A comparative study of interagency communications and information exchange in disaster response among selected countries.

BACKGROUND: Effective communications and secure information exchange platforms during disasters and emergencies are among the significant factors in inclusive disaster management and can radically contribute to better preparedness, efficient and timely responsiveness, and, finally, maximal reduction of damages and fatalities. The present study was to compare communications and information exchange among disaster response organizations in selected countries. MATERIALS AND METHOD: This applied research, carried out in 2022, was a qualitative descriptive-comparative study pursuing a content analysis approach. Australia, Turkey, India, America, Japan, and Iran constituted the statistical population of the study. The sampling was based on the countries' disaster histories and response experiences. The note-taking tool was used to extract and collect data during the review of texts, documents, and articles, and the qualitative content analysis method was employed for data analysis. RESULTS: The outcomes of the descriptive-comparative analysis fell into four main comparative axes of the selected countries, including comparing reference, authority, and coordinator organizations in the response phase, comparing planning records and histories in disaster and emergency management comparing the contribution or non-contribution of government, military institutions, and non-governmental organizations to disaster and emergency management, the commonalities of the selected countries' disaster and emergency management and dependence on government. CONCLUSION: The results revealed that all selected countries depended on the government in managing disasters and emergencies, and the four communication platforms, i.e., landline telephone, mobile phone, radio communications systems, and couriers, were the common communication and information acquisition sources.

Extracting the Factors Affecting the Survival Rate of Trauma Patients Using Data Mining Techniques on a National Trauma Registry.

Introduction: Thousands of people die due to trauma all over the world every day, which leaves adverse effects on families and the society. The main objective of this study was to identify the factors affecting the mortality of trauma patients using data mining techniques. Methods: The present study includes six parts: data gathering, data preparation, target attributes specification, data balancing, evaluation criteria, and applied techniques. The techniques used in this research are all from the decision tree family. The output of these techniques are patterns extracted from the trauma patients dataset (National Trauma Registry of Iran). The dataset includes information on 25,986 trauma patients from all over the country. The techniques that were used include random forest, CHAID, and ID3. Results: Random forest performs better than the other two techniques in terms of accuracy. The ID3 technique performs better than the other two techniques in terms of the dead class. The random forest technique has performed better than other techniques in the living class. The rules with the most support, state that if the Injury Severity Score (ISS) is minor and vital signs are normal, 98% of people will survive. The second rule, in terms of support, states that if ISS is minor and vital signs are abnormal, 93% will survive. Also, by increasing the threshold of the patient's arrival time from 10 to 15 minutes, no noticeable difference was observed in the death rate of patients. Conclusion: Transfer time of less than ten minutes in patietns whose ISS is minor, can increase the chance of survival. Impaired vital signs can decrease the chance of survival in traffic accidents. Also, if the ISS is minor in non-penetrating trauma, regardless of vital signs and if the victim is transported in less than ten minutes, the patient will survive with 99% certainty.

Health Information System in Developing Countries: A Review on the Challenges and Causes of Success and Failure.

Background: A review on the health information systems (HISs) of each country should not be limited only to data collected and reported normally by the service providers. In this regard, the first step for the development in any national project is exploring the experiences of other countries worldwide, especially those with economic, political, cultural, and regional partnerships, and then using their resources and documents to have a broader attitude and a better profitability in planning the development strategy. This study was conducted to review the studies conducted on the causes of HIS success and failure, and the challenges faced by developing countries in using these systems. Methods: The present study was a narrative review to meet the aim of the study, and those studies published in English language in PubMed, Web of science, and Science Direct databases and Scopus between 2000 and 2020 were investigated. Primary keywords used to extract content in these databases were as follows: "health information system", "challenges", "success", "failure", "developing country", and "low and middle income country". Results: After searching the above-mentioned databases, 455 studies were retrieved. Finally, 24 articles were used. The causes of success and failure of HISs were finally divided into 4 categories: human, organizational, financial and technical factors. A total of 30 subfactors were extracted for different factors. Moreover, the findings indicated that many of the challenges that developing countries face in using HISs are influenced by the social, cultural, economic, geographical, and political conditions of these countries. The results represented that organizational and human elements play a critical role in the advancement or falling of the health HIS in growing countries. Conclusion: There is a demand to come up with flexible standards for designing and deploying HISs to address these complexities. Several solutions can be found to address the obstacles and problems facing HISs in developing countries, including formulating strategic plans and policies necessary for the development of national HISs.

The opportunities and challenges of using mobile health in elderly self-care.

Population aging is a phenomenon expanding around the world and will be increase the incidence of chronic diseases and health costs. This study was conducted according to the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analyses (PRISMA). A comprehensive literature search was performed on 4 databases (Web of Science, PubMed, Science Direct, and ProQuest) for English language studies from January 1, 2000, to December 31, 2019. The keywords used to extract relevant contents were "e-health," "Elderly care," "Self-care," "challenge," "Opportunity" etc., The search strategy led to a total of 638 potentially relevant papers, of which 19 papers met the inclusion criteria. The results showed that the challenges of using mobile health in elderly self-care can be divided into technical, human and managerial challenges. The resulting opportunities include reducing health care costs; no need to visit verbal and remote access to elderly information. The use of mobile health in the elderly has advantages and disadvantages. One of the advantages of that is improving physical activity and reducing care costs, but it may break the privacy. The disadvantages of that can be resolved by educating the elder men.

The role of virtual social networks in shaping people's attitudes toward COVID-19 in Iran.

BACKGROUND: The widespread occurrence of COVID-19 has caused people to seek information from various sources such as virtual social networks, which can positively or negatively affect one's mental status. In this article, we present the role of virtual social networks in shaping people's attitudes toward COVID-19 in Iran. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This is an applied descriptive study, in which 1010 users of virtual social networks were surveyed through an electronic questionnaire. Data were analyzed with SPSS, Excel, and Rapid Miner software. The FP-growth technique was used to investigate the concurrence of choices in multiple-choice questions, and the Mann-Whitney and the Kruskal-Wallis tests were used to determine the correlation of the mean of each dimension with demographic data. Moreover, the Wilcoxon signed-rank, the Shapiro-Wilk, and the Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests were used. RESULTS: Virtual social networks use increased significantly (40%) after the COVID-19 outbreak. According to users, the greatest psychological impact of virtual social networks was the induction of anxiety (46.43%) and the most common use was to learn about COVID-19 prevention and treatment (69.3%). Based on the findings, there were no significant differences between the "awareness," "behavior intention," and "attitude and trust" and the users' marital status, age group, educational degree, and gender. CONCLUSION: Although social networks have enriched the public knowledge, they increased the individuals' anxiety mostly because of controversial news and disperse of misinformation which in turn misled the users. The social networks play an important role in directing the behavioral inclinations. Accordingly, it is recommended that the authorities in healthcare system establish authentic and formal webpage in these social networks to manage controversial and voluminous information.

Assessing the educational services quality of health information technology students.

INTRODUCTION: Responsibility in the higher educational system requires the universities to be sensitive on students' needs and expectations. The purpose of the present study was to examine the educational service quality among health information technology (HIT) students in Isfahan University of Medical Science based on the SERVQUAL model. METHODS: This was a descriptive cross-sectional study and carried out at the Management and Medical Information Sciences faculty of IUMS in 2018. Sixty-eight undergraduate and postgraduate students of HIT participated in this study. For collecting data, the standard SERVQUAL questionnaire was used. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS version 20 software in descriptive level. RESULTS: Findings showed that there was a positive gap in overall dimensions of educational services quality (mean discrepancy of expectations and perceives). Most mean of service gap was contributed to responsiveness dimension 1.06 (0.98 standard deviation [SD]), following that empathy 1.04 (0.97 SD), assurance 1.00 (0.83 SD), reliability 0.83 (0.76 SD), and the least gap was seen intangibles 0.61 (1.02 SD). CONCLUSION: According to the current gaps in all quality dimensions, as well as high amount of expectations in comparison with students' perception, it is required to evaluate higher education quality through implementing students' knowledge skill and creative abilities. Therefore, to improve the quality of educational services at the Faculty of Management and Medical Information, all dimensions, especially the responsiveness dimension, should be considered.

National Communicable Disease Surveillance System: A review on Information and Organizational Structures in Developed Countries.

INTRODUCTION: To obtain necessary information for managing communicable diseases, different countries have developed national communicable diseases surveillance systems (NCDSS). Exploiting the lesson learned from the leading countries in development of surveillance systems provides the foundation for developing these systems in other countries. In this study, the information and organizational structure of NCDSS in developed countries were reviewed. METHODS: The study reviewed publications found on the organizational structure, content and data flow of NCDSS in the United States of America (USA), Australia and Germany that were published in English between 2000 and 2016. The publications were identified by searching the CINAHL, Science Direct, ProQuest, PubMed, Google Scholar databases and the related databases in selected countries. RESULTS: Thirty-four studies were investigated. All of the reviewed countries have implemented the NCDSS. In majority of countries the department of health (DoH) is responsible for managing this system. The reviewed countries have created a minimum data set for reporting communicable diseases data and information. CONCLUSION: For developing NCDSS, establishing coordinator centers, setting the effective policies and procedures, providing appropriate communication infrastructures for data exchange and defining a communicable diseases minimum data set are essential.