The use of videogames in healthcare interventions is gaining popularity, but there is still a gap in the understanding on how these types of interventions are used for the management of diabetes. The purpose of this review is to examine published research on the use of videogames for diabetes management. With the increased use of mobile technology, the review was expanded to understand whether games, gamification, and virtual environments can be used for diabetes self-management. Out of the 307 articles identified, only 10 articles met the inclusion criteria of the study. The duration of most studies was short, with small sample sizes. All interventions targeted behavioral changes examining risk reduction of diabetes-related risk and promotion of healthy behavior among study participants. Videogames appeared to be helpful tools for education in some interventions, whereas gamification and virtual environments increased extrinsic motivation and provided positive reinforcement. This review concludes by discussing the potential of using videogames and gamification for the self-management of diabetes.
Background
With the increasing acceptance of face-to-face classes transitioning to web-based learning due to COVID-19, there is an increasing need to have educators trained and equipped to teach online. The ability to teach in-person may not necessarily mean that one is ready teach in a web-based environment.
Objective
The objective of our study was to investigate the readiness of health care professionals in Singapore to teach online and their technology-related teaching needs.
Methods
This was a quantitative cross-sectional pilot study conducted among health care administrative staff and professionals in medicine, nursing, allied health, and dentistry. Participants were recruited via an open invitation email to all staff members of Singapore’s largest group of health care institutions. Data were collected using a web-based questionnaire. Differences in the readiness of the professionals to teach online were analyzed using analysis of variance, and a 1-sided independent sample t test was performed to analyze the differences between respondents younger than 40 years and those older than 41 years.
Results
A total of 169 responses was analyzed. Full-time academic faculty members scored the highest for readiness to teach online (2.97), followed by nursing professionals (2.91), medicine professionals (2.88), administrative staff members (2.83), and allied health professionals (2.76). However, there was no statistically significant difference (P=.77) among all the respondents in their readiness to teach online. There was an agreement among all professionals in their need for software tools to teach; in particular, there was a significant difference in the software needs among the professionals for streaming videos (P=.01). There was no statistically significant difference in the readiness to teach online between those younger than 40 years and those older than 41 years (P=.48).
Conclusions
Our study shows that there are still some gaps in terms of readiness to teach online among health care professionals. Our findings can be used by policy makers and faculty developers to identify opportunities for development among their educators so that they are ready to teach online with the appropriate software tools.
ACM 978-1-4503-2474-8/14/04.Abstract In this paper, we present an enhanced virtual observation therapy (VOT) system to address challenges in medication adherence and the current observed therapy approach. The original approach requires both patient and healthcare worker to be physically collocated, which has several technical and practical challenges. Therefore, we developed a system that tracks the natural actions of the patient when they take medication, which provides a new experience for them. The system automates the process of recording a video of the patient's medication taking and uploads the video log to the hospital management system. In addition, the system provides instructions to the patient from start to end of the medication taking process.
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