ABSTRACT
Technology innovations are making their mark within the hospitality industry, and in the present COVID-19 sanitary crisis, they will be a major driver of hotel strategy. The COVID-19 disease is highly contagious, and its fear is likely to lead to distrust of facilities and spaces shared by different people, particularly in hotels where hotel customers encounter various people and use a variety of spaces. Such contact and use may expose individuals to a perceived health risk what raised issues in the hospitality industry and lead to the redesigning of safety measures and hygiene standards and to the introduction of technology innovations to help manual processes or replace personal interactions to make them secure and safe. As the hotel customer’s perception of sanitary and hygienic procedures and health safety is crucial for the recovery of the hotel industry, in this article, the main objective is to understand how hotel technology innovations influence hotel customers’ perception of hygiene and safety which influences their perceived health risk and hotel selection behaviors. Therefore, this study focused on different scenarios associated with hotel technologies, such as kiosk check-in system, mobile check-in system, robot cleaning system, and ultraviolet (UV) light cleaning system. The findings indicate that robotics, artificial intelligence, and human–robot interactions have gained an increased presence to help manage the spread of COVID-19, and that these new preferred technologies for making a safe and secure hotel environment for the guests and employees are paving their way to the new normal in post-COVID-19 pandemic times. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
ABSTRACT
INTRODUCTION: Reliable assessment of individuals with Parkinson's disease (PD) is essential for providing adequate treatment. Clinical assessment is a complex and time-consuming task, especially for bradykinesia, since its evaluation can be influenced by the degree of experience of the examiner, patient collaboration and individual bias. Improvement of the clinical evaluation can be obtained by considering assessments from several professionals. However, this is only true when inter and intra-rater agreement are high. Recently, the Movement Disorder Society highlighted, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the need to develop and validate technologies for remote assessment of the motor status of people with PD. Thus, this study introduces an objective strategy for the remote evaluation of bradykinesia using multi-specialist analysis. METHODS: Twelve volunteers with PD participated and these were asked to execute finger tapping, hand opening/closing and pronation/supination movements. Each task was recorded and rated by fourteen PD health experts for each patient. The scores were assessed on an individual basis. Intra and inter-rater agreement and correlation were estimated. RESULTS: The results showed that agreements and correlations between experienced examiners were high with low variability. In addition, group analysis was noted as possessing the potential to solve individual inconsistency bias. CONCLUSION: Furthermore, this study demonstrated the need for a group with prior training and experience, along with indicating the importance for the development of a clinical protocol that can use telemedicine for the evaluation of individuals with PD, as well as the inclusion of a specialized mediating group. In Addition, this research helps to the development of a valid remote assessment of bradykinesia.