Digital Health Technologies

Digital Health Technologies

  

Research Assignment

  

  

Introduction

  

Digital technologies have become ubiquitous in daily life. Most of you carry a smartphone,

  

some of you wear a smartwatch, and you may even drive cars that can steer and brake

  

autonomously. All of these solutions exist because of rapid advances in computing power and

  

data that are being captured and curated constantly. Brought together, we now have the ability

  

to capture and analyse data, quite literally, in the blink of an eye. This encroachment of

  

technology into our lives is also seen in healthcare. Or at the very least, and especially where

  

it concerns so-called big data, is desired in healthcare.

  

Health data is part of your digital shadow; that unique amorphous collection of data each

  

individual is constantly creating through their traceable digital activities and online interactions,

  

often without realising it. Health data is created both within and outside the healthcare setting.

  

That smartwatch you are wearing? Most smartwatches today capture your physical movement

  

and exercise patterns, your heartbeat, your peripheral body temperature and in some cases,

  

your blood oxygen saturation and a rudimentary form of capillary blood pressure. Newer cars

  

have driver-facing cameras that capture images of your face and through analysis of where

  

you are looking and your pupillary size and response, compute values that represent your

  

alertness level and whether your attention is focused on potential hazards in the road ahead.

  

Those monitors you connect to a patient in theatre or a neonate in the NICU? Most

  

manufactured in the last several years have the ability to interconnect with other hospital

  

computing systems, and many can record telemetry data directly into suitably configured

  

electronic health records systems. Already today we see cardiotocograph (CTG) monitoring

  

in the maternity unit recording directly into platforms such as those provided by K2 and

  

Badgernet. These digital health tools are also capable of identifying and alerting midwives to

  

suspicious and abnormal changes in the foetal heart trace through intelligent data analysis

  

using Dawes-Redman and other established algorithms.

  

The following work from the literature could set the groundwork for the issues that you may

  

want to investigate in your assignment:

  

? Manteghinejad A, Javanmard SH. Challenges and opportunities of digital health in a

  

post-COVID19 world. J Res Med Sci. 2021 Feb 16;26:11. doi:

  

10.4103/jrms.JRMS_1255_20. PMID: 34084190; PMCID: PMC8103966.

  

Digital health as a rapidly growing medical field relies comprehensively on human health data.

  

Conventionally, the collection of health data is mediated by officially diagnostic instruments,

  

operated by health professionals in clinical environments and under strict regulatory conditions.

  

Mobile health, telemedicine, and other smart devices with Internet connections are becoming the

  

future choices for collecting patient information. Progress of technologies has facilitated

  

smartphones, wearable devices, and miniaturized health-care devices. These devices allow the

  

gathering of an individual's health-care information at the patient's home. The data from these

  

devices will be huge, and by integrating such enormous data using Artificial Intelligence, more

  

detailed phenotyping of disease and more personalized medicine will be realistic. The future of

  

medicine will be progressively more digital, and recognizing the importance of digital technology

  

in this field and pandemic preparedness planning has become urgent.

  

  

This Assignment

  

For this assignment you are required to identify and investigate a problem related to an

  

application of one of the following in a front-line or clinical healthcare setting:

  

1. medical data - large collections of a specific type of health-related or medical data

  

2. patient records - large collections of electronic health or medical records (EHR/EMR)

  

3. an application of digital health technology used in patient care within the NHS or a

  

similar national health service that incorporates:

  

a. machine learning

  

b. artificial intelligence

  

c. internet of things (IoT)

  

The problem should relate to and affect or impact your area of clinical practice. However, if

  

you are unable to identify a suitable problem specifically within your practice area, you may

  

consider one that is peripheral to your practice - but should be something for which you can

  

identify people who can describe the impact or effect the issue has had on their clinical

  

practice.

  

  

Part A

  

To successfully complete this part of your assignment, you should achieve the following:

  

1. Identify a problem or a challenging issue in one of the three areas specified above and

  

provide:

  

a. an introduction to and background for the problem (what, when and where),

  

and;

  

b. a description of the problem from the perspective of its effect on your practice

  

(how and why).

  

2. Propose an approach, methodology or experiment for the investigation you will

  

undertake in Part B of this assignment.

  

  

Word Count (this part): ................................................................................................... 1,000

  

Proportion of final grade: ................................................................................ weighting 30%

  

Component pass mark: .................................................................................................... 50%

  

  

Important Dates - Part A:

  

Submission Date: ...................................................................................... 17

  

th

  

February 2025

  

Handback Date: ........................................................................................ 28

  

st

  

February 2025

  

  

Part B

  

To successfully complete this part of your assignment, you should achieve the following:

  

1. Using the academic literature, demonstrate whether the problem or challenging issue

  

relating to digital health technology:

  

a. has been previously described and, if so, provide a review and summary of that

  

literature;

  

b. the scope and breadth of the problem in your and other areas of healthcare.

  

2. Provide a critical evaluation of the potential and actual issues that arise from the

  

problem or challenging issue including discussion of the possible causes for and

  

impact of the problem on clinical practice, patient care and outcomes.

  

3. Suggest ways that the identified impact/s could be reduced or mitigated.

  

4. Discuss any ethical issues that might apply to the identified problem or issue and the

  

impact on clinical practice and patient care, with a focus on realising the impact on

  

individual stakeholders (doctor, nurse, patient, patient s family).

  

  

Word Count (this part): ................................................................................................... 3,000

  

  

Total Word Count (incorporating content from both Part A and Part B): ........................ 4,000

  

  

Proportion of final grade: ................................................................................ weighting 70%

  

Component pass mark: .................................................................................................... 50%

  

  

Important Dates - Part B:

  

Submission Date: .......................................................................................... 28

  

th

  

March 2025

  

Handback Date: ................................................................................................. 7

  

th

  

April 2025

  

  

  

  

  

However, when submitting your response to Part B you are required to present your final

  

complete assignment incorporating the material corresponding to your responses to both Part

  

A and Part B as an academic paper. The IEEE conference proceedings template for Microsoft

  

Word in A4 must be used, and can be found at:

  

https://www.ieee.org/content/dam/ieee-org/ieee/web/org/conferences/conference-template-

  

Submission Requirements and Suggestions

  

Thereis no set template for submissions to Part A.

  

a4.docx

  

  

  

  

  

Additional Resources

  

The Assignment area on KEATS will provide you three additional resources (reproduced with

  

permission)

  

The total word count (4,000 words) is derived fromincorporation and aggregation of both your

  

Part A(Introduction, Description/Motivation and Method) and Part B (Results, Discussion and

  

Conclusion) responses. References and Abstract are not included in the word count.

  

To improve the quality of your write-up and to succinctly present a complex aspect of your

  

workyou should use at least one visual aid, such as a diagram.

  

:

  

1. Professor Fenton s guide: Improving Your Technical Writing Skills

  

  

This short document describes the basic principles of good writing, targeted towards

  

students and researchers who are preparing technical reports and academic research

  

documents.

  

  

2. Professor Norris guide: The Literature Review

  

  

This short guide provides a basic and easy to understand explanation of how to

  

undertake the type of literature review necessary to most academic research.

  

  

3. Professor Bettany-Saltikov s guide: How to do a Systematic Literature Review in

  

Nursing

  

  

An extract from this text will be provided to further guide and develop your skills in

  

evaluation of sources and writing up your results.

  

  

Assessment Criteria

  

The following table provides the assessment criteria and marking rubric that will be applied when

grading your submissions: