriptive statistics.

National Survey Using CFIR to Assess Early Outpatient Specialty Palliative Care Implementation.

Context: The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) recommends that outpatient specialty palliative care (OSPC) be offered within eight weeks of an advanced cancer diagnosis. To meet the rising demand, there has been an increase in the availability of OSPC services at National Cancer Institute (NCI)-designated cancer centers; however, many OSPC referrals still occur late in the disease course.

Objectives: Using the Consolidated Framework for Implementation Research (CFIR), we evaluated facilitators and barriers to early OSPC implementation and associated clinic characteristics.

New bed configurations and discharge timing policies: A hospital-wide simulation.

Objective: Optimising patient flow is becoming an increasingly critical issue as patient demand fluctuates in healthcare systems with finite capacity. Simulation provides a powerful tool to fine-tune policies and investigate their impact before any costly intervention.

Methods: A hospital-wide discrete event simulation is developed to model incoming flow from ED and elective units in a busy metropolitan hospital.

Measuring patient engagement with HIV care in sub-Saharan Africa: a scoping study.

Introduction: Engagement with HIV care is a multi-dimensional, dynamic process, critical to maintaining successful treatment outcomes. However, measures of engagement are not standardized nor comprehensive. This undermines our understanding of the scope of challenges with engagement and whether interventions have an impact, complicating patient and programme-level decision-making.

Invited review: Current enteric methane mitigation options.

Ruminant livestock are an important source of anthropogenic methane (CH). Decreasing the emissions of enteric CH from ruminant production is strategic to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5°C by 2050.

Five years' experience with value-based quality improvement teams: the key factors to a successful implementation in hospital care.

Background: In recent years, value-based healthcare (VBHC) has become one of the most accepted concepts for fixing the 'broken' healthcare systems. Numerous hospitals have embraced VBHC and are trying to implement value-based quality improvement (VBQI) into their practice. However, there is a lack of knowledge on how to practically implement VBHC and organizations differ in their approach.