Telehealth Delivery of Evidence-Based Intervention Within Older Adult Populations: A Scoping Review.

Telehealth services enable individuals to participate in meaningful occupations; however, the evidence on this topic has not been synthesized in older adult populations. This scoping review synthesized the evidence on interventions delivered through telehealth (and the mode of delivery) in occupational therapy for older adult populations. A search for studies on occupational therapy, older adults, and telehealth was performed in six research databases, and identified 536 articles. Four reviewers independently screened the titles and abstracts; and reviewed eligible full text. Ten articles were extracted into a table and summarized through narrative format. The studies focused on performance-based intervention (60%), cognition (10%), health (10%), occupation (10%), and the environment (10%) in older adult populations (N = 1 - 208); including those with Alzheimer's disease, chronic pain, cancer, and stroke. The interventions were delivered through electronic audio-visual platforms (e.g., zoom) (80%) and teleconference platforms (e.g., phone calls) (20%).

Design of a Novel Oxygen Therapeutic Using Polymeric Hydrogel Microcapsules Mimicking Red Blood Cells.

The goal of this research was to develop a novel oxygen therapeutic made from a pectin-based hydrogel microcapsule carrier mimicking red blood cells. The study focused on three main criteria for developing the oxygen therapeutic to mimic red blood cells: size (5-10 µm), morphology (biconcave shape), and functionality (encapsulation of oxygen carriers; e.g., hemoglobin (Hb)). The hydrogel carriers were generated via the electrospraying of the pectin-based solution into an oligochitosan crosslinking solution using an electrospinning setup. The pectin-based solution was investigated first to develop the simplest possible formulation for electrospray. Then, Design-Expert® software was used to optimize the production process of the hydrogel microcapsules. The optimal parameters were obtained through the analysis of a total of 17 trials and the microcapsule with the desired morphology and size was successfully prepared under the optimized condition. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) was used to analyze the chemistry of the microcapsules. Moreover, the encapsulation of Hb into the microcapsule did not adversely affect the microcapsule preparation process, and the encapsulation efficiency was high (99.99%). The produced hydrogel microcapsule system shows great promise for creating a novel oxygen therapeutic.