Evolution of Primary Research Studies in Digital Interventions for Mental Well-Being Promotion from 2004 to 2023: A Bibliometric Analysis of Studies on the Web of Science.

Research into digital interventions for mental well-being promotion has grown in recent years, fuelled by the need to improve mental health prevention strategies and respond to challenges arising from the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. This bibliometric analysis provides a structured overview of publication trends and themes in primary research studies reporting an array of digital interventions indexed at WoS from 2004 to 2023. Bibliometric data were collected on a sample of 1117 documents and analysed using the Biblioshiny package. Supplemental network visualisation analysis was conducted using VosViewer. The study, based on Web of Science and Scopus databases, indicates a marked increase in publications post-2020. There were seven groups of research themes clustered around "Mindfulness", "Anxiety", "COVID-19", "Acceptance and Commitment Therapy", "Depression", "Web-based", and "Positive Psychology". Further, results demonstrated the growth of specific themes (e.g., mindfulness, mhealth), the defining impact of COVID-19 studies, and the importance of both randomised controlled trials and formative research. Overall, research in the field is still early in its development and is expected to continue to grow. Findings highlight the field's dynamic response to societal and technological changes, suggesting a future trajectory that leans increasingly on digital platforms for mental health promotion and intervention. Finally, study limitations and implications for future studies are discussed.

Use of wearables among Multiple Sclerosis patients and healthcare Professionals: A scoping review.

INTRODUCTION: Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an increasingly prevalent chronic, autoimmune, and inflammatory central nervous system illness, whose common symptoms undermine the quality of life of patients and their families. Recent technical breakthroughs potentially offer continuous, reliable, sensitive, and objective remote monitoring solutions for healthcare. Wearables can be useful for evaluating falls, fatigue, sedentary behavior, exercise, and sleep quality in people with MS (PwMS). OBJECTIVE: This scoping review of relevant literature explores studies investigating the perceptions of patients and healthcare professionals (HCPs) about the use of wearable technologies in the management of MS. METHODS: The Joanna Briggs Institute methodology for scoping reviews was used. The search strategy was applied to the databases, MEDLINE via Ovid, Embase, APA PsycInfo, and CINAHL. Further searches were performed in IEEE, Scopus, and Web of Science. The review considered studies reporting quantitative or qualitative data on perceptions and experiences of PwMS and HCPs concerning wearables' usability, satisfaction, barriers, and facilitators. RESULTS: 10 studies were included in this review. Wearables' usefulness and accessibility, ease of use, awareness, and motivational tool potential were patient-perceived facilitators of use. Barriers related to anxiety and frustration, complexity, and the design of wearables. Perceived usefulness and system requirements are identified as facilitators of using wearables by HCPs, while data security concerns and fears of increased workload and limited effectiveness in the care plan are identified as barriers to use wearables. CONCLUSIONS: This review contributes to our understanding of the benefits of wearable technologies in MS by exploring perceptions of both PwMS and HCPs. The scoping review provided a broad overview of facilitators and barriers to wearable use in MS. There is a need for further studies underlined with sound theoretical frameworks to provide a robust evidence-base for the optimal use of wearables to empower healthcare users and providers.

Repurposing Case-Based Learning to a Conversational Agent for Healthcare Cybersecurity.

A crucial factor for successful cybersecurity education is how information is communicated to learners. Case-based learning of common cybersecurity issues has been shown to improve human behaviour for prevention. However, some delivery methods prevent realistic critical appraisal and reflection of awareness. Conversational agents can scaffold healthcare workers' understanding and promote deterrence strategies. The challenges of repurposing material to create a case-based agent were explored, and the ASPIRE process was modified. Heuristic evaluation from 10 experts in innovative educational technology resulted in the desired outcomes of usability, however Natural Language Understanding improvements were needed. Discussion of best practice when repurposing into conversational agents suggested modification of the ASPIRE process is feasible for future use.

Artificial Intelligence for Participatory Health: Applications, Impact, and Future Implications.

OBJECTIVE: Artificial intelligence (AI) provides people and professionals working in the field of participatory health informatics an opportunity to derive robust insights from a variety of online sources. The objective of this paper is to identify current state of the art and application areas of AI in the context of participatory health. METHODS: A search was conducted across seven databases (PubMed, Embase, CINAHL, PsychInfo, ACM Digital Library, IEEExplore, and SCOPUS), covering articles published since 2013. Additionally, clinical trials involving AI in participatory health contexts registered at clinicaltrials.gov were collected and analyzed. RESULTS: Twenty-two articles and 12 trials were selected for review. The most common application of AI in participatory health was the secondary analysis of social media data: self-reported data including patient experiences with healthcare facilities, reports of adverse drug reactions, safety and efficacy concerns about over-the-counter medications, and other perspectives on medications. Other application areas included determining which online forum threads required moderator assistance, identifying users who were likely to drop out from a forum, extracting terms used in an online forum to learn its vocabulary, highlighting contextual information that is missing from online questions and answers, and paraphrasing technical medical terms for consumers. CONCLUSIONS: While AI for supporting participatory health is still in its infancy, there are a number of important research priorities that should be considered for the advancement of the field. Further research evaluating the impact of AI in participatory health informatics on the psychosocial wellbeing of individuals would help in facilitating the wider acceptance of AI into the healthcare ecosystem.

Setting priorities for EU healthcare workforce IT skills competence improvement.

A major challenge for healthcare quality improvement is the lack of IT skills and knowledge of healthcare workforce, as well as their ambivalent attitudes toward IT. This article identifies and prioritizes actions needed to improve the IT skills of healthcare workforce across the EU. A total of 46 experts, representing different fields of expertise in healthcare and geolocations, systematically listed and scored actions that would improve IT skills among healthcare workforce. The Child Health and Nutrition Research Initiative methodology was used for research priority-setting. The participants evaluated the actions using the following criteria: feasibility, effectiveness, deliverability, and maximum impact on IT skills improvement. The leading priority actions were related to appropriate training, integrating eHealth in curricula, involving healthcare workforce in the eHealth solution development, improving awareness of eHealth, and learning arrangement. As the different professionals' needs are prioritized, healthcare workforce should be actively and continuously included in the development of eHealth solutions.

Education Program for Carers in Facilities with Neuro Disabled Subjects EPoCFiNDS.

The prevalence of chronic illness and the disabilities they cause are strongly associated with age. According to the United Nations, in most countries around the world, 8-10% of the population has some form of disability. Carers are helping subjects who have severe or profound core activity limitations in the community and hospice facilities. The skills acquired by carers in their caring role are relevant to the competencies required for occupations and qualifications in community, aged care, health, youth, housing and disability support services. With the aging population the number of subjects with neurological lesions living in hospices and long-term care facilities is increased. It makes a strong case to educate carers to help these subjects. There is a lack of evidence on how to design and implement mechanisms such as foundation skills courses and programs to best meet the needs of carers. The goal of Education Program for Carers in Facilities with Neuro Disabled Subjects (EPoCFiNDS), is to create training programs for carers in neurodisabled subjects living in various facilities. In Europe we need to develop educational programs, aimed at volunteers, relatives or any other group of people so that they better organize benefits care for neurodisabled subjects.

Semantic Web, Reusable Learning Objects, Personal Learning Networks in Health: Key Pieces for Digital Health Literacy.

The knowledge existing in the World Wide Web is exponentially expanding, while continuous advancements in health sciences contribute to the creation of new knowledge. There are a lot of efforts trying to identify how the social connectivity can endorse patients' empowerment, while other studies look at the identification and the quality of online materials. However, emphasis has not been put on the big picture of connecting the existing resources with the patients "new habits" of learning through their own Personal Learning Networks. In this paper we propose a framework for empowering patients' digital health literacy adjusted to patients' currents needs by utilizing the contemporary way of learning through Personal Learning Networks, existing high quality learning resources and semantics technologies for interconnecting knowledge pieces. The framework based on the concept of knowledge maps for health as defined in this paper. Health Digital Literacy needs definitely further enhancement and the use of the proposed concept might lead to useful tools which enable use of understandable health trusted resources tailored to each person needs.

Actions to Empower Digital Competences in Healthcare Workforce: A Qualitative Approach.

While healthcare systems are taking advantage of the ICT to improve healthcare services, healthcare workforce needs additional competencies in order to continue the provision of the best achievable care. In this paper emphasis is given to an active research effort taken during the MEI2015 Conference. Based on hands-on group-work, participants identified the actions needed to boost the acquisition of IT competences by healthcare workforce and collaboratively indicated the most important actions. The leading priority actions were integration of IT into Curriculum, continuous IT/eHealth training at the work place, raising awareness of IT competences, participatory decisions for actions, match healthcare applications to users' own context, inclusion of professionals in the development of eHealth projects. Interestingly, the proposed actions coupling the outcomes of another study following a different methodology, but also support the cooperation opportunities on IT skills for healthcare workforce. The latter formed a set of recommendations which were proposed within the CAMEI coordination and support action of EC-FP7.

Internet of Things in Health Trends Through Bibliometrics and Text Mining.

Recently a new buzzword has slowly but surely emerged, namely the Internet of Things (IoT). The importance of IoT is identified worldwide both by organisations and governments and the scientific community with an incremental number of publications during the last few years. IoT in Health is one of the main pillars of this evolution, but limited research has been performed on future visions and trends. Thus, in this study we investigate the longitudinal trends of Internet of Things in Health through bibliometrics and use of text mining. Seven hundred seventy eight (778) articles were retrieved form The Web of Science database from 1998 to 2016. The publications are grouped into thirty (30) clusters based on abstract text analysis resulting into some eight (8) trends of IoT in Health. Research in this field is obviously obtaining a worldwide character with specific trends, which are worth delineating to be in favour of some areas.

User-Centered Design of Serious Games for Older Adults Following 3 Years of Experience With Exergames for Seniors: A Study Design.

BACKGROUND: Seniors need sufficient balance and strength to manage in daily life, and sufficient physical activity is required to achieve and maintain these abilities. This can be a challenge, but fun and motivational exergames can be of help. However, most commercial games are not suited for this age group for several reasons. Many usability studies and user-centered design (UCD) protocols have been developed and applied, but to the best of our knowledge none of them are focusing on seniors' use of games for physical activity. In GameUp, a European cofunded project, some prototype Kinect exergames to enhance the mobility of seniors were developed in a user-centered approach. OBJECTIVE: In this paper we aim to record lessons learned in 3 years of experience with exergames for seniors, considering both the needs of older adults regarding user-centered development of exergames and participation in UCD. We also provide a UCD protocol for exergames tailored to senior needs. METHODS: An initial UCD protocol was formed based on literature of previous research outcomes. Senior users participated in UCD following the initial protocol. The users formed a steady group that met every second week for 3 years to play exergames and participate in the UCD during the 4 phases of the protocol. Several methods were applied in the 4 different phases of the UCD protocol; the most important methods were structured and semistructured interviews, observations, and group discussions. RESULTS: A total of 16 seniors with an average age above 80 years participated for 3 years in UCD in order to develop the GameUp exergames. As a result of the lessons learned by applying the different methodologies of the UCD protocol, we propose an adjusted UCD protocol providing explanations on how it should be applied for seniors as users. Questionnaires should be turned into semistructured and structured interviews while user consultation sessions should be repeated with the same theme to ensure that the UCD methods produce a valid outcome. By first following the initial and gradually the adjusted UCD protocol, the project resulted in exergame functionalities and interface features for seniors. CONCLUSIONS: The main lessons learned during 3 years of experience with exergames for seniors applying UCD are that devoting time to seniors is a key element of success so that trust can be gained, communication can be established, and users' opinions can be recorded. All different game elements should be taken into consideration during the design of exergames for seniors even if they seem obvious. Despite the limitations of this study, one might argue that it provides a best practice guide to the development of serious games for physical activity targeting seniors.

Why decision support systems are important for medical education.

During the last decades, the inclusion of digital tools in health education has rapidly lead to a continuously enlarging digital era. All the online interactions between learners and tutors, the description, creation, reuse and sharing of educational digital resources and the interlinkage between them in conjunction with cheap storage technology has led to an enormous amount of educational data. Medical education is a unique type of education due to accuracy of information needed, continuous changing competences required and alternative methods of education used. Nowadays medical education standards provide the ground for organising the educational data and the paradata. Analysis of such education data through education data mining techniques is in its infancy, but decision support systems (DSSs) for medical education need further research. To the best of our knowledge, there is a gap and a clear need for identifying the challenges for DSSs in medical education in the era of medical education standards. Thus, in this Letter the role and the attributes of such a DSS for medical education are delineated and the challenges and vision for future actions are identified.

A Proposed Framework to Enrich Norwegian EHR System with Health-trusted Information for Patients and Professionals.

In the era of social media, semantic web and big data, a huge amount of health-related information, knowledge and resources exist on the Web. Patients and healthcare professionals should spend enormous effort and time in order to find health-trusted information, while the appropriate technologies to interlink and retrieve this type of information already exist. In this paper we propose a framework to enrich DIPS, the most deployed Norwegian EHR System, with health-trusted information for patients and state-of-the-art resources for healthcare professionals. The framework based upon the new architecture of DIPS, namely DIPS Arena, and upon the interlinking with the semantic web, social media and open linked data cloud information, knowledge and resources through well-established medical thesauri like SNOMED CT and MeSH.

Analysis of EU-USA cooperation opportunities on IT skills for healthcare workforce.

An overview about the state of the art about IT skills education for the healthcare workforce in the EU and USA, making a specific analysis about the current educational programmes from different perspectives (technologies, users, IT skills, policies) is presented. Main result of this paper is a recommendation plan to address current needs on the field. Authors end with a set of conclusions and references that can provide the background enough for any reader interested on these subjects, creating awareness about the importance of transnational IT educational programmes for the EU-US healthcare workforce.

Depicting educational content repurposing context and inheritance.

Educational content is often shared among different educators and is enriched, adapted, and, in general, repurposed so that it can be reused in different contexts. This paper discusses educational content and content repurposing in medical education, presenting different repurposing contexts. Finally, it proposes a novel approach to content repurposing via Web 2.0 social networking of learning resources. The proposed social network is augmented by a graphical representation module in order to capture and depict the relationships among different repurposed medical educational resources, based on educational resource "families" and inheritance. The ultimate goal is to provide a conceptually different approach to educational resource organization and retrieval via "social" associations among learning resources.

The use of open source and Web2.0 in developing an integrated EHR and e-learning system for the Greek Smoking Cessation Network.

Technologies of information and communication are incrementally integrated with all facets of healthcare practice and education. Although Electronic Health Records (EHRs) have long been used in healthcare the introduction of open source tools has empowered their further expansion of use. Simultaneously the use of Web 2.0 tools has opened up new ways of enhancing both healthcare practice and education. In this paper, we describe our approach towards the development of an integrated system supporting the smoking cessation network initiatives in the Greek public hospitals. The system combines the availability of an open source, web based EHR subsystem, with a Web 2.0 facilitated e-learning component for supporting continuing medical education and promoting public awareness.