Believers Church Medical College Hospital (BCMCH) is a healthcare institution of Believers Church based in Thiruvalla, Kerala, India. The Medical College is attached to a 743-bed, multi-speciality hospital. The Medical College, established in 2016, is situated in a campus of about 25 acres (10 ha) connected by rail and road.
Uncertainty, time pressure, and information overload are common characteristics of clinical decision-making, prompting clinicians to rely on fast-and-frugal heuristics. The theory of fast-and-frugal decision-making posits such recourse does not require integration of all cues but can rely instead on take-the-best cue. The introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) has added a new class of informational cues that aggregate multiple clinical indicators into a single output with the potential to function as a dominant heuristic that relieves clinicians from having to process and integrate multiple cues. However, the evidence suggests that routine usage of AI among clinicians is low. Little research has addressed whether cultural, technological, and institutional factors may influence the usage, evaluation, and adoption of AI cues across healthcare markets. This study addresses these gaps through a between-subjects field experiment with clinicians in the U.S. and India. Participants assessed 15 patient scenarios with or without an AI cue. The results show that the AI cue becomes a take-the-best heuristic in the mature AI market (U.S.), but in the emerging market (India) usage of traditional cues remains dominant. Consequently, AI-generated output should be presented as complements to the support of clinical decision-making to allow clinicians to use familiar approaches to validate AI assessments.
IntroductionKerala faces numerous disasters and has disaster management teams at all levels. However, efforts are needed to train professional staff and educate the general population for effective disaster response.MethodsThe Unfolding Newer Innovations for Tomorrow’s Emergencies and Disasters (UNITED’24) conference was hosted by Believers Church Medical College Hospital (BCMCH) in Kerala, India in November 2024. The conference on disaster preparedness included pre-conference asynchronous lectures, and in-person didactics, panels, exercises, and a mock drill.ResultsOf the 434 conference attendees, 323 completed the anonymous post conference survey. Respondents were predominantly between 22 and 29 years-old (54%), female (68%), from Kerala (97%), and medical or nursing students and residents (75%). The top five most informative sessions identified by the respondents were on disaster planning and response (57%), triage ethics (51%), building resilience post-disasters (50%), climate change (35%), and the disaster mock drill (32%).DiscussionThis first international disaster medicine conference in India trained multidisciplinary professionals in disaster management and facilitated development of a disaster response center in Kerala through strategic academic and government partnerships contributing to a more disaster-resilient India.
Background: Despite being a relatively small state, Kerala has a high prevalence of diabetes in India, with approx. 16% of the population affected. A worrying proportion of cases remain undiagnosed, putting individuals at risk of complications without proper management. Early diagnosis, effective management, and addressing risk factors are crucial to controlling the disease and its complications. Objective: To assess the risk of diabetes and its correlates among youth of both gender belonging to age group of 20–35 years using the Indian diabetes risk score in Thiruvalla, Central Kerala.Methodology: A cross sectional study was conducted among youth of both gender belonging to age group of 20–35 years from June 2023 to December 2023. The data was analyzed using the IBM statistical package for social sciences version 20. The results have been presented as tables and charts showing percentages. Chi-square test and odds ratio were used for analyzing the association between demographic variables and diabetes risk among the study participants.Results: Majority of the youth in the study were under a moderate risk of getting Diabetes (74%). While physical activity was found to be protective against the risk of Diabetes, Family history of Diabetes, Stress and Abdominal Obesity were found to be risk factors for Diabetic risk among the study participants.Conclusion: The study findings underscore the need for increasing the awareness among the youth regarding the impending Diabetes epidemic.
