Bmc Med
-
This is an Erratum to BMC Medicine 2015, 13:111 indicating the correct name for one of the authors. Please see related article: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7015/13/111. ⋯ The erratum includes this information. Corrected text: Jan NM IJzermans
-
It has been clear for some time that the development of telecare faces significant problems. Large scale studies and clinical trials seem to suggest that the cost and clinical effectiveness of telecare systems is doubtful, and the claim that these systems empower or enable service users often seems greatly overstated. The question that stems from this is, can these problems be overcome? Greenhalgh et al. have critiqued the construction of telecare as a generalised technological solution to problems of the delivery of care and have offered a new framework for defining quality in telecare and telehealth. ⋯ This is a valuable approach, and is part of a much wider transformation of the way in which policy and practice researchers conceptualise healthcare delivery as a problem of performativity. Recognising that this is an important shift, in this paper I argue that we also need to keep in mind the meso-level factors that structure new technology applications in practice. Please see the related article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12916-015-0279-6.
-
As activity tracking devices become smaller, cheaper, and more consumer-accessible, they will be used more extensively across a wide variety of contexts. The expansion of activity tracking and personal data collection offers the potential for patient engagement in the management of chronic diseases. Consumer wearable devices for activity tracking have shown promise in post-surgery recovery in cardiac patients, pulmonary rehabilitation, and activity counseling in diabetic patients, among others. Unfortunately, the data generated by wearable devices is seldom integrated into programmatic self-management chronic disease regimens. In addition, there is lack of evidence supporting sustained use or effects on health outcomes, as studies have primarily focused on establishing the feasibility of monitoring activity and the association of measured activity with short-term benefits. ⋯ Activity monitoring has the potential to engage patients as advocates in their personalized care, as well as offer health care providers real world assessments of their patients' daily activity patterns. This potential will be realized as the voice of the chronic disease patients is accounted for in the design of devices, measurements are validated against existing clinical assessments, devices become part of the treatment 'prescription', behavior change programs are used to engage patients in self-management, and best practices for clinical integration are defined.
-
Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a devastating lung disease of unknown origin. Recent findings suggest that IPF results from multiple factors that eventually lead to interstitial lung injury. In the pathogenesis it is likely that complex relationships between genetic predispositions, environmental exposures, and lung infections promote the fibrotic processes causing IPF; it is this complexity and the multiplicity of causes that make the population and clinical course of IPF so heterogeneous. ⋯ In recent years, efforts have been made in finding therapeutic strategies that target disease progression rather than disease onset. The biochemical composition and abnormal stiffness of the matrix might be crucial in controlling the cellular phenotype in fibrotic lungs that promotes disease progression and persistence. Though there has been substantial progress in the IPF field in recent years, much more work is required in order to improve the prognosis associated with this disease.
-
National health systems performance (HSP) assessments and benchmarking are critical to understanding how well the delivery of healthcare meets the needs of citizens. Benchmarking HSP has often been done between countries to inform the global public health space. ⋯ This is the first empirical sub-national HSP benchmarking study in the country and the results have potentially important health system policy implications. Please see related research: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7015/13/285.