December | 2020 | Digital Health

Yin K, Lau, AYS. [invited book chapter] Field Methods for Patient Ergonomics: Interviews, Focus Groups, Surveys, and Observations. The Patient Factor: Theories and Methods for Patient Ergonomics. May 12, 2021, CRC Press

Patients are increasingly encouraged to take an active role in managing their health and healthcare. New technologies, cultural shifts, trends in healthcare delivery, and policies have brought to the forefront the “”work”” patients, families, and other non-professionals perform in pursuit of health. This volume provides a theoretical and methodological foundation for the emerging discipline of

Clark, J., Scott, A.M. and Glasziou, P., 2020. Not All Systematic Reviews Can Be Completed in 2 Weeks-But Many Can Be (And Should Be). Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, pp.S0895-4356.

Dear Editors, We would like to thank Yan et al. for providing us with an opportunity to expand on the applicability of our 2-week systematic review (2weekSR) processes [1]. Yan et al. correctly point out that “it is important to recognize not all systematic reviews (SRs) are created equal and complexity of the [SR] topic

Godinho MA, Borda A, Kostkova P, Molnar A, Liaw ST. ‘Serious Games’ for unboxing Global Digital Health policymaking. BMJ Stel 2020; 0:1–2. doi:10.1136/bmjstel-2020-000606

The news headlines report daily on the global political impacts of digital technology: the secondary use of social media data has been implicated in election meddling, though the complex issues surrounding data governance, data ownership and the ethics of personalised advertising remain to be addressed. Meanwhile, digital automation drives unemployment and income inequality, even as

Liaw ST, Georgiou A, Marin H. Evaluation of digital health and information technology in primary care. Int J Med Informatics 2020. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijmedinf.2020.104285.

Primary care is where the health care system meets the people – the first point of care for the citizenry. General practice and primary care DH&IT tools are essential strategies to strengthen health systems to achieve health priorities and universal health coverage and sustainable development goals. While primary care DH&IT systems are just as if

Struelens MJ, Sintchenko V. Pathogen genomics: Empowering infectious disease surveillance and outbreak investigations. Frontiers in Public Health 2020 May 19;8:179.

Comparative microbial genomics analysis by high-throughput whole-genome sequencing (WGS) offers exquisite resolution for epidemiological investigations of infectious disease. This approach has revolutionized outbreak detection and monitoring of transmission dynamics of infectious agents and antimicrobial resistance across humans, animals, and environment. The objective of this Research Topic was to assemble articles on genomic epidemiological approaches to

Sáez C, Liaw ST, Kimura E, Coorevits P, García-Gómez, JM. Guest editorial: Special issue in biomedical data quality assessment methods. Computer Methods and Programs in Biomedicine June 2019. DOI: 10.1016/j.cmpb.2019.06.013

No abstract available Publication link

Chen A, Jonnagaddala J, Nekkantti C, Liaw ST. Generation of surrogates for de-identification of electronic health records. Paper presentation. Medinfo 2019: Health and Wellbeing e-Networks for All. L. Ohno-Machado & B. Séroussi (Eds) © 2019 International Medical Informatics Association (IMIA) and IOS Press. doi:10.3233/SHTI190185

Unstructured electronic health records are valuable resources for research. Before they are shared with researchers, protected health information needs to be removed from these unstructured documents to protect patient privacy. The main steps involved in removing protected health information are accurately identifying sensitive information in the documents and removing the identified information. To keep the

Williamson D, Kirk M, Sintchenko V, Howden B. The importance of public health genomics to ensure health security for Australia. Medical Journal of Australia 2019;210(7):295-297.e1.

Coordination is required to future‐proof Australia’s capacity and leadership in public health genomics. Infectious diseases are an ever‐present risk to society, particularly because of globalisation and the threat of antimicrobial‐resistant organisms. Recently, a World Health Organization (WHO) team conducted a joint external evaluation of Australia’s core capacities under the International Health Regulations. The evaluation gave

Williams RD, Markus AF, Yang C, Duarte Salles T, Duvall SL, Falconer T, Jonnagaddala J, Kim C, Rho Y, Williams A, Alberga A, An MH, Aragón M, Areia C, Burn E, Choi Y, Drakos I, Fernandes Abrahão M, Fernández-Bertolín S, Hripcsak G, Kaas-Hansen B, Kandukuri P, Kors JA, Kostka K, Liaw S-T, Lynch KE, Matheny ME, Machnicki G, Morales D, Nyberg F, Park RW, Prats-Uribe A, Pratt N, Rao G, Reich CG, Rivera M, Seinen T, Shoaibi A, Spotnitz ME, Steyerberg EW, Suchard MA, You SC, Zhang L, Zhou L, Ryan PB, Prieto-Alhambra D, Reps JM, Rijnbeek PR. Seek COVER: Development and validation of a personalized risk calculator for COVID-19 outcomes in an international network. medRxiv. 2020:2020.05.26.20112649. preprint

Objective: To develop and externally validate COVID-19 Estimated Risk (COVER) scores that quantify a patient’s risk of hospital admission (COVER-H), requiring intensive services (COVER-I), or fatality (COVER-F) in the 30-days following COVID-19 diagnosis. Methods: We analyzed a federated network of electronic medical records and administrative claims data from 14 data sources and 6 countries. We

Reps JM, Kim C, Williams RD, Markus AF, Yang C, Salles TD, Falconer T, Jonnagaddala J, Williams A, Fernandez-Bertolin S, DuVall SL, Kostka K, Rao G, Shoaibi A, Ostropolets A, Spotnitz ME, Zhang L, Casajust P, Steyerberg E, Nyberg F, Kaas-Hansen BS, Choi YH, Morales D, Liaw S-T, Abrahao MTF, Areia C, Matheny ME, Aragon M, Park RW, Hripcsak G, Reich CG, Suchard MA, You SC, Ryan PB, Prieto-Alhambra D, Rijnbeek PR. Can we trust the prediction model? Demonstrating the importance of external validation by investigating the COVID-19 Vulnerability (C-19) Index across an international network of observational healthcare datasets. medRxiv. 2020:2020.06.15.20130328.

Background: SARS-CoV-2 is straining healthcare systems globally. The burden on hospitals during the pandemic could be reduced by implementing prediction models that can discriminate between patients requiring hospitalization and those who do not. The COVID-19 vulnerability (C-19) index, a model that predicts which patients will be admitted to hospital for treatment of pneumonia or pneumonia

Moynihan R, Sanders S, Michaleff ZA, Scott A, Clark J, To EJ, Jones M, Kitchener E, Fox M, Johansson M, Lang E, Duggan A, Scott I, Albarqouni L. Pandemic impacts on healthcare utilisation: a systematic review. medRxiv. 2020:2020.10.26.20219352.

Objectives: To determine the extent and nature of changes in utilisation of healthcare services during COVID-19 pandemic. Design: Systematic review. Eligibility: Eligible studies compared utilisation of services during COVID-19 pandemic to at least one comparable period in prior years. Services included visits, admissions, diagnostics, and therapeutics. Studies were excluded if from single-centres or studied only

Byambasuren O, Dobler CC, Bell K, Rojas DP, Clark J, McLaws M-L, Glasziou P. Comparison of seroprevalence of SARS-CoV-2 infections with cumulative and imputed COVID-19 cases: systematic review. medRxiv. 2020:2020.07.13.20153163. preprint

Background. Accurate seroprevalence estimates of SARS-CoV-2 in different populations could clarify the extent to which current testing strategies are identifying all active infection, and hence the true magnitude and spread of the infection. Our primary objective was to identify valid seroprevalence studies of SARS-CoV-2 infection and compare their estimates with the reported and imputed COVID-19

Byambasuren O, Cardona M, Bell K, Clark J, McLaws M-L, Glasziou P. Estimating the extent of asymptomatic COVID-19 and its potential for community transmission: systematic review and meta-analysis. medRxiv. 2020:2020.05.10.20097543.

Background: The prevalence of true asymptomatic COVID-19 cases is critical to policy makers considering the effectiveness of mitigation measures against the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. We aimed to synthesize all available research on the asymptomatic rates and transmission rates where possible. Methods: We searched PubMed, Embase, Cochrane COVID-19 trials, and Europe PMC (which covers pre-print platforms such

Bakhit M, Krzyzaniak N, Scott AM, Clark J, Glasziou P, Del Mar C. Downsides of face masks and possible mitigation strategies: a systematic review and meta-analysis. medRxiv. 2020:2020.06.16.20133207.

Objective To identify, appraise, and synthesise studies evaluating the downsides of wearing facemasks in any setting. We also discuss potential strategies to mitigate these downsides. Methods PubMed, Embase, CENTRAL, EuropePMC were searched (inception-18/5/2020), and clinical registries were searched via CENTRAL. We also did forward-backward citation search of the included studies. We included randomised controlled trials