Predicting Mortality in COVID-19 Patients Using 6 Machine Learning Algorithms.

In late 2019, COVID-19 appeared and has since spread worldwide as the new pandemic, causing more than 6 million deaths. In dealing with this global crisis, the contribution of Artificial Intelligence was also important through the possibilities of creating predictive models through Machine Learning algorithms, which are already successfully applied to solving a multitude of problems, for many scientific fields. This work aims to find the best model for predicting the mortality of patients with COVID-19, through the comparison of 6 classification algorithms, i.e. Logistic Regression, Decision Trees, Random Forest, eXtreme Gradient Boosting, Multi-Layer Perceptrons, K-Nearest Neighbors. We used a dataset containing more than 12 million cases which was cleansed, modified, and tested for each model. The best model is XGBoost (Precision: 0.93764, Recall: 0.95472, F1-score: 0.9113, AUC_ROC: 0.97855 and Runtime: 6.67306 sec), which is recommended for the prediction and priority treatment of patients with high mortality risk.

Web and Mobile Enabled Application for Public Health Inspections.

This work aims to promote and improve Public Health practices by creating an Information System (IS) to register health inspections performed in health stores by the Public Health Inspectors of the Health Departments of Regions in Greece. The IS was implemented based on open-source programming languages and frameworks. The front end was implemented by JavaScript and Vue.js framework, and the back end by Python and Django.

Survey Results on Online Teaching and Learning Environments in the European EMMA Project.

In the Erasmus+ project EMMA, a concept for a common digital teaching and learning platform is to be developed for an online joint master program. In the initial phase, a status quo survey was carried out among the consortium members, which shows which digital infrastructures are already in use and which functions are considered particularly important by the teachers. This paper shows the first results of the short survey via online questionnaire and discusses the challenges derived from it. Due to the non-homogeneous infrastructure and software use, there are neither the teaching-learning platform nor digital communication applications tools that are used equally by all six European higher education institutions. However, the consortium pursues the idea of specifying a limited tool pool order to strengthen the user experience and usability of teachers and students with different interdisciplinary backgrounds and digitalization expertise.

A Conversational Web-Based Chatbot to Disseminate COVID-19 Advisory Information.

Chatbots are computer programs which integrate Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) technologies to simulate human conversation. The use of chatbots has significantly been increased during the COVID-19 pandemic to support healthcare procedures and systems. The purpose of this study is to present the design, implementation, and initial evaluation of a web-based conversational chatbot aiming at the immediate and reliable information regarding the COVID-19 disease. The implementation of the chatbot was built on IBM's Watson Assistant. The chatbot "Iris" that was created is highly developed with the ability to support dialogue, since it has a satisfactory understanding of the relevant subject matter. The system was pilot evaluated using the University of Ulster's Chatbot Usability Questionnaire (CUQ). The results confirmed its usability and that Chatbot "Iris" is a pleasant experience for users. Finally, the related study's limitations and future steps are discussed.

Digital Transformation Efforts in Greece: Evaluation of the E-Prescription System.

In recent years, Greece has made efforts towards digital transformation. The most significant was the installation and use of eHealth systems and applications by health professionals. The purpose of this study is to investigate the views of physicians on the usefulness, ease of use and user satisfaction of the eHealth applications and especially the e-prescription system. Data were collected by using a 5-point Likert-scale questionnaire. The study indicated that the usefulness, ease of use and user satisfaction of eHealth applications: a)are rated at moderate levels and b) are not affected by characteristics such as gender, age, education, years of practicing the medical profession, the type of medical practice and the use of different electronic applications.

Mining Greek Tweets on Long COVID Using Sentiment Analysis and Topic Modeling.

Around 10% to 20% of patients experience Long COVID after recovering from COVID-19. Many people are turning to social networks such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, etc., to express their opinions and feelings regarding Long COVID. In this paper, we analyse text messages in the Greek language posted on the Twitter platform in 2022 to extract popular discussion topics and classify the sentiment of Greek citizens regarding Long COVID. Results highlighted the following discussion topics: Greek-speaking users discuss Long COVID effects and time required to heal, Long COVID effects in specific population groups like children and COVID-19 vaccines. 59% of analysed tweets conveyed a negative sentiment while the rest had positive or neutral sentiment. The analysis shows that public bodies could benefit from systematically mining knowledge from social media to understand public's perception of a new disease and take action.

AI Techniques to Identify Nerve Cell Alterations in Digital Images.

Artificial intelligence (AI), utilising computing power, has managed to influence the health sector with many applications based on algorithms, tools, and automated processes. In this work, neuronbiological images acquired by an electronic microscope are assessed under appropriate image processing to identify areas of interest. The algorithmic steps identified the alterations of nerve cells that appeared as areas in the red channel of each digital image.

Health Informatics Training Programs to Strengthen Health Workforce in Montenegro.

Health informatics plays a crucial role in modern healthcare provision. Training and continuous education are essential to bolster the healthcare workforce on health informatics. In this work, we present the training events within EU-funded DigNest project. The aim of the training events, the subjects offered, and the overall evaluation of the results are described in this paper.

Western Balkan Network for Youth Support and Counselling Service in Digital Era.

This poster presents a Western Balkan network for youth support and counselling services in the digital era, resulted from Erasmus project BeWell@Digital. The network consists of an online counselling platform, peer-to-peer support, and mobile app. A collaborative effort between mental health professionals, ICT experts, and young people was used to develop the network. First results indicate positive mental health outcomes, stress, axiety, and depression reduction, increased sense of social support, and enhanced coping skills.

Train Digital Entrepreneurship on Health Informatics in Western Balkan Countries.

The BeWell@Digital project aims to improve Western Balkans' youth mental health by empowering them through digital education, peer-to-peer counselling services, and employment opportunities in the digital working arena. The Greek Biomedical Informatics and Health Informatics Association developed six teaching sessions about Health literacy and digital entrepreneurship, each comprising a teaching text, presentation, lecture video, and multiple-choice exercises, as part of this project. These sessions aim to improve counsellors' knowledge of technology and their ability to utilise it efficiently.

Montenegrin Digital Academic Innovation Hub: Supporting Digital Education, Business and Innovations in Medical Informatics.

This poster presents a Montenegrin Digital Academic Innovation Hub aimed to support education, innovations, and academia-business cooperation in medical informatics (as one of four priority areas) at national level in Montenegro. The Hub topology and its organisation in the form of two main nodes, with services established within key pillars: Digital Education; Digital Business Support; Innovations and cooperation with industry; and Employment support.

Open Source Web Application: An Application on Health Tourism in Greece.

The purpose of this work is to enhance health tourism services for thermal sources in Greece. Within this research work, a website was developed to assist all interested people in searching for the appropriate thermal source for them. The content of the website is related to the health tourism ideas approach the historical foundation of health tourism and the alternative forms. The website was implemented based on the open-source CMS of Joomla. The server hosted by the CMS is based on open-source solutions such as Apache, MariaDB, and PHP.

3D Digital Printing in Healthcare: Technologies, Applications and Health Issues.

3D Printing has a wide range of technologies and applications used in healthcare. In this work, a thorough literature review, concerning the last decade, was conducted in major bibliographic databases. The aim is to report the main applications and materials used in healthcare. In addition, this work tries to identify possible health issues due to particles emissions made by the 3D printing materials.

Use of Scratch as ICT Educational Tool in Health.

Education adds knowledge, experience, and skills to the human personality, from childhood to old age. This paper focuses on adult education, presenting the difficulties, techniques and results that have been demonstrated to produce educational training program, including material using Scratch. Referring to the planned education from the school, university or any other institution, the educators have a duty to share their knowledge with the students, to show them the way of knowledge, learning, and exploration. They are constantly looking for new training techniques and methods that will attract anyone interested. An important role in this continuous effort is called to play the technology, which nowadays evolves. This paper addresses some of the advantages and disadvantages of technology in health training, how technology can be used and how it can be combined with training. In addition, important issues for health training are mentioned. The training program, the target group to which it is addressed, the means to be used and the objectives are presented in detail. Finally, technological training programs were created, which will enrich the specially designed training program, for which the methodology used, and their purpose will be analyzed.

Accreditation on Biomedical and Health Informatics in Europe: Guidelines and Procedures.

Accreditation is the evaluation and monitoring process assuring that educational programs and institutions meet academic standards and operational integrity and quality. The number of programs in the field of Biomedical and Health Informatics is rapidly increasing. In this paper we briefly introduce the accreditation procedure that has been established by Accreditation Committee (AC2) of European Federation of Medical Informatics according to international standards.

High Performance Work Practices and Work Results on Non-Profit Institutions.

High Performance Work Practices (HPWP) has not been sufficiently investigated in the frame of Non-profit Organizations. At the same time the need of NPOs for satisfied employees keeps rising, because of the increased demand for their services, especially in the health care sector. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the relationship between HPWP and the mediation of Work Passion. The survey was based on a quantitative methodological approach, with the use of questionnaires, and the sample was constituted of 125 employees of health and mental health Non-profit Organizations based in Athens. The statistical analysis was implemented with the use of IBM SPSS Statistics 20. It was shown that HPWP are positively related to Work Passion. The implementation of High-Performance Work Practices and the recruitment of employees who share common values with the organization can contribute significantly in this direction, since they are related to higher career satisfaction, through the increase of employee's work passion.

Investigating the Impact of Misinformation Sources on Health Issues: Implications for Public Health.

The aim of this work is to shortly provide the public with an overview about fake news and artificial intelligence (AI) technology. Especially in our days, where there is a high speed of spreading news, the impact of fake news on public health is crucial and the development of valid and effective means of technology to support the provision of safe and trustworthy information about public health issues is vital. The role of informatics in health area is profoundly important and AI in public health, so people will be able to distinguish the genuine information from the fake one.

Investigating the Success of "Asklepieio Voulas" Hospital Information System.

Hospital Information Systems assessment is important to ensure the quality of provided healthcare services. This research evaluates the success of the clinical information system used in the General Hospital "Asklepieio Voulas". A questionnaire was developed based on the DeLone & McLean information systems success model, and used on February 2020, to record the users' opinions regarding the information system. The reliability of the questionnaire was tested by applying Cronbach's alpha analysis, descriptive statistics was calculated for all variables of the questionnaire, and new variables was created to investigate the relationships between the model's factors. Correlation analysis between the factors and linear multiple regression analysis between some of the factors of the DeLone & McLean success model were conducted 218 users responded to the survey, 56.3% of them were medical doctors, 24.1% nurses, and 19.6% other staff of the hospital. Results highlight that the users of the system are satisfied with it. A77.3% of the participants believe that they perform their work more easily when using the system, while 89.3% of the participants believe that the system is useful in their work. According to the results of the model, system quality and information quality seems to be related with the system usage. Information quality plays the most important role in the use of the system while the system quality plays the most important role in user satisfaction. Based on the users' opinions, the "Asklepieio Voulas" Hospital Information System can be assumed as successful.

Knowledge and Perceptions of Undergraduate and Postgraduate Nursing Students About the Use of 3D Digital Printing in Healthcare.

3D printing is applicable in various fields. The purpose of this study was to explore the knowledge and perceptions of undergraduate and postgraduate nursing students in relation to the use of 3D printing. A questionnaire was developed including questions about demographics, the students' knowledge about, and the student's attitude towards the 3D printing technology. Descriptive statistics and correlations were examined. The average knowledge score was 2.6 out of 6 and the perception score was 7.7 out of 10. Only gender was found to be related with 3D printing knowledge. Gender, age, and educational level were related with students' attitude towards 3D printing.

Recognition of Neonatal Hospitalization Cost in an Intensive Care Unit in Greece and the Deviation from Its Current Reimbursement System.

In this paper efforts have been made to record the actual, real cost of health care services in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (N.I.C.U.) of a public hospital. It is well known that, in recent years, the hospitals have been reimbursed with the system of Diagnosis-Related Groups (D.R.G.'s). The purpose of this study is to determine whether the costs according with D.R.G.'s correspond to the actual-real cost, as this is recorded in the N.I.C.U. This cost is called direct cost. Here is a case study of a premature neonate in the intensive care unit (N.I.C.U.). From the outset, the age of pregnancy, the birth weight, the duration of hospitalization in N.I.C.U. and the needs of the newborn in oxygen, medication, as well as nutrition are defined which are very important in shaping the cost. Then, the cost is calculated according to the D.R.G.'s system. By setting three basic diagnoses (I.C.D.-10), we find the D.R.G. which better describes the case, as well as the associated costs. Then, we calculate the direct cost and list all the consumables, exams, staff costs, overheads. Comparing the two results we find that the cost of D.R.G. does not meet the direct cost of hospitalization. There is a significant deviation from the actual real cost, which proves the under-costing of the health services. The D.R.G.'s system leads hospitals to increase their financial deficits and provide degraded quality health services. It is necessary to readjust the D.R.G.'s according to the reality and the redefinition of the hospital's reimbursement system to meet the direct - real cost of the health services offered.