scholarly journals Rehabilitation games in a world in digital transition

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-4
Author(s):  
Carla Sílvia Fernandes

Is it possible to analyze the world in the same way, after this globalized and most widespread event of all time? Of course, not; the complexity of this event leads us to the need to address many changes, especially in the health area. Indeed, the pandemic course of COVID-19 has led us to a true digital revolution in such a way that the reality as we know it will be something of the "last century". We live in moments of changing care practices where it is essential to discuss the advantages and potential of other health resources, abandoning a traditionalist view of care. Although the tremendous technological development of the last decades, the health sector is still structured in a historical model of mandatory personal interactions between people and health professionals, that is, in need of face-to-face interaction. Now, the times are of transition, in what can be called hybrid care, functioning as a bridge between the traditional provision of face-to-face care and digital health solutions. These aspects must also be integrated when we think about rehabilitation and its wide range of interventions.

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lena Quilty ◽  
Branka Agic ◽  
Michelle Coombs ◽  
Betty-Lou Kristy ◽  
Jill Shakespeare ◽  
...  

BACKGROUND Digital health resources are being increasingly used to support women with substance use concerns. Although empirical research demonstrates that these resources have promise, the available evidence for their benefit in women requires further investigation. OBJECTIVE The objective of the current investigation was to evaluate the evidence supporting the efficacy or effectiveness for online or mobile interventions for risky or harmful substance use in adults who identify as female or women, or who report a history of trauma. METHODS This scoping review is based on an academic search in MEDLINE, APA PsycINFO, EMBASE, Cochrane Central, and CINAHL, as well as a grey literature search in U.S. and Canadian government and funding agency websites. Of the 4977 records identified, 355 remained following title and abstract screening. Of these, 121 met all eligibility criteria and were reviewed and synthesized. RESULTS The 121 records reflected 96 distinct studies, and 85 distinct interventions. Investigations and the interventions evaluated predominantly focused on alcohol use or general substance use. Digital health resources evaluated included multi-session and brief session interventions, with a wide range of therapeutic elements. More intensive online and mobile interventions exhibited moderate to strong effects in the vast majority of studies, whereas brief interventions demonstrated smaller effect sizes at short-term follow-up periods. Most investigations did not assess gender identity, or conduct sex- or gender-based analyses. Only 10 investigations that included trauma were located. CONCLUSIONS Despite the overall promise of digital health interventions for substance use concerns, direct or quantitative evidence for efficacy or effectiveness of interventions in females or women specifically is weak.


2009 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Geist-Martin ◽  
Catherine Becker ◽  
Summer Carnett ◽  
Katherine Slauta

The big island of Hawaii has been named the healing island – a place with varied interpretations of healing, health, and a wide range of holistic health care practices. This research explores the perspectives of holistic providers about the communicative practices they believe are central to their interactions with patients. Intensive ethnographic interviews with 20 individuals revealed that they perceive their communication with clients as centered on four practices, specifically: (a) reciprocity – a mutual action or exchange in which both the practitioner and patient are equal partners in the healing process; (b) responsibility – the idea that, ultimately, people must heal themselves; (c) forgiveness – the notion that healing cannot progress if a person holds the burden of anger and pain; and (d) balance – the idea that it is possible to bring like and unlike things together in unity and harmony. The narratives revealed providers’ ontological assumptions about mind-body systems and the rationalities they seek to resist in their conversations with patients.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
André De Faria Pereira Neto ◽  
Leticia Barbosa ◽  
Rodolfo Paolucci

UNSTRUCTURED Billions of people in the world own a smartphone. It is a low-cost, portable computing device with countless features, among which applications stand out, which are programs or software developed to meet a specific goal. A wide range of applications available ranging from entertainment and personal organization to work and education is available currently. It is a vast and profitable market. Health applications have been a means of intervention for different areas, including chronic diseases, epidemics, and health emergencies. A recently published paper in the journal with the highest impact factor in Digital Health (“Journal of Medical Internet Research”) proposes a classification of health applications. This study performs a critical analysis of this organization and presents other sort criteria. This paper also presents and analyzes the “Meu Info Saúde” (“My Health Info”) app – a pioneering government initiative focused on primary care launched by the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation. The application classification proposal that will be presented builds on the intervention strategies in the health-disease process, namely: “Health Promotion”, “Disease Prevention” and “Care, Treatment and Rehabilitation”, as defined by official documents such as the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most applications present in the sample are of private and foreign origin, free to download, but with a display of ads or the sale of products and services. The sampled applications were classified as “Health Promotion”, and some applications have also been categorized as “Disease Prevention” or “Care, Treatment or Rehabilitation” because they have multiple functionalities. The applications identified as “Health Promotion” focused only on individuals’ lifestyle and their increased autonomy and self-care management capacity. From this perspective, the apps analyzed in this paper differ from the “Meu Info-Saúde” application developed at Fiocruz.


This book explores the value for literary studies of relevance theory, an inferential approach to communication in which the expression and recognition of intentions plays a major role. Drawing on a wide range of examples from lyric poetry and the novel, nine of the ten chapters are written by literary specialists and use relevance theory both as an overall framework and as a resource for detailed analysis. The final chapter, written by the co-founder of relevance theory, reviews the issues addressed by the volume and explores their implications for cognitive theories of how communicative acts are interpreted in context. Originally designed to explain how people understand each other in everyday face-to-face exchanges, relevance theory—described in an early review by a literary scholar as ‘the makings of a radically new theory of communication, the first since Aristotle’s’—sheds light on the whole spectrum of human modes of communication, including literature in the broadest sense. Reading Beyond the Code is unique in using relevance theory as a prime resource for literary study, and is also the first to apply the model to a range of phenomena widely seen as supporting an ‘embodied’ conception of cognition and language where sensorimotor processes play a key role. This broadened perspective serves to enhance the value for literary studies of the central claim of relevance theory: that the ‘code model’ is fundamentally inadequate to account for human communication, and in particular for the modes of communication that are proper to literature.


2021 ◽  
pp. bjophthalmol-2020-317683
Author(s):  
Yih-Chung Tham ◽  
Rahat Husain ◽  
Kelvin Yi Chong Teo ◽  
Anna Cheng Sim Tan ◽  
Annabel Chee Yen Chew ◽  
...  

COVID-19 has led to massive disruptions in societal, economic and healthcare systems globally. While COVID-19 has sparked a surge and expansion of new digital business models in different industries, healthcare has been slower to adapt to digital solutions. The majority of ophthalmology clinical practices are still operating through a traditional model of ‘brick-and-mortar’ facilities and ‘face-to-face’ patient–physician interaction. In the current climate of COVID-19, there is a need to fuel implementation of digital health models for ophthalmology. In this article, we highlight the current limitations in traditional clinical models as we confront COVID-19, review the current lack of digital initiatives in ophthalmology sphere despite the presence of COVID-19, propose new digital models of care for ophthalmology and discuss potential barriers that need to be considered for sustainable transformation to take place.


2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Daisuke Uritani ◽  
Hitoshi Koda ◽  
Sho Sugita

Abstract Background Enhancing self-efficacy to manage symptoms and functions is an important aspect of self-management for patients with knee osteoarthritis (OA). Many reports have investigated the effects of self-management education programmes for arthritis patients. However, a study that exclusively focuses on patients with OA in the same joints is required to clarify the effects of self-management programmes because individuals with knee OA experience physical and psychological difficulties different from those experienced by individuals with other arthritis diseases. Furthermore, previous studies have reported a wide range of delivery styles of self-management education programmes. This systematic review aimed to evaluate the effects of group-based and face-to-face self-management education programmes conducted by health professionals targeting self-efficacy for knee OA exclusively. Methods The MEDLINE, CENTRAL, EMBASE, CINAHL, Web of Science, and PEDro databases were searched to identify quantitative measures used in randomised controlled trials (RCTs) to assess the effects of self-management education programmes targeting self-efficacy in patients with knee OA. We included studies in which medical professional-delivered self-management education programmes were conducted in a group-based and face-to-face manner in community or outpatient settings. Results Seven RCTs from five countries were included in this review. Our retrieved studies included various types of self-management education programmes such as cognitive behavioural counselling, pain management education, physical education, weight management education, and arthritis self-efficacy management education, and control arms. They assessed various aspects of self-efficacy, including pain, physical function, arthritis symptoms excluding pain, weight management, mobility, and self-regulation. The total score of the Arthritis Self-Efficacy Scale was also measured. Some studies have reported beneficial effects of group-based and face-to-face self-management education programmes on self-efficacy for management of pain and other symptoms and for self-regulatory, knee OA. However, the results of the included studies were varied and inconsistent. Conclusions The current review only included seven studies, and there was a wide range of clinical heterogeneity among these studies. Thus, the effects of group-based and face-to-face self-management education programmes conducted by health professionals on self-efficacy for knee OA exclusively are inconclusive to date. Therefore, high-quality studies are required to provide significant information on clinicians, patients, and healthcare professionals in the future.


Molecules ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (6) ◽  
pp. 1537
Author(s):  
Aneta Saletnik ◽  
Bogdan Saletnik ◽  
Czesław Puchalski

Raman spectroscopy is one of the main analytical techniques used in optical metrology. It is a vibration, marker-free technique that provides insight into the structure and composition of tissues and cells at the molecular level. Raman spectroscopy is an outstanding material identification technique. It provides spatial information of vibrations from complex biological samples which renders it a very accurate tool for the analysis of highly complex plant tissues. Raman spectra can be used as a fingerprint tool for a very wide range of compounds. Raman spectroscopy enables all the polymers that build the cell walls of plants to be tracked simultaneously; it facilitates the analysis of both the molecular composition and the molecular structure of cell walls. Due to its high sensitivity to even minute structural changes, this method is used for comparative tests. The introduction of new and improved Raman techniques by scientists as well as the constant technological development of the apparatus has resulted in an increased importance of Raman spectroscopy in the discovery and defining of tissues and the processes taking place in them.


2020 ◽  
pp. 152483802096734
Author(s):  
Mengtong Chen ◽  
Ko Ling Chan

Digital technologies are increasingly used in health-care delivery and are being introduced into work to prevent unintentional injury, violence, and suicide to reduce mortality. To understand the potential of digital health interventions (DHIs) to prevent and reduce these problems, we conduct a meta-analysis and provide an overview of their effectiveness and characteristics related to the effects. We searched electronic databases and reference lists of relevant reviews to identify randomized controlled trials (RCTs) published in or before March 2020 evaluating DHIs on injury, violence, or suicide reduction. Based on the 34 RCT studies included in the meta-analysis, the overall random effect size was 0.21, and the effect sizes for reducing suicidal ideation, interpersonal violence, and unintentional injury were 0.17, 0.24, and 0.31, respectively, which can be regarded as comparable to the effect sizes of traditional face-to-face interventions. However, there was considerable heterogeneity between the studies. In conclusion, DHIs have great potential to reduce unintentional injury, violence, and suicide. Future research should explore DHIs’ successful components to facilitate future implementation and wider access.


2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tin Tin Aye ◽  
Datuk Muhammad Yusolf Ibrahim ◽  
Daw Khin Saw Naing ◽  
Than Myint ◽  
Muhammad Hj Jical

Women have been fulfilling their reproductive responsibility of propagating human race, many have died and many more faced death in the process of delivering babies, but this can be prevented by taking appropriated antenatal care, clean and safe delivery and essential obstetric care. Antenatal care is the first phase to be encountered once a woman has conceived. The objective of the study was to assess the antenatal (AN) care practice and pregnancy outcome of ever-married women aged 18 to 49 years old having at least one pregnancy experience, residing in kampongs of Kudat area, Sabah, East Malaysia, Northern Borneo from December 2015 to October 2016. Cross–sectional analytical study, non-probability convenient sampling method was used and 300 eligible participants were interviewed face to face by trained interviewer using pretested questionnaire. 99.3% of all the women received AN care, and 97% of the women received AN care practice (AN visit of 4 times and above). Mean AN visit was 9 times. The study revealed that overall knowledge amongst the women with good knowledge was 47.2% and low knowledge was 52.8%. Additionally, there was significant association between education and knowledge, income and knowledge, AN care practices and knowledge. But there was no significant association between AN practice and complication. Despite these results, outcomes were good and all complications were properly and successfully addressed. This may reflect the effectiveness of current national maternal health programs.Asian J. Med. Biol. Res. March 2017, 3(1): 31-37


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