Emerging Trends of ICT in Airborne Disease Prevention

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are becoming indispensable nowadays for the healthcare industry. The utilization of ICT in healthcare services has accelerated even faster after the commencement of the COVID-19 outbreak. This study aims to perform a scientometric analysis of scholarly literature on airborne diseases in the discipline of science and technology. It explores the recent advancement of internet technologies in healthcare to control the prevalence of deadly airborne illnesses by applying analytical approaches. It presents publication trends, citation structure, influential sources, co-citation, and cooccurrence network analysis using the CiteSpace tool. It identifies the important research topics, current research hotspots, most active research areas, and leading technologies in this scientific knowledge domain. It inferred significant results fromanalyses thatwill benefit researchers and the academic fraternity across the globe to understand the evolving paths and recent scientific progress of ICT in airborne disease management.

Emerging Trends of ICT in Airborne Disease Prevention

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are becoming indispensable nowadays for the healthcare industry. The utilization of ICT in healthcare services has accelerated even faster after the commencement of the COVID-19 outbreak. This study aims to perform a scientometric analysis of scholarly literature on airborne diseases in the discipline of science and technology. It explores the recent advancement of internet technologies in healthcare to control the prevalence of deadly airborne illnesses by applying analytical approaches. It presents publication trends, citation structure, influential sources, co-citation, and co-occurrence network analysis using the CiteSpace tool. It identifies the important research topics, current research hotspots, most active research areas, and leading technologies in this scientific knowledge domain. It inferred significant results from analyses that will benefit researchers and the academic fraternity across the globe to understand the evolving paths and recent scientific progress of ICT in airborne disease management. © 2022 Association for Computing Machinery.

The lasting impact of coronavirus disease 2019 on head and neck cancer services: a UK tertiary centre study.

BACKGROUND: The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic led to increased pressure on health services, which, combined with variable social restrictions, led to decreased referrals for head and neck cancer. This study assessed whether there were lasting changes to head and neck cancer referrals during different stages of the pandemic response in 2020 and 2021. METHODS: A retrospective review was conducted of all cases referred for suspected head and neck cancer to our institution in January 2020, April 2020, April 2021 and June 2021. RESULTS: There was a rebound 91 per cent increase in referrals between April 2020 and April 2021 following the 59 per cent decrease in referrals between January 2020 and April 2020. Males made up 47.1 per cent of referrals in January 2020, 40 per cent in April 2020 and 37.82 per cent in April 2021. CONCLUSION: Further research is recommended to investigate the reasons why there is a continued decline in male referrals and the effect this has on their outcomes.

Blockchain Oriented Effective Charity Process During Pandemics and Emergencies

During any emergency, a donation is considered a moral responsibility all over the globe. The lack of transparency and oversight in charity donations hurts people’s enthusiasm to donate. Donors are distrustful about how their funds are utilized. The use of blockchain technology (BCT) will provide a solution to make the donation procedure more viable. It is a distributed technology that offers a secure and transparent environment by avoiding the involvement of third parties between contributors and charities. This article proposed a blockchain-based donation mechanism for the convenience of charity organizations, donors, and beneficiaries during disasters, pandemics such as Covid-19, and other emergencies. All transactions can be traced in blockchain, giving donors visibility into where and how their funds are utilized. This article contributes to improving donations’openness to strengthen public interest in donations and encourage BCT in charity. Ethereum blockchain is used to implement the proposed framework and provides a convenient donation platform. Smart contracts are used to make donations, which build trust between contributors, beneficiaries, and charity organizations. The blockchain-based donation method saves time, lowers donation costs, and eliminates the chances of dubious campaign funds. This study will contribute to improving emergency recovery efforts. IEEE

Blockchain Oriented Effective Charity Process During Pandemics and Emergencies

During any emergency, a donation is considered a moral responsibility all over the globe. The lack of transparency and oversight in charity donations hurts people's enthusiasm to donate. Donors are distrustful about how their funds are utilized. The use of blockchain technology (BCT) will provide a solution to make the donation procedure more viable. It is a distributed technology that offers a secure and transparent environment by avoiding the involvement of third parties between contributors and charities. This article proposed a blockchain-based donation mechanism for the convenience of charity organizations, donors, and beneficiaries during disasters, pandemics such as Covid-19, and other emergencies. All transactions can be traced in blockchain, giving donors visibility into where and how their funds are utilized. This article contributes to improving donations' openness to strengthen public interest in donations and encourage BCT in charity. Ethereum blockchain is used to implement the proposed framework and provides a convenient donation platform. Smart contracts are used to make donations, which build trust between contributors, beneficiaries, and charity organizations. The blockchain-based donation method saves time, lowers donation costs, and eliminates the chances of dubious campaign funds. This study will contribute to improving emergency recovery efforts.

Knowledge mapping of 4D printing technologies in computer engineering

Four-dimensional (4D) printing has received an amplified consideration in the research community for fabrication and manufacturing in industry, medical field, and smart flood management. Disruptive technologies such as Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, and 4D printing are highly recommended during disaster management activities. The 4D printing technology is an evolving field that is an advancement of three-dimensional printing technologies in which the materials are programmed to change shape over time responding to external stimulus without human intervention, thereby adding a fourth dimension. The technology had a great impact during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic and flood management activities. This paper, with the aim of a scientometric review, recognizes the recent research hotspots, trends, and worldwide scope of 4D printing for the period of 2007-2021. The bibliographic data fetched from the Scopus in comma-separated values format is used in the study for extracting the masked information by discussing the in-depth visualization of the attributes of the index documents. The study examines the growth of publications, subject categorizations, global distributions, citation analysis, and the influence of the institutions and authors using the bibliographic data. VOSviewer, a java-based tool, is used to study the keyword co-occurrence, which yields hotspots and emerging trends in the various applications of 4D printing, including smart flood management. This study provides the implementation, latest trends, and universal research topography over the past decade, which assists to recognize primitive research and also provides supervision for the upcoming research.

Fog-assisted Energy Efficient Cyber Physical System for Panic-based Evacuation during Disasters

Disasters around the world have adversely affected every aspect of life and panic-health of stranded persons is one such category. An effective and on-time evacuation from disaster-affected areas can avoid any panic-related health problems of the stranded persons. Although the nature of disasters differ in terms of how they occur, the evacuation of stranded persons faces approximately same set of issues related to the communication, time-sensitive computation and energy efficiency of the devices operated in the disaster-affected areas. In this paper, a cyber physical system (CPS) is proposed that takes into account various challenges of the disaster evacuation, so an efficient on-time and orderly evacuation of stranded panicked persons could be realized. The system employs fog-assisted mobile and UAV devices for time-sensitive computation services, data relaying and energy-aware computation. The system uses a fog-assisted two-factor energy-aware computation approach using data reduction, which enables the energy-efficient data reception and transmission (DRecTrans) operations at the fog nodes and compensates to extend the period for other functionalities. The data reduction at fog devices employs Novel Events Identification (NEI) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) for detecting consecutive duplicate traffic and data summarization of high dimensional data, respectively. The proposed system operates in two spaces: physical and cyber. Physical space facilitates real-world data acquisition and information sharing with the concerned stakeholders (stranded persons, evacuation teams and medical professionals). The cyber space houses various data-analytics layers and comprises of two subspaces: fog and cloud. The fog space helps in providing real-time panic-health diagnostic and alert services and enables the optimized energy consumption of devices operate in disaster-affected areas, whereas the cloud space facilitates the monitoring and prediction of panic severity of the stranded persons, using a conditional probabilistic model and seasonal auto regression integrated moving average (SARIMA), respectively. Cloud space also facilitates the disaster mapping for converging the evacuation map to the actual situation of the disaster-affected area, and geographical population analysis (GPA) for the identification of the panic severity-based critical regions. The performance evaluation of the proposed CPS acknowledges its Logistic Regression-based panic-well being determination and real-time alert generation efficiency. The simulated implementation of NEI and PCA depicts the fog-assisted energy efficiency of the DRecTrans operations of the fog nodes. The performance evaluation of the proposed CPS also acknowledges the prediction efficiency of the SARIMA and disaster mapping accuracy through GPA. The proposed system also discusses a case study related to the pandemic disaster of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), where the system can help in panic-based selective testing of the persons, and preventing panic due to distressing period of COVID-19 outbreak.

A moderated-mediation model of fear of illness and subjective psychological well-being during COVID-19 pandemic

A sudden outbreak of diseases poses a serious threat to mental health. Relying on strengths might mitigate negative mental health outcomes and promote positive mental health. Prior research suggests a potential moderated mediation effect between fear of illness and subjective psychological well-being. Based on the Competence-based Model of mental health, this study examined the relationship between fear of illness and subjective psychological well-being through perceived distress moderated by resilience in the context of COVID-19 pandemic. A cross-sectional survey using questionnaires was employed. Data were collected online from 384 participants (270 female and 114 male, age range= 15 to 29 years). The participants had indirect exposure to COVID-19 through information from the media. Results demonstrated that fear of illness significantly predicts subjective psychological well-being both directly and indirectly. In addition, the moderated mediation effect of resilience was confirmed. Resilience moderated the indirect effect between fear of illness and subjective psychological well-being through perceived distress. The magnitude of the indirect effect was contingent on resilience. Further, the effect of perceived distress on subjective psychological well-being is weakened as the level of resilience increases. This study contributes theoretically to a better understanding of the salutogenic effect of resilience on positive mental health during a pandemic. Based on the findings, implications and future directions are discussed. © 2021, Sarawak Research Society. All rights reserved.

A quality improvement project: Implementation of a new epistaxis pathway

Introduction: Epistaxis is one of the most common ENT conditions leading to unplanned hospital admission. This closed loop quality improvement project looked at epistaxis admissions, and whether patients could be safely managed on an ambulatory basis with unilateral intranasal packing, through the implementation of a new epistaxis pathway. Method: Two prospective cycles at a District General Hospital. First cycle: three-month period (October-December 2018);recorded all patients admitted with epistaxis and the percentage with intranasal packing;criteria for discharge with unilateral intranasal packing created (including normal observations, normal clotting/haemoglobin, only on aspirin, safe home environment). Second cycle (after implementation of new pathway): two months (December 2019 and January 2020);recorded all patients admitted with epistaxis or discharged with unilateral intranasal packing;patient feedback obtained. Results: First cycle: 31 epistaxis admissions;12 patients met discharge criteria;average length of stay was 1.4 days. Second cycle: 22 epistaxis admissions;4 admissions were avoided;2 admissions were unnecessary according to new pathway;no patient-reported issues with pack at home. Conclusions: Successful creation and initial implementation of pathway with no adverse outcomes. Approximately £1380 of savings through avoided admissions. Pathway expanded and successfully used during COVID-19 to include patients on anticoagulation as suitable for discharge with intranasal packing.

The impact of coronavirus disease 2019 on head and neck cancer services: a UK tertiary centre study.

BACKGROUND: The coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic has necessitated almost exclusive National Health Service focus on emergency work and cancer care. There are concerns that increased hospital and community pressures will lead to decreased referrals and worse outcomes for head and neck cancer patients. METHOD: This is a retrospective review of all cases referred for suspected head and neck cancer to our institution in January and April 2020. RESULTS: There was a 55 per cent decrease in referrals but diagnostic yield rose from 2.9 per cent in January to 8.06 per cent in April. In both months, 100 per cent of patients met the 31- and 62-day targets, with similar 14-day wait time success (97.83 per cent for January vs 98.33 per cent for April). Referrals for laryngopharyngeal reflux rose from 27.5 per cent to 41.9 per cent. Referrals for those aged over 60 years fell from 42 per cent to 26 per cent. CONCLUSION: It is suggested that further research be conducted into the reasons why fewer patients were referred, particularly elderly patients, and why laryngopharyngeal reflux is so prevalent in fast-track referrals.