"Hey Siri, Help Me Take Care of My Child": A Feasibility Study With Caregivers of Children With Special Healthcare Needs Using Voice Interaction and Automatic Speech Recognition in Remote Care Management

Psychosocial support and care for children with special healthcare needs and their families: A scoping review for enhancing the care system

BACKGROUND

Advances in medical technology have increased the identification of children with special healthcare needs (CSHCN), indicating the need to strengthen care systems. However, existing systematic reviews are outdated, over a decade old, and narrowly focused-primarily on hospital-based comprehensive care programs and family-centered care. This scoping review aimed to organize and integrate existing findings on care and support for CSHCN and their families from the available literature.

METHODS

We employed an extensive search in December 2023, utilizing databases such as PubMed, Web of Science, CINAHL, ERIC, and The Cochrane Library. Selected articles were thoroughly reviewed, categorized, and organized by the type of care and support addressed. The findings of the included studies were organized and integrated descriptively.

RESULTS

Following a comprehensive search and screening process, 49 articles were selected and categorized into 5 themes: care systems based on hospitals and other specialized institutions, specialized personnel or programs for care coordination/integrated care, support using telehealth technology to enhance and facilitate care, care aimed at reducing the psychological burden on the child and family, and peer and group support emphasizing the role of family and community. Publication years ranged from 1998 to 2023. The studies were conducted in 7 countries, predominantly in the United States, with additional studies from Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, Japan, India, and Belgium.

CONCLUSIONS

This study underscores the importance of establishing effective care systems that ensure continuous and smooth care coordination from multiple perspectives for the well-being of CSHCN and their families. To enhance support systems for the well-being of CSHCN and their families, it is necessary to pursue a multi-faceted approach that facilitates continuous and smooth care coordination from various perspectives.

Supporting patients' workload through wearable devices and mobile health applications, a systematic literature review

Patients face a challenging workload in their course of care. In this study, we investigate the impact of using mobile health technologies in supporting this workload and identify the system challenges of its application through a systematic review of the literature published in the last two decades following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis Reviews and Meta-Analysis guidelines PRISMA guidelines. Twenty-two studies that satisfied the inclusion criteria were included. The review revealed various mobile health and wearable devices used to support mental demand, physical demand, frustration, and performance. Better outcomes were related to mobile health use in healthcare for patients in different settings. There were no applications of health that supported the temporal demand of patients. Some populations, such as cancer patients, need more than only physical demand. Mhealth devices are important in supporting the patients' workload in their daily activities and clinical settings.Practitioner summary: This review study shows the importance of mHealth and wearables in supporting patients' workload (physical, mental, emotional) but not the temporal load.

Revolutionizing Radiological Analysis: The Future of French Language Automatic Speech Recognition in Healthcare

This study introduces a specialized Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) system, leveraging the Whisper Large-v2 model, specifically adapted for radiological applications in the French language. The methodology focused on adapting the model to accurately transcribe medical terminology and diverse accents within the French language context, achieving a notable Word Error Rate (WER) of 17.121%. This research involved extensive data collection and preprocessing, utilizing a wide range of French medical audio content. The results demonstrate the system's effectiveness in transcribing complex radiological data, underscoring its potential to enhance medical documentation efficiency in French-speaking clinical settings. The discussion extends to the broader implications of this technology in healthcare, including its potential integration with electronic health records (EHRs) and its utility in medical education. This study also explores future research directions, such as tailoring ASR systems to specific medical specialties and languages. Overall, this research contributes significantly to the field of medical ASR systems, presenting a robust tool for radiological transcription in the French language and paving the way for advanced technology-enhanced healthcare solutions.

Progress in diagnosis and treatment of difficult-to-treat asthma in children

At present, medications containing inhaled corticosteroids (ICS-containing) are the keystones of asthma treatment. The majority of asthmatic children can significantly improve clinical outcomes with little worsening by standardized inhaled glucocorticoid treatment, but there is still a small proportion of children who are unable to achieve good symptom control even after the maximum standardized treatment, known as 'children with difficult-to-treat asthma (DA)'. The high heterogeneity of DA makes therapy challenging and expensive, which poses a serious risk to children's health and makes it extremely difficult for clinical physicians to accurately identify and treat children with DA. This article reviews the definition, evaluation, and treatment of this asthma in order to provide a reference for optimal clinical decision-making.