JMIR public health and surveillance
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JMIR Public Health Surveill · Jun 2020
Mining Physicians' Opinions on Social Media to Obtain Insights Into COVID-19: Mixed Methods Analysis.
The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic is considered to be the most daunting public health challenge in decades. With no effective treatments and with time needed to develop a vaccine, alternative approaches are being used to control this pandemic. ⋯ Our findings indicate that Twitter and social media platforms can help identify important and useful knowledge shared by medical professionals during a pandemic.
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JMIR Public Health Surveill · Jun 2020
Machine Learning to Detect Self-Reporting of Symptoms, Testing Access, and Recovery Associated With COVID-19 on Twitter: Retrospective Big Data Infoveillance Study.
The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic is a global health emergency with over 6 million cases worldwide as of the beginning of June 2020. The pandemic is historic in scope and precedent given its emergence in an increasingly digital era. Importantly, there have been concerns about the accuracy of COVID-19 case counts due to issues such as lack of access to testing and difficulty in measuring recoveries. ⋯ This study used unsupervised machine learning for the purposes of characterizing self-reporting of symptoms, experiences with testing, and mentions of recovery related to COVID-19. Many users reported symptoms they thought were related to COVID-19, but they were not able to get tested to confirm their concerns. In the absence of testing availability and confirmation, accurate case estimations for this period of the outbreak may never be known. Future studies should continue to explore the utility of infoveillance approaches to estimate COVID-19 disease severity.
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JMIR Public Health Surveill · Jun 2020
Primary Health Care Facility Preparedness for Outpatient Service Provision During the COVID-19 Pandemic in India: Cross-Sectional Study.
Primary health centers (PHCs) represent the first tier of the Indian health care system, providing a range of essential outpatient services to people living in the rural, suburban, and hard-to-reach areas. Diversion of health care resources for containing the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has significantly undermined the accessibility and availability of essential health services. Under these circumstances, the preparedness of PHCs in providing safe patient-centered care and meeting the current health needs of the population while preventing further transmission of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection is crucial. ⋯ Existing PHC facilities in India providing outpatient services are constrained in their functioning during the COVID-19 pandemic due to weak infrastructure contributing to suboptimal patient safety and infection control measures. Furthermore, there is a need for effective planning, communication, and coordination between the centralized health policy makers and health managers working at primary health care facilities to ensure overall preparedness during public health emergencies.