Pain Management Mobile Applications: A Systematic Review of Commercial and Research Efforts.

Shared decision making is crucial in the pain domain. The subjective nature of pain demands solutions that can facilitate pain assessment and management. The aim of the current study is to review the current trends in both the commercial and the research domains in order to reveal the key issues and guidelines that could further help in the effective development of pain-focused apps. We searched for scientific publications and commercial apps in 22 databases and the two major app stores. Out of 3612 articles and 336 apps, 69 met the requirements for inclusion following the PRISMA guidelines. An analysis of their features (technological approach, design methodology, evaluation strategy, and others) identified critical points that have to be taken into consideration in future efforts. For example, commercial and research efforts target different types of pain, while no participatory design is followed in the majority of the cases examined. Moreover, the evaluation of the final apps remains a challenge that hinders their success. The examined domain is expected to experience a substantial increase. More research is needed towards the development of non-intrusive wearables and sensors for pain detection and assessment, along with artificial intelligence techniques and open data.

A systematic review of mHealth funded R&D activities in EU: Trends, technologies and obstacles.

OBJECTIVE: This study provides a systematic review of EU-funded mHealth projects. METHODS: The review was conducted based mainly on the Projects and Results service provided by the EU Open Data Portal. Even though the search strategy yielded a large number of results, only 45 projects finally met all the inclusion criteria. RESULTS: The review results reveal useful information regarding mHealth solutions and trends that emerge nowadays in the EU, the diseases addressed, the level of adoption by users and providers, the technological approaches, the projects' structure, and the overall impact. New areas of application, like behavioral intervention approaches as well as an apparent trend towards affective computing, big data, cloud computing, open standards and platforms have also been recognized and recorded. Core legal issues with regard to data security and privacy still pose challenges to mHealth projects, while commercialization of the developed solutions is slow. Interdisciplinary consortia with the participation of a significant number of SMEs and public healthcare organizations are also key factors for a successful project. CONCLUSION: The study provides researchers and decision-makers with a complete and systematically organized knowledge base in order to plan new mHealth initiatives.

RESHEN, a best practice approach for secure healthcare networks in Europe.

Electronic communication of healthcare related information (in the framework of Regional Healthcare Information Networks), introduces a number of security risks with regard to confidentiality, integrity and availability, which can become quite crucial taking into account its sensitive nature. Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) is acknowledged as an appropriate means for dealing with such risks, as long as all the involved critical factors are first practically assessed. This paper presents a best-practice approach for secure regional healthcare networks in Europe, examining all the identified crucial parameters (technical, organisational, legal/regulatory, medical and business). Our approach is conducted at two levels (the regional and the European), including the integration of PKI-aware security mechanisms (strong authentication, encryption, digital signature, time-stamping) in three regional pilot sites in Greece, Finland and Germany and demonstrating their interconnection in a pan-European architecture. Following the above approach, some major conclusions are excluded, pointing out existing open issues and possible steps forward.