Clinical Trials on Alternative Medicines for COVID-19.

In this study, we addressed the alternative medications that have been targeted in the clinical trials (CTs) to be evidenced as an adjuvant treatment against COVID-19. Based on the outcomes from CTs, we found that dietary supplements such as Lactoferrin, and Probiotics (as SivoMixx) can play a role enhancing the immunity thus can be used as prophylactics against COVID-19 infection. Vitamin D was proven as an effective adjuvant treatment against COVID-19, while Vitamin C role is uncertain and needs more investigation. Herbals such as Guduchi Ghan Vati can be used as prophylactic, while Resveratrol can be used to reduce the hospitalization risk of COVID-19 patients. On the contrary, there were no clinical improvements demonstrated when using Cannabidiol. This study is a part of a two-phase research study. In the first phase, we gathered evidence-based information on alternative therapeutics for COVID-19 that are under CT. In the second phase, we plan to build a mobile health application that will provide evidence based alternative therapy information to health consumers.

Evaluation of Meditation Apps Available on Google Play and Apple Store: An App Review.

Many meditation apps have been used to improve the mental wellbeing of individuals. However, little information is available regarding the quality of the applications. This study aims to evaluate meditation apps using the Mobile Applications Rating Scale (MARS). A systematic search for meditation apps was performed on both Android Google Play and Apple iOS Store. We used two keywords to search both app stores: meditation and mindfulness. Out of 623 apps identified, 334 apps were excluded due to language, containing only reminders to meditate, or for not being accessible. A total number of 289 apps remained, of which 280 apps were excluded for being information-only focused, containing religious practices, eating habits, exercises, or for not being free. Therefore, nine apps were included in this review for evaluation. The MARS ratings used in this app review were based on scores from a prior study conducted. The mobile app Headspace had the highest average (4), which is rated as 'good' based on MARS. The remaining apps were rated as acceptable with averages that ranged from 3.2-3.7.

Features of Meditation Apps: A Scoping Review.

This review aims to provide an overview of the features of meditation apps as described in empirical literature. Nine databases were searched for this review. Search terms were related to all types of meditation. Study selection and data extraction of the included studies were conducted by two reviewers. We included 93 studies in this review. Headspace was the most common app among studies and the most common type of meditation was mindfulness. Stress was the most targeted health condition by the studies. Future research needs to focus on different mental conditions other than stress to understand the effect of meditation apps on mental health.

A Comprehensive Overview of the COVID-19 Literature: Machine Learning-Based Bibliometric Analysis.

BACKGROUND: Shortly after the emergence of COVID-19, researchers rapidly mobilized to study numerous aspects of the disease such as its evolution, clinical manifestations, effects, treatments, and vaccinations. This led to a rapid increase in the number of COVID-19-related publications. Identifying trends and areas of interest using traditional review methods (eg, scoping and systematic reviews) for such a large domain area is challenging. OBJECTIVE: We aimed to conduct an extensive bibliometric analysis to provide a comprehensive overview of the COVID-19 literature. METHODS: We used the COVID-19 Open Research Dataset (CORD-19) that consists of a large number of research articles related to all coronaviruses. We used a machine learning-based method to analyze the most relevant COVID-19-related articles and extracted the most prominent topics. Specifically, we used a clustering algorithm to group published articles based on the similarity of their abstracts to identify research hotspots and current research directions. We have made our software accessible to the community via GitHub. RESULTS: Of the 196,630 publications retrieved from the database, we included 28,904 in our analysis. The mean number of weekly publications was 990 (SD 789.3). The country that published the highest number of COVID-19-related articles was China (2950/17,270, 17.08%). The highest number of articles were published in bioRxiv. Lei Liu affiliated with the Southern University of Science and Technology in China published the highest number of articles (n=46). Based on titles and abstracts alone, we were able to identify 1515 surveys, 733 systematic reviews, 512 cohort studies, 480 meta-analyses, and 362 randomized control trials. We identified 19 different topics covered among the publications reviewed. The most dominant topic was public health response, followed by clinical care practices during the COVID-19 pandemic, clinical characteristics and risk factors, and epidemic models for its spread. CONCLUSIONS: We provide an overview of the COVID-19 literature and have identified current hotspots and research directions. Our findings can be useful for the research community to help prioritize research needs and recognize leading COVID-19 researchers, institutes, countries, and publishers. Our study shows that an AI-based bibliometric analysis has the potential to rapidly explore a large corpus of academic publications during a public health crisis. We believe that this work can be used to analyze other eHealth-related literature to help clinicians, administrators, and policy makers to obtain a holistic view of the literature and be able to categorize different topics of the existing research for further analyses. It can be further scaled (for instance, in time) to clinical summary documentation. Publishers should avoid noise in the data by developing a way to trace the evolution of individual publications and unique authors.

Satisfaction and perceived usefulness with newly-implemented Electronic Health Records System among pediatricians at a university hospital.

BACKGROUND: Apposite implementation of Electronic Health Records (EHR) is anchoring standards of care in healthcare settings by reducing long-run operational costs, improving healthcare quality, and enhancing patient safety. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to explore factors that might influence Pediatricians' satisfaction with an implemented EHR system and its perceived usefulness at a tertiary-care teaching hospital, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. METHODS: A cross-sectional survey distributed to all physicians working in the pediatric department of King Saud University Medical City (KSUMC) in the period from June to November 2015, two months after the launch of the EHR system, internally branded as electronic system for integrated health information (eSiHi). Bivariate and multivariate regression were analyzed to examine factors associated with physicians' satisfaction. RESULTS: Of the 112 physicians who completed the survey, 97 (86.6%) attended training courses before the implementation of new EHR. On average, the participants rated the perceived usefulness of the new system at 6.4/10 for patient care and physicians' satisfaction levels were 5.2/10. The top indicator of EHR usefulness was the system's ability to reduce errors and improve the quality of care [mean 3.31, SD 0.9, RII 82.8%]; the lowest-ranking indicator was the physicians' perceived familiarity with functions and benefits [mean 2.68, SD 0.7, RII 67%]. The top indicator of satisfaction with the EHR system was enhanced "individual performance" [mean 3.04, SD 1, RII 60.9%]; the lowest-ranking perceived indicator was the limited availability of workplace computers [mean 1.91, SD 1.2, RII 38.2%]. CONCLUSIONS: Limited data regarding EHR implementation and end-users satisfaction in the Middle East region necessitates further work on factors affecting levels of satisfaction with the EHR system among different health institutes. Lack of information technology (IT) support, hardware, and time-consuming data entry process are challenging barriers for proper utilization of EHR for pediatric health care services.

Islamic E-health: definitions, applications and challenges.

The purpose of this exploratory study is to introduce the concept of Islamic E-health. The study defines Islamic E-health and discusses various applications of this concept. Data collection methods used for the study included interviews, Facebook, Google, and iTunes searches using a variety of Islamic E-health-related terms. The results show that some Islamic E-health applications focus primarily on spiritual health, followed by Hajj systems for surveillance and monitoring and the use of electronic medical records to monitor the blood glucose levels of Muslim patients who fast during the month of Ramadan. Future research and research limitations are also discussed.