ABSTRACT
Objectives@#The aim of the present study was to develop and evaluate the usability of a telemedicine system for management and monitoring of patients with diabetic foot. @*Methods@#This study was conducted in four phases. In the first phase, the information needs and characteristics required to design the telemedicine system were identified based on a literature review. Then, in a two-stage Delphi survey, 15 experts approved the identified information needs and characteristics. The prototype telemedicine system was then designed. In the third phase, system usability was evaluated through a semi-structured interview. In the fourth phase, users’ satisfaction with the designed system was analyzed. @*Results@#Out of 115 information needs and required characteristics, 95 were considered in the system design. Eight main pages for enabling patient-physician interactions and physician-physician interactions, monitoring the patient and controlling the disease process, providing medical consultation, and prescribing medications were considered. In the third phase, 26 distinct problems were identified. However, 75% of the participants were very satisfied with the system. @*Conclusions@#This study presents an attempt to design and evaluate a telemedicine system for the management and monitoring of patients with diabetic foot. In this system, patients receiving medical services or physicians who encounter rare cases can send the complete medical history, clinical test results, and videos and images related to the foot to specialist physicians. After examining the medical history or images and videos, the physician can provide the necessary medication prescriptions and laboratory tests or other recommendations.
ABSTRACT
Introduction: Mobile technology has provided new opportunities for health care systems. Improvement of health services outcomes in different patient groups is one of the benefits of using this tool. Although the use of mobile in Iran is expanding, there is no evidence of the state and the use of this technology in health system. The aim of this study was to review published researches on the application of mHealth in the health system of Iran
Methods: In order to carry out a review study, Pubmed database was searched by the keyword [mobile Health] and its equivalents which have derived from the [Medical Subject Headings]. Iranian databases including Iran medex, Magiran and Scientific Information Database [SID] were also searched for Persian and English terms of mobile health. Retrieval citations from information databases were sent to the endnote software and evaluated based on the considered criteria
Results: The research sample consisted of 26 articles that met the criteria of the study. In most of studies, text messaging was the main intervention tool of mHealth. The results indicated significant effect of mobile health in improving the patients' care
Conclusion: In Iran, mobile health can be effectively used in the health system due to population structure and geographic extent. According to the results of this study, the use of mobile health, especially in educating patients for self-care and preventing the spread of diseases, can be very effective
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Introduction: Although many studies have been conducted in the telepathology field in recent years, a systematic review that examines studies in a comparative manner has not yet been undertaken. This paper aims to review the published papers on telepathology projects and compare them in several aspects such as telepathology method, telecommunication method, clinical outcome, etc.
Method: This is a systematic review study. PubMed database was used to find the studies published in the past ten years [2004-2014]. The 71 final related papers were evaluated. Data were extracted from these studies based on the following items: country, national [in country] or international [between countries], frozen section or slide, body part, type of camera used, telecommunication method, telepathology method, clinical outcome, cost evaluation, satisfaction evaluation and the description of consultation providers and receivers. Data were analyzed using descriptive analysis
Results: Results showed that most of the studies were performed in developed countries on a national level, on slide and on a specific body part. In most studies, a Nikon camera was used to take images. Online methods were the most used telecommunication method in the studies, while store and forward was the most used telepathology method. Clinical outcome of many studies showed that telepathology is a reliable and accurate method for consultation. More than half of the studies considered the cost, and most of them showed that a telepathology system is cost effective. Few studies evaluated satisfaction of the participants. In most studies, the telepathology project was undertaken between pathologists
Conclusion: Although there is enough evidence to suggest that telepathology is an effective way of consultation between pathologists, there are still some areas that should be addressed and for which there is a lack of convincing evidence. For example, pathologist satisfaction, cost evaluation, legal issues and ethical issues still need to be addressed
ABSTRACT
General practitioners working in remote and rural areas sometimes need consultation with cardiologists. One practical and cost-effective way is transmission of patients' electrocardiographic images via ordinary fax machine to the cardiologists, but there is an important question that how much agreement exists between the diagnoses made by reading an original electrocardiogram and its copy transmitted via fax. In this cross-sectional study, 60 original electrocardiographic images were given to cardiologists for diagnosis. In the next step those electrocardiographic images were faxed to the hospital through a simple cheap fax machine, one month later the same cardiologist was asked to put his diagnosis on the copied versions of electrocardiographs, and the results were compared. In 59 studied cases, the two method of diagnoses were exactly the same and only in one case the diagnoses were different. Therefore, Kappa agreement coefficient was calculated as 96%. According to the results of this study, general practitioners working in deprived areas can be certainly recommended to send patients' electrocardiographic images to the cardiologists via fax in the case of needing consultation