Internet of things-based health monitoring system for early detection of cardiovascular events during COVID-19 pandemic

Assessment of childhood immunization services at private healthcare facilities in Indonesia: a case study in a highly-populated city

Introduction

The need to enhance the utilization of the private sector for immunization programs in Indonesia while maintaining the high quality of services provided is evident. This study aimed to rapidly assess immunization services at private healthcare facilities in Indonesia by using Bandung, the most densely populated city, as the reference case.

Methods

Initially, a situation analysis was conducted by collecting data from selected healthcare facilities (n = 9). Furthermore, a qualitative study was taken into account by developing framework approaches and conducting interviews with different layers, such as mid-level managers at healthcare facilities (n = 9), professional organizations (n = 4), and public stakeholders (n = 7).

Results

The situation analysis showed that private healthcare facilities had provided sufficient time for essential childhood immunization services with adequate staff. Nevertheless, the number of limited staff the Ministry of Health (MoH) has trained remains a programmatic problem. Furthermore, private healthcare facilities have used the MoH guidelines and additional internal guidelines for immunization services as the primary reference, including in the efforts to provide complete and reliable equipment. Vaccine availability at private healthcare facilities is manageable with an acceptable out-of-stock level. The results of our interviews highlighted three key findings: the lack of coordination across public and private sectors, the need for immunization service delivery improvement at private healthcare facilities, and the urgency to strengthen institutional capacity for advocacy and immunization systems support.

Conclusion

Even though private healthcare facilities have been shown to make a modest contribution to childhood immunization services in Indonesia, efforts should be made to expand the role of private healthcare facilities in improving the performance of routine immunization programs.

Smart Wearables for the Detection of Cardiovascular Diseases: A Systematic Literature Review

Background: The advancement of information and communication technologies and the growing power of artificial intelligence are successfully transforming a number of concepts that are important to our daily lives. Many sectors, including education, healthcare, industry, and others, are benefiting greatly from the use of such resources. The healthcare sector, for example, was an early adopter of smart wearables, which primarily serve as diagnostic tools. In this context, smart wearables have demonstrated their effectiveness in detecting and predicting cardiovascular diseases (CVDs), the leading cause of death worldwide. Objective: In this study, a systematic literature review of smart wearable applications for cardiovascular disease detection and prediction is presented. After conducting the required search, the documents that met the criteria were analyzed to extract key criteria such as the publication year, vital signs recorded, diseases studied, hardware used, smart models used, datasets used, and performance metrics. Methods: This study followed the PRISMA guidelines by searching IEEE, PubMed, and Scopus for publications published between 2010 and 2022. Once records were located, they were reviewed to determine which ones should be included in the analysis. Finally, the analysis was completed, and the relevant data were included in the review along with the relevant articles. Results: As a result of the comprehensive search procedures, 87 papers were deemed relevant for further review. In addition, the results are discussed to evaluate the development and use of smart wearable devices for cardiovascular disease management, and the results demonstrate the high efficiency of such wearable devices. Conclusions: The results clearly show that interest in this topic has increased. Although the results show that smart wearables are quite accurate in detecting, predicting, and even treating cardiovascular disease, further research is needed to improve their use.