On the Current Connection and Relation Between Health Informatics and Social Informatics.

Scholars from the health and medical sciences have recently proposed the term social informatics (SI) as a new scientific subfield of health informatics (HI). However, SI is not a new academic concept; in fact, it has been continuously used in the social sciences and informatics since the 1970s. Although the dominant understanding of SI was established in the 1990s in the United States, a rich international perspective on SI has existed since the 1970s in other regions of the world. When that perspective is considered, the fields of understanding can be structured into 7 SI schools of thought. Against that conceptual background, this paper contributes to the discussion on the relationship between SI and HI, outlining possible perspectives of SI that are associated with health, medical, and clinical aspects. This paper argues against the multiplication and inconsistent appearance of the term SI when newly used in health and medical sciences. A more explicit name for the area that uses health and social data to advance individual and population health might be helpful to overcome this issue; giving an identity to this new field would help it to be understood more precisely and bring greater separation. This labeling could be fruitful for further segmentation of HI, which is rapidly expanding.

RUDO: A Home Ambient Intelligence System for Blind People.

The article introduces an ambient intelligence system for blind people which besides providing assistance in home environment also helps with various situations and roles in which blind people may find themselves involved. RUDO, the designed system, comprises several modules that mainly support or ensure recognition of approaching people, alerting to other household members' movement in the flat, work on a computer, supervision of (sighted) children, cooperation of a sighted and a blind person (e.g., when studying), control of heating and zonal regulation by a blind person. It has a unified user interface that gives the blind person access to individual functions. The interface for blind people offers assistance with work on a computer, including writing in Braille on a regular keyboard and specialized work in informatics and electronics (e.g., programming). RUDO can complement the standard aids used by blind people at home, it increases their independence and creates conditions that allow them to become fully involved. RUDO also supports blind people sharing a home with sighted people, which contributes to their feeling of security and greater inclusion in society. RUDO has been implemented in a household for two years, which allows an evaluation of its use in practice.

Internet of Medical Things Security Frameworks for Risk Assessment and Management: A Scoping Review.

Background: The massive expansion of the Internet of medical things (IoMT) technology brings many opportunities for improving healthcare. At the same time, their use increases security risks, brings security and privacy concerns, and threatens the functioning of healthcare facilities or healthcare provision. Purpose: This scoping review aims to identify progress in designing risk assessment and management frameworks for IoMT security. The frameworks found are divided into two groups according to whether frameworks address the technological design of risk management or assess technological measures to ensure the security of the IoMT environment. Furthermore, the article intends to find out whether frameworks also include an assessment of organisational measures related to IoMT security. Methods: This review was prepared using PRISMA ScR guidelines. Relevant studies were searched in the citation databases Web of Science and Scopus. The search was limited to articles published in English between 2018 and 17 September 2023. The initial search yielded 1341 articles, of which 44 (3.3%) were included in the scoping review. A qualitative content analysis focused on selected security perspectives and progress in the given area was carried out. Results: Thirty-two articles describe the design of risk assessment and management frameworks. Twelve articles describe the design of frameworks for assessing the security of IoMT devices and possibly offer a comparison of different IoMT alternatives. A description of the included articles was prepared from the selected security perspectives. Conclusion: The review shows the need to create comprehensive or holistic frameworks for operational security and privacy risk management at all layers of the IoMT architecture. It includes the design of specific technological solutions and frameworks for continuously assessing the overall level of information security and privacy of the IoMT environment. Unfortunately, none of the found frameworks offer an assessment of organizational measures even though the importance of the organization measures was highlighted in articles. Another area of interest for researchers could be the design of a general risk management database for IoMT, which would include potential IoMT-related risks connected to a particular device.

What Technologies Based on Unique Patient Identifiers Are Used for Patient Identification in Healthcare?

Ensuring the correct identification of the patient is key to matching the correct patients with the proper care (e.g. correct administration of medications and treatments), but it is also applied, for example, to monitoring the patient's movement in the hospital environment. This scoping review aims to find out what technologies based on unique patient identifiers are used to identify patients in healthcare facilities to increase patient safety and to identify future research trends. PRISMA-ScR guidelines were used, and the search focused on Web of Science and Scopus citation databases from 2000 to February 2024. Thirty-two papers dealing with patient identification methods from the point of view of person identification were found. The solutions found were built on the technologies (linear or 2D) of barcodes, RFID and NFC tags. None of the patient identification solutions found offer complete accuracy due to the human factor, and each solution targets a different problem context associated with a particular type of health facility. Future research can focus on the combination of multiple technologies, including biometric methods, to improve identification and tools to support decisions about the use of technology in a particular context and health facility (e.g. hospitals, medical nursing homes).

Adoption of a COVID-19 Contact Tracing App by Czech Youth: Cross-Cultural Replication Study.

BACKGROUND: During the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic crisis, the role of digital contact tracing (DCT) intensified. However, the uptake of this technology expectedly differed among age cohorts and national cultures. Various conceptual tools were introduced to strengthen DCT research from a theoretical perspective. However, little has been done to compare theory-supported findings across different cultural contexts and age cohorts. OBJECTIVE: Building on the original study conducted in Belgium in April 2020 and theoretically underpinned by the Health Belief Model (HBM), this study attempted to confirm the predictors of DCT adoption in a cultural environment different from the original setting, that is, the Czech Republic. In addition, by using brief qualitative evidence, it aimed to shed light on the possible limitations of the HBM in the examined context and to propose certain extensions of the HBM. METHODS: A Czech version of the original instrument was administered to a convenience sample of young (aged 18-29 y) Czech adults in November 2020. After filtering, 519 valid responses were obtained and included in the quantitative data analysis, which used structural equation modeling and followed the proposed structure of the relationships among the HBM constructs. Furthermore, a qualitative thematic analysis of the free-text answers was conducted to provide additional insights about the model's validity in the given context. RESULTS: The proposed measurement model exhibited less optimal fit (root mean square error of approximation=0.065, 90% CI 0.060-0.070) than in the original study (root mean square error of approximation=0.036, 90% CI 0.033-0.039). Nevertheless, perceived benefits and perceived barriers were confirmed as the main, statistically significant predictors of DCT uptake, consistent with the original study (ß=.60, P<.001 and ß=-.39; P<.001, respectively). Differently from the original study, self-efficacy was not a significant predictor in the strict statistical sense (ß=.12; P=.003). In addition, qualitative analysis demonstrated that in the given cohort, perceived barriers was the most frequent theme (166/354, 46.9% of total codes). Under this category, psychological fears and concerns was a subtheme, notably diverging from the original operationalization of the perceived barriers construct. In a similar sense, a role for social influence in DCT uptake processes was suggested by some respondents (12/354, 1.7% of total codes). In summary, the quantitative and qualitative results indicated that the proposed quantitative model seemed to be of limited value in the examined context. CONCLUSIONS: Future studies should focus on reconceptualizing the 2 underperforming constructs (ie, perceived severity and cues to action) by considering the qualitative findings. This study also provided actionable insights for policy makers and app developers to mitigate DCT adoption issues in the event of a future pandemic caused by unknown viral agents.

Usage of eHealth/mHealth Services among Young Czech Adults and the Impact of COVID-19: An Explorative Survey.

Various mHealth/eHealth services play an increasingly important role in healthcare systems and personal lifestyle management. Yet, the relative popularity of these services among the young population of the Czech Republic was not known. Therefore, we carried out an on-line survey with a convenience sample (n = 299) of young adults aged 18-29 and living in the Czech Republic. To this end, we adapted the survey instrument which was previously used in a similar study conducted in a different cultural context (Hong Kong). In our study, we found out that health tutorial activities (i.e., acquiring information on diet, exercise, fitness) were the most common among our respondents (M = 2.81, SD = 1.14). These were followed by health information seeking activities (i.e., acquiring information on medical problems) (M = 2.63, SD = 0.89) and medical services (i.e., the eHealth/mHealth services that provide infrastructural support, such as ePrescription and doctor appointment organizers) (M = 2.18, SD = 0.97). Based on the grouping according to gender and existing health condition, pairwise comparisons showed statistically significant differences. We also briefly analyzed the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic on the examined activities. Based on their relative popularity, we suggest leveraging the potential of health tutorial activities to improve public health.