ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has been one of the greatest public health challenges imposing significant economic and societal costs. A wide range of public health interventions (PHIs) have been implemented to control the virus, with many aggressive measures that led to economic downturn and social calamity. However, evidence concerning their impacts in terms of costs and benefits of the best buy strategy is limited. This systematic review aimed to provide a critical summary of full economic evaluations (EEs) to inform decisions concerning their adoptions. A systemic search in 7 relevant databases and other sources were conducted. Out of 11,584 and 11 records identified from databases and other sources, a total 31 full EEs focusing on PHIs were included. Majority of studies included were in good quality and from the US and upper-middle, and high-income countries whereas only 6 studies were from low and middle-income countries. Suppression/containment was the most deployed strategy (n=19), followed by screening/detection (n = 8), and protection (n = 4). Aggressive elimination strategy usually results in more lives or QALYs saved compared to mitigation strategies but at a very high cost. The trade-off between aggressive and loose suppressions depends on several factors including timing of implementation, duration, epidemiological characteristics of the virus, and the healthcare capacity. Tight and timely adoption of effective intervention at the early stage of pandemic is key in shrinking the number of cases. Using a combination approach is generally more cost-effective compared to a single intervention. Personal protective measure is highly cost-effective in protecting healthcare workers in a high prevalence scenario and when it is adopted together with social distancing strategy. Future studies to address the flaws of current evidence are warranted. This review provides important insights regarding adoption of PHIs and their cost-effectiveness which would be useful to inform policy decisions in response to COVID-19 and future pandemics. © 2022, HH Publisher. All rights reserved.
ABSTRACT
Staying mobile is the key to ensuring high quality of life for older adults. With the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the ability to live and move around independently becomes more critical for the most aging society. While several efforts have been made to invest in mobility solutions to help improve older adults’ mobility, there is still a lack of good practice and guidelines for developing such a niche Information Technology (IT) solution. In this paper, we report our experience of using Living Lab, a design science approach, to assess and capture the needs of mobility solutions for older adults. A semi-structured interview involving 25 older adults was conducted. We identified interesting and practical requirements/functionalities from the participants that might be otherwise overlooked if we followed the traditional software development process. The participants provided valuable feedback to help improve our mobility solution in two main areas, mainly the design and functionality of the application. The findings from this case study can potentially be applied for future work that attempts to address similar problems in the same domain. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.