Telehealth utilization during the Covid-19 pandemic: A systematic review.

During the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, different technologies, including telehealth, are maximised to mitigate the risks and consequences of the disease. Telehealth has been widely utilised because of its usability and safety in providing healthcare services during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, a systematic literature review which provides extensive evidence on the impact of COVID-19 through telehealth and which covers multiple directions in a large-scale research remains lacking. This study aims to review telehealth literature comprehensively since the pandemic started. It also aims to map the research landscape into a coherent taxonomy and characterise this emerging field in terms of motivations, open challenges and recommendations. Articles related to telehealth during the COVID-19 pandemic were systematically searched in the WOS, IEEE, Science Direct, Springer and Scopus databases. The final set included (n = 86) articles discussing telehealth applications with respect to (i) control (n = 25), (ii) technology (n = 14) and (iii) medical procedure (n = 47). Since the beginning of the pandemic, telehealth has been presented in diverse cases. However, it still warrants further attention. Regardless of category, the articles focused on the challenges which hinder the maximisation of telehealth in such times and how to address them. With the rapid increase in the utilization of telehealth in different specialised hospitals and clinics, a potential framework which reflects the authors' implications of the future application and opportunities of telehealth has been established. This article improves our understanding and reveals the full potential of telehealth during these difficult times and beyond.

Role of biological Data Mining and Machine Learning Techniques in Detecting and Diagnosing the Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19): A Systematic Review.

Coronaviruses (CoVs) are a large family of viruses that are common in many animal species, including camels, cattle, cats and bats. Animal CoVs, such as Middle East respiratory syndrome-CoV, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-CoV, and the new virus named SARS-CoV-2, rarely infect and spread among humans. On January 30, 2020, the International Health Regulations Emergency Committee of the World Health Organisation declared the outbreak of the resulting disease from this new CoV called 'COVID-19', as a 'public health emergency of international concern'. This global pandemic has affected almost the whole planet and caused the death of more than 315,131 patients as of the date of this article. In this context, publishers, journals and researchers are urged to research different domains and stop the spread of this deadly virus. The increasing interest in developing artificial intelligence (AI) applications has addressed several medical problems. However, such applications remain insufficient given the high potential threat posed by this virus to global public health. This systematic review addresses automated AI applications based on data mining and machine learning (ML) algorithms for detecting and diagnosing COVID-19. We aimed to obtain an overview of this critical virus, address the limitations of utilising data mining and ML algorithms, and provide the health sector with the benefits of this technique. We used five databases, namely, IEEE Xplore, Web of Science, PubMed, ScienceDirect and Scopus and performed three sequences of search queries between 2010 and 2020. Accurate exclusion criteria and selection strategy were applied to screen the obtained 1305 articles. Only eight articles were fully evaluated and included in this review, and this number only emphasised the insufficiency of research in this important area. After analysing all included studies, the results were distributed following the year of publication and the commonly used data mining and ML algorithms. The results found in all papers were discussed to find the gaps in all reviewed papers. Characteristics, such as motivations, challenges, limitations, recommendations, case studies, and features and classes used, were analysed in detail. This study reviewed the state-of-the-art techniques for CoV prediction algorithms based on data mining and ML assessment. The reliability and acceptability of extracted information and datasets from implemented technologies in the literature were considered. Findings showed that researchers must proceed with insights they gain, focus on identifying solutions for CoV problems, and introduce new improvements. The growing emphasis on data mining and ML techniques in medical fields can provide the right environment for change and improvement.