Background: The driving force for information and communication technology in healthcare has been directed towards better-coordinated care but high cost and time consumption in addition to difficulties with cooperation with resident practitioners has hampered progress. Therefore, due to the underestimation of difficulties to manage national eHealth activities, the potential of eHealth in Europe is still to be realized. Methods: An evaluation of the national eHealth in Slovenia grounded on open platform theory based organizational design principles for eHealth platforms has been conducted. We used a running use case of an eDiabetes digital health intervention as a potential new central service of the national eHealth platform. We discussed all the design principles and also constructed a questionnaire during the process to additionally help with the evaluation. Results: We have identified a gap that needs to be bridged in order for Slovenia to achieve all the benefits of an open eHealth platform that could become a strategic direction for the future. We constructed a questionnaire that is based on the open platform theory grounded design principles for open eHealth platforms which we used as a helping tool to perform the analysis. Conclusion: By evaluating the national eHealth in Slovenia against the open eHealth platform organizational design principles, we identified a gap that needs to be bridged to benefit from the positive effects of open eHealth platforms. Being open suggests participation, extension and growth both in terms of demand side users (e.g. patients and doctors) and supply side platform users (e.g. IT companies, HCPs etc.) Shortage of a business model is just one principle that still needs to be met in addition to several others. With this, Slovenia can ground its national eHealth vision and strategy on the results of this analysis.
It has been previously shown that human cardiac disorders can be modeled with induced pluripotent stem cell differentiated cardiomyocytes (iPSC-CM), which enables to study disease characteristics and pathophysiology in more detail. We have shown that some genetic cardiac diseases can be separated from each other and from healthy controls by applying machine learning methods to calcium transient signals measured from these cells. In this study, separation of four genetic cardiac diseases and controls were studied by applying classification methods such as nearest neighbor searching algorithm, decision trees, least squares support vector machines and random forests to peak data computed from calcium transient signals measured from beating induced pluripotent stem cell-derived (iPSC) cardiomyocytes. The best classification accuracy obtained was 77.8% being very promising. The result strengthens our previous finding that the machine learning method can be exploited to identification of several genetic cardiac diseases, but also to separate mutations in different genes resulting in the same clinical phenotype.
BACKGROUND:Obtaining informed consent from research study participants continues to meet difficulties. New ways to connect with potential participants are necessary to address barriers, expand enrollment and offer more services to underserved populations.OBJECTIVES:Electronic consent is designed to complete consenting sessions remotely and may help combat the obstacles inherent in the traditional informed consent process. We investigate the implementation of an electronic consent platform, Teleconsent, to broaden and diversify recruitment for clinical research.METHODS:Semi-structured interviews were conducted with community members to assess their perceptions regarding the acceptability and usability of Teleconsent, a form of electronic consent. Interviews were structured to determine the main benefits, challenges and concerns as detailed by each participant. Participants were divided into rural and urban groupings.RESULTS:We interviewed 40 participants to gather first-time perceptions of Teleconsent. We found overall positive results. Predominately in urban communities, participants possessed the technological skills and amenities to support smooth implementation of this technology. However, many participants reflect on the challenges regarding logistics, privacy and reliability of utilizing Teleconsent in underserved, rural areas. 5 of 19 participants, more than a quarter for the rural group, experienced Teleconsent software problems. During these sessions, an alternative process with paper templates was employed to complete interviews.CONCLUSION:Perceptions regarding Teleconsent demonstrate current challenges along with potential acceptance within different communities. This is despite the fact that on its own it will not be able to overcome the barriers currently found in the informed consent process. Still, investment in electronic consent, including the development of enhanced and interactive content, can potentially revolutionize this process. Our findings offer a preliminary step towards determining the feasibility and acceptance of Teleconsent, a form of electronic consent, in different communities. More research surrounding the logistics of adoption is necessary in order to determine success.
IntroductionElectronic medical records (hereafter called "EMRs") are designed for the primary use of data, such as the efficiency of medical work by order entry systems and medical accounting systems.Secondary data, such as medical research, decision support, and educational support for young doctors, are expected to accumulate via promoting the computerization of medical data.Especially, computer-based clinical decision support systems (hereafter called "CDSS") to support doctor's clinical decision making is an important example of secondary use of EMRs [1].The CDSS is a system that provides better medical care to patients by reducing decision mistakes and sharing medical evidence when medical staff makes decisions, such as diagnosis and prescription [2].
