Developing Trusted IoT Healthcare Information-Based AI and Blockchain

The Internet of Things (IoT) has grown more pervasive in recent years. It makes it possible to describe the physical world in detail and interact with it in several different ways. Consequently, IoT has the potential to be involved in many different applications, including healthcare, supply chain, logistics, and the automotive sector. IoT-based smart healthcare systems have significantly increased the value of organizations that rely heavily on IoT infrastructures and solutions. In fact, with the recent COVID-19 pandemic, IoT played an important role in combating diseases. However, IoT devices are tiny, with limited capabilities. Therefore, IoT systems lack encryption, insufficient privacy protection, and subject to many attacks. Accordingly, IoT healthcare systems are extremely vulnerable to several security flaws that might result in more accurate, quick, and precise diagnoses. On the other hand, blockchain technology has been proven to be effective in many critical applications. Blockchain technology combined with IoT can greatly improve the healthcare industry’s efficiency, security, and transparency while opening new commercial choices. This paper is an extension of the current effort in the IoT smart healthcare systems. It has three main contributions, as follows: (1) it proposes a smart unsupervised medical clinic without medical staff interventions. It tries to provide safe and fast services confronting the pandemic without exposing medical staff to danger. (2) It proposes a deep learning algorithm for COVID-19 detection-based X-ray images; it utilizes the transfer learning (ResNet152) model. (3) The paper also presents a novel blockchain-based pharmaceutical system. The proposed algorithms and systems have proven to be effective and secure enough to be used in the healthcare environment

Global economic burden of unmet surgical need for appendicitis

Background There is a substantial gap in provision of adequate surgical care in many low- and middle-income countries. This study aimed to identify the economic burden of unmet surgical need for the common condition of appendicitis. Methods Data on the incidence of appendicitis from 170 countries and two different approaches were used to estimate numbers of patients who do not receive surgery: as a fixed proportion of the total unmet surgical need per country (approach 1); and based on country income status (approach 2). Indirect costs with current levels of access and local quality, and those if quality were at the standards of high-income countries, were estimated. A human capital approach was applied, focusing on the economic burden resulting from premature death and absenteeism. Results Excess mortality was 4185 per 100 000 cases of appendicitis using approach 1 and 3448 per 100 000 using approach 2. The economic burden of continuing current levels of access and local quality was US $92 492 million using approach 1 and$73 141 million using approach 2. The economic burden of not providing surgical care to the standards of high-income countries was $95 004 million using approach 1 and$75 666 million using approach 2. The largest share of these costs resulted from premature death (97.7 per cent) and lack of access (97.0 per cent) in contrast to lack of quality. Conclusion For a comparatively non-complex emergency condition such as appendicitis, increasing access to care should be prioritized. Although improving quality of care should not be neglected, increasing provision of care at current standards could reduce societal costs substantially

Global economic burden of unmet surgical need for appendicitis

Background There is a substantial gap in provision of adequate surgical care in many low- and middle-income countries. This study aimed to identify the economic burden of unmet surgical need for the common condition of appendicitis. Methods Data on the incidence of appendicitis from 170 countries and two different approaches were used to estimate numbers of patients who do not receive surgery: as a fixed proportion of the total unmet surgical need per country (approach 1); and based on country income status (approach 2). Indirect costs with current levels of access and local quality, and those if quality were at the standards of high-income countries, were estimated. A human capital approach was applied, focusing on the economic burden resulting from premature death and absenteeism. Results Excess mortality was 4185 per 100 000 cases of appendicitis using approach 1 and 3448 per 100 000 using approach 2. The economic burden of continuing current levels of access and local quality was US $92 492 million using approach 1 and$73 141 million using approach 2. The economic burden of not providing surgical care to the standards of high-income countries was $95 004 million using approach 1 and$75 666 million using approach 2. The largest share of these costs resulted from premature death (97.7 per cent) and lack of access (97.0 per cent) in contrast to lack of quality. Conclusion For a comparatively non-complex emergency condition such as appendicitis, increasing access to care should be prioritized. Although improving quality of care should not be neglected, increasing provision of care at current standards could reduce societal costs substantially