Speech Recognition and Neural Networks based Talking Health Care Bot (THCB): Medibot

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected healthcare in several ways. Some patients were unable to make it to appointments due to curfews, transportation restrictions, and stay-at-home directives, while less urgent procedures were postponed or cancelled. Others steered clear of hospitals out of fear of contracting an infection. With the use of a conversational artificial intelligence-based program, the Talking Health Care Bot (THCB) could be useful during the pandemic by allowing patients to receive supportive care without physically visiting a hospital. Therefore, the THCB will drastically and quickly change in-person care to patient consultation through the internet. To give patients free primary healthcare and to narrow the supply-demand gap for human healthcare professionals, this work created a conversational bot based on artificial intelligence and machine learning. The study proposes a revolutionary computer program that serves as a patient's personal virtual doctor. The program was carefully created and thoroughly trained to communicate with patients as if they were real people. Based on a serverless architecture, this application predicts the disease based on the symptoms of the patients. A Talking Healthcare chatbot confronts several challenges, but the user's accent is by far the most challenging. This study has then evaluated the proposed model by using one hundred different voices and symptoms, achieving an accuracy rate of 77%. © 2023 IEEE.

Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on diagnosis of sleep apnea: an observational study of a hybrid virtual care clinical pathway.

Since the onset of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, there has been a reduction in patient uptake of in-person care, likely in part, due to patients' fear of contracting COVID infection. We aimed to examine changes in the proportion of patients assessed in a sleep clinic who subsequently underwent in-lab polysomnography before and during the pandemic. A retrospective study was conducted, comparing the periods September 2018-April 2019 (pre-pandemic) and September 2020-April 2021 (pandemic). Among the patients who were referred to an ambulatory sleep clinic in Toronto, Ontario for assessment of possible sleep apnea, the number of patients who underwent diagnostic PSG within 90 days from the first consultation with a physician was analyzed. Significantly lower number of patients underwent PSG in the pandemic than the pre-pandemic period [122/229 patients (53.3%) vs. 169/208 patients (81.3%), p < 0.001]. Older age and having a consultation in the months of full-blown pandemic, which was defined as month with its average of newly confirmed COVID-19 positive cases in Ontario > 1000 cases/day, were associated with declining PSG in the pandemic period. Among patients who underwent PSG, sleep apnea was found in 114/169 (67.5%) and 85/122 (69.7%) patients in the pre-pandemic and the pandemic period, respectively (p = 0.69). During the pandemic, there was a dramatic reduction in uptake of in-lab PSG. It is very likely that a significant proportion of patients in this cohort had sleep apnea that went undiagnosed with significant implications for health outcomes.

Telemedicine Investigation and Recommendation for Duhok Province

With the onset of the 2019 coronavirus disease outbreak (COVID19), the shift from traditional in-person care to mostly virtual or remote care has been accelerated. Choosing the appropriate telemedicine communication services and interaction modes is critical to the success of remote disease management infrastructures for a better future healthcare system. This paper aims to investigate the possibility of the adoption of telemedicine in Duhok province that becomes an urgent need due to Covid-19. However, it begins with a systematic review of telemedicine applications development merits and demerits in different countries to the best fit. A questionnaire with private and public hospitals to gauge public acceptance of telemedicine in Duhok province in the Kurdistan Region has been designed and implemented. The results show that 58.8% were looking forward to this platform, whereas 34.5% were neutral, and 6.7% were negative. The survey results also show the most important services required from the point of view of patients, the public, and health care staff to be adopted and implemented in Duhok province. © 2022 IEEE.

Disparities in mental health access before and after transitioning to telehealth

Telehealth implementation has potential to reduce disparities in access to mental health care. We examined the number of mental health visits accessed and the visit format used (office, phone, or virtual) by patient demographics before and after a large health system's shift to telehealth during the COVID-19 pandemic. Patients ages 6-17 accessed relatively fewer and female patients accessed relatively more mental health visits after the telehealth transition. Demographic variables were associated with visit format used, with rural residents, older adults, females, and White and Black/African American patients using a higher proportion of phone visits. Implications are discussed for the future implementation of telehealth. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved) Impact Statement This study found changes in the gender and age of patients accessing mental health services before and after a large health system began providing services remotely in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. It also found that phone calls were relatively preferred by certain demographic groups. These groups may be adversely affected by limitations on reimbursement for mental health services provided by phone. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

Telemedicine-assisted stepwise approach of service delivery for substance use disorders in India.

Restricted access to healthcare during COVID-19 pandemic warranted an urgent adaptation of telemedicine practice. We describe a synchronous, stepwise (telephonic, video, and in-person consultation) direct-care model. From 18th May to 31st August 2020, 128 new and 198 follow-up patients received consultation. Eighty-nine percent of new patients required video-consultation. Sixty-eight percent of follow-up cases were managed by telephonic consultation. A third of new and a fifth of the follow-up patients had to be called for physical consultation. Limited access to and understanding of the technologies, potential breach in privacy, and restrictions imposed on online prescription of medications posed significant challenges.