scholarly journals Teledermatology in the Saudi Arabian Healthcare System: Utilization and Challenges

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Alhanouf A. Bin Dakhil ◽  
Saad Altalhab
Keyword(s):  
Medical Education ◽  
Saudi Arabia ◽  
Inpatient Care ◽  
Data Access ◽  
Visual Assessment ◽  
Healthcare Services ◽  
Wait Times ◽  
Privacy Concerns ◽  
System Utilization ◽  
Store And Forward

<b><i>Background:</i></b> In recent years, telemedicine has led to a dramatic shift in healthcare service delivery, mainly due to the ease with which telemedicine can be integrated into a multitude of specialties and its flexibility as a means of providing care. Over the last 2 decades, technological advancements have made telemedicine integral to healthcare in many countries. In particular, dermatology was benefited from telemedicine as a new tool, thanks to the visual character that pervades this practice. Teledermatology is the interactive practice of remote dermatological assessment, involving live contact with patients (“live interactive”) and data access and retrieval (“store-and-forward”). This review discusses the role of this new discipline in medical education, inpatient care, and primary care through the analysis of several studies addressing this topic. Also examined are the status and limitations of teledermatology in Saudi Arabia and some proposed solutions. <b><i>Summary:</i></b> Visual assessment of dermatological conditions is common practice among dermatologists. However, due to the scarcity of specialists in some areas, wait times have been a hindrance for patients requiring an assessment. Teledermatology improves access by reducing wait times, speeding up the referral process, and streamlining assessments. Furthermore, teledermatology effectively serves as a form of triage, particularly for cases of suspected cutaneous malignancy that typically require the shortest referral time. Earlier diagnoses, more effective management of chronic skin disease, and inpatient care are all additional benefits offered by the teledermatology practice. The use of teledermatology is now widespread, with roles extending beyond patient care to medical teaching and training in residency programs. This perhaps reflects physicians’ highly positive perceptions regarding teledermatology; however, patient perception in Saudi Arabia is still lagging behind the global standard, possibly due to privacy concerns. <b><i>Key Message:</i></b> Teledermatology can be reliably utilized to advance healthcare services and medical education. Improving patient awareness and perception of this emerging discipline is crucial; to that end, the practice must address privacy concerns. Patient uploads of photographs and videos should be stored on an end-to-end encrypted platform to provide optimal service and encourage patients’ participation. Ultimately, physicians should be well acquainted with the medical, ethical, and technical aspects of teledermatology.

Control Cloud Data Access Privilge Anonymity with Attributed Based Encryption

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (8) ◽  
pp. 279
Author(s):  
P. Sudheer ◽  
T. Lakshmi Surekha
Keyword(s):  
Data Privacy ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Data Access ◽  
Privacy Concerns ◽  
Cloud Data ◽  
Computing Paradigm ◽  
Attribute Based Encryption ◽  
Data Content ◽  
Identity Privacy ◽  
Cloud Servers

Cloud computing is a revolutionary computing paradigm, which enables flexible, on-demand, and low-cost usage of computing resources, but the data is outsourced to some cloud servers, and various privacy concerns emerge from it. Various schemes based on the attribute-based encryption have been to secure the cloud storage. Data content privacy. A semi anonymous privilege control scheme AnonyControl to address not only the data privacy. But also the user identity privacy. AnonyControl decentralizes the central authority to limit the identity leakage and thus achieves semi anonymity. The  Anonymity –F which fully prevent the identity leakage and achieve the full anonymity.

Generating publicly available progress notes of authentic quality: A crowdsourcing-based approach (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rina Kagawa ◽  
Yukino Baba ◽  
Hideo Tsurushima
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Medical Education ◽  
Medical Practice ◽  
Patient Privacy ◽  
Patient Anxiety ◽  
Physical Status ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Privacy Concerns ◽  
Progress Notes ◽  
Research And Education

BACKGROUND Sharing progress notes as a common social capital is essential in research and education, but the content of progress notes is sensitive and needs to be kept confidential. Publishing actual progress notes are difficult due to privacy concerns. OBJECTIVE This study aims to generate a large repository of pseudo-progress notes of authentic quality. We focused on two requirements for authentic quality: the validity and consistency of the data, from the perspective of medical practice, and the empirical and semantic characteristics of progress notes, such as shorthand styles used for reporting changes in a patient's physical status, long narrative sentences detailing patient anxiety, and interprofessional communications. METHODS We proposed a practical framework that consists of a simulation of the notes and evaluation of the simulated notes. The framework utilized two human cognitive traits: (1) the ability to use imitation to simulate objects with diverse characteristics without background knowledge and (2) the use of comparison as a strategy for deep thinking. This enabled crowd workers to generate a large number of progress notes. Our framework involved three steps. In step 1, crowd workers imitated actual progress notes decomposed into subject data (S), object data (O), and assessment and plan (A/P). These imitated texts were then shuffled and recomposed in S, O, and A/P in order to create simulated progress notes. In step 2, crowd workers identified the characteristics of actual progress notes based on comparisons between actual and dummy progress notes. These characteristics were clustered based on their similarities. Each cluster exhibited the empirical and semantic characteristics of the actual progress notes. Finally, in step 3, the texts from step 1 that exhibited the identified characteristics from step 2 were evaluated as quality-guaranteed progress notes that met the two requirements. All data were preprocessed to protect patient privacy. RESULTS Step 1: By recomposing the 700 imitated texts, 9,856 simulated progress notes were generated. Step 2: 3,938 differences between actual progress notes and dummy progress notes were identified. After clustering, 166 characteristics were evaluated to be appropriate as empirical and semantic characteristics of the actual progress notes. Step 3: 500 crowd workers demonstrated that 83.0% of the simulated progress notes satisfied at least one of the characteristics obtained in step 2. The crowd workers' artificially-reproduced progress notes were evaluated to determine the most realistic, based on four metrics: disease, morpheme, readability, and reality. CONCLUSIONS Our results demonstrated that crowd workers could generate and evaluate highly professional documents. We have made our large repository of high-quality crowdsourced progress notes publicly available, and we encourage their use in the development of medical education and research.

scholarly journals Evaluation of e-health (Seha) application: a cross-sectional study in Saudi Arabia

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Abeer Alharbi ◽  
Joharah Alzuwaed ◽  
Hind Qasem
Keyword(s):  
Saudi Arabia ◽  
Health Services ◽  
Healthcare Services ◽  
Cross Sectional Study ◽  
Advanced Technology ◽  
Sectional Study ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Technical Problems ◽  
Significant Difference ◽  
Ease Of Access

Abstract Background The Ministry of Health in Saudi Arabia is expanding the country’s telemedicine services by using advanced technology in health services. In doing so, an e-health application (app), Seha, was introduced in 2018 that allows individuals to have face-to-face visual medical consultations with their doctors on their smartphones. Objective This study evaluated the effectiveness of the app in improving healthcare delivery by ensuring patient satisfaction with the care given, increasing access to care, and improving efficiency in the healthcare system. Methods A cross-sectional study design was used to assess the perceptions of users of the Seha app and non-users who continued with traditional health services. The data were collected using an online survey via Google Forms between June 2020 and September 2020. Independent t tests and chi-square (χ2) tests were conducted to answer the research questions. Results There was a significant difference between users and non-users in terms of ease of access to health services (t =  − 9.38, p < 0.05), with app users having a higher mean score (4.19 ± 0.91) than non-users (3.41 ± 1.00); satisfaction with health services (t =  − 6.33, p < 0.05), with users having a higher mean score (3.96 ± 0.91) than non-users (3.45 ± 0.94); and efficiency (only one visit needed for treatment) (t =  − 3.20, p < 0.05), with users having a higher mean score (3.71 ± 0.93) than non-users (3.45 ± 0.93). There were significant associations between the use of the Seha app and age (χ2 = 8.79, p < 0.05), gender (χ2 = 22.19, p < 0.05), region (χ2 = 19.74, p < 0.05), and occupation (χ2 = 22.05, p < 0.05). There were significant relationships between the three items (on access, satisfaction, and efficiency) and experiencing technical issues (t = 4.47, t = 8.11, and t = 3.24, respectively, p < 0.05), with users who faced technical problems having significantly lower mean scores for all three items. Conclusion This study provided evidence that the Seha app improved the delivery of healthcare in Saudi Arabia. Users of the app had a better health experience in terms of their perceived ease of access to healthcare services; their satisfaction with healthcare services; and the efficiency of the system, measured by the number of required doctor visits. Other factors that appeared to influence the use of the app included age, gender, usual source of care, and technical difficulties.

Implementation and evaluation of Stanford Health Care store-and-forward teledermatology consultation workflow built within an existing electronic health record system

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 125-131 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grace E Kim ◽  
Olga K Afanasiev ◽  
Chris O’Dell ◽  
Christopher Sharp ◽  
Justin M Ko
Keyword(s):  
Health Care ◽  
Electronic Health Record ◽  
Primary Care Physicians ◽  
Health Record ◽  
Record System ◽  
Privacy Concerns ◽  
Successful Model ◽  
Dermatology Clinic ◽  
Electronic Health ◽  
Store And Forward

Introduction Teledermatology services that function separately from patients’ primary electronic health record (EHR) can lead to fragmented care, poor provider communication, privacy concerns and billing challenges. This study addresses these challenges by developing PhotoCareMD, a store-and-forward (SAF) teledermatology consultation workflow built entirely within an existing Epic-based EHR. Methods Thirty-six primary care physicians (PCPs) from eight outpatient clinics submitted 215 electronic consults (eConsults) for 211 patients to a Stanford Health Care dermatologist via PhotoCareMD. Comparisons were made with in-person referrals for this same dermatologist prior to initiation of PhotoCareMD. Results Compared to traditional in-person dermatology clinic visits, eConsults decreased the time to diagnosis and treatment from 23 days to 16 hours. The majority (73%) of eConsults were resolved electronically. In-person referrals from PhotoCareMD (27%) had a 50% lower cancellation rate compared with traditional referrals (11% versus 22%). The average in-person visit and documentation was 25 minutes compared with 8 minutes for an eConsult. PhotoCareMD saved 13 additional clinic hours to be made available to the dermatologist over the course of the pilot. At four patients per hour, this opens 52 dermatology clinic slots. Over 96% of patients had a favourable experience and 95% felt this service saved them time. Among PCPs, 100% would recommend PhotoCareMD to their colleagues and 95% said PhotoCareMD was a helpful educational tool. Discussion An internal SAF teledermatology workflow can be effectively implemented to increase access to and quality of dermatologic care. Our workflow can serve as a successful model for other hospitals and specialties.

scholarly journals Quality issues in continuing medical education in Saudi Arabia

2008 ◽  
Vol 28 (5) ◽  
pp. 378 ◽  
Author(s):  
AliM Al-Shehri ◽  
AliI Alhaqwi ◽  
MohammedA Al-Sultan
Keyword(s):  
Medical Education ◽  
Saudi Arabia ◽  
Continuing Medical Education ◽  
Quality Issues

scholarly journals Attitudes toward breastfeeding practices among breastfeeding women in Buraydah city, Saudi Arabia: a cross-sectional study

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (8) ◽  
pp. 1203
Author(s):  
Alhanof F. Alharbi ◽  
Asma M. Almutairi ◽  
Abeer E. Alrasheedi ◽  
Abdulrhman Aldukhayel ◽  
Sara M. Almutairi
Keyword(s):  
Saudi Arabia ◽  
Healthcare Services ◽  
Cross Sectional Study ◽  
Attitude Scale ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Cross Sectional Design ◽  
Breastfeeding Attitudes ◽  
Individual Scores ◽  
Self Administered Questionnaire ◽  
Purposive Sample

Background: This study assessed the attitudes toward breastfeeding among mothers receiving healthcare services in Primary Healthcare Centers (PHCCs) in Buraydah, Saudi Arabia. It also examined the association between the mothers’ demographic characteristics and breastfeeding attitudes.Methods: This study utilized a descriptive cross-sectional design. A purposive sample of 415 breastfeeding mothers who were receiving healthcare services from the selected PHCCs during the conduct of the study were recruited in PHCCs in Buraydah, Saudi Arabia. A two-part self-administered questionnaire containing a demographic sheet and the Iowa Infant Feeding Attitude Scale (IIFAS) Arabic version was employed to collect data from the respondents. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used accordingly in data analyses.Results: The overall mean score of the women in the IIFAS was 60.50 (SD = 11.08), with individual scores ranging from 17.00 to 82.00. This finding implies good attitudes toward breastfeeding. Mothers who were divorced/widowed (M = 63.75, SD = 5.20) had significantly better breastfeeding attitudes than married mothers (M = 60.24, SD = 11.38). Mothers who were not working (M = 61.41, SD = 10.03) reported more positive breastfeeding attitudes compared with working mothers (M = 58.36, SD = 13.02).Conclusions: The mothers reported good attitudes toward breastfeeding, but expressed poor beliefs in some areas of breastfeeding. The present findings have implication to medicine, nursing, and healthcare policies.

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