Current Issue : April - June Volume : 2015 Issue Number : 2 Articles : 6 Articles
Sixty million US residents live in rural areas, but health policies and interventions developed from an urban mindset often fail\nto address the significant barriers to health experienced by these local communities. Telepsychology, or psychological services\ndelivered by distance via technology, is an emerging treatment modality with special implications for underserved rural areas.\nThis study found that a sample of rural residents seeking telepsychology services (n = 94) had low health-related quality of life\n(HRQOL), often due to cooccurring physical and mental health diagnoses including high rates of depression. However, a brief\ntelepsychology treatment delivered to rural clients (n = 40) was associated with an improvement in mental health-related quality\nof life (d = 0.70, P < .001). These results indicate that despite the complex health needs of these underserved communities,\ntelepsychology interventions may help offset the disparities in health service access in rural areas....
Purpose. Congenital rubella syndrome (CRS) is a global cause of preventable hearing impairment, blindness, and intellectual\nimpairment. The present study sought to identify ocular and auditory manifestations of CRS in school-aged children in Mbingo,\nCameroon. Design. Cross sectional study. Subjects. Students at two schools, one for children with hearing impairment, were\nscreened for cataract, congenital glaucoma, and pigmentary retinopathy. Methods. Students underwent seven-field digital fundus\nphotography through a dilated pupil using a Topcon NW200 nonmydriatic camera. Images were assessed by retina specialists in\nCanada via teleophthalmology. Clinical evidence was integrated to form case definitions for CRS based on Center for Disease\nControl and Prevention guidelines. Serological evidence of rubella infection was obtained using standardized IgG antibody titers.\nMain Outcome Measure. Number of probable and suspicious cases of CRS. Results. Between September 2009 and May 2010, 320\nstudents participated. There were 28 (10.2%) probable cases, 104 (37.8%) suspects, and 143 (52.0%) unaffected. Rubella IgG serology\nwas positive in 79 (48.7%) of children with hearing impairment and 11 (7.4%) of children with normal hearing. Conclusions. The\npresent study identified 28 probable cases of CRS. Furthermore, 92.6% of students with normal hearing did not possess rubella IgG\nantibodies making future cases of CRS likely without intervention....
Internet of Things (IoT) brings telemedicine a new chance. This enables the specialist to consult the patient�s condition despite\nthe fact that they are in different places. Medical image segmentation is needed for analysis, storage, and protection of medical\nimage in telemedicine. Therefore, a variety of methods have been researched for fast and accurate medical image segmentation.\nPerforming segmentation in various organs, the accurate judgment of the region is needed in medical image. However, the removal\nof region occurs by the lack of information to determine the region in a small region. In this paper,we researched howto reconstruct\nsegmentation region in a small region in order to improve the segmentation results.We generated predicted segmentation of slices\nusing volume data with linear equation and proposed improvementmethod for small regions using the predicted segmentation. In\norder to verify the performance of the proposed method, lung region by chest CT images was segmented. As a result of experiments,\nvolume data segmentation accuracy rose from 0.978 to 0.981 and from 0.281 to 0.187 with a standard deviation improvement\nconfirmed....
The overall goal of the research is to improve the quality of biomedical image for telemedicine with minimum percentages of noise\nin the retrieved image and to take less computation time. The novelty of this technique lies in the implementation of spectral\ncoding for biomedical images using neural networks in order to accomplish the above objectives. This work is in continuity of\nan ongoing research project aimed at developing a system for efficient image compression approach for telemedicine in Saudi\nArabia. We compare the efficiency of this technique against existing image compression techniques, namely, JPEG2000, in terms\nof compression ratio, peak signal to noise ratio (PSNR), and computation time. To our knowledge, the research is the primary\nin providing a comparative study with other techniques used in the compression of biomedical images. This work explores and\ntests biomedical images such as X-rays, computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and positron emission\ntomography (PET)....
This paper proposes a new method for protecting patient privacy when communicating with a gateway which collects\nbioin formation through using personal health devices, a type of biosensor for tele medicine, at home and in other buildings. As\nthe suggested method is designed to conform with ISO/IEEE 11073-20601, which is the international standard, inter operability\nwith various health devices was considered. We believe it will be a highly valuable resource for dealing with basic data because it\nsuggests an additional standard for security with the Continua Health Alliance or related international groups in the future....
Objectives. To assess the impact of live interactive tele cardiology on diagnosis and disease management, patients� quality of life,\nand time- and cost-savings. Methods. All consecutive patients who attended or were referred to the tele clinics for suspected cardiac\nproblems in two hospitals in remote areas of Jordan during the study period were included in the study. Patients were interviewed\nfor relevant information and their quality of life was assessed during the first visit and 8 weeks after the last visit. Results. A total of 76\npatients were included in this study. Final diagnosis and treatment plan were established as part of the tele cardiology consultations\nin 71.1% and 77.3% of patients, respectively. Patients� travel was avoided for 38 (50.0%) who were managed locally. The majority of\npatients perceived that the visit to the tele cardiology clinic results in less travel time (96.1%), less waiting time (98.1%), and lower\ncost (100.0%). Tele cardiology consultations resulted in an improvement in the quality of life after two months of the first visit.\nConclusions. Tele cardiology care in remote areas of Jordan would improve the access to health care, help to reach proper diagnosis\nand establish the treatment plan, and improve the quality of life....
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