Designing and optimizing a healthcare kiosk for the community

Vital signs-based healthcare kiosks for screening chronic and infectious diseases: a systematic review

BACKGROUND

Increasing demands, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, have presented substantial challenges to global healthcare systems, resulting in staff shortages and overcrowded emergency rooms. Health kiosks have emerged as a promising solution to improve overall efficiency and healthcare accessibility. However, although kiosks are commonly used worldwide for access to information and financial services, the health kiosk industry, valued at $800 million, accounts for just 1.9% of the $42 billion global kiosk market. This review aims to bridge the research-to-practice gap by examining the development of health kiosk technology from 2013 to 2023.

METHODS

We conducted a systematic search across PubMed, IEEE Xplore, and Google Scholar databases, identifying 5,537 articles, with 36 studies meeting inclusion criteria for detailed analysis. We evaluated each study based on kiosk purpose, targeted diseases, measured vital signs, and user demographics, along with an assessment of limitations in participant selection and data reporting.

RESULTS

The findings reveal that blood pressure is the most frequently measured vital sign, utilized in 34% of the studies. Furthermore, cardiovascular disease detection emerges as the primary motivation in 56% of the included studies. The United States, India, and the United Kingdom are notable contributors, accounting for 43% of the reviewed articles. Our assessment reveals considerable limitations in participant selection and data reporting in many studies. Additionally, several research gaps remain, including a lack of performance testing, user experience evaluation, clinical intervention, development standardization, and inadequate sanitization protocols.

CONCLUSIONS

This review highlights health kiosks' potential to ease the burden on healthcare system and expand accessibility. However, widespread adoption is hindered by technical, regulatory, and financial challenges. Addressing these barriers could enable health kiosks to play a greater role in early disease detection and healthcare delivery.

Blood pressure measurement at kiosks in public spaces: systematic review and consensus statement by the European Society of Hypertension Working Group on Blood Pressure Monitoring and Cardiovascular Variability endorsed by the International Society of Hypertension and the World Hypertension League

Kiosk devices for unsupervised self-measurement of blood pressure (BP) are being used in public spaces and healthcare settings in several countries. This statement by the European Society of Hypertension (ESH) Working Group on BP Monitoring and Cardiovascular Variability provides a review of the published evidence on kiosk BP devices and consensus recommendations for their requirements and clinical use. A systematic literature search identified 54 relevant studies. Kiosk BP measurements appeared to be close to office BP [mean difference systolic 0.2 mmHg (95% confidence intervals -1.3 to 1.8); diastolic -0.4 mmHg (-3.5 to 2.7)], and higher than daytime ambulatory and home BP [mean difference 6.0 mmHg (1.6-10.4)/5.0 (2-8) and 8.1 mmHg (-2.6 to 18.9)/0.2 (-9.6 to 10.0), respectively]. Randomized or observational studies using kiosk BP measurements for hypertension screening or for assessing hypertension control were also included, as well as studies investigating users' and healthcare professionals' opinions, acceptability, and perspectives regarding kiosk BP measurements, and validation studies of kiosk BP devices. These studies had considerable heterogeneity in design, setting, methodology, measurement protocol, and sample size. Thus, at present, the clinical utility of kiosk BP measurements is uncertain. This ESH consensus statement acknowledges the potential of kiosk BP measurement as an emerging method for unsupervised self-measurement in the context of opportunistic screening for hypertension in apparently healthy people and the long-term monitoring of people with diagnosed hypertension. Requirements for the design, validation, function, and use of kiosk BP monitors are provided, together with the pending research questions on their optimal implementation in clinical practice.

Quality Characteristics and Acceptance Intention for Healthcare Kiosks: Perception of Elders from South Korea Based on the Extended Technology Acceptance Model

This study aimed to perform a path analysis to understand the effects of quality characteristics on perceived usefulness, perceived ease to use, involvement, and acceptance intention of healthcare kiosks in elderly using the extended technology acceptance model. We performed structural equation modeling (SEM) with data from 300 elderly. The following results were obtained. Firstly, elderly's perceived quality characteristics of healthcare kiosks had a partial positive effect on perceived usefulness. Secondly, elderly's perceived quality characteristics of healthcare kiosks had a partial positive effect on perceived ease to use. Thirdly, elderly's perceived ease to use healthcare kiosks had a partial positive effect on perceived usefulness. In addition, elderly's perceived usefulness of healthcare kiosks had a positive effect on acceptance intention. Lastly, elderly's perceived ease to use healthcare kiosks had a positive effect on acceptance intention.

Epidemic Healthcare Kiosk

One of the most difficult tasks for the physicians is to analyze, manage, and plan suitable diagnoses and treatments for society, especially in an epidemic situation like Corona virus disease (COVID-19). Hence, the mortality rate shoots up. The ultimate reason for such pathetic situation is due to large mass of people being infected, lack of physicians and testing staff, and the threat of physicians themselves being infected while testing patients. This article proposes a solution to tackle this major issue worldwide. This article portrays the methodology of an IoT-interfaced epidemic healthcare kiosk (EHK)-intelligent monitoring system to plan and manage epidemics. The EHK is a non-invasive data acquisition system that consists of several sensors that can record the physiological measurements of the EHK user. The measured parameters are computed using quantum machine learning techniques. The proposed ideology can reduce the mortality rate, control the epidemic, and moreover, provide safety to citizens and physicians.