Search Results (7)

The Farmworker Family Health Program (FWFHP) annually supports 600 farmworkers in connectivity-challenged rural areas. Traditional paper-based data collection poses validity concerns, prompting a pilot of direct data entry using tablets and satellite internet to enhance efficiency. The purpose of this article is to describe, using the TIDier checklist, a real-time, live data-entry EMR intervention made possible by satellite internet. Utilizing a customized REDCap database, direct data entry occurred through tablets and satellite internet. Patients received a unique medical record number (MRN) at the mobile health clinic, with an interprofessional team providing care. Medication data, captured in REDCap before the mobile pharmacy visit, exhibited minimal defects at 6.9% of 319 prescriptions. To enhance data collection efficiency, strategies such as limiting free text variables and pre-selecting options were employed. Adequate infrastructure, including tablets with keyboards and barcode scanners, ensured seamless data capture. Wi-Fi extenders improved connectivity in open areas, while backup paper forms were crucial during connectivity disruptions. These practices contributed to enhanced data accuracy. Real-time data entry in connectivity-limited settings is viable. Replacing paper-based methods streamlines healthcare provision, allowing timely collection of occupational and environmental health metrics. The initiative stands as a scalable model for healthcare accessibility, addressing unique challenges in vulnerable communities. Full article

The accurate identification of medicine vials is crucial for emergency medical services, especially for vials that resemble one another but have different labels, volumes, and concentrations. This study introduces a method to detect vials in real-time using mixed reality technology through Microsoft HoloLens 2. The system is also equipped with an SQL server to manage barcode and vial information. We conducted a comparative analysis of the barcode detection capabilities of the HoloLens 2 camera and an external scanner. The HoloLens 2 effectively identified larger barcodes when they were 20–25 cm away in normal lighting conditions. However, it faced difficulties in detecting smaller barcodes that were consistently detected by the external scanner. The frame rate investigation revealed performance fluctuations: an average of 10.54 frames per second (fps) under standard lighting conditions, decreasing to 10.10 fps in low light and further reducing to 10.05 fps when faced with high barcode density. Resolution tests demonstrated that a screen resolution of 1920 × 1080 yielded the best level of accuracy, with a precision rate of 98%. On the other hand, a resolution of 1280 × 720 achieved a good balance between accuracy 93% and speed. The HoloLens 2 demonstrates satisfactory performance under ideal circumstances; however, enhancements in detecting algorithms and camera resolution are required to accommodate diverse surroundings. This approach seeks to help paramedics make quick and accurate decisions during critical situations and tackle common obstacles such as reliance on networks and human mistakes. Our new approach of a hybrid method that integrates an external Bluetooth scanner with the MR device gives optimal results compared to the scanner-only approach. Full article

Although self-service facilities (SSFs) have been used on a large scale worldwide, they can be easily contaminated by microorganisms from the hands of their sequential users. This research aimed to study the prevalence and antimicrobial susceptibility/resistance of bacteria contaminating SSFs in Sakaka, Aljouf, Saudi Arabia. We randomly swabbed the surfaces of 200 SSFs, then used the suitable culture media, standard microbiological methods, and the MicroScan WalkAway Microbiology System, including the identification/antimicrobial susceptibility testing-combo panels. A high SSFs’ bacterial contamination load was detected (78.00%). Ninety percent of the samples collected in the afternoon, during the maximum workload of the SSFs, yielded bacterial growth (p < 0.001 *). Most of the contaminated SSFs were supermarket payment machines, self-pumping equipment at gas stations (p = 0.004 *), online banking service machines (p = 0.026 *), and barcode scanners in supermarkets. In the antiseptic-deficient areas, 55.1% of the contaminated SSFs were detected (p = 0.008 *). Fifty percent of the contaminated SSFs were not decontaminated. The most common bacterial contaminants were Escherichia coli (70 isolates), Klebsiella pneumoniae (66 isolates), Staphylococcus epidermidis (34 isolates), methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (18 isolates), and methicillin-sensitive Staphylococcus aureus (14 isolates), representing 31.53%, 29.73%, 15.32%, 8.11%, and 6.31% of the isolates, respectively. Variable degrees of reduced sensitivity to some antimicrobials were detected among the bacterial isolates. The SSFs represent potential risks for the exchange of antimicrobial-resistant bacteria between the out-hospital environment and the hospitals through the hands of the public. As technology and science advance, there is an urgent need to deploy creative and automated techniques for decontaminating SSFs and make use of recent advancements in materials science for producing antibacterial surfaces. Full article

Digital pathology for the routine assessment of cases for primary diagnosis has been implemented by few laboratories worldwide. The Gravina Hospital in Caltagirone (Sicily, Italy), which collects cases from 7 different hospitals distributed in the Catania area, converted the entire workflow to digital starting from 2019. Before the transition, the Caltagirone pathology laboratory was characterized by a non-tracked workflow, based on paper requests, hand-written blocks and slides, as well as manual assembling and delivering of the cases and glass slides to the pathologists. Moreover, the arrangement of the spaces and offices in the department was illogical and under-productive for the linearity of the workflow. For these reasons, an adequate 2D barcode system for tracking purposes, the redistribution of the spaces inside the laboratory and the implementation of the whole-slide imaging (WSI) technology based on a laboratory information system (LIS)-centric approach were adopted as a needed prerequisite to switch to a digital workflow. The adoption of a dedicated connection for transfer of clinical and administrative data between different software and interfaces using an internationally recognised standard (Health Level 7, HL7) in the pathology department further facilitated the transition, helping in the integration of the LIS with WSI scanners. As per previous reports, the components and devices chosen for the pathologists’ workstations did not significantly impact on the WSI-based reporting phase in primary histological diagnosis. An analysis of all the steps of this transition has been made retrospectively to provide a useful “handy” guide to lead the digital transition of “analog”, non-tracked pathology laboratories following the experience of the Caltagirone pathology department. Following the step-by-step instructions, the implementation of a paperless routine with more standardized and safe processes, the possibility to manage the priority of the cases and to implement artificial intelligence (AI) tools are no more an utopia for every “analog” pathology department. Full article

Around a third of people worldwide are physically inactive, causing 3.2 million deaths each year. People often use wearables and smartphone trackers to motivate them to be active, but there is evidence to show that use of these trackers declines quickly, often within weeks. One intervention that appears to successfully motivate people to be active is parkrun, a free, weekly timed 5 km run or walk every Saturday morning. The system used by parkrun is surprisingly low-tech: it uses printable barcodes, stopwatches and scanners, and the internet. A survey of 60,694 parkrun participants showed that levels of self-reported physical activity increased following participation in parkrun, especially for those with previously low levels of activity. Nine out of ten reported feeling a sense of personal achievement and improvements to fitness and physical health since starting parkrun. Based on a taxonomy of behaviour change interventions, the technology used by parkrun was shown to incorporate at least seven techniques that inform and encourage parkrunners. It is concluded that physical activity technologies should not be central to an intervention, rather, they should enhance interventions where behaviour change takes precedence. Full article

The widespread use of smartphones is boosting the market take-up of dedicated applications and among them, barcode scanning applications. Several barcodes scanners are available but show security and privacy weaknesses. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive security and privacy analysis of 100 barcode scanner applications. According to our analysis, there are some apps that provide security services including checking URLs and adopting cryptographic solutions, and other apps that guarantee user privacy by supporting least privilege permission lists. However, there are also apps that deceive the users by providing security and privacy protections that are weaker than what is claimed. We analyzed 100 barcode scanner applications and we categorized them based on the real security features they provide, or on their popularity. From the analysis, we extracted a set of recommendations that developers should follow in order to build usable, secure and privacy-friendly barcode scanning applications. Based on them, we also implemented BarSec Droid, a proof of concept Android application for barcode scanning. We then conducted a user experience test on our app and we compared it with DroidLa, the most popular/secure QR code reader app. The results show that our app has nice features, such as ease of use, provides security trust, is effective and efficient. Full article

With the technological advances in the areas of Machine-To-Machine (M2M) and Device-To-Device (D2D) communication, various smart computing devices now integrate a set of multimedia sensors such as accelerometers, barometers, cameras, fingerprint sensors, gestures, iris scanners, etc., to infer the environmental status. These devices are generally identified using radio-frequency identification (RFID) to transfer the collected data to other local or remote objects over a geographical location. To enable automatic data collection and transition, a valid RFID embedded object is highly recommended. It is used to authorize the devices at various communication phases. In smart application devices, RFID-based authentication is enabled to provide short-range operation. On the other hand, it does not require the communication device to be in line-of-sight to gain server access like bar-code systems. However, in existing authentication schemes, an adversary may capture private user data to create a forgery problem. Also, another issue is the high computation cost. Thus, several studies have addressed the usage of context-aware authentication schemes for multimedia device management systems. The security objective is to determine the user authenticity in order to withhold the eavesdropping and tracing. Lately, RFID has played a significant for the context-aware sensor management systems (CASMS) as it can reduce the complexity of the sensor systems, it can be available in access control, sensor monitoring, real time inventory and security-aware management systems. Lately, this technology has opened up its wings for CASMS, where the challenging issues are tag-anonymity, mutual authentication and untraceability. Thus, this paper proposes a secure hash-based RFID mechanism for CASMS. This proposed protocol is based on the hash operation with the synchronized secret session-key to withstand any attacks, such as desynchronization, replay and man-in-the-middle. Importantly, the security and performance analysis proves that the proposed hash-based protocol achieves better security and performance efficiencies than other related schemes. From the simulation results, it is observed that the proposed scheme is secure, robust and less expensive while achieving better communication metrics such as packet delivery ratio, end-to-end delay and throughput rate. Full article