Sweet care against sugar bitterness, designing health-based electronic game

Health-based electronic games present an innovative tool to deal with mental and behavioral disorders as well as physical. An appropriately designed game can optimize health care. The aim of this study was to establish a design for health-based electronic games model and to develop a sample game in diabetes. This study was carried out in two phases: first, the design of a health-based electronic game framework and second, the design and production of sweet care game. There were two intended information prerequisites: determination of effective components in models of behavior change and validation of these components on health topics and structural formation of a game. The game framework design was presented. In the second phase, a sample of the game was developed in the field of diabetes. Important components to empower people were ranked using the Friedman test in the following order: self-learning, treatment, mental empowerment, condition management, healthy eating and physical activity. The axis of self-learning received the highest rating from the perspective of the subjects with an average of 3.93 percent. Another part was the game framework with components as follows: application areas, educational content for change behavior, resources, game structure and game production. Finally, the sweet care game was designed on diabetes with educational, technological and clinical content. The health-based electronic game designed on a systematic framework could be applied as a tool to expanding the knowledge base on how to create effective health-based digital games that entertain while promoting behavior change.

Digital games as an effective approach for cancer management: Opportunities and challenges

OBJECTIVE

Cancer is one of the most preventable and common chronic diseases that have economic, social and psychological burden for patients, families, and the society. Cancer can be monitored by new information technology. Digital games as a uniquely powerful interaction tool support optimal care management program operation in all dimensions. The aim of this review article is to describe opportunities and challenges of this new modern technology on the delivery of cancer care services in cancer management domains for cancer care improvement.

METHODS

This study was un-systematic (narrative) review article. In this research, 50 full-text papers and reports had been retrieved, studied exactly, and arranged based on study aims. We searched papers based on specific and relevant keywords in research databases including PubMed, ScienceDirect, Scopus, and Google scholar.

CONCLUSION

In cancer management domain, digital games are as an effective medium for health education and intervention, disease self-management training, attention distraction to relieve pain, enhance clinical outcomes, improvements in lifestyles, and physical and psychosocial activity promotion when active participation and behavior rehearsal are required for cancer patient. In spite of potential benefits of new technology, sometimes people confront various challenges such as social isolation, unusual anxiety, and disorder in physiological times of body, low physical activities, decrease academic performance, increase aggressive behavior, and physical pain. These problems can be partly overcome by proper planning, good design, and usage of suitable and continuous monitoring.

Development of Performance Dashboards in Healthcare Sector: Key Practical Issues

Background:

Static nature of performance reporting systems in health care sector has resulted in inconsistent, incomparable, time consuming, and static performance reports that are not able to transparently reflect a round picture of performance and effectively support healthcare managers’ decision makings. So, the healthcare sector needs interactive performance management tools such as performance dashboards to measure, monitor, and manage performance more effectively. The aim of this article was to identify key issues that need to be addressed for developing high-quality performance dashboards in healthcare sector.

Methods:

A literature review was established to search electronic research databases, e-journals collections, and printed journals, books, dissertations, and theses for relevant articles. The search strategy interchangeably used the terms of “dashboard”, “performance measurement system”, and “executive information system” with the term of “design” combined with operator “AND”. Search results (n=250) were adjusted for duplications, screened based on their abstract relevancy and full-text availability (n=147) and then assessed for eligibility (n=40). Eligible articles were included if they had explicitly focused on dashboards, performance measurement systems or executive information systems design. Finally, 28 relevant articles included in the study.

Results:

Creating high-quality performance dashboards requires addressing both performance measurement and executive information systems design issues. Covering these two fields, identified contents were categorized to four main domains: KPIs development, Data Sources and data generation, Integration of dashboards to source systems, and Information presentation issues.

Conclusion:

This study implies the main steps to develop dashboards for the purpose of performance management. Performance dashboards developed on performance measurement and executive information systems principles and supported by proper back-end infrastructure will result in creation of dynamic reports that help healthcare managers to consistently measure the performance, continuously detect outliers, deeply analyze causes of poor performance, and effectively plan for the future.

The application of use case modeling in designing medical imaging information systems

Introduction. The essay at hand is aimed at examining the application of use case modeling in analyzing and designing information systems to support Medical Imaging services. Methods. The application of use case modeling in analyzing and designing health information systems was examined using electronic databases (Pubmed, Google scholar) resources and the characteristics of the modeling system and its effect on the development and design of the health information systems were analyzed. Results. Analyzing the subject indicated that Provident modeling of health information systems should provide for quick access to many health data resources in a way that patients' data can be used in order to expand distant services and comprehensive Medical Imaging advices. Also these experiences show that progress in the infrastructure development stages through gradual and repeated evolution process of user requirements is stronger and this can lead to a decline in the cycle of requirements engineering process in the design of Medical Imaging information systems. Conclusion. Use case modeling approach can be effective in directing the problems of health and Medical Imaging information systems towards understanding, focusing on the start and analysis, better planning, repetition, and control.