A Validation Study on the Physiological Parameters Recorded by COVIDBEEP - An Indigenous Remote Health Monitoring System Designed for COVID-19 Care in India.

Background: COVID-19 pandemic has affected mankind globally. After the three waves since March 2020, the threat continues instilling fear in the minds. Vital parameter monitoring through remote health monitoring system (RHMS) becomes critical for effective disease management and manpower safety and confidence. In a low resource setting like India, a comprehensive, wearable, and remotely operable device that is economical was required to be introduced for COVID-19 care. Present study validated the remote health monitoring device named COVIDBEEP with gold standard equipment. Materials and Methods: Six parameters, namely heart rate, SpO2, respiratory rate, temperature, blood pressure, and ECG were acquired in the supine position using the devices. Result: Analysis was performed using Graph Pad Prism. Intraclass correlation coefficients were used to measure concurrent validity. Bland-Altman graphs were plotted to know the agreement for each vital parameter. Confidence limits were set at 95%. All the parameters recorded from the devices showed a significant correlation with an "r" value between 0.5 and 0.9 with P value between 0.001 and 0.0002. Bland-Altman plots showed a minimum bias of 0.033 for heart rate and maximum of 3.5 for systolic blood pressure and respiratory rate. Conclusion: The association between the parameters recorded by the devices strengthened as the time of collection of data increased. Agreement between the two methods in 95% confidence interval was also proven to be significant for the parameters. Therefore, the indigenously developed COVIDBEEP has shown good validity in comparison to standard monitoring device.

Artificial Intelligence-Based Portable Bioelectronics Platform for SARS-CoV-2 Diagnosis with Multi-nucleotide Probe Assay for Clinical Decisions.

In the context of the recent pandemic, the necessity of inexpensive and easily accessible rapid-test kits is well understood and need not be stressed further. In light of this, we report a multi-nucleotide probe-based diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 using a bioelectronics platform, comprising low-cost chemiresistive biochips, a portable electronic readout, and an Android application for data acquisition with machine-learning-based decision making. The platform performs the desired diagnosis from standard nasopharyngeal and/or oral swabs (both on extracted and non-extracted RNA samples) without amplifying the viral load. Being a reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction-free hybridization assay, the proposed approach offers inexpensive, fast (time-to-result: ≤ 30 min), and early diagnosis, as opposed to most of the existing SARS-CoV-2 diagnosis protocols recommended by the WHO. For the extracted RNA samples, the assay accounts for 87 and 95.2% test accuracies, using a heuristic approach and a machine-learning-based classification method, respectively. In case of the non-extracted RNA samples, 95.6% decision accuracy is achieved using the heuristic approach, with the machine-learning-based best-fit model producing 100% accuracy. Furthermore, the availability of the handheld readout and the Android application-based simple user interface facilitates easy accessibility and portable applications. Besides, by eliminating viral RNA extraction from samples as a pre-requisite for specific detection, the proposed approach presents itself as an ideal candidate for point-of-care SARS-CoV-2 diagnosis.

Menopause-Related Quality of Life among Urban Women of Hyderabad, India.

BACKGROUND: Menopause is regarded as the marker for various symptoms such as physical, psychological, vasomotor, and sexual impairing the quality of life (QOL). OBJECTIVES: To assess the menopause-related QOL and determine associated factors among postmenopausal women. MATERIALS AND METHODS: A cross-sectional study was conducted among 378 postmenopausal women attending the obstetrics and gynecology department of a tertiary care hospital using a standardized menopause-specific QOL (MENQOL) questionnaire consisting of physical, vasomotor, psychosocial, and sexual domains. RESULTS: The study included 378 women aged above 40 years, with majority belonging to the age group of 46-50 years. The total MENQOL mean score was found to be 19.35 ± 16.20, with physical domain score the highest 14.89 ± 11.85, followed by vasomotor 1.98 ± 3.83, psychosocial 1.82 ± 3.29, and the least as sexual domain with score of 0.624 ± 2.21. Post menopausal women with age less than 50 years, No formal education, High socio-economic status, Home makers and duration of menopause less than 5 years was found to have statistical significant association with higher vasomotor domain score; No formal education, higher socio economic status and duration of menopause with greater than 5 years was found to be significant with higher sexual domain scores. CONCLUSIONS: Menopause may be associated with a decrease in QOL. Certain sociodemographic variables showed a statistically significant association with the vasomotor and sexual domains. Awareness and interventions that affect the modifiable factors may help in increasing the QOL at menopause.