ABSTRACT
Amid and post-COVID-19 pandemic, the matter of being in touch with patients to monitor their health matrices became somewhat challenging, especially in the rural areas of countries like Bangladesh and for elderlies. To address this issue, a patient health monitoring system is developed using a Programmable Intelligent Computer (PIC) microcontroller and Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) protocol with the help of a pulse sensor, IR sensor, photodiodes, temperature sensor, etc., to measure 3 (three) crucial health matrices such as heartbeat/pulse, oxygen saturation level, and body temperature from a fingertip of the patient in 20 s remotely. Whenever the system measures the health matrices, it sends a short message service (SMS) report to a personal caretaker over GSM automatically. If the system finds any anomaly based on predefined threshold levels for each health parameter, it sends a SMS alert report to the designated doctor automatically as well. A prototype of the developed system is made, verified, and tested to be working perfectly as designed and programmed. In the experiment with the developed system, heart rate ranged from 61 to 105 bmp, body temperature ranged from 95.3 to 99.1 ℉, and oxygen saturation was minimum at 97%. According to the set threshold levels, which led to an automatic SMS alert to the caretaker's mobile phone. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
ABSTRACT
During the COVID-19 pandemic, we witnessed how sharing of biological and biomedical data facilitated researchers, medical practitioners, and policymakers to tackle the pandemic on a global scale. Despite the growing use of electronic health records (EHRs) by medical practitioners and wearable digital gadgets by individuals, 80% of health and medical data remain unused, adding little value to the work of researchers and medical practitioners. Legislative constraints related to health data sharing, centralized siloed design of traditional data management systems, and most importantly, lack of incentivization models are thought to be the underpinning bottlenecks for sharing health data. With the advent of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the European Union (EU) and the development of technologies like blockchain and distributed ledger technologies (DLTs), it is now possible to create a new paradigm of data sharing by changing the incentivization model from current authoritative or altruistic form to a shared economic model where financial incentivization will be the main driver for data sharing. This can be achieved by setting up a digital health data marketplace (DHDM). Here, we review papers that proposed technical models or implemented frameworks that use blockchain-like technologies for health data. We seek to understand and compare different technical challenges associated with implementing and optimizing the DHDM operation outlined in these articles. We also examine legal limitations in the context of the EU and other countries such as the USA to accommodate any compliance requirement for such a marketplace. Last but not least, we review papers that investigated the short-, medium-, and long-term socioeconomic impact of such a marketplace on a wide range of stakeholders.
ABSTRACT
Smoking is a known risk factor for a wide range of potential perioperative complications. Mehar R. et al. 2002 estimated a prevalence of smoking in general population of Karachi, it was reported 32.7%. The prevalence of smoking among surgical patient was around 20% in a systematic review by Wong J. et al. 2012. The aims of our study were to estimate the prevalence of smoking among surgical patients in the tertiary care hospitals of Karachi and to evaluate the knowledge of the patient about the need of smoking abstinence. The data was collected from the anaesthesia and surgery clinics of two public sector (i.e. Abbasi Shaheed hospital &Civil Hospital) and one private tertiary care hospital (i.e. Aga khan University hospital) of Karachi, Pakistan. A total of 811 patients were enrolled from July 30th 2019 to March 17th 2020. With the emergence of COVID pandemic in March 2020, elective surgical lists were halted in the selected hospitals so, we stopped our recruitment and concluded the study. Overall prevalence of smoking among surgical patients in all three hospitals during the above mentioned period came out to be 20.2%, with highest proportion in Civil hospital Karachi (i.e. 27.6%) and lowest in Abbasi Shaheed Hospital Karachi (i.e. 17%). The prevalence of smoking in Aga Khan University Hospital Karachi was came out to be 19.3%. Educational status was also cross tabulated with smoking status which came out that 23.0% of illiterate patients, 19.7% undergraduates, 20.6% graduates and 14.7% with postgraduate education were smokers. In conclusion, burden of smoking in surgical patients in Karachi was quiet significant and the knowledge about the preoperative smoking abstinence and potential perioperative complication were relatively more among the educated patients. Role of Anaesthesiologist and surgeon in educating patients was quiet insignificant (11% Vs 9% respectively).
ABSTRACT
Aim: To review on the current preventive and nonaerosol-generating practices available for a pediatric dentist. Background: Life of a dentist revolves around air turbine drills and ultrasonic devices. COVID-19 spreads through respiratory droplets and through contact routes. Dental instruments generate high amounts of aerosols with contaminated saliva and blood, which would be hazardous to the dentist and the other healthcare workers and which can have serious implications on cross-infection and disease transmission. Air turbine drills help in improved efficiency and reduced chairside time. Until it is safe to go back to full-fledged air turbine tooth preparation, there are some alternative options that can be used to treat patients, which could avoid the use of such aerosol generation. Review results: The treatment modalities include instruments and devices that do not make use of air turbine drills and hence can be called nonaerosol-generating procedures. Some of the procedures include hand scaling, atraumatic restoration treatment, silver diamine fluoride application, extraction, and others. Conclusion: The abovementioned procedures are minimally invasive and can be considered as a best suitable option in this current situation when treatment is required. Clinical significance: This review suggests the treatment modalities to be done considering the COVID-19 pandemic that involves cross-contamination in pediatric dentistry. © 2020, Jaypee Brothers Medical Publishers (P) Ltd. All rights reserved.