Optimizing Medical Healthcare Services Using Big Data Analytics

Big data is a very large size of datasets which come from many different sources and are in a wide variety of forms. Due to its enormous potential, big data has gained popularity in recent years. Big data enables us to investigate and reinvent numerous fields, including the healthcare industry, education, and others. Big data specifically in the healthcare sector comes from a variety of sources, including patient medical information, hospital records, findings from physical exams, and the outcomes of medical devices. Covid19 recently, one of the most neglected areas to concentrate on has come under scrutiny due to the pandemic: healthcare management. Patient duration of stay in a hospital is one crucial statistic to monitor and forecast if one wishes to increase the effectiveness of healthcare management in a hospital, even if there are many use cases for data science in healthcare management. At the time of admission, this metric aids hospitals in identifying patients who are at high Length of Stay namely LS risk (patients who will stay longer). Once identified, patients at high risk for LS can have their treatment plans improved to reduce LS and reduce the risk of infection in staff or visitors. Additionally, prior awareness of LS might help with planning logistics like room and bed allotment. The aim of the suggested system is to precisely anticipate the length of stay for each patient on an individual basis so that hospitals can use this knowledge for better functioning and resource allocation using data analytics. This would contribute to improving treatments and services. © 2023 IEEE.

An optimisation approach for determining the efficiency of vital medical devices in intensive care units with COVID-19 patients using Apriori algorithm

Improving the process of strategic management in hospitals preparation and equipping the intensive care units (ICUs) and the availability of medical devices plays an important role for knowing consumer behaviour and need. This cross-sectional study was performed in the ICU of Farhikhtegan Hospital, Tehran, Iran for a period of six months. During these months, ten medical devices have been used 5,497 times. These devices include: ventilator, oxygen cylinder, infusion pump, electrocardiography machine, vital signs monitor, oxygen flowmeter, wavy mattress, ultrasound sonography machine, ultrasound echocardiography machine, and dialysis machine. The Apriori algorithm showed that four devices: ventilator, oxygen cylinder, vital signs monitoring device, oxygen flowmeter are the most used ones by patients. These devices are positively correlated with each other and their confidence is over 80% and their support is 73%. For validating the results, we have used equivalence class clustering and bottom-up lattice traversal (ECLAT) algorithm in our dataset.

Analysis of the Professional Aspects of Medical Drugs Industry in the Republic of Serbia in Times of COVID-19 Pandemic

The research subject of this paper is the analysis of the attitudes of employees in pharmaceutical companies towards the business aspects of the pharmaceutical industry during and after the end of the pandemic in the Republic of Serbia. The aim is to examine the differences in the attitudes of employees, as well as to determine which variables predict the situations of endangering the professional reputation of pharmaceutical companies during the COVID-19 pandemic. The research was conducted by means of a survey during 2021 on a sample of 27 innovative and generic pharmaceutical companies. We used the SPSS program for descriptive statistics analysis, chi square test and binary logistic regression models. The findings show that there is a statistically significant difference in the expressed attitudes of employees in innovative and generic pharmaceutical companies in terms of coming to the office during the pandemic;the lack of medicines and medical devices used in the treatment of COVID-19 infections;the patient access to a chosen doctor;the expectations of the employees to continue working from home after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings of the binary regression models show the slowdown in the supply chain, the access to doctors and working from the home office have not been perceived as creating situations of endangering professional reputations, that is, they contribute to the sustainable economic success. On the other hand, the introduction of digital technologies decreases the occurrence of conditions in which their professional reputation has been threatened.

Comparison of requirements for clinical study of SARS-CoV-2 antigen test kits in China, the USA and Europe.

Aims: This study was designed to analyze the requirements for clinical trials of SARS-CoV-2 antigen testing to explore the rationality and scientific rigor of clinical trials. Methods: The guidelines for the listing of SARS-CoV-2 antigen tests were compared and the requirements for clinical trials were analyzed to find similarities and differences between China, the USA and Europe. Results: The requirements for clinical trials of SARS-CoV-2 antigen tests in China, the USA and Europe were consistent in terms of methods. However, differences were found in the requirements for protocol design. Conclusion: The differences in clinical trial requirements stem from regulations and the actual conditions across regions, but all clinical trials are designed to obtain valid clinical performance of products.

Current Advances in Nanomaterial-associated Micro and Nano-devices for SARS-CoV-2 Detection

COVID-19 spread rapidly around the world in 18 months, with various forms of variants caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS-CoV). This has put pressure on the world community and created an urgent need for understanding its early occurrence through rapid, simple, cheap, and yet highly accurate diagnosis. The most widely adopted method as of today is the real-time reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction. This test has shown the potential for rapid testing, but unfortunately, the test is not rapid and, in some cases, displays false negatives or false positives. The nanomaterials play an important role in creating highly sensitive systems, and have been thought to significantly improve the performance of the SARSCoV- 2 protocols. Several biosensors based on micro-and nano-sensors for SARS-CoV-2 detection have been reported, and they employ multi-dimensional hybrids on sensing surfaces with devices having different sizes and geometries. Zero-to-three-dimension nanomaterial hybrids on sensing surfaces, including nanofilm hybrids for SARS-CoV-2 detection, were employed with unprecedented sensitivity and accuracy. Furthermore, the sensors were nanofluidic and mediated high-performance SARS-CoV-2 detection. This breakthrough has brought the possibility of making a biosystem on a chip (Bio-SoC) for rapid, cheap, and point-of-care detection. This review summarises various advancements in nanomaterial-associated nanodevices and metasurface devices for detecting SARS-CoV-2.

The Pi-CON Methodology Applied: Operator Errors and Preference Tracking of a Novel Ubiquitous Vital Signs Sensor and Its User Interface

Remote Patient Monitoring has enjoyed strong growth to new heights driven by several factors, such as the COVID-19 pandemic or advances in technology, allowing consumers and patients to continuously record health data by themselves. This does not come without its challenges, however. A literature review was completed and highlights usability gaps when using wearables or home use medical devices in a virtual environment. Based on these findings, the Pi-CON methodology was applied to close these gaps by utilizing a novel sensor that allows the acquisition of vital signs at a distance, without any sensors touching the patient. Pi-CON stands for passive, continuous and non-contact, and describes the ability to acquire vital signs continuously and passively, with limited user interaction. The preference of vital sign acquisition with a newly developed sensor was tested and compared to vital sign tests taken with patient generated health-data devices (ear thermometer, pulse oximeter) measuring heart rate, respiratory rate and body temperature. In addition, the amount of operator errors and the user interfaces were tested and compared. Results show that participants preferred vital signs acquisition with the novel sensor and the developed user interface of the sensor. Results also revealed that participants had a mean error of .85 per vital sign measurement with the patient-generated health data devices and .33 with the developed sensor, confirming the beneficial impact available when using the developed sensor based on the Pi-CON methodology.

Advances in medical textiles

Medical textile is one of the technical textiles sectors, growing faster due to developments in polymer science and technology and innovation in forming new textile structures. In this review, current market trends for the growth of medical textiles for both pre and post covid pandemic periods were discussed. Focus is given to the classification of medical textiles and devices, specific requirements of fibers and widely used types of fibers, and advanced developments in this field, including nanofibers, bicomponent fibers, superabsorbent polymers, and conductive materials used in a wide range of advanced medical devices. Various fabric structures (woven/knitted/nonwoven/braided) have been in use in biomedical devices;however, recent 3D shaped structures such as spacer fabrics, and 3D-printed materials have profoundly marked their significance with its ability to adapt to specific needs of the medical community. Smart wearable sensor technologies for monitoring, diagnosis, and treatment are discussed and critically reviewed, enabling the readers to understand the complexity of the nature of interdisciplinary approaches required for developing such complex structures and systems. Antimicrobial agents (synthetic and natural/organic) used in the development of medical textiles mainly wound dressings, advances in antiadhesive textile coatings, and antimicrobial assessments of medical fabrics are critically reviewed. Finally, a case study on 3D printing of complex structures is presented to update modern developments using fine detail resolution (FDR), a selective laser sintering that uses carbon dioxide laser to produce delicate and complex 3D structures suitable for medical applications. It is anticipated that readers will benefit from this critical overview of trends in this sector and the multidisciplinary approaches needed to meet the demands of the ever-growing consumer base. © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

WORKING PRINCIPLE AND INTELLIGENCE OF SMART INFUSION PUMP

There is a tremendous demand on the critical care resources due to the extensive spread of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and the large number of patients requiring critical care. The efficacy of a device directly influences how long a patient lives since patients are often receiving critical care. Smart infusion pump is a medical device that can drip fluids into the patient's body. This device is considered as one of the most safety-critical medical devices due to the way it functions and the risks it presents. The main objective of this work is to develop an affordable infusion pump usin g embedded technology. The main tactic is to develop equipment that can identify air bubbles in infusion pump tubing since even a little one might obstruct blood flow and result in mortality. This method may provide consumers an accurate result, making it the greatest method for identifying bubbles and saving lives.

Development Dimensions in International Relations: reflections on industry and health in pandemic times

This article presents the results of research on the effect of the coronavirus pandemic on the medical equipment industry in Argentina, focusing on the province of Buenos Aires. It is presented as a case study that contributes to generate reflections about the complex connection between the different dimensions of the concept of development.The concept of development has been widely used in sociology and economics, but the discipline of International Relations ignored it for a long time frame. Therefore, from an international perspective, questions on development remained in the area of international economics and development studies. In Latin America, the first genuinely peripheral approach to development, structuralism, emerged also from the field of economics to discuss modernization theories. It promoted a new approach to development and industrialization to overcome the so-called underdevelopment of the region. Its central conceptual tool, dependency, was considered a fundamental pillar for Latin American International Relations and International Political Economy.The discipline of International Relations expanded its scope, while the concept of development increasingly included other dimensions that were not strictly economic, such as health. The end of the Cold War implied an important challenge for considerations about the concept and the United Nations promoted a human development approach. This had practical effects which, for example, conditioned development cooperation: the percentage of official development aid allocated to the health sector between 1995-2000 and 2007-2011 went from 7 to 13%. This gave greater visibility to health in different reports and international meetings, such as the Commission on Health Research for Development or the Project on Priority Medical Devices of the World Health Organization, which drew attention to the incompatibilities of modern and technologically complex products and the (human, technological and infrastructure) resources available in low-income countries. This was followed by a series of publications on public policies, innovation, regulations, use, priorities and even conditions for the donations of medical equipment.When the pandemic caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus was declared, the WHO issued its list of priority medical devices for this illness, which served as a reference for the governments of the affected countries. However, the availability of these devices in regions, countries and local communities was highly uneven. At the international level, the demand for medical equipment increased notably, while different countries established export bans on those devices that were in short supply. Access to these resources became an indicator of the relative success or failure of countries in caring for the health of their citizens. The pandemic thus reinforced a certain homogenization in the priority given to medical products as indicators of development. Yet, at the same time, it generated opportunities to discuss their pertinence and relevance.In this context, the supply capacity of these products in Argentina was at the center of concerns and facilitated a multiplication of policies to support the sector, as well as public-private initiatives for the production of medical equipment, both to face the pandemic and to strengthen this industrial sector in the future. The potential capacities of this sector, which until then had not been the target of specific policies, became evident. However, at the same time, a series of limiting factors were identified, linked to the country's position in the global medical equipment industry and to the structural economic difficulties that the country has historically faced.This situation generated interest in more in-depth studies on the sector. Therefore, this article presents the characteristics of this sector in Argentina, and, in particular, the province of Buenos Aires, as well as the effects of the pandemic on it. The main part of the medical equipment industry is housed in this province. Buenos Aires represents 50% of the total manufacturing activity in the country. It is also the most populated province and this population has, at the same time, a wide margin of unsatisfied needs. In this analysis, questions about the convergence between the industrial and health dimensions, the role of public policies dedicated to one or the other, and the relevance of dedicating (material and/or human) public resources to an industrial sector, became evident. The goods produced by this sector may be a way of improving health, but they are neither the only way nor the sufficient means to do it;the social determinants of health have been widely recognized. Therefore, this case study recalls that, although the notion of development exceeds the industrial dimension, the exploration of the link between it and others, such as the health dimension, is complex and necessary.To start this exploration, the research is carried out using a qualitative methodology, through bibliographic and documentary analysis, as well as in-depth interviews and statistical data. The article starts by synthesizing the main dimensions that formed part of the concept of development since the second post-war period, concentrating on the role given to industry and health in its evolution. It identifies the structuralist approach as a tool to understand the place of the Argentine industry in the structure of the global medical equipment market, concentrated in a few companies and countries that generate a large part of the production, sales and technology of the sector. It also identifies the circular way in which human development has conceived the relationship between health and economic development, underlining the role of social debate to define the priority each society gives to one or the other. In a second section, the paper synthesizes the characteristics of the medical equipment industry at a global level to facilitate locating the Argentine industry in this global structure. Finally, it presents the characteristics of the sector in Argentina, with a particular focus on the province of Buenos Aires: a marginal sector in terms of industrial income, which registers historical trade deficit and which, at the same time, shows potential industrial capacities in terms of innovation, technology and human resources. The effects of the pandemic for this sector were limited in terms of its economic indicators and historical industrial structure, but substantial in terms of visibility of the sector on the political agenda, which generated the mentioned opportunity to discuss the relevance and pertinence of dedicating public resources to foster it. In his way, the reflections triggered by the analysis of this specific case aim to enrich the research agenda of International Relations, in particular by encouraging debate on the relationship between health, industry and development.

PACMAN: A Framework for Pulse Oximeter Digit Detection and Reading in A Low-Resource Setting

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, patients were required to manually input their daily oxygen saturation (SpO2) and pulse rate (PR) values into a health monitoring system—unfortunately, such a process trend to be an error in typing. Several studies attempted to detect the physiological value from the captured image using optical character recognition (OCR). However, the technology has limited availability with high cost. Thus, this study aimed to propose a novel framework called PACMAN (Pandemic Accelerated Human-Machine Collaboration) with a low-resource deep learning-based computer vision. We compared state-of-the-art object detection algorithms (scaled YOLOv4, YOLOv5, and YOLOR), including the commercial OCR tools for digit recognition on the captured images from the pulse oximeter display. All images were derived from crowdsourced data collection with varying quality and alignment. YOLOv5 was the best-performing model against the given model comparison across all datasets, notably the correctly orientated image dataset. We further improved the model performance with the digits auto-orientation algorithm and applied a clustering algorithm to extract SpO2 and PR values. The accuracy performance of YOLOv5 with the implementations was approximately 81.0-89.5%, which was enhanced compared to without any additional implementation. Accordingly, this study highlighted the completion of the PACMAN framework to detect and read digits in real-world datasets. The proposed framework has been currently integrated into the patient monitoring system utilized by hospitals nationwide. IEEE

A Medical Device That Can Be Used for Psychotherapy in the Metaverse

In 2020, a new coronavirus swept the world, and the advent of this disease has a huge impact on our social and economic development. Due to the limited medical resources and regional differences, this model of virtual medicine becomes more valuable. In this paper, we create a virtual medical space based on a metaverse in order to investigate whether the medical model can be freely transformed between virtual and reality. In this process, I first describe different scenarios of virtual medical care in mixed reality, and then we use one of them as an example to develop a medical device. Then we designed the software and hardware of the product and performed the user experience, it includes the interaction and usage scenarios that affect the user. Finally, this medical device will be demonstrated by user experience and feedback. © 2023 The authors and IOS Press.

Heart Rate Evaluation by Smartphone: An Overview

In this paper, an overview of the smartphone measurement methods for Heart Rate (HR) and Heart Rate Variability (HRV) is presented. HR and HRV are important vital signs to be evaluated and monitored especially in a sudden heart crisis and in the case of COVID-19. Unlike other specific medical devices, the smartphone can always be present with a person, and it is equipped with sensors that can be used to estimate or acquire such vital signs. Furthermore, their computation and connection capabilities make them suitable for Internet of Things applications. Although in the literature many interesting solutions for evaluating HR and HRV are proposed, often a lack in the analysis of the measurement uncertainty, the description of the measurement procedure for their validation, and the use of a common gold standard for testing all of them is highlighted. The lack of standardization in experimental protocol, processing methodology, and validation procedures, impacts the comparability of results and their general validity. To stimulate the research activities to fill this gap, the paper gives an analysis of the most recent literature together with a logical classification of the measurement methods by highlighting their main advantages and disadvantages from a metrological point of view together with the description of the measurement methods and instruments proposed by authors for their validation. © 2023, ICST Institute for Computer Sciences, Social Informatics and Telecommunications Engineering.

Design and Implementation of Regulated Oxygenation Based Ventilation System with Feedback Mechanism

A multifunctional medical device for the aid of COVID affected patients are scarce. This paper proposes an automated medical device which is incorporated with a feedback mechanism and a GSM base emergency alarm system. The combined sensors in the prototype can acquire readings of a patient's temperature, heart rate, oxygen saturation (SpO2), respiratory rate (RR), and heart condition noninvasively and can send these vitals easily via SMS in real time. Based on the patient's SpO2 level and RR, the system can control the oxygen flow through a nasal canola with the aid of a servo motor mechanism. The system derives information from the sensors to operate automatically based on the degrading vitals of a patient. Due to its nature of user friendliness the protype can be operated without much prior medical knowledge. © 2023 IEEE.

Why did the number of US FDA medical device guidelines begin to rise in the mid-2010s? A perspective.

AREAS COVERED: An initial investigation of US medical device guidelines is presented, with the aid of those of medicines as qualitative comparator. Since the first recorded FDA medical device guideline (February 1975) until the mid-2010s, the number of medical device guidelines has been basically stable, then rapidly rose. EXPERT OPINION: The rise of the COVID-19 pandemic and digital health technologies explains 50% of the upward momentum in guidelines since the mid-2010s. Concomitantly, medical device and medicinal guidelines became moderately correlated. This perspective posits that this trend will continue irrespective of the ebbing pandemic as it is embedded in the concept of 'innovation saltus' - i.e. discrete periods of elevated innovation. A key aspiration of this work is to inspire additional research into this interesting area of regulatory science; namely, examination of guidelines (as proxy measures of regulations) and their influence on innovation.

Robust Design Optimization of Powered Air Purifying Respirator System by Iterative Process

The personal protective equipment (PPE) has protected the frontline health workers from getting affected in COVID 19 spread situations to a certain level. Among the PPEs, PAPRs (Powered Air Purifying Respirators) are considered as one of the most efficient equipment for protection purposes. In pandemic spread situations, the PAPR becomes very much essential considering its protection. The PAPR is mainly imported to India. But the cost of PAPR being on the higher side (Rupees (Rs) 100000) becomes unaffordable to many frontline health workers. This paper focuses on the development of a cost-effective PAPR that is affordable to them. This paper projects a detailed step-by-step process of design and development of PAPR, and its evolution in each iteration. The study was conducted with the medical officers from AIMS Hospital and engineers from AMMACHI labs to bring out effective solutions for frontline health workers during a pandemic. © 2022 IEEE.

Super effective antimicrobial silver-sputtered coatings on poly(lactic acid) against bacteria and omicron SARS-CoV-2

Poly(lactic acid) (PLA) is a biopolymer with properties potentially suitable for fabricating packaging, medical devices, and healthcare products in a more friendly environmental way because this polymer presents biodegradability, compostability, low carbon footprint, and recyclability. However, PLA does not present intrinsic antimicrobial properties. Antimicrobial materials are highly desirable for manufacturing smart packaging and personal protective equipment to secure food and health professionals against pathogenic microorganisms. In this work, we evaluated the antimicrobial performance of (Ag)-coated PLA against Escherichia coli, Bacillus subtilis, and Omicron severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). PLA was rapidly coated with metallic Ag by pulsed direct current magnetron sputtering (pDCMS) for 5, 10, and 20 s. Atomic force microscopy indicates that the Ag coating grows predominantly on the PLA surface via a bulk diffusion mechanism. According to bactericidal and quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction assays, Ag-coated PLA was capable of inhibiting bacterial biofilm formation and disrupting the genetic material of the Omicron SARS-CoV-2. X-ray high-resolution photoelectron and nuclear magnetic resonance results suggest no polymer chain scission in the PLA bulk due to plasma thermal stress effects during Ag sputtering. © 2023 Elsevier Ltd

Privacy Protection and Regulatory Aspects in the context of Medical Apps

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a significant increase in the development of medical apps worldwide in recent years, both in research projects and in industry. However, unfortunately the development of such apps has often been significantly slowed down, if not stopped, due to bureaucratic problems frequently related to privacy. Therefore, in this paper we aim to summarize regulatory aspects and privacy protection in the context of medical apps, in order to provide suggestions and guidelines for app designers and developers. © 2022 IEEE.

An Insight into Wearable Devices for Smart Healthcare Technologies

Physical fitness is the prime priority of people these days as everyone wants to see himself as healthy. There are numbers of wearable devices available that help human to monitor their vital body signs through which one can get an average idea of their health. Advancements in the efficiency of healthcare systems have fueled the research and development of high-performance wearable devices. There is significant potential for portable healthcare systems to lower healthcare costs and provide continuous health monitoring of critical patients from remote locations. The most pressing need in this field is developing a safe, effective, and trustworthy medical device that can be used to reliably monitor vital signs from various human organs or the environment within or outside the body through flexible sensors. Still, the patient should be able to go about their normal day while sporting a wearable or implanted medical device. This article highlights the current scenario of wearable devices and sensors for healthcare applications. Specifically, it focuses on some widely used commercially available wearable devices for continuously gauging patient's vital parameters and discusses the major factors influencing the surge in the demand for medical devices. Furthermore, this paper addresses the challenges and countermeasures of wearable devices in smart healthcare technology. © 2023 IEEE.

Medical device companies crisis communication response to stakeholders during COVID-19: pre-crisis stage to new normal

Purpose: During COVID-19, this study aims to evaluate the crisis communication strategies (CCS) of Fortune 500 medical device businesses. These companies' CCS adoption is evaluated using data from the microblogging site Twitter. Design/methodology/approach: A total of 11,569 tweets were collected over the course of a year, from 31 December 2019 to 31 December 2020, and analysed using COVID-19's pre-crisis, crisis and new normal stages. The data acquired from Twitter is assessed using latent Dirichlet allocation-based topic modelling, valence aware dictionary for sentiment reasoning sentiment analysis and emotion recognition analysis and then further examined using fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis to build a configurational model. The findings were compared to Cheng's (2018, 2020) integrated strategy toolkit for organisational CCS, which included 28 strategies. Findings: With positive sentiments across stages, companies chose "information providing”, "monitoring” and "good intentions” as the CCS. In the crisis and new normal stages of COVID, the emotion of "depression” was observed. Research limitations/implications: Researchers would be able to assess the CCS used through visual aids in the future by conducting a cross-industry examination using image analytics. Furthermore, by prolonging the study's duration, long-term changes in the CCS can be investigated. Practical implications: Companies should send real-time information to their stakeholders via social media during a pandemic, conveying good intentions and positive sentiments while remaining neutral. Originality/value: To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is one of the first studies to investigate the CCS patterns used by medical device businesses to communicate via social media during a pandemic. © 2023, Emerald Publishing Limited.

Synthesis of ester-free poly(trimethylene carbonate) bearing cinnamyl moiety for antibacterial biomaterials applications

Antimicrobial biocompatible polymers have highly desirable materials in medical technology to prevent any healthcare-associated infections from the in-dwelling on medical device that could pose a risk to patients, and this is gaining attention particularly in the context of the current COVID-19 pandemic. In this study, ester free type of poly(trimethylene carbonate) (PTMC) derivatives containing cinnamyl group has been synthesized. Also, several of alcohol-based initiators;benzyl alcohol, 2,2-dimethyl-1-propanol, 4-(2-hydroxyethoxy) benzaldehyde and 2-(p-tolyloxy)ethan-1-ol and polymer structure has been designed and analyzed its molecular weight on thermal and physical properties effect. The homopolymers and copolymers of PTMC derivatives with cinnamyl group had achieved with molecular weight up to 7400 — 12,300 g/mol with the improved physical state and glass transition temperature, Tg at 8 ֩C respectively. Different types of essential oil, which is thymol and carvacrol, have been incorporated with cinnamyl PTMC had resulted the suppression of E.coli and S.aureus growth. The results showed a promising of introduction of cinnamyl derivatives into ester free-type of PTMC derivatives, as well as create more alcohol-initiators for polymerization of trimethylene carbonate, for more advanced development in the future. © 2023 Elsevier B.V.