Managing mood-related symptoms utilizing diet, targeted nutrient supplementation, and lifestyle changes: A case series

Evaluating physical activities in clinical diabetes: lifestyle scores hypothesis

BACKGROUND

The concept of lifestyle-based risk scores is known but not evaluated in most rural communities of low- to mid-income countries. This study investigated the correlation of lifestyle scores with health indices.

METHODS

This was a descriptive cross-sectional investigation. A total of 203 participants (141 females and 62 males), 18-90 years, had anthropometric assessments and lifestyle scores determined from a 12-item framework. Data analysis included average age in different health conditions, lifestyle scores in age groups, and correlations with age.

RESULTS

Average age of healthy subpopulation was 39 years while diabetes, hypertension, and obesity subpopulations were 58, 64, and 56 years, respectively. The percentage of participants whose activities of daily living (ADL) were unaffected by ill-health decreased with age (P < 0.0001), and lifestyle scores also decreased with age (P < 0.01) and negatively correlated with physical activities.

CONCLUSION

This report contributes to diabetes cardiovascular complications management. Sedentary ADL factors need integration in healthy lifestyle education especially among the elderly.

Automated Workflow for Usability Audits in the PHR Realm

Teleworking is an everyday reality in today’s world. Many companies are opting for this way of working remotely, as it improves employers’ satisfaction along with the work–life balance and it does not lead to any significant reduction in performance. In general, the comfortable use of software applications is a priority, and quality aspects such as usability are of vital importance. In this paper, a novel workflow is proposed. It consists of the following components: (1) a tool to manage usability evaluations based on expert reviews, called Usevalia; (2) a set of heuristics to be considered when performing the evaluations; (3) a catalogue of usability requirements to guide the evaluations; (4) a checklist related to the heuristics to verify that the evaluations have been performed correctly by all the auditors; and (5) a set of tasks to know in advance the functionality of the applications to be audited. Personal health records (PHRs) were taken as a case study. This methodology made it possible to involve a total of 31 working groups that evaluated the usability of four PHRs. Concerning the main results, the evaluators agreed that with Usevalia the usability evaluations could go a step further because they are coordinated and can work together remotely. In addition, analyses of usability scores provided insight into current proposals for improving usability of applications.