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Objectives: COVID 19 and increasing unmet needs of health technology had accelerated an adoption of digital health globally and the major categories are mobile-health, health information technology, telemedicine. Digital health interventions have various benefit on clinical efficacy, quality of care and reducing healthcare costs. The objective of the study is to identify new reimbursement policy trend of digital health medical devices in South Korea. Method(s): Official announcements published in national bodies and supplementary secondary research were used to capture policies, frameworks and currently approved products since 2019. Result(s): With policy development, several digital health devices and AI software have been introduced as non-reimbursement by utilizing new Health Technology Assessment (nHTA) pathway including grace period of nHTA and innovative medical devices integrated assessment pathway. AI based cardiac arrest risk management software (DeepCARS) and electroceutical device for major depressive disorders (MINDD STIM) have been approved as non-reimbursement use for about 3 years. Two digital therapeutics for insomnia and AI software for diagnosis of cerebral infarction were approved as the first innovative medical devices under new integrated assessment system, and they could be treated in the market. In addition, there is remote patient monitoring (RPM) reimbursement service fee. Continuous glucose monitoring devices have been reimbursed for type 1 diabetes patients by the National Health Insurance Service (NHIS) since January 2019. Homecare RPM service for peritoneal dialysis patients with cloud platform (Sharesource) has been reimbursed since December 2019, and long-term continuous ECG monitoring service fee for wearable ECG monitoring devices (ATpatch, MEMO) became reimbursement since January 2022. Conclusion(s): Although Korean government has been developed guidelines for digital health actively, only few products had been reimbursed. To introduce new technologies for improved patient centric treatment, novel value-based assessment and new pricing guideline of digital health medical devices are quite required.Copyright © 2023
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The phase 3 MOMENTUM study (NCT04173494) of the ACVR1/JAK1/JAK2 inhibitor momelotinib (MMB) vs. danazol (DAN) in patients with myelofibrosis (MF) previously treated with a JAK inhibitor (JAKi) met the primary endpoint and all key secondary endpoints at week 24 (W24). We provide updated results from week 48 assessments. Eligible patients had primary or post-ET/ PV MF;DIPSS high, Int-2, or Int-1 risk;Total Symptom Score (TSS) >=10;haemoglobin (Hb) <10 g/dL;platelets >=25 x 109/L;prior JAKi for >=90 days (>=28 days if red blood cell [RBC] transfusions >=4 units in 8 weeks or grade 3/4 thrombocytopenia/anaemia/ hematoma);and palpable spleen >=5 cm. Randomisation was 2:1 to MMB 200 mg/day or DAN 600 mg/day for 24 weeks, followed by open-label (OL) MMB. Week 48 endpoints included durations of response (TSS, transfusion independence [TI], splenic) and overall and leukaemia-free survival (OS, LFS). As of 17 May 2022, 93/130 (72%) MMB -> MMB and 41/65 (63%) DAN -> MMB patients received OL MMB;mean MMB durations were 48 weeks and 24 weeks, respectively. Analyses for W24 responders showed the following: of TSS responders, 31/32 (97%) MMB -> MMB and 6/6 DAN -> MMB patients had TSS < baseline;of TI responders, 36/40 (90%) and 10/13 (77%) had no RBC transfusions or Hb <8 g/dL;and of spleen responders, all patients had splenic volume < baseline. In the OL phase, the most common grade >=3 treatment-emergent adverse events (TEAEs) were thrombocytopenia (MMB -> MMB, 9%;DAN -> MMB, 15%) and anaemia (MMB -> MMB, 9%;DAN -> MMB, 2%). Grade >=3 infections occurred in 19% of MMB -> MMB and 10% of DAN -> MMB patients, including grade >=3 (nonfatal) COVID-19. Peripheral neuropathy (PN) occurred in 2% of patients in each arm, and none discontinued MMB due to PN. TEAEs led to MMB discontinuation in 18% (MMB -> MMB) vs. 10% (DAN -> MMB). A trend towards improved OS up to W24 was previously observed with MMB vs. DAN (hazard ratio [HR], 0.506;p = 0.0719);after all patients crossed over to OL MMB, OS and LFS curves for both arms converged (HR, 0.945, 95% CI, 0.528-1.693;HR, 0.830, 95% CI, 0.473-1.4555). Sixty of 81 (74%) MMB -> MMB and 29 of 43 (67%) DAN -> MMB patients with baseline platelets <=150 x 109/L entered the OL phase. Efficacy and safety results in thrombocytopenic subgroups in the OL period were consistent with the intent-to- treat (ITT) population. OL MMB maintained symptom, TI, and spleen responses with continued good survival and safety in the ITT and low platelet populations. MMB may address an unmet need in anaemic patients with MF.
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Digital contact tracing is an effective solution to prevent such a pandemic, but the low adoption rate of a required mobile app hinders its effectiveness. A large collection of cellular trajectories from mobile subscribers can be an out-of-the-box solution that is free from the low adoption issue, but has been overlooked due to its low spatial resolution. In this paper, to increase the resolution of this cellular trajectory, we present a new problem that estimates the user's visited places at the point-of-interest(POI) level, which we call POI-level cellular trajectory reconstruction. We propose a novel algorithm, Pincette, that accomplishes more accurate POI reconstruction by leveraging various external data such as road networks and POI contexts. Specifically, Pincette comprises multi-view feature extraction and GCN-LSTM-based POI estimation. In the multi-view feature extraction, Pincette extracts three complementary features from three views: efficiency, periodicity, and popularity. In the GCN-LSTM-based POI estimation, these three views are seamlessly integrated, where spatio-temporal periodic patterns are captured by graph convolutional networks (GCNs) and an LSTM. With extensive experiments on two real data collections of two cities, we show that Pincette outperforms four POI estimation baselines by up to 21.20%. We believe that our work sheds light on the use of cellular trajectories for digital contact tracing. We release the source code at https://github.com/kaist-dmlab/Pincette. © 2022 IEEE.
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Since the global shock caused by COVID-19, interest in immune-enhancing materials is rapidly increasing, therefore, the development of novel materials is necessary from the industrial and health perspectives. In this study, we selected Nelumbo nucifera Gaertner Seed Extract (NSE) and evaluated immune enhancement effect by using RAW 264.7 murine macrophage cells. NSE significantly up-regulated production of nitric oxide and reactive oxygen species without affecting cell viability in RAW 264.7 cells. Additionally, NSE exhibited an increase of inducible nitric oxide synthase and cyclooxygenase-2 expression in RAW 264.7 cells. The enzyme-linked immuno-sorbent assay results showed that NSE-treatment significantly enhanced production of interleukin 6 and tumor necrosis factor-α in RAW 264.7 cells. Furthermore, we observed that NSE significantly up-regulated phosphorylation of p65, I kappa B kinase α/β, and I kappa B (IκB) α as well as down-regulation of IκB α expression in RAW 264.7 cells. Our findings indicate that NSE could be the potential health-functional food material with capacity of improving immunity via Nuclear factor-kappa B signaling pathway. © 2023, Korean Society for Applied Biological Chemistry. All rights reserved.
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Purpose – COVID-19 has dramatically changed the business landscape, and the travel industry is no exception. The industry is undergoing a paradigm shift to the platform business, and traditional travel agencies are moving their businesses to online platforms. However, in this irreversible global paradigm shift, it is not easy for travel companies to hire and retain employees, especially companies in the IT sector. Studies typically study consumers, such as selection attributes and satisfaction with travel platforms. However, to the best of our knowledge, there have been almost no studies on employees. This study explored how the empowerment of online travel platform employees influences their perceived person-environment (P-E) fit and work engagement. Design/Methodology/Approach – We analyzed data from 352 employees of 26 domestic online travel platforms who were surveyed in January and February 2021. After coding the collected data, we analyzed it using frequency, exploratory factor, reliability, correlation, and multiple regression analyses using IBM SPSS Statistics, ver. 20.0. Findings – First, enhancing the meaningfulness of work and organizational autonomy influences person-job (P-J) fit and person-organization (P-O) fit. Second, enhancing the meaningfulness of work significantly influences vigor, dedication, and absorption in terms of work engagement, while organizational autonomy significantly inf luences work engagement vigor. Third, P-J fit and P-O fit inf luence the vigor of work engagement, and P-O fit influences dedication and absorption. Research Implications – This study demonstrated that the empowerment of travel platform employees can improve perceived P-E fit and work engagement. Thus, if organizations guarantee some degree of empowerment, employees will be energized and engaged more in their workplace. Finally, this helps expand the scope of online travel platform research from the perspective of personnel organization. © 2023 International Academy of Global Business and Trade.
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This study investigates the spillover dynamics among 10 Australian sectoral indices and their connectedness to global factors, including the WTI crude oil price, oil market volatility, Australian exchange rate, U.S. stock market volatility index and Infectious Disease Tracker Index. Using data from May 14, 2007 to March 31, 2022, this study applies the time-varying parameter vector autoregressive model to study their static and dynamic connectedness, wavelet coherence analysis to investigate the time-frequency co-movement of global macroeconomic factors with Australian sector stock indices and wavelet decomposition-based Granger causality. The results show that aggressive stocks (Industrials, Consumer Discretionary and Financials) are net transmitters, while defensive stocks (Health, Information Technology, Communication and Utilities) are net receivers of spillovers. The coronavirus pandemic has increased systemic risk, causing radical changes in net connectedness. Additionally, global macroeconomic factors drive the connectedness of the Australian sectoral indices, with oil and exchange rates moving in phase, and oil volatility, stock volatility and the Infectious Disease Tracker Index moving in antiphase. Global stock and oil market volatility has a significant impact on the Australian sector's returns over short-, medium- and long-term horizons. This study provides valuable insights to investors and policymakers by carefully examining the relationships between global factors and Australian sectoral indices. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd.
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Assessing the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on economies is fundamental to tailor the responses of the governments to recover from the crisis. In this paper, we present a novel approach to assessing the economic impact with a large-scale credit card transaction dataset at a fine granularity. For this purpose, we develop a fine-grained economic-epidemiological modeling framework COVID-EENet, which is featured with a two-level deep neural network. In support of the fine-grained EEM, COVID-EENet learns the impact of nearby mass infection cases on the changes of local economies in each district. Through the experiments using the nationwide dataset, given a set of active mass infection cases, COVID-EENet is shown to precisely predict the sales changes in two or four weeks for each district and business category. Therefore, policymakers can be informed of the predictive impact to put in the most effective mitigation measures. Overall, we believe that our work opens a new perspective of using financial data to recover from the economic crisis. For public use in this urgent problem, we release the source code at https://github.com/kaist-dmlab/COVID-EENet.
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The purpose of this research is to examine how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted the luxury goods industry. The authors hypothesize that pandemic threats drive consumers toward luxury consumption to increase their perceptions of control. The article reports results of three experimental studies conducted in the United States. In Study 1, after participants read an article about COVID-19, they respond favorably to an advertisement for a luxury brand. The comparative control participants read an article about a tofu dish and respond less favorably to the luxury advertisement. Study 2 provides further evidence that perceived control acts as a mediator, while ruling out alternative explanations. Study 3 indicates that threat evokes luxury preferences only when advertisements for both luxury and nonluxury products use messages, as opposed to concrete messages. The findings provide practical insights showing that the most effective advertising strategy for luxury brand managers is to use rather than concrete messages for targeting consumers who feel highly threatened by COVID-19. © 2023 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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Promoting epistemic agency in science classrooms benefits student learning. One critical variable in the development of epistemic agency is the activation of intrinsic motivation that can happen when cognitive authority is shared between teachers and students. With the recent pivot to online teaching, opportunities to engage in such learning environments have been challenging using online platforms. We investigate one teacher's implementation of a science unit that was delivered online. While the unit was specifically constructed to build epistemic agency with students in in-person classes, using various instructional design choices, this teacher was able to cede cognitive authority over to his students by engaging them in activities that improved intrinsic motivation. We describe those choices, such as, using unmonitored scaffolds to enable student autonomy, and leveraging familiarity with their local context through peer-led collaborations. We then discuss implications for this research in support of better learning and engagement in online environments. © ISLS.
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OBJECTIVE: We aimed to assess the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on the incidence of intussusception. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Literature search of the PubMed and EMBASE databases was conducted for articles published in English until August 5, 2022. RESULTS: Overall, 127 articles were retrieved, and five studies from South Korea (n=4) and the United States of America (n=1) containing clinical data from single-center medical records to nationwide databases were ultimately included in the systematic review. All the included studies reported that the incidence of intussusception decreased significantly during the pandemic period compared with the pre-pandemic period. The communicable disease incidence tended to decrease even as the incidence of non-communicable diseases did not significantly change. There was no significant difference in the time to diagnosis between the pre-pandemic and pandemic periods; however, the time to radiologic reduction was significantly longer or not depending on the study. CONCLUSIONS: The COVID-19 pandemic significantly reduced the incidence of intussusception in children, supporting the hypothesis that infection plays a major role in the etiology of intussusception. Future studies in the late pandemic or post-pandemic era, which would represent the level of implementation of non-pharmaceutical interventions and social distancing as well as additional data from various countries will be needed.
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COVID-19 , Intussusception , Child , United States , Humans , Pandemics , COVID-19/epidemiology , Incidence , SARS-CoV-2 , Intussusception/epidemiologyABSTRACT
In the COVID-19 pandemic, vaccines have emerged as the most effective tool to protect people from COVID-19. However, there is a limited study of adverse events (AEs) for COVID-19 vaccines among people with type 2 diabetes. The purpose of this study is to report the common adverse events following the COVID-19 vaccines, mRNA-1273, BNT162b2, and JNJ-78436735 in diabetic patients. We collected data for common adverse events to the COVID-19 vaccines using Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). To identify the people with and without diabetes, we used the Natural language processing algorithms. After a 1:3 propensity score matching, we used 6,829 people with type 2 diabetes and 20,487 healthy control groups. Multiple logistic regression analysis was performed to obtain the odds ratio for 25 common AEs in order of high frequency. The most common AEs were pain (17.9%), headache (16.6%), pyrexia (13.4%), chills (12.4%), fatigue (12.0%), dizziness (11.0%). In particular, AEs of the dysmenorrhea in women were rare (0.14%), but a 15-fold higher frequency was observed in patients with diabetes (0.45% versus 0.03%) than in those with controls. The risk of all common AEs following both mRNA vaccines was significantly lower (OR = 0.87, 95% CI = 0.77–0.97, P = 0.015) than that after one viral vector vaccine, as well as the risk among males (OR = 0.56, 95% CI = 0.53–0.59, P < 0.001) was lower than among females. In conclusion, the risk of common adverse events among people with type 2 diabetes was low after both mRNA vaccines and in males. These findings might have implications for safe vaccine use. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
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The novel infectious disease COVID-19, which started in December 2019, has plunged the world into a pandemic era. Accordingly, countries around the world are concerned about the spread of COVID-19, and have promoted large-scale gatherings and education through immigration control and social distancing. In particular, from March 15, 2020, elementary, secondary, high school, and university have conducted an unprecedented online opening of school in Korea's school education operation, and distance education classes have been conducted starting with the third year of middle and high schools across the country. In this process, students, faculty, and parents were faced with unexpected non-face-to-face distance education, and experienced confusion, tension, and uncertainty about the future society. Due to the spread of COVID-19, the online school curriculum has exposed the limitations and problems of the existing face-to-face school education system. In particular, coding education aimed at understanding and using software can interest students through face-to-face computer practice education. In addition, face-to-face education is important for non-IT majors to realize the importance of SW education and improve their convergence thinking skills. In this study, big data (SNS, Naver blog, youtube, google search keyword frequency, etc.) collected online to analyze the recognition and evaluation of untact (real-time online or pre-recorded video lecture) coding education was used as a text mining technique. Analysis was performed. ‘Coding education’, the keyword of this study, was selected as an analysis keyword, and data was collected through portals/SNSs of Google, Naver, Daum, and YouTube. In addition, after refining/morpheme analysis based on the collected list, word frequency, TF-IDF, N-gram, and topic modeling were analyzed through text mining, and matrix analysis, matrix chart, and sentiment analysis were performed. The results of this study will be used as basic data for college students’ coding education. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
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As for the OTT platform, as the commercialization of the high-speed Internet technology called 5G began, the development of download and streaming technology also accelerated, and the market entry began in earnest. In addition, as the COVID-19 pandemic has occurred around the world, many changes have occurred in the platform industry that provides digital content. In order to maintain users' subscriptions to OTT platform digital content services and to understand the factors of continuous use, it is necessary to study the perceived value, satisfaction, and intention to continue using OTT services.Therefore, this study was conducted based on the value-based acceptance model to study the factors that can be expected for OTT platform digital content services and the factors that the perceived value of OTT services affects satisfaction and intention to continue use. For empirical analysis, SPSS ver.23 will analyze the influence of path coefficients on playability, convenience, usefulness, technical risk, cost risk, and security risk that affect the perceived value of OTT digital content services, and determine whether or not to adopt t value (1.96 or more) and p value 0.05. In addition, domestic and foreign OTT platform digital content providers will derive and present factors to improve or upgrade through causal analysis of digital content provision services that are used the most among overseas/domestic OTT platforms. © 2022 IEEE.
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Aerosolized droplets are produced en masse in dental practices;these aerosols disperse in the surrounding space, posing a health threat if the patient is infected with a transmittable disease, particularly COVID-19. Here, a viscoelastic polyacrylic acid (PAA) solution was used to minimize liquid aerosolization and limit the travel distance of aerosols. The PAA concentration was varied to evaluate its effect on aerosolization and droplet size resulting from procedures using dental handpieces, which include tooth cutting, grinding, and polishing. In addition, a thermocouple was inserted at the center of the model tooth to measure its temperature during a handpiece operation. The temperature data suggest that the cooling performance of the PAA solution is comparable to that of pure water in operations in the occlusal and facial directions. The PAA solution droplets splattered on the patient's facial area during the handpiece operation are markedly larger than those of pure water, which is evidence of the settling of the PAA droplets, preventing further transmission. Accordingly, the travel distance of the aerosolized PAA droplets was limited by viscoelastic resistance to droplet detachment. This comparison of the aerosol suppression capability between water and PAA solutions confirms the benefit of using viscoelastic solutions for various dental operations. Published under an exclusive license by AIP Publishing.
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Background: Oral mucositis (OM) is a debilitating side effect of concomitant chemoradiotherapy (CRT) for head and neck cancer (HNC). EC-18 may effectively mitigate OM by minimizing the CRT-induced innate immune response. This Phase II, 2-stage trial evaluated safety, tolerability, and efficacy of EC- 18 in reducing the duration, incidence, and trajectory of severe OM (SOM) in HNC patients. Methods: Patients (n = 105) with pathologically confirmed oral cavity, oropharynx, hypopharynx, or nasopharynx squamous cell cancers who received intensity-modulated radiation therapy (IMRT;with ≥ 55 Gy on ≥ 2 oral sites) and weekly or tri-weekly cisplatin were studied. In Stage 1, 24 patients were randomized (n = 6 per arm) to receive 500, 1000, or 2000 mg of EC-18, or placebo. Following independent Data Safety Monitoring Board review, 81 patients in Stage 2 received EC-18 2000 mg (n = 41) or placebo (n = 40) throughout CRT. WHO OM grade was assessed twice weekly during IMRT and then once weekly for up to 6 weeks post-IMRT. The primary efficacy endpoint was duration of SOM during the active and short-term follow-up (STFU) periods in the compliant per-protocol population (PP). Much of Stage 2 was conducted during peak periods of the COVID-19 pandemic which measurably impacted patient compliance relative to test medication dosing and planned radiation. Consequently, to assess efficacy most accurately, the PP population was analyzed (with at least 4 weeks of study drug dosing, minimum cumulative radiation of 55 Gy, 80% study drug compliance in the first 28 days of dosing, and without using not-allowed-therapy). Results: Patient demographics and baseline characteristics were balanced between groups. Adverse events (AEs) were comparable amongst cohorts without drug-related severe AEs. In the PP, the median duration of SOM from baseline through STFU was 0 day in the EC-18 group (n = 22) v 13.5 days in the placebo group (n = 20). SOM incidence through STFU (45.5% v 70%) and opioid use (time to onset: 32.3 v 26.0 days;and duration: 32.8 v 37.5 days) favored EC-18 v placebo. Results of the covariates analyses suggested that EC-18 favorably impacted SOM incidence in patients who experienced SOM treated with weekly low-dose cisplatin (n = 26;37.5% v placebo 70.0%) and HPV+ tumors (n = 29;35.3% v placebo 66.7%;Table). One-year long-term follow-up for tumor outcomes is ongoing. Conclusions: EC-18 safely mitigated the development and the time course of SOM in CRT-treated HNC patients. In addition, EC-18 may provide substantial benefits to subpopulations of HPV+ HNC patients treated with low dose cisplatin.
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Recently, the worldwide demand for disposable masks has increased due to COVID-19 infections and severe air pollution. Personal masks should reduce breathe resistance while maintaining filtering performance. In this study, a solution blowing process is used to produce composite nanofiber filters to co-spin two polymers at once. The manufacture process of the various fiber diameter filter was designed, and the filtration performance and differential pressure of the prepared filter was investigated. Poly vinylidene fluoride-hexafluoropropylene (PVDF-HFP) and Polylactic acid (PLA) fibers were chosen to be entangled together in a layer with a diameter of 1.05 mu m and 0.33 mu m. Composite nanofilters showed up to 87% filtration efficiency and 32 Pa differential pressure.
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This research-track work-in-progress paper contributes to engineering education by documenting progress in developing a new standard Engineering Computational Thinking Diagnostic to measure engineering student success in five factors of computational thinking. Over the past year, results from an initial validation attempt were used to refine diagnostic questions. A second statistical validation attempt was then completed in Spring 2021 with 191 student participants at three universities. Statistics show that all diagnostic questions had statistically significant factor loadings onto one general computational thinking factor that incorporates the five original factors of (a) ion, (b) Algorithmic Thinking, (c) Decomposition, (d) Data Representation and Organization, and (e) Impact of Computing. This result was unexpected as our goal was a diagnostic that could discriminate among the five factors. A small population size caused by the virtual delivery of courses during the COVID-19 pandemic may be the explanation and a third round of validation in Fall 2021 is expected to result in a larger population given the return to face-to-face instruction. When statistical validation is completed, the diagnostic will help institutions identify students with strong entry level skills in computational thinking as well as students that require academic support. The diagnostic will inform curriculum design by demonstrating which factors are more accessible to engineering students and which factors need more time and focus in the classroom. The long-term impact of a successfully validated computational thinking diagnostic will be introductory engineering courses that better serve engineering students coming from many backgrounds. This can increase student self-efficacy, improve student retention, and improve student enculturation into the engineering profession. Currently, the diagnostic identifies general computational thinking skill