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Recommendations to improve apps for neglected tropical diseases | healthcare technology | Scoop.it

From medicalxpress.com - April 1, 2021 12:46 AM

Neglected tropical diseases affect more than a billion people and cause hundreds of thousands of deaths every year. In spite of this, most people still know very little about them.

A study performed by the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) provided eight recommendations for improving the online technology to help with the treatment and diagnosis of neglected tropical diseases (NTDs).

The goal was to standardize and improve the apps developed for controlling and monitoring neglected tropical diseases of the skin.

The analysis was performed by UOC researchers Carme Carrion and Marta Aymerich from the eHealth Lab and Noemí Robles from the eHealth Center, together with José Antonio Ruiz Postigo from the World Health Organization and Oriol Solà de Morales from the Health Innovation Technology Transfer Foundation. In the study, the authors looked at the context of the existing apps and identified their weaknesses.

The recommendations are outlined in the infographic prepared by the UOC eHealth Center, which is attached with this post.

The recommendations provide an initial base for improving the efficiency in the development and social uptake of apps designed for the control and treatment of NTDs.

These recommendations are summarized in eight points

Nobody should be left out: patients from all regions should be selected to benefit from the proposed interventions. This requires translating the tools into different languages.
Users must have control: the interventions' end users (health professionals and patients) must be given sufficient training to improve their digital literacy and make effective use of the tools that are provided.
Complexity must be adequately catered for: integrating e-health-related technology is a complicated process that should be considered in depth both before and during implementation.
Utility and simplicity must be there, and, what is more, they must be seen: health professionals, patients and healthy citizens must be able to understand the proposed technology's utility and ease of use. In other words, it must be a facilitator, not a barrier.
The technological requirements must be considered from the beginning: the availability of adequate mobile devices, the potential problems with electricity supply or internet networks, and other technical issues must be considered as part of a comprehensive strategy with a specific objective.
A long-term m-health platform must be established: an m-health intervention's success depends on the existence of a platform that makes it easier not only to implement the tool but also guarantees its sustained, effective use.
Split-level processes are required to improve: in the early stages of implementation of an m-health system, the processes must be divided into two levels in order, first, to refine the process and, then, to optimize it iteratively.
The tool must meet the stated needs: interventions are integrated in a specific health service; accordingly, additional tools should be considered as required.

From www.wired.com - December 7, 2020 1:57 PM

With cases soaring across the globe, the Covid-19 pandemic is nowhere near its end, but with three vaccines reporting trial data and two apparently nearing approval by the US FDA, it may be reaching a pivot point.

In what feels like a moment of drawing breath and taking stock, international researchers are turning their attention from the present back to the start of the pandemic, aiming to untangle its origin and asking what lessons can be learned to keep this from happening again.

Two efforts are happening in parallel. On November 5, the World Health Organization quietly published the rules of engagement for a long-planned and months-delayed mission that creates a multinational team of researchers who will pursue how the virus leaped species. Meanwhile, last week, a commission created by The Lancet and headed by the economist and policy expert Jeffrey Sachs announced the formation of its own international effort, a task force of 12 experts from nine countries who will undertake similar tasks.

Both groups will face the same complex problems. It has been approximately a year since the first cases of a pneumonia of unknown origin appeared in Wuhan, China, and about 11 months since the pneumonia’s cause was identified as a novel coronavirus, probably originating in bats.

The experts will have to retrace a chain of transmission—one or multiple leaps of the virus from the animal world into humans—using interviews, stored biological samples, lab assays, environmental surveys, genomic data, and the thousands of papers published since the pandemic began, all while following a trail that may have gone cold.

The point is not to look for patient zero, the first person infected—or even a hypothetical bat zero, the single animal from which the novel virus jumped.

It’s likely neither of those will ever be found. The goal instead is to elucidate the ecosystem—physical, but also viral—in which the spillover happened and ask what could make it likely to happen again.

more at WIRED : https://www.wired.com/story/two-global-efforts-try-to-trace-the-origin-of-the-covid-virus/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-intl-en

nrip's curator insight, April 1, 2021 12:45 AM

These recommendations are excellent. Anyone working in healthcare in Africa or South America will agree wholeheartedly with these. Plus91's MediXcel Lite was built on these same principles based on our own study carried out in 2017-18. And it has improved and grown using customer and user feedback over the past 3 years. If you are looking for developing or deploying a mobile or lightweight solution for studying, analyzing, making sense of health data, have a chat with me to discuss how MediXcel Lite can help you. We have use cases over the past 3 years which may be just what you are looking for, or you may tell us something which will help learn something. In any case the future of digital health needs for us to talk, so do message

Recommendations to improve apps for neglected tropical diseases

Tracing the Origin of the Covid Virus