Oxygen: A Distributed Health Care Framework for Patient Health Record Management and Pharmaceutical Diagnosis

With the COVID-19 pandemic, the world is confronting various healthcare issues, and healthcare automation is more crucial than ever. The pandemic has revealed the limitations of existing digital healthcare systems to manage public health emergencies. There is no registered population for many healthcare institutions in Sri Lanka, as a result, there is a communication gap. Electronic Health Record systems (EHRs) are becoming popular to share patient details but accessing scattered data across several EHRs while safeguarding patient privacy remains a challenge. Most of these medical records are in printed format and manually entering those into EHR systems is time-consuming and error prone. Not only that pharmaceutical error is a critical healthcare problem, but it is even riskier to visit doctors for pharmaceutical diagnosis during a pandemic. This research introduces a Blockchain-based patient health record system, an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) based Medical Document Scanner, a Drug Identifier based on Image Processing and a Medical Chatbot powered by NLP as four novel approaches to address these issues. Altogether with the results, this research aims at introducing a solution for the limitations in healthcare while providing a distributed healthcare framework for the healthcare community worldwide. © 2022 IEEE.

The prevalence of diabetes and thyroid related autoantibodies in Sri Lankan children with type 1 diabetes and their unaffected siblings - The utility of a new screening assay.

Background: There is limited information about diabetes and thyroid related autoantibodies in children with type 1 diabetes (T1D) or their siblings in Sri Lanka. Objectives: To assess in T1D children and their unaffected siblings the prevalence of autoantibodies to (1) glutamic acid decarboxylase (GADA), insulinoma associated antigen-2 (IA-2A) and zinc transporter 8 (ZnT8A) using 3 Screen ICA™ (3-Screen) and individual ELISA assays; (2) insulin (IAA); and (3) thyroid peroxidase (TPOA), thyroglobulin (TgA) and the TSH receptor (TSHRA). Methods: We selected - (a) consecutive T1D children, and (b) their unaffected siblings of both sexes, from the T1D Registry at Lady Ridgeway Hospital, Colombo. Results: The median age (IQR) of 235 T1D children and 252 unaffected siblings was 11 (8.4, 13.2) and 9 (5.4, 14.9) years respectively, and the duration of T1D was 23 (7, 54) months. (1) T1D children (a) 79.1% were 3-Screen positive; (b) all 3-Screen positives were individual antibody positive (GADA in 74%; IA-2A 31.1%; ZnT8A 38.7%); (c) and were younger (p=0.01 vs 3-Screen negatives); (d) multiple autoantibodies were present in 45.1%; (e) IA-2A (p=0.002) and ZnT8A (p=0.006) prevalence decreased with T1D duration. (f) TPOA and TgA prevalence was higher in T1D children compared to unaffected siblings (28%, p=0.001 and 31%, p=0.004, respectively). (2) Unaffected siblings (a) 6.3% were 3-Screen positive (p=0.001 vs T1D), and 2.4% were positive for IAA; (b) four subjects had two diabetes related autoantibodies, one of whom developed dysglycaemia during follow-up. Conclusions: The 3-Screen assay, used for the first time in Sri Lankan T1D children and their siblings as a screening tool, shows a high prevalence of T1D related Abs with a high correlation with individual assays, and is also a helpful tool in screening unaffected siblings for future T1D risk. The higher prevalence of thyroid autoantibodies in T1D children is consistent with polyglandular autoimmunity.

Affections and coping strategies in time of Coronavirus: a qualitative study

This study aimed to raise coping strategies to deal with social isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic. The spread of the Covid-19 virus has turned into a pandemic as it spread throughout the world, leading to mobility restrictions for billions of people who have faced varying degrees of confinement. This situation has led to extreme emotions of fear, sadness, and feelings of anxiety, with impacts on people's psychological health. Research has shown that the ability to adequately regulate one's own emotions is important for mental physical, and social health and it is relevant to study how people deal with their emotions in stressful situations, such as the current context of isolation in the pandemic. A questionnaire was applied electronically to 463 participants from all over Brazil over the age of 18 years. Data analysis was qualitative, based on responses to an open item that asked about coping strategies to deal with social isolation. The results showed the use of varied strategies to minimize stress and increase well-being. Cognitive reassessment, the search for social support, and distraction were highlighted.

Increased use of antibiotics during the COVID-19 pandemic in a city in the interior of Minas Gerais

With the pandemic emergence of the SARS-COV-2 in 2019, many doubts and uncertainties arose about the COVID-19 disease, many of them due to the thousands of fake-News, lack of information, little scientific research to prove the unfolding of what actually it would happen, from the symptoms, the forms of contagion, how each organism would react to the virus, about the effectiveness of masks and social isolation, but mainly about the treatments against the new coronavirus. With all these doubts, some measures were taken to try to alleviate and resolve the situation;the so-called "Kit-Covid" (containing medicines, among them antibiotics) and currently not recommended by the Ministry of Health, was one of the controversial measures that took place in Brazil. The recommendation to use drugs without scientifically proven efficacy against the symptoms of COVID-19 caused sales of antimicrobial drugs to double in different parts of the country, including the city of Nanuque, MG, as demonstrated in this study. This increase in the use of antibiotics is worrying, as it increases the probability of cases of microbial resistance, transforming common bacteria into possible superbugs, making it necessary to use increasingly potent antibiotics.