Is the COVID-19 pandemic more contagious for the Asian stock markets? A comparison with the Asian financial, the US subprime and the Eurozone debt crisis.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has sent shock waves across the global stock markets. Several financial crises in the past too have had a global impact with their reach extending beyond the country of origin. The current study compares the contagion effect of four such crises viz. the Asian financial crisis, the US subprime crisis, the Eurozone debt crisis, and the currently ongoing Covid-19 crisis on Asian stock markets to understand which of these has had the most severe impact. It finds that among all the four crises, the US subprime crisis has been the most contagious for the Asian stock markets. The study also highlights the difference between severities of a liquidity crisis versus a real crisis and identifies the markets that remained insulated from all these crises, a finding which will be useful for portfolio managers in devising their asset allocation.

Digital Connectivity: The Sixth Vital Sign.

Digital health and telehealth connectivity have become important aspects of clinical care. Connected devices, including continuous glucose monitors and automated insulin delivery systems for diabetes, are being used increasingly to support personalized clinical decisions based on automatically collected data. Furthermore, the development, demand, and coverage for telehealth have all recently expanded, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Medical care, and especially diabetes care, are therefore becoming more digital through the use of both connected digital health devices and telehealth communication. It has therefore become necessary to integrate digital data into the electronic health record and maintain personal data confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Connected digital monitoring combined with telehealth communication is known as virtual health. For this virtual care paradigm to be successful, patients must have proper skills, training, and equipment. We propose that along with the five current vital signs of blood pressure, pulse, respiratory rate, temperature, and pain, at this time, digital connectivity should be considered as the sixth vital sign. In this article, we present a scale to assess digital connectivity.

Pharmacoadherence: An Opportunity for Digital Health to Inform the Third Dimension of Pharmacotherapy for Diabetes.

The basis of pharmacotherapy requires knowledge of two properties of a drug: pharmacokinetics (PK) and pharmacodynamics (PD). In the era of precision medicine, there is growing interest in determining between-individual variations in PK and PD. While these two dimensions of pharmacotherapy are key foci of investigation, a third property is also emerging as a critical factor in understanding how a drug affects an individual. This third property of a drug is known as phamacoadherence (PA). There can be wide variation in PA among people with diabetes, whether they are using oral or injectable medications. The use of new digital health interventions and telehealth communication tools, such as smart insulin pens, is now creating opportunities for health care professionals to have a more complete understanding of the PA of drugs, which allows for more personalized prescribing practices.