A Secure Occupational Therapy Framework for Monitoring Cancer Patients' Quality of Life

Utilization of blockchain technology in personalized nursing: A scoping review

AIM AND OBJECTIVE

This study aims to scrutinize the interconnected concepts, prevailing landscape and efficacy of personalized nursing within the framework of blockchain technology and to proffer a roadmap for prospective scholarly inquiries.

BACKGROUND

The ethos of personalized nursing as a paradigm grounded in human-centered care has been venerated as the pinnacle of nursing practice. Recent years have witnessed the emergence of groundbreaking technologies, notably blockchain, which have set the stage for the actualization of personalized nursing care. Nevertheless, a lacuna persists in the holistic comprehension surrounding the integration of blockchain technology within the domain of personalized nursing.

DESIGN AND METHODS

We considered studies published in English from 2018 to the present. Databases searched included CINAHL, Pubmed, MEDLINE, Scopus. Sources of grey literature that were searched included ProQuest Dissertations and Theses. The eligibility of the studies was independently appraised by a pair of researchers. The findings are delineated through narratives and tabular presentations.

RESULTS

The narrative findings are stratified into three primary domains: (1) the theoretical underpinnings of personalized nursing vis-à-vis the integration of blockchain technology; (2) delineation of the specific domains within nursing where blockchain applications are germane to personalized nursing; and (3) the demonstrable impact of blockchain technology on the efficacy of personalized nursing.

CONCLUSION

Blockchain technology has wrought profound transformations in the landscape of personalized nursing. As blockchain technology continues to evolve, future scholarship necessitates elucidation on the conceptual intricacies of personalized nursing interfaced with blockchain technology, and broadening of the research purview to encompass a comprehensive understanding of the various applications of personalized nursing.

REPORTING METHOD

This scoping review adhered to relevant EQUATOR guidelines and used the PRISMA-ScR.

A Review of Blockchain Technology Applications in Ambient Assisted Living

The adoption of remote assisted care was accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. This type of system acquires data from various sensors, runs analytics to understand people’s activities, behavior, and living problems, and disseminates information with healthcare stakeholders to support timely follow-up and intervention. Blockchain technology may offer good technical solutions for tackling Internet of Things monitoring, data management, interventions, and privacy concerns in ambient assisted living applications. Even though the integration of blockchain technology with assisted care is still at the beginning, it has the potential to change the health and care processes through a secure transfer of patient data, better integration of care services, or by increasing coordination and awareness across the continuum of care. The motivation of this paper is to systematically review and organize these elements according to the main problems addressed. To the best of our knowledge, there are no studies conducted that address the solutions for integrating blockchain technology with ambient assisted living systems. To conduct the review, we have followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) methodology with clear criteria for including and excluding papers, allowing the reader to effortlessly gain insights into the current state-of-the-art research in the field. The results highlight the advantages and open issues that would require increased attention from the research community in the coming years. As for directions for further research, we have identified data sharing and integration of care paths with blockchain, storage, and transactional costs, personalization of data disclosure paths, interoperability with legacy care systems, legal issues, and digital rights management.

Design and Implementation of Intelligent Monitoring System for Head and Neck Surgery Care Based on Internet of Things (IoT)

As a chronic disease, cervical spondylosis is prone to recurrent attacks as we age if we do not pay attention to protection, which can easily lead to symptoms such as osteophytes and herniated discs. In the early stage of cervical spondylosis, it is possible to alleviate the disease and prevent its aggravation by improving poor cervical posture and increasing cervical activities. This article analyzes the current situation and medical prospect of smart wearable devices with the prevention and treatment of cervical spondylosis in white-collar people as the starting point and smart wearable devices as the focus and provides a detailed analysis of the functions, categories, technologies, and applications of smart wearable devices to provide a technical theoretical basis for the construction of the subsequent research system. For the user's health state, some other physiological parameters are sent to data also through mobile Internet, and the user's physiological information is obtained on the computer database in also, which not only provides the monitoring function for the user's health but also provides the information of medical big data elements for medical and health institutions and so on. This article elaborates the requirement analysis of this system, based on which the system architecture design and module division are elaborated. It provides a practical and theoretical basis for further realizing the seamless integration of IoT technology and nursing information management system and improving its depth and breadth in the application of nursing information management system. From the perspective of the way of quantification of nursing practice activities, real-time monitoring, scientific management, and intelligent decision-making, it provides the basis for achieving the quality of nursing services, reducing errors, reducing labor intensity, and improving work efficiency and clinical research.

A review of AI and Data Science support for cancer management

INTRODUCTION

Thanks to improvement of care, cancer has become a chronic condition. But due to the toxicity of treatment, the importance of supporting the quality of life (QoL) of cancer patients increases. Monitoring and managing QoL relies on data collected by the patient in his/her home environment, its integration, and its analysis, which supports personalization of cancer management recommendations. We review the state-of-the-art of computerized systems that employ AI and Data Science methods to monitor the health status and provide support to cancer patients managed at home.

OBJECTIVE

Our main objective is to analyze the literature to identify open research challenges that a novel decision support system for cancer patients and clinicians will need to address, point to potential solutions, and provide a list of established best-practices to adopt.

METHODS

We designed a review study, in compliance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines, analyzing studies retrieved from PubMed related to monitoring cancer patients in their home environments via sensors and self-reporting: what data is collected, what are the techniques used to collect data, semantically integrate it, infer the patient's state from it and deliver coaching/behavior change interventions.

RESULTS

Starting from an initial corpus of 819 unique articles, a total of 180 papers were considered in the full-text analysis and 109 were finally included in the review. Our findings are organized and presented in four main sub-topics consisting of data collection, data integration, predictive modeling and patient coaching.

CONCLUSION

Development of modern decision support systems for cancer needs to utilize best practices like the use of validated electronic questionnaires for quality-of-life assessment, adoption of appropriate information modeling standards supplemented by terminologies/ontologies, adherence to FAIR data principles, external validation, stratification of patients in subgroups for better predictive modeling, and adoption of formal behavior change theories. Open research challenges include supporting emotional and social dimensions of well-being, including PROs in predictive modeling, and providing better customization of behavioral interventions for the specific population of cancer patients.

Blockchain research in healthcare: a bibliometric review and current research trends

The literature on blockchain-enabled use cases has grown exponentially over recent years. Yet, studies are missing that apply bibliometrics and visualization techniques to unravel the dynamics and current discussions pertaining to the nexus of blockchain technology (BCT) and the healthcare field. To close this knowledge gap, we examine the knowledge base and research hotspots of BCT research in the field of healthcare. We carry out a series of bibliometric analyses on the extant literature, including the scholarly production, developmental pattern of the annual total number of authors, and identification of productive academic institutions, countries, and leading authors. Additionally, we conduct a keyword co-occurrence analysis and identify the major research hotspots and trends for the future. The findings of this research are valuable for scholars and practitioners who seek to better understand the development status, dynamics, and trends pertaining to BCT in healthcare.

Information management research and practice in the post-COVID-19 world

COVID-19 has radically transformed many aspects of human life and global society both now and for many years to come. A key aspect of the transformation has been increased digitalization and the accelerated implementation of previously predicted trends that have been discussed for many years in the information management literature. Human endeavour has encouraged us to adapt to the "new normal" through immediate necessity in areas such as work, education, healthcare, entertainment and leisure, and online commerce. This new environment has provided unprecedented opportunities for the information management research community to develop research that will have a significant impact on practice in these and other areas. We are essentially at the pinnacle of new developments in the digital space and must seek to develop exemplars that can help to signpost the future direction of digital global society for the benefit of all. Notwithstanding, the problems of digitalization have also been exacerbated and must be further understood and ameliorated in the post-COVID world. This paper examines opportunities and problems in information management brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. It details implications for research and practice.

Using Visualization to Build Transparency in a Healthcare Blockchain Application

With patients demanding services to control their own health conditions, hospitals are looking to build agility in delivering care by extending their reach into patient and partner ecosystems and sharing relevant patient data to support care continuity. However, sharing patient data with several external stakeholders outside a hospital network calls for the development of a digital platform that is trusted by both hospitals and stakeholders, given that there is often no single entity supporting such coordination. In this paper, we propose a methodology that uses a blockchain architecture to address the technical challenge of linking disparate systems used by multiple stakeholders and the social challenge of engendering trust by using visualization to bring about transparency in the way in which data are shared. We illustrate this methodology using a pilot implementation. The paper concludes with a discussion and directions for future research and makes some concluding comments.