Cybersecurity and the Digital Health: An Investigation on the State of the Art and the Position of the Actors

Cybercrime is increasingly exposing the health domain to growing risk. The push towards a strong connection of citizens to health services, through digitalization, has undisputed advantages. Digital health allows remote care, the use of medical devices with a high mechatronic and IT content with strong automation, and a large interconnection of hospital networks with an increasingly effective exchange of data. However, all this requires a great cybersecurity commitment—a commitment that must start with scholars in research and then reach the stakeholders. New devices and technological solutions are increasingly breaking into healthcare, and are able to change the processes of interaction in the health domain. This requires cybersecurity to become a vital part of patient safety through changes in human behaviour, technology, and processes, as part of a complete solution. All professionals involved in cybersecurity in the health domain were invited to contribute with their experiences. This book contains contributions from various experts and different fields. Aspects of cybersecurity in healthcare relating to technological advance and emerging risks were addressed. The new boundaries of this field and the impact of COVID-19 on some sectors, such as mhealth, have also been addressed. We dedicate the book to all those with different roles involved in cybersecurity in the health domain

Low-power Wearable Healthcare Sensors

Advances in technology have produced a range of on-body sensors and smartwatches that can be used to monitor a wearer’s health with the objective to keep the user healthy. However, the real potential of such devices not only lies in monitoring but also in interactive communication with expert-system-based cloud services to offer personalized and real-time healthcare advice that will enable the user to manage their health and, over time, to reduce expensive hospital admissions. To meet this goal, the research challenges for the next generation of wearable healthcare devices include the need to offer a wide range of sensing, computing, communication, and human–computer interaction methods, all within a tiny device with limited resources and electrical power. This Special Issue presents a collection of six papers on a wide range of research developments that highlight the specific challenges in creating the next generation of low-power wearable healthcare sensors

The Impact of Digital Technologies on Public Health in Developed and Developing Countries

This open access book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 18th International Conference on String Processing and Information Retrieval, ICOST 2020, held in Hammamet, Tunisia, in June 2020.* The 17 full papers and 23 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 49 submissions. They cover topics such as: IoT and AI solutions for e-health; biomedical and health informatics; behavior and activity monitoring; behavior and activity monitoring; and wellbeing technology. *This conference was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic

Improving Access and Mental Health for Youth Through Virtual Models of Care

The overall objective of this research is to evaluate the use of a mobile health smartphone application (app) to improve the mental health of youth between the ages of 14–25 years, with symptoms of anxiety/depression. This project includes 115 youth who are accessing outpatient mental health services at one of three hospitals and two community agencies. The youth and care providers are using eHealth technology to enhance care. The technology uses mobile questionnaires to help promote self-assessment and track changes to support the plan of care. The technology also allows secure virtual treatment visits that youth can participate in through mobile devices. This longitudinal study uses participatory action research with mixed methods. The majority of participants identified themselves as Caucasian (66.9%). Expectedly, the demographics revealed that Anxiety Disorders and Mood Disorders were highly prevalent within the sample (71.9% and 67.5% respectively). Findings from the qualitative summary established that both staff and youth found the software and platform beneficial

The Impact of Digital Technologies on Public Health in Developed and Developing Countries

This open access book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 18th International Conference on String Processing and Information Retrieval, ICOST 2020, held in Hammamet, Tunisia, in June 2020.* The 17 full papers and 23 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 49 submissions. They cover topics such as: IoT and AI solutions for e-health; biomedical and health informatics; behavior and activity monitoring; behavior and activity monitoring; and wellbeing technology. *This conference was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic

Rebelling with Care.:Exploring open technologies for commoning healthcare

The publication Rebelling with Care is the result of the research and dissemination activities carried out by WeMake within the framework of DSI for Europe, a project supported by the European Commission to reinforce the network of organizations using technologies to make a positive impact on society. The DSI paradigm revolves around key concepts such as open codes and data, co-design, collaboration and social impact. Since January 2018, we have reflected upon the traction these terms could have specifically in the field of health and care practices, starting with a map of the current DSI ecosystem and an informal learning journey that has involved citizens, policy-makers, professionals and institutions. What does it mean to develop bottom-up innovation, which is community-driven and built upon the commons, in a sector that is struggling to meet the needs of a growing and aging society, that is ruled by obsolete bureaucracies, and that is limited by proprietary technologies and top-down procedures? We have tried to answer these questions through seven articles and seven practices that show in concrete terms the contours of the emerging and diverse new modalities of dealing with the health and care challenges of today by leveraging the empowering potential of digital technologies. In the context of this research, we came to define these different modalities, which often emerge from the strong personal needs of the people directly impacted by a specific condition, as “rebel practices”. This is because in the vast majority of cases, these practices simultaneously operate outside a market logic without asking for the full permission of official institutions, with the purpose of provoking them to change or filling the gap left by who do not innovate, with due care, in the fields of health and care provisions

Wearable Medical Devices in Use: A Study of Insulin Pump Adoption by Young Diabetic Patients In Saudi Arabia

his research belongs to the multi-disciplinary research community concerned with wearable medical technology and branches of sociology and psychology that study its impact. It addresses a real-life problem of Insulin Pump (IP) adoption by Children. This is important for Saudi Arabia, since it is among the top five countries in the world with the highest rate of diabetes. Theories of reasoned action (TRA), technology acceptance model (TAM) and health belief models (HBM) for some of the cases predict that the perception of benefits is the main motivator for the proper use of the technology. This is often not realised in practice, because the main theoretical focus is on the benefits of IP, specifically in the pre-adoption phase. In contrast, this research project is focused on the reasons why some diabetic children patients misuse the IP in spite of the initial perception of its benefits. To find answers to this research question, an empirical study of adoption of IP by children and young adults in Saudi Arabia was carried out. A novel analytical framework was developed in this study in order to unify different perspectives and expectations of the benefits of the IP for a diabetic child and young adult. The analytic framework is applied using empirical study of diabetic children struggling with the IP in the course of the adoption process, with main emphasis on the post-adoption phase. Research methods were predominantly qualitative, involving in-depth interviews and case studies. In the discovery phase, data was collected through interviews of medical personnel and case studies with children and their parents. The analysis was focused on different interactions between medical personnel, patients and their caregivers, the discourses among them in order to explicate the contradictions between them. The main findings are that contradictions show different expectations between the different actors. The medical personnel used medical reasons, whereas the caregiver focus on emotional aspects. However, the diabetic child was concerned with the life-style changes that the use of the IP caused. The different motivations create misunderstandings and result in resistance towards the IP. Age-related and culture-specific factors were also considered, but further research is needed to ensure that the findings can be generalised to other devices, age-groups, cultures and different social contexts. Such studies would also refine the analytical framework and enrich research methodology to make generalisations possible

Validation of design artefacts for blockchain-enabled precision healthcare as a service.

Healthcare systems around the globe are currently experiencing a rapid wave of digital disruption. Current research in applying emerging technologies such as Big Data (BD), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Deep Learning (DL), Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), Digital Twin (DT), Wearable Sensor (WS), Blockchain (BC) and Smart Contracts (SC) in contact tracing, tracking, drug discovery, care support and delivery, vaccine distribution, management, and delivery. These disruptive innovations have made it feasible for the healthcare industry to provide personalised digital health solutions and services to the people and ensure sustainability in healthcare. Precision Healthcare (PHC) is a new inclusion in digital healthcare that can support personalised needs. It focuses on supporting and providing precise healthcare delivery. Despite such potential, recent studies show that PHC is ineffectual due to the lower patient adoption in the system. Anecdotal evidence shows that people are refraining from adopting PHC due to distrust. This thesis presents a BC-enabled PHC ecosystem that addresses ongoing issues and challenges regarding low opt-in. The designed ecosystem also incorporates emerging information technologies that are potential to address the need for user-centricity, data privacy and security, accountability, transparency, interoperability, and scalability for a sustainable PHC ecosystem. The research adopts Soft System Methodology (SSM) to construct and validate the design artefact and sub-artefacts of the proposed PHC ecosystem that addresses the low opt-in problem. Following a comprehensive view of the scholarly literature, which resulted in a draft set of design principles and rules, eighteen design refinement interviews were conducted to develop the artefact and sub-artefacts for design specifications. The artefact and sub-artefacts were validated through a design validation workshop, where the designed ecosystem was presented to a Delphi panel of twenty-two health industry actors. The key research finding was that there is a need for data-driven, secure, transparent, scalable, individualised healthcare services to achieve sustainability in healthcare. It includes explainable AI, data standards for biosensor devices, affordable BC solutions for storage, privacy and security policy, interoperability, and usercentricity, which prompts further research and industry application. The proposed ecosystem is potentially effective in growing trust, influencing patients in active engagement with real-world implementation, and contributing to sustainability in healthcare