Personalized Mobile Health for Elderly Home Care: A Systematic Review of Benefits and Challenges.

Mobile health as one of the new technologies can be a proper solution to support care provision for the elderly and provide personalized care for them. This study is aimed at reviewing the benefits and challenges of personalized mobile health (PMH) for elderly home care. With a systematic review methodology, 1895 records were retrieved by searching four databases. After removing duplicates, 1703 articles remained. Following full-text examination, 21 articles that met the inclusion criteria were studied in detail, and the output was presented in different tables. The results indicated that 25% of the challenges were related to privacy, cybersecurity, and data ownership (10%), technology (7.5%), and implementation (7.5%). The most frequent benefits were related to cost-saving (17.5%), nurse engagement improvement (10%), and caregiver stress reduction (7.5%). In general, the number of benefits in this study was slightly higher than the challenges, but in order to use PMH technologies, the challenges presented in this study must be carefully considered and a suitable solution must be adopted. Benefits can also be helpful in persuading individuals and health-care providers. This study shed light on those points that need to be highlighted for further work in order to convert the challenges toward benefits.

Effects of technology-based educational tools on nursing learning outcomes in intensive care units: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND: Nurses working in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), due to the sensitivity and difficulty of tasks, need continuous and scientific training to be able to offer the best performance in difficult situations and use their knowledge in the best way. Also, nursing students spend internships in ICUs and receive special training in practice in the actual center. Educational tools based on new technologies can potentially improve the educational outcomes of nursing in ICUs. OBJECTIVES:  The present study aims to review and evaluate the effect of using technology-based educational tools for training critical care nurses and nursing students. METHODS:  A comprehensive search was conducted to identify peer-reviewed English language articles in Embase, Medline (through PubMed), Scopus, and ISI web of science published from 2010 to Feb 18, 2022. The studies that examined the effectiveness of technology-based educational interventions with control groups were included. The risk of bias in each study was assessed using the Cochrane Collaboration's tool. Also, we used Standard Mean Difference (SMD) to estimate the effect of technology-based educational tools on learning outcomes. All meta-analyses were performed with a random effects model in Stata Ver.16. RESULTS:  Altogether, ten studies were eligible for the quality assessment and systematic review, while one study that had not reported the pre-intervention analysis was excluded from the meta-analysis. Nine studies were considered to have a low RoB regarding reporting ways, and one of them showed a high risk. Performance and selection bias caused a high risk in six and five of the studies, respectively. In the meta-analysis, improvement in knowledge (SMD = 0.91), skills (SMD = 0.52), and self-confidence (SMD = 0.96) was noticed by applying technology-based educational tools. CONCLUSION: It can be offered that if the learning method based on the new technologies tested is more effective than conventional teaching methods, they are likely to improve the learning outcome significantly. The new-developed tools also have great potential in improving health care functions among nurses or nursing students as well as enhancing the quality of life and patient satisfaction.

Quality Evaluation of English Mobile Applications for Gestational Diabetes: App Review using Mobile Application Rating Scale (MARS).

BACKGROUND: Mobile applications and social media serve their users as convenient tools to improve and monitor diseases and conditions such as pregnancy. These tools also exert a positive impact on Gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) self-management. INTRODUCTION: Despite the expansion of mobile health apps for the management of GDM, no study has evaluated these apps using a valid tool. This study aimed to search and review the apps developed for this purpose, providing overall and specific rating scores for each aspect of MARS. METHODS: Two cases of app stores (IOS and Google Play) were searched in January 2019 for apps related to GDM. Search keywords included "gestational diabetes", "pregnant diabetes", and "Health apps". Eligibility criteria include: capable of running on Android or IOS operating systems, in the English language, especially for GDM, and available in Iran. After removal of duplicates, the apps were reviewed, rated, and evaluated independently by two reviewers with Mobile App Rating Scale (MARS) tools. RESULTS: Initially, 102 apps were identified after the exclusion process, five selected apps were downloaded and analyzed. All apps were classified into four categories according to contents and their interactive capabilities. In most quadrants of MARS, the Pregnant with Diabetes app received the highest scores. Also, in general, the maximum app quality mean score belonged to Pregnant with Diabetes (3.10 / 5.00). CONCLUSION: Findings revealed that apps designed for GDM are small in number and poor in quality based on MARS tools. Therefore, considering pregnant women's need for using the capabilities of these apps in pregnancy management and promoting community-based care, it seems essential to develop and design a series of high-quality apps in all four specified categories (only giving comments, obtaining data and giving comments, diagnosis of GDM, and diet calculator).