Studies in health technology and informatics
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jun 2020
Global Access to OpenWHO's Online Learning Resources for COVID-19.
This poster presents the COVID-19 online learning response by the World Health Organization's (WHO) OpenWHO learning platform for health emergencies. Platform use shifted during the pandemic from being the highest in the WHO African and Eastern Mediterranean regions to the American and European regions. The largest traffic channels were search engines, social media and WHO websites.
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jun 2020
Application of Topic Modeling to Tweets as the Foundation for Health Disparity Research for COVID-19.
We randomly extracted publicly available Tweets mentioning COVID-19 related terms (n=2,558,474 Tweets) from Tweet corpora collected daily using an API from Jan 21st to May 3rd, 2020. We applied a clustering algorithm to publicly available Tweets authored by African Americans (n=1,763) to detect topics and sentiment applying natural language processing (NLP). ⋯ Compared to the COVID-19 related Tweets authored by others, positive sentiments, cohesively encouraging online discussions (e.g., Black strong 27.1%, growing up Blacks 22.8%, support Black business 17.0%, how to build resilience 7.8%), and COVID-19 prevention behaviors (e.g., masks 4.7%, encouraging social distancing 9.4%) were uniquely observed in African American Twitter communities. Application of topic modeling techniques to streaming social media Twitter provides the foundation for research team insights regarding information and future virtual based intervention and social media based health disparity research for COVID-19.
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jun 2020
An Analysis of the Growth in Uptake of OpenWHO's Online Learning Resources for COVID-19.
From 26 January - 21 April 2020, 9 online courses for COVID-19 were published on OpenWHO.org. The courses are available in 18 different languages, totalling 53 learning resources and more than 1.5 million course enrolments. ⋯ The number of enrolments increased significantly between 26 January and 21 April, with distinct spikes in growth preceded by important global milestones in the timeline of the outbreak. The surge in users demonstrates that the platform is serving as a source of digitized learning for COVID-19, helping meet the broad demand for outbreak-related information.
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jun 2020
Development of a Mobile Digital Manikin to Measure Pain Location and Intensity.
Painful conditions are prevalent and substantially contribute to disability worldwide. Digital manikins are body-shaped drawings to facilitate self-reporting of pain. Some of them have been validated, but without allowing for recording of location-specific pain intensity and for use on a smartphone. ⋯ Test-retest reliability depended on the manikin's level of detail, but was generally high with most intraclass correlation coefficients âĽě0.70 and all similarity coefficients âĽě0.50. Participants found the manikin easy to use, but suggested clearer orientation (front/back, certain body locations) and would value additional feedback and diary functions. We will address these issues in the next version of the manikin before conducting a validation study.
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Stud Health Technol Inform · Jun 2020
Health Professionals' Experiences of the Benefits and Challenges of Online Symptom Checkers.
Online symptom checkers and assessment services are used by patients seeking guidance on health problems. In this study, the goal was to identify health professionals' experiences of the benefits and challenges of new symptom checkers providing triage advice. Data was collected through an online survey of 61 health professionals who were target users of the online symptom checkers implemented in six public health organizations and one private occupational health clinic. ⋯ Health professionals were satisfied with symptom checkers providing them with more useful information before meeting patients. By contrast, symptom checkers were seen as disrupting clinical work and time-consuming. The results imply that the clinical work processes should be redesigned to guide patients in an efficient manner, avoid work overlap, and provide work motivation for professionals.