Medical Assistance Robot with capabilities of Mask Detection with Automatic Sanitization and Social Distancing Detection/ Awareness

Healthcare sectors such as hospitals, nursing homes, medical offices, and hospice homes encountered several obstacles due to the outbreak of Covid-19. Wearing a mask, social distancing and sanitization are some of the most effective methods that have been proven to be essential to minimize the virus spread. Lately, medical executives have been appointed to monitor the virus spread and encourage the individuals to follow cautious instructions that have been provided to them. To solve the aforementioned challenges, this research study proposes an autonomous medical assistance robot. The proposed autonomous robot is completely service-based, which helps to monitor whether or not people are wearing a mask while entering any health care facility and sanitizes the people after sending a warning to wear a mask by using the image processing and computer vision technique. The robot not only monitors but also promotes social distancing by giving precautionary warnings to the people in healthcare facilities. The robot can assist the health care officials carrying the necessities of the patent while following them for maintaining a touchless environment. With thorough simulative testing and experiments, results have been finally validated. © 2022 IEEE.

Indian Pharmaceutical Industry's Supply Chain Challenges: An Overview

The pharmaceutical supply chain is very crucial for the overall industry. A crucial role is played by the Indian Pharmaceuticals industry when we consider the global pharmaceuticals industry. Indian pharmaceutical industry fulfils a large portion of the global pharmaceutical demand. After Covid-19 pandemic, many retail outlets have mushroomed everywhere in India though it is good for the business development, it puts a lot of pressure on the existing infrastructure of the supply chain. The level of responsiveness of the supply chain determines how quickly it can satisfy consumer demand. The pharmaceutical industry is ensuring good service levels as it operates at a 95 percent service level. This research paper identifies challenges in pharmaceutical supply chain. Researcher also narrowed down these challenges into two as Supply chain responsiveness and Service level. Here researcher suggested that to enhance Supply chain responsiveness and Service level, pharmaceutical industry should apply new techniques such as AI & ML. Copyright © 2022 Wolters Kluwer Medknow Publications. All rights reserved.

A fatal association of COVID-19 and acute complicated Type-B aortic dissection: Interventional management in a difficult situation

We present a rare case with simultaneous COVID-19 pneumonia and acute complicated type -B aortic dissection (ACTBAD). With strained health services a major procedure endovascular aortic repair (EVAR) was performed. Despite successful EVAR, patient had sudden unexplained cardiac arrest. Procedural mortality is high among COVID-19 infected patients.

Hybrid Workshops During the COVID-19 Pandemic-Dawn of a New Era in Neurosurgical Learning Platforms.

BACKGROUND: During the COVID-19 pandemic, disruption of surgical hands-on training has hampered the skills acquisition by budding neurosurgeons. Online and virtual classrooms have not been able to substitute the hands-on experience and learning via direct interaction with senior colleagues. To overcome these challenges, we organized a hybrid workshop where simulation-based learning modules, and direct and virtual interaction with surgeons during live surgeries or didactic lectures were utilized to help delegates in understanding the nuances of neurosurgery. METHODS: A 3-day hybrid workshop was held in March 2021, which was attended by 133 delegates. A structured questionnaire was utilized to record their feedback. RESULTS: An overwhelming majority of the respondents (94.1%, n = 64) found hybrid conferences to be better than an online conference. Most of the respondents (88.3%, n = 60) rated the utility of direct face-to-face interaction to be more satisfying as compared with online interaction with faculty during a webinar. Again, many the respondents (86.8%, n = 59) believed that similar hybrid events will be the new normal given the current situation of COVID-19 pandemic. A large majority (88.2%, n = 60) of the respondents reported that they will prefer a hybrid event over an online conference. CONCLUSIONS: In this era of the COVID-19 pandemic, "hybrid" microneurosurgery workshops offer unique opportunities to enhance surgical skills acquisition by hands-on simulation-based learning and observing live surgical demonstrations, apart from 2-way interactions with experts under one roof. This may be a stepping stone for what lies ahead in the future of neurosurgical training.

Fear of COVID-19 and its impact on quality of life during the lockdown situation among the teaching faculty of a health university in India

Background: With the COVID-19 pandemic, the lockdown situation, work from home and teaching through the online platform is completely a 'new normal' in the present time. It is probably a state of mental turmoil of fear, novelty and anxiety among the faculty. This state is likely to affect teaching performance, learning and also have implications for the health of the faculty. Objectives: To assess the fear of COVID-19 and its impact on the quality of life during the Lockdown situation among the teaching faculty of a Health University and also study the gender differences if any. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional survey was conducted among the teaching faculty of a Health University during April 28 through to May 8, 2020. Randomly selected 270 faculty were sent Google link of the assessment tool using the University e-mail network. They had to fill the questionnaire based on their experience of the past 1 month. Assessment tools used were fear scale of COVID-19 and adapted with permission World Health Organization quality of life (QOL)-BREF QoL. Results: Out of the 270 participants, only 198 teaching faculty participated in the survey (response rate = 73.33%). The overall mean fear score was 18.69 ± 5.57 and the overall QoL mean score was 46.29 ± 4.02. There was a gender-wise statistically significant difference observed in the fear score (t = 2.34, P = 0.02), reporting more fear in the females (19.45 ± 5.81) as compared to the males (17.57 ± 5.01). There was a negative correlation between QoL scores and Fear score r = -0.24 (P = 0.000). Conclusions: There is certainly a fear about COVID-19, but it has not impacted the quality of life. © 2021 Medical Journal of Dr. D.Y. Patil Vidyapeeth.

A study on determinants of customer satisfaction in E-enabled bus booking platforms

E-enabled ventures (especially the online bus booking services) have witnessed impressive growth in India during last decade. Especially after COVID-19, customer shift towards online services is expected to augment. This paper is an attempt to develop a scale for determinants of customer satisfaction amongst the existing users of online bus booking (e-enabled platform).Using e-SERVQUAL model by Parasuraman et al. (2005), a draft instrument was designed. Since online bus services also includes physical experience of services offered, Tangibility factor was added in the construct. The questionnaire was tested on a sample of existing users of online bus booking services (n=105). After checking for the adequate reliability score, Exploratory factor Analysis (EFA) was performed. It resulted into extraction of four factors such as Contact, Fulfilment, Privacy and Responsiveness, accounting for 50.5% of total variance explained. Validating this scale on a larger sample for generalisation of the results would be the future agenda of research. Development of India specific scale for e-enabled business models in public transports can be considered as one of the major contribution of this study. © 2021 Karadeniz Technical University. All rights reserved.

Triple drug therapy for optimal glycemic control in patients with T2DM in COVID-19 times: Indian clinician perspective

Introduction: Background: Optimum glycemic control is pivotal to prevent complications and premature mortality, and improve quality of life in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Patients uncontrolled on mono- or dual- antidiabetic therapy require triple drug therapy (TDT) to achieve optimal glycemic control. Objectives: Objective: This survey was carried out to understand the clinical utilization of TDT in attaining durable glycemic control in patients with T2DM. Methods: Methods: A structured objective questionnaire was used for the survey and responses were sought from 270 Healthcare practitioners (HCPs) across India during May 15 to May 30, 2020 via Google forms. The questionnaire consisted of questions related to proportion of patients with uncontrolled glycemia, role and choice of TDT in achieving durable glycemic control, importance of cost of therapy, etc. The responses were analyzed descriptively. Results: Results: The respondent HCP pool comprised consulting physicians (47%), diabetologists (30%), endocrinologists (16%), and family physicians (7%). More than 45% of HCPs agreed that 30-50% of their diabetes patients have HbA1c >8.5%, and uncontrolled fasting and postprandial blood glucose levels while 21% mentioned such uncontrolled glycemia in more than 50% of their patients. Approx. 52% of the HCPs think that 50-70% of their patients can be brought under control with TDT, while a quarter of HCPs believe that more than 70% of their patients can be effectively managed with TDT. 72% of respondents aligned in their views that the cost of anti-diabetic therapy is an important parameter during Covid-19 pandemic. In uncontrolled T2DM patients taking a combination of modern sulphonylurea and metformin, HCPs rated DPP-4 inhibitor, pioglitazone and voglibose as third line options for achieving durable glycemic control. 60% of the HCPs opined that triple drug therapy can delay the initiation of insulin therapy in patients with T2DM. Almost two-thirds of the HCPs agreed that double and triple fixed dose OAD combinations have better pharmacy availability than insulin, enabling better patient accessibility. Conclusion: Conclusion: A high proportion of patients have a suboptimal glycemic control during covid-19 pandemic, and TDT can control a majority of these patients. The survey also highlights the HCPs' opinion that the triple drug therapy has multiple patient-centric benefits like cost effectiveness, accessibility, delaying insulin usage.