The current study aimed to compare the effectiveness of training in IVR and a non-immersive virtual environment for improving real-world skills in people with ID. Open access article - no login required
Study found that a digitally augmented psychological therapy with therapist support could be as effective as normal treatment. This has cost and resource implications.
We discuss the open research direction and challenges that need to be overcome to realize the full potential of deploying language models for use in clinical contexts. We highlight the need for increased representation in AI systems to ensure there are no disparities in access. To read the full article, choose Open Athens “Institutional Login” and search for “Midlands Partnership”.
This study was conducted to assess ChatGPT's ability to provide satisfactory responses (i.e., directly answers the question, accurate, complete and relevant) to medication-related questions posed to an academic drug information service. To read the full article, choose Open Athens “Institutional Login” and search for “Midlands Partnership”.
A scoping review was undertaken to examine existing deprescribing apps, identifying features including interactive and artificial intelligence (AI) elements. Open access article - no login required
The current study aims to examine the efficacy of CBT delivered via videoconferencing (VCBT) for GAD using a randomized controlled trial design comparing an immediate treatment group to a waitlist control. Open access article - no login required
In this review, we delineate the literature establishing strong support for remote delivery of prolonged exposure (PE) and cognitive processing therapy (CPT); there is also promising support for written exposure therapy (WET) and trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (TF-CBT). We also mention adjunctive and integrative modifications to better serve patients with PTSD. To read the full article, choose Open Athens “Institutional Login” and search for “Midlands Partnership”.
This study compared three artificial intelligence (AI) platforms' potential to identify drug therapy communication competencies expected of a graduating medical doctor. To read the full article, choose Open Athens “Institutional Login” and search for “Midlands Partnership”.
'Findings strongly point toward the fact that personalised AI-enabled chatbots can increase self-referrals to mental health services without negatively impacting wait times or clinical assessments. Critically, the increase in self-referrals is more pronounced in minority groups, suggesting that this technology may help close the accessibility gap to mental health treatment. The fact that ‘human-free’ was identified as a positive by participants suggests that reduced stigma may be an important mechanism.'
This systematic review evaluated feasibility, acceptability, and effectiveness of digitally enhanced psychological assessments and treatments for paranoia across the paranoia continuum. Open access article - no login required.
Editorial. Digital platforms and artificial intelligence's (AI) influence on our daily lives often go unnoticed. From the algorithms that support our smartphones and driverless vehicles to the medical diagnostic systems used by health professionals, AI is increasingly taking over decision-making tasks traditionally performed by humans. While enhancing human efficiency, this shift also introduces a myriad of ethical and legal uncertainties that demand our attention.
Free Access Article
Overall, ICT fall interventions improved fall efficacy but not cognitive function. For quality of life (QOL), mixed results were found depending on the assessment tools.
Open Access article - no password required.
'As the NHS moves towards providing Enhanced Primary Care Services, which include mental health services for people with more complex presentations, such an intervention may offer practitioners an easily implementable tool which could help reduce escalation to secondary care and improve mental health literacy'
This meta-analysis evaluates the efficacy of guided self-help ICBT (GSH ICBT) and unguided self-help ICBT (SH ICBT) against active and passive control conditions in adults with OCD. Open access article - no login required.
Remote monitoring technologies show potential to help health professionals deliver preventative interventions which can avoid hospital admissions and allow patients to remain in a home setting.
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Online symptom checkers are a way to address patient concerns and potentially offload a burdened healthcare system. However, safety outcomes of self-triage are unknown, so we reviewed triage recommendations and outcomes of our institution's depression symptom checker.
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This preliminary study aims to examine the use of a co-designed immersive virtual reality intervention programme in improving access to health care for people with intellectual disability. To read the full article, choose Open Athens “Institutional Login” and search for “Midlands Partnership”.
We examined whether biometric data provided by smartwatches could help to predict relapse and inform treatment decisions. To read the full article, choose Open Athens “Institutional Login” and search for “Midlands Partnership”.
This review shows that AI application in wound care offers benefits in the assessment/diagnosis, monitoring and treatment of acute and hard-to-heal wounds. To read the full article, choose Open Athens “Institutional Login” and search for “Midlands Partnership”.
The role of digital technology in the delivery of patient care was accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic when remote triage and consultations became part of everyday practice in healthcare settings. Yet despite growing evidence that a digitally literate nursing workforce can support and enhance patient safety and outcomes, many nurses report a reluctance to engage in the use of digital technology.
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Findings Several barriers and facilitators to the use of digital technology were identified, including around infrastructure, time, skills, training, support, leadership, familiarity and confidence. The use of digital technology may enhance care consistency and increase patient autonomy, but it may also erode nurse-patient relationships.
Conclusion Digital technology can enhance patient care but organisational barriers, notably in relation to digital literacy training, need to be addressed for nurses to fully adopt it.
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This systematic review aimed to evaluate the extent of measurable and nonmeasurable factors in patients with rheumatoid arthritis and their satisfaction with this method of care. To read the full article, choose Open Athens “Institutional Login” and search for “Midlands Partnership”.
This study examines whether a mobile health patient reported outcome app integrated in the electronic health record (EHR) can reduce visit volume for rheumatoid arthritis. To read the full article, choose Open Athens “Institutional Login” and search for “Midlands Partnership”.
Concludes that there is little uptake of psychological interventions for depression. Strategies currently in development that could change this include single session interventions and task sharing which involves using lay counsellors to deliver the intervention. Digital interventions could improve access to treatment and have shown some positive outcomes.
This document builds on previous NHS Digital guidance on digital inclusion for health and social care.
Use it to design and implement inclusive digital approaches and technologies, which are complementary to non-digital services and support.
Resources to support dementia carers from ethnically diverse families are limited. We explored carers’ and service providers’ views on adapting the World Health Organization’s iSupport Lite messages to meet their needs.
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The NHS.uk website averaged over 2,000 visitors per minute in 2022 and, while websites are hardly considered cutting edge, this technology is important to help make trusted and reliable health and care knowledge easily accessible to patients and the public. Web-based information, alongside access to medical records and personalised care initiatives, means people are potentially more informed to make decisions and be actively involved in their own care.
This article evaluates the performance of chat generative pre-trained transformer (ChatGPT) in key domains of clinical pharmacy practice, including prescription review, patient medication education, adverse drug reaction (ADR) recognition, ADR causality assessment, and drug counselling. To read the full article, choose Open Athens “Institutional Login” and search for “Midlands Partnership”.
Technology has already made health information more accessible, but now it can potentially go further to help those with low health literacy. The latest development in AI is a classification of tools called large language models (for example Chat GPT). These tools have the potential to make health and care information more personalised, understandable and actionable This supports patients to have greater understanding of their health conditions, have greater control over their health and care and be more confident and informed to take the steps they choose to in order to take care of themselves.
Even across such a broad group there was good agreement about both the challenges facing adult social care and the type of social care system people wanted to see.
There were also many examples of technology being effectively used to improve quality and ensure better choice and control, as well as generating efficiencies. These examples gave a glimpse of the potential for technology to benefit those that draw on services, carers, staff and organisations.
The main telemedicine research fields over the past 52 years are identified, the meanings of analyses results are discussed, and emerging trends are highlighted.
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For health and social care to benefit from digital technologies there needs to be a vibrant ecosystem with innovations that are problem-led and rapid to implement, while using the best evidence-based technology. The evolution of the ecosystem is far from this ideal and risks being shaped by dysfunction.
The design, development, implementation and use of digital technologies in health and care can be considered to be an ecosystem made up of provider organisations, staff, patients, carers, innovators, regulators, researchers, charities and suppliers. It’s a complex ecosystem with many interacting parts, each one with different incentives and aspirations that can make them pull in slightly different directions. If the ecosystem is healthy, it should create a number of benefits for all parts of the system.
The review showed that robust evidence for the effectiveness of iCBT as an add-on to TAU is still limited, with results not necessarily generalisable to people from different backgrounds based on age, gender, education, and mental healthcare settings. Clearly more research is needed, as remotely delivered, self-guided iCBT has the promise to increase accessibility and be more cost-effective.
VR may be an effective environment for psychosis patients with agoraphobia. Although patients are aware that VR environments are not real, they very closely match real-world experiences and allow for greater engagement with treatment (Lambe et al., 2020). Psychosis patients are more likely to enter situations within VR that they would otherwise find incredibly distressing in the real world and this allows a safe space for experimentation (Lambe et al., 2020).
This study examined how health and social care professionals and managers perceive the effects of digitalisation on the work of professionals.
Open Access Article
Virtual wards are increasingly being used by the NHS to provide care to patients where they live, whether in a care setting or at home. The NHS has been set a target of 40–50 virtual wards per 100,000 people and, more immediately, to scale up capacity ahead of next winter, to above 10,000 beds by this autumn. This report sets out the critical factors needed to enable the NHS to succeed in achieving these targets and to make virtual wards a sustainable model in the longer term, where patient demand and satisfaction are met, as well as better productivity.
Although search engines sometimes highlight specific search results relevant to health, many resources remain underpromoted.5 AI assistants may have a greater responsibility to provide actionable information, given their single-response design. Partnerships between public health agencies and AI companies must be established to promote public health resources with demonstrated effectiveness. For instance, public health agencies could disseminate a database of recommended resources, especially since AI companies potentially lack subject matter expertise to make these recommendations, and these resources could be incorporated into fine-tuning responses to public health questions. New regulations, such as limiting liability for AI companies who implement these recommendations, since they may not be protected by 47 US Code § 230, could encourage adoption of government recommended resources by AI companies.
Implications for practice and research
Digital mental health interventions may be useful to complement in-person mental health services, with sufficient supports for meaningful use.
User-centred design research with adults with intellectual disabilities and supporters is needed at all phases of digital mental health intervention development and evaluation.
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Digital technologies can change how health and care organisations are structured and how they work. They can have an impact on who leaders or staff can reach and hear from: staff can be engaged over longer periods of time and across wider groups of colleagues, and leaders can quantify perceptions of services and reduce their dependency on anecdotal information.
Devices and internet connectivity are essential for effective digital services but so are good design, co-development and trust. The use and beneficial impact of digital technologies and data is much more likely if technology is useable and trusted, while also meeting the needs and expectations of staff and patients.
Telepsychiatry has the potential to facilitate access to mental health services for young people with first-episode of psychosis (FEP); however, limited attention has been given regarding the perceptions of mental health providers in this regard.
Research limitations/implications
The main applications of mHealth for epidemic/pandemic outbreaks included public health aspects, data management, educational programs, diagnosis as well as treatment. mHealth is an appropriate method for encountering epidemic/pandemic outbreaks due to its extensive applications. In the pandemic outbreak of COVID-19, mHealth is one of the best choices to use in the patient-physician relationship as Tele-visits, using in fever coach, providing real-time information for healthcare providers, population monitoring and detecting the diseases based on data obtained from different locations. These findings will help the mHealth providers to design their services accordingly. To read the full article, please contact the library.
Digital health was given impetus by the COVID-19 pandemic and demonstrated its potential for the delivery of safe care in the community. ... Continued attention is required to meet the needs of those without access to digital technology and its use.
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Commentary on: Bhatia R, Gilliam E, Aliberti G, Pinheiro A, Karamourtopoulos M, Davis RB, DesRochers L, Schonberg MA. Older adults' perspectives on primary care telemedicine during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Implications for practice and research
As the undoubtful potential of telemedicine was proved during the last pandemic, older adults’ experience with telemedicine must be recognised and understood.
In order to maximise the profits of telemedicine, further initiatives, should be employed to satisfy the challenges that old people may experience in accessing telemedicine services.
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The Digital apps and reducing ethnic health inequalities report, published by the NHS Race and Health Observatory, measured the variation in use and experience of online apps by ethnicity. It then used the findings to make a series of recommendations for NHS leaders and providers.
Connected: Remote technology in mental health services finds that using remote technology can improve access to mental health support for rural communities, disabled people or people needing a specialist service far from home. It has the potential to increase access and choice in mental health care.
We aimed to identify the factors associated with satisfaction with telerehabilitation in families with children with neurodevelopmental disorders through a program that included physiotherapy, occupational therapy, and speech therapy. To read the full article, choose Open Athens “Institutional Login” and search for “Midlands Partnership”.
Designed to be used by health and care commissioners, service leads, and digital teams, the framework aims to understand and mitigate the barriers people often face when trying to access digital health and care services, that result in digital exclusion.
Research into digital exclusion shows that there are links between those more likely to be digitally excluded and those more at risk of health inequalities.
As mental health professionals we are often asked to provide recommendations for trustworthy apps to support young peoples’ mental health. This review demonstrates why this is a hard task: there are many apps which seem appealing to young people but have no evidence-base, and only a handful of apps with a sound evidence-base which are available to young people.