Correlates of poor clinical outcomes related to COVID-19 among older people with psychiatric illness - a mixed methods study

Objective: COVID-19 leads to highly variable clinical outcomes among older people with psychiatric and medical co-morbidities. Evidence guiding management of future outbreaks among this vulnerable population in in-patient psychiatry settings are sparse. Hence, we aimed to investigate the correlates of poor clinical outcomes related to COVID-19 and to explore the perspectives of COVID-19 survivors in in-patient psychiatry settings. Method: We investigated the correlates of poor clinical outcomes related to COVID-19 using retrospective chart review of 81 older people in in-patient psychiatry settings. Correlates of clinical outcomes related to COVID-19 were assessed by multiple logistic regression models. Moreover, we explored the perspectives of 10 of those COVID-19 survivors by qualitative interviews. We analysed the qualitative data using thematic analysis. Results: Although 25.9% (n = 21) participants were asymptomatic, there was high COVID-19 related mortality rate (14.8%;n = 12). Vitamin-D deficiency, anticholinergic burden, and isolation policies within psychiatric wards were significantly (P < 0.05) associated with COVID-19 related deaths. Participants emphasised the importance of strengthening local support networks and making vaccination centres more accessible. Conclusions: Reducing anticholinergic prescriptions and improving isolation policies may mitigate poor clinical outcomes. Future research investigating the impact of vitamin-D supplementation on COVID-19 related outcomes are warranted. © The Author(s) 2023.

Intelligent Solutions for Manipulating Purchasing Decisions of Customers Using Internet of Things during Covid-19 Pandemic

It is a well-known fact that consumers may gain significant benefits from the effective use of IoT in pandemic and post-pandemic settings. Security vulnerabilities can be seen in the ever-increasing Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem from cloud to edge, which is crucial to note in this particular circumstance. Most merchants, even luxury stores, have failed to implement robust IoT cyber security procedures. Therefore, the researchers sought to put forth secondary research methodologies to bring forward efficient scrutiny regarding this particular issue to properly comprehend the influence of IoT in various devices, including a smartwatch, power displaying metre, brilliant weight showing gadgets and many more. The secondary research approach allowed the researchers to collect a large quantity of data quickly, acquiring a wide range of possible solutions for security and privacy issues in Consumer IoT (CIoT) devices. Secondary research also will enable scholars to compare and contrast several papers' philosophies and research findings to get a quick conclusion. To gather information, the researchers used publications and the internet efficiently. In this situation, it helped to save a significant amount of time. Findings suggested that vulnerabilities occur in smart IoT gadgets, including the intelligent power consumption metre and brilliant weight displaying widget, due to their low-standard and conventional security system. Thus, this paper has suggested possible solutions to protect IoT devices against phishing and theft attacks. © 2022 by Dr Avinash Rajkumar, Pankhuri Agarwal, Dr Mohit Rastogi, Dr Vipin Jain, Dr Chanchal Chawla and Dr Manoj Agarwal.

Visualizing Effects of COVID-19 Social Isolation with Residential Activity Big Data Sensor Data

The ability to understand and visualize big data sets is of increasing interest to caregivers and clinicians as ambient home sensing can provide massive amounts of data related to the activities of residents. However, this data is only useful if it can be effectively and simply visualized for review and analysis. This paper presents the visualization of longitudinal data sets from ambient well-being sensors deployed in 3 residences that have a spousal pair dyad where 1 resident has been diagnosed with Mild Cognitive Impairment or Dementia and the spousal partner is acting as a caregiver. The paper presents the differences in activity and behaviour that can be observed in the 3 residences by comparing two 30-day periods prior to and one 30-day period during COVID-19 social isolation precautions. The work shows the potential for this circle plot based visualization technique to summarize resident activity and also to convey external factors such as the variation in solar day that can itself influence behaviour. © 2020 IEEE.