Review of Muslim Patient Needs and Its Implications on Healthcare Delivery.

BACKGROUND: In the rapidly changing environment of healthcare, striving toward health equity and providing patient-centered care is imperative to the patient's experience. To achieve these goals, a comprehensive understanding of the diverse patient populations seeking these services, their needs, and the multitude of religious, cultural, and structural elements that impact their well-being is required. Muslim patients represent a considerable demographic, both in number and complexity of religious and cultural beliefs and practices. This scoping review examines the intersection of religion and cultural values with healthcare delivery in the context of the Muslim patient experience. OBJECTIVES: The objective of this review is to identify key concepts and challenges that impact the Muslim patient experience. SEARCH METHODS: The research databases Cochrane Library, OVID Medline, and PubMED were used to conduct a comprehensive systemic review of original, empirical peer-reviewed publications with the following search terms: "Muslim healthcare," "Muslim patient," and "Muslim experience." SELECTION CRITERIA: Inclusion and exclusion criteria were used to narrow down articles to those that addressed Muslim patient needs and their healthcare experience. RESULTS: A total of 21 articles met the criteria of this scoping review. Five central topics were identified during thematic analysis: Ramadan and Fasting, Barriers in the Patient-Physician Relationship, Trauma and Perceived Discrimination, Mental Health Awareness and Stigma, and Awareness of Advanced Care Planning. CONCLUSION: This scoping review demonstrates that in order to provide patient-centered care addressing the unique needs of Muslim patients, religious and cultural values need to be explored under the frameworks of cultural humility and structural competency.

Effect of environmental taxes on environmental innovation and carbon intensity in China: an empirical investigation.

Environmental taxes are deemed to be an important carbon mitigating factor and also encourage the producers to adopt environmentally friendly technologies. Therefore, the main objective of the analysis is to evaluate the environmental taxes on environmental innovations and carbon intensity in China. The novel quantile autoregressive distributed lag (QARDL) is applied to investigate the model empirically. From the results, we confer that the short and long run estimated coefficients of environmental taxes are positive and significant at most quantiles in the environmental innovation model, implying that the higher the rate of environmental taxes, the higher the rate of environment-related innovations. However, the estimates of environmental taxes are significant and negative in both short and long run at more than half quantiles in the carbon emissions model, suggesting the positive role of environmental taxes in reducing carbon emissions. In general, our findings imply that an increase in environment-related taxes helps reduce carbon intensity and promote environmental innovation in China. The study suggests that policymakers in China should promote environmental innovation and expand the environmental tax base to achieve the objective of carbon neutrality.

Reply to Morone, G.; Giansanti, D. Comment on "Anwer et al. Rehabilitation of Upper Limb Motor Impairment in Stroke: A Narrative Review on the Prevalence, Risk Factors, and Economic Statistics of Stroke and State of the Art Therapies. Healthcare 2022, 10, 190".

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Rehabilitation of Upper Limb Motor Impairment in Stroke: A Narrative Review on the Prevalence, Risk Factors, and Economic Statistics of Stroke and State of the Art Therapies.

Stroke has been one of the leading causes of disability worldwide and is still a social health issue. Keeping in view the importance of physical rehabilitation of stroke patients, an analytical review has been compiled in which different therapies have been reviewed for their effectiveness, such as functional electric stimulation (FES), noninvasive brain stimulation (NIBS) including transcranial direct current stimulation (t-DCS) and transcranial magnetic stimulation (t-MS), invasive epidural cortical stimulation, virtual reality (VR) rehabilitation, task-oriented therapy, robot-assisted training, tele rehabilitation, and cerebral plasticity for the rehabilitation of upper extremity motor impairment. New therapeutic rehabilitation techniques are also being investigated, such as VR. This literature review mainly focuses on the randomized controlled studies, reviews, and statistical meta-analyses associated with motor rehabilitation after stroke. Moreover, with the increasing prevalence rate and the adverse socio-economic consequences of stroke, a statistical analysis covering its economic factors such as treatment, medication and post-stroke care services, and risk factors (modifiable and non-modifiable) have also been discussed. This review suggests that if the prevalence rate of the disease remains persistent, a considerable increase in the stroke population is expected by 2025, causing a substantial economic burden on society, as the survival rate of stroke is high compared to other diseases. Compared to all the other therapies, VR has now emerged as the modern approach towards rehabilitation motor activity of impaired limbs. A range of randomized controlled studies and experimental trials were reviewed to analyse the effectiveness of VR as a rehabilitative treatment with considerable satisfactory results. However, more clinical controlled trials are required to establish a strong evidence base for VR to be widely accepted as a preferred rehabilitation therapy for stroke.

Eye and Voice-Controlled Human Machine Interface System for Wheelchairs Using Image Gradient Approach.

Rehabilitative mobility aids are being used extensively for physically impaired people. Efforts are being made to develop human machine interfaces (HMIs), manipulating the biosignals to better control the electromechanical mobility aids, especially the wheelchairs. Creating precise control commands such as move forward, left, right, backward and stop, via biosignals, in an appropriate HMI is the actual challenge, as the people with a high level of disability (quadriplegia and paralysis, etc.) are unable to drive conventional wheelchairs. Therefore, a novel system driven by optical signals addressing the needs of such a physically impaired population is introduced in this paper. The present system is divided into two parts: the first part comprises of detection of eyeball movements together with the processing of the optical signal, and the second part encompasses the mechanical assembly module, i.e., control of the wheelchair through motor driving circuitry. A web camera is used to capture real-time images. The processor used is Raspberry-Pi with Linux operating system. In order to make the system more congenial and reliable, the voice-controlled mode is incorporated in the wheelchair. To appraise the system's performance, a basic wheelchair skill test (WST) is carried out. Basic skills like movement on plain and rough surfaces in forward, reverse direction and turning capability were analyzed for easier comparison with other existing wheelchair setups on the bases of controlling mechanisms, compatibility, design models, and usability in diverse conditions. System successfully operates with average response time of 3 s for eye and 3.4 s for voice control mode.