A cross-country comparison of user experience of public autonomous transport
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ABSTRACT: Supplementary Information
The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12544-021-00477-3.
SUBMITTER: Bellone M
PROVIDER: S-EPMC7938373 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jan
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:The demand for therapeutic robots to alleviate mental health problems is growing. Studies have shown that people's mental health improves when they are touched. Consequently, therapeutic robots are designed to alleviate stress through robot's autonomous touch. However, robot's autonomous touch can sometimes cause discomfort to recipients. This paper proposes a semi-autonomous touch method that merges robot's autonomous touch with user-operated touch to mitigate discomfort while maintaining the sensation of being touched by another person. We conducted an experiment involving 24 participants who were touched on the neck by robots under three conditions: robot's autonomous touch, user-operated touch, and the proposed semi-autonomous touch method condition. Additionally, the study investigated participants' impressions of the robot in each condition. The results showed that semi-autonomous touch condition mitigated discomfort more effectively compared with the robot's autonomous touch method condition. It also enhanced the feeling of being touched by another person entity and suppressed interaction boredom compared with the user-operated touch method condition. Participants reported higher trustworthiness and perceived friendliness in robots utilizing the semi-autonomous touch method compared to those with autonomous touch method condition. These findings indicate that robots featuring the proposed semi-autonomous touch method can provide a comforting experience, leveraging the therapeutic benefits of being touched by another person, and underscore their potential in mental health applications.
| S-EPMC11291646 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BACKGROUND: In view of the current economic crisis and the resulting austerity measures being implemented by governments across Europe, public expenditure for substance abuse treatment has increasingly become a subject of discussion. An EU cross-country comparison would allow an estimation of the total amount of public resources spent on substance abuse treatment, compare various substance abuse treatment funding options, and evaluate the division of expenditures between alcohol and illegal drugs. The purpose of this study is to estimate the public spending of EU countries for alcohol and illegal drug abuse treatment in hospitals. METHODS: Our study uses a uniform methodology in order to enable valid cross-national comparisons. Our data are drawn from the Eurostat database, which provides anno 2010 data on government spending for the treatment of illegal drug and alcohol abuse in 21 EU member states. The cross-country comparison is restricted to hospitals, since data were unavailable for other types of treatment providers. The systematic registration of in- and outpatient data is essential to monitoring public expenditures on substance abuse treatment using international databases. RESULTS: Total public spending for hospital-based treatment of illegal drug and alcohol abuse in the 21 EU member states studied is estimated to be 7.6 billion euros. Per capita expenditures for treatment of illegal drug abuse vary, ranging from 0.1 euros in Romania to 13 euros in Sweden. For alcohol abuse, that figure varied from 0.9 euros in Bulgaria to 24 euros in Austria. These results confirm other studies indicating that public expenditures for alcohol treatment exceed that for illegal drug treatment. CONCLUSIONS: Multiple factors may influence the number of hospital days for alcohol or illegal substance abuse treatment, and expenditures fluctuate accordingly. In this respect, we found a strong correlation between gross domestic product (GDP) per capita and public expenditures per hospital day. The prevalence of problematic (illegal or legal) drug use in a country did not correlate significantly with the number of hospital days. Other factors must be included in the analysis of public expenditures for the treatment of substance abuse, such as the drug policy in a given country and the social norms regarding alcohol consumption.
| S-EPMC4083336 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BACKGROUND:Understanding public behavioral responses to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) epidemic and the accompanying infodemic is crucial to controlling the epidemic. OBJECTIVE:The aim of this study was to assess real-time public awareness and behavioral responses to the COVID-19 epidemic across 12 selected countries. METHODS:Internet surveillance was used to collect real-time data from the general public to assess public awareness and rumors (China: Baidu; worldwide: Google Trends) and behavior responses (China: Ali Index; worldwide: Google Shopping). These indices measured the daily number of searches or purchases and were compared with the numbers of daily COVID-19 cases. The trend comparisons across selected countries were observed from December 1, 2019 (prepandemic baseline) to April 11, 2020 (at least one month after the governments of selected countries took actions for the pandemic). RESULTS:We identified missed windows of opportunity for early epidemic control in 12 countries, when public awareness was very low despite the emerging epidemic. China's epidemic and the declaration of a public health emergency of international concern did not prompt a worldwide public reaction to adopt health-protective measures; instead, most countries and regions only responded to the epidemic after their own case counts increased. Rumors and misinformation led to a surge of sales in herbal remedies in China and antimalarial drugs worldwide, and timely clarification of rumors mitigated the rush to purchase unproven remedies. CONCLUSIONS:Our comparative study highlights the urgent need for international coordination to promote mutual learning about epidemic characteristics and effective control measures as well as to trigger early and timely responses in individual countries. Early release of official guidelines and timely clarification of rumors led by governments are necessary to guide the public to take rational action.
| S-EPMC7402643 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BACKGROUND:The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic presents one of the most challenging global crises at the dawn of a new decade. Public health authorities (PHAs) are increasingly adopting the use of social media such as Facebook to rapidly communicate and disseminate pandemic response measures to the public. Understanding of communication strategies across different PHAs and examining the public response on the social media landscapes can help improve practices for disseminating information to the public. OBJECTIVE:This study aims to examine COVID-19-related outreach efforts of PHAs in Singapore, the United States, and England, and the corresponding public response to these outreach efforts on Facebook. METHODS:Posts and comments from the Facebook pages of the Ministry of Health (MOH) in Singapore, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States, and Public Health England (PHE) in England were extracted from January 1, 2019, to March 18, 2020. Posts published before January 1, 2020, were categorized as pre-COVID-19, while the remaining posts were categorized as peri-COVID-19 posts. COVID-19-related posts were identified and classified into themes. Metrics used for measuring outreach and engagement were frequency, mean posts per day (PPD), mean reactions per post, mean shares per post, and mean comments per post. Responses to the COVID-19 posts were measured using frequency, mean sentiment polarity, positive to negative sentiments ratio (PNSR), and positive to negative emotions ratio (PNER). Toxicity in comments were identified and analyzed using frequency, mean likes per toxic comment, and mean replies per toxic comment. Trend analysis was performed to examine how the metrics varied with key events such as when COVID-19 was declared a pandemic. RESULTS:The MOH published more COVID-19 posts (n=271; mean PPD 5.0) compared to the CDC (n=94; mean PPD 2.2) and PHE (n=45; mean PPD 1.4). The mean number of comments per COVID-19 post was highest for the CDC (mean CPP 255.3) compared to the MOH (mean CPP 15.6) and PHE (mean CPP 12.5). Six major themes were identified, with posts about prevention and safety measures and situation updates being prevalent across the three PHAs. The themes of the MOH's posts were diverse, while the CDC and PHE posts focused on a few themes. Overall, response sentiments for the MOH posts (PNSR 0.94) were more favorable compared to response sentiments for the CDC (PNSR 0.57) and PHE (PNSR 0.55) posts. Toxic comments were rare (0.01%) across all PHAs. CONCLUSIONS:PHAs' extent of Facebook use for outreach purposes during the COVID-19 pandemic varied among the three PHAs, highlighting the strategies and approaches that other PHAs can potentially adopt. Our study showed that social media analysis was capable of providing insights about the communication strategies of PHAs during disease outbreaks.
| S-EPMC7238862 | biostudies-literature
Project description:BackgroundMis-implementation (i.e., the premature termination or inappropriate continuation of public health programs) contributes to the misallocation of limited public health resources and the sub-optimal response to the growing global burden of chronic disease. This study seeks to describe the occurrence of mis-implementation in four countries of differing sizes, wealth, and experience with evidence-based chronic disease prevention (EBCDP).MethodsA cross-sectional study of 400 local public health practitioners in Australia, Brazil, China, and the United States was conducted from November 2015 to April 2016. Online survey questions focused on how often mis-termination and mis-continuation occur and the most common reasons programs end and continue.ResultsWe found significant differences in knowledge of EBCDP across countries with upwards of 75% of participants from Australia (n = 91/121) and the United States (n = 83/101) reporting being moderately to extremely knowledgeable compared with roughly 60% (n = 47/76) from Brazil and 20% (n = 21/102) from China (p < 0.05). Far greater proportions of participants from China thought effective programs were never mis-terminated (12.2% (n = 12/102) vs. 1% (n = 2/121) in Australia, 2.6% (n = 2/76) in Brazil, and 1.0% (n = 1/101) in the United States; p < 0.05) or were unable to estimate how frequently this happened (45.9% (n = 47/102) vs. 7.1% (n = 7/101) in the United States, 10.5% (n = 8/76) in Brazil, and 1.7% (n = 2/121) in Australia; p < 0.05). The plurality of participants from Australia (58.0%, n = 70/121) and the United States (36.8%, n = 37/101) reported that programs often mis-continued whereas most participants from Brazil (60.5%, n = 46/76) and one third (n = 37/102) of participants from China believed this happened only sometimes (p < 0.05). The availability of funding and support from political authorities, agency leadership, and the general public were common reasons programs continued and ended across all countries. A program's effectiveness or evidence-base-or lack thereof-were rarely reasons for program continuation and termination.ConclusionsDecisions about continuing or ending a program were often seen as a function of program popularity and funding availability as opposed to effectiveness. Policies and practices pertaining to programmatic decision-making should be improved in light of these findings. Future studies are needed to understand and minimize the individual, organizational, and political-level drivers of mis-implementation.
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Project description:Background and objectivesGlobally, a number of countries have developed guidelines that describe the design and conduct of economic evaluations as part of health technology assessment (HTA) or pharmacoeconomic analysis for decision making. The current scoping review was undertaken with an objective to summarize the recommendations made on methods of economic evaluation by the national healthcare economic evaluation (HEE) guidelines.MethodologyA comprehensive search was undertaken in the website repositories of the International Society for Pharmacoeconomic and Outcomes Research (ISPOR) and Guide to Economic Analysis and Research (GEAR), and websites of national HTA agencies and ministries of health of individual countries. All guidelines in the English language were included in this review. Data were extracted with respect to general and methodological characteristics, and a descriptive analysis of recommendations made across the countries was undertaken.ResultsOverall, our review included 31 national HEE guidelines, published between 1997 and August 2020. Nearly half (45%) of the guidelines targeted the evaluation of pharmaceuticals. The nature of the guidelines was either mandatory (31%), recommendatory (42%), or voluntary (16%). There was a substantial consensus among the guidelines on several key principles, including type of economic evaluation (cost-utility analysis), time horizon of the analysis (long enough), health outcome measure (quality-adjusted life-years) and use of sensitivity analyses. The recommendations on study perspective, comparator, discount rate and type of costs to be included (particularly the inclusion of indirect costs) varied widely.ConclusionDespite similarity in the overall processes, variation in several recommendations given by various national HEE guidelines was observed. This is perhaps unsurprising given the differences in the health systems and financing mechanisms, capacity of local researchers, and data availability. This review offers important lessons and a starting point for countries that are planning to develop their own HEE guidelines.
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Project description:BackgroundForeign aid has been shown to be favourably biased towards small countries. This study investigated whether country size bias also occurs in national malaria policy and development assistance from international agencies.MethodsData from publicly available sources were collected with countries as observational units. The exploratory data analysis was based on the conceptual framework with socio-economic, environmental and institutional parameters. The strength of relationships was estimated by the Pearson and polychoric correlation coefficients. The correlation matrix was explored by factor analysis.ResultsMalaria burden is strongly correlated with GDP per capita, total health expenditure per capita, HDI; moderately with latitude, weakly with elevation, urban population share, per capita funding from the Global Fund, PMI USAID, UK government and UNICEF. Small country status is strongly correlated with population size, land area, island status; moderately with development assistance received per capita, weakly with funding per capita from Global Fund, government NMP and PMI USAID. Policy score 1, a variable derived from our factor analysis and related to malaria endemicity, is significantly strongly correlated with the malaria burden, moderately with HDI, GDP per capita, total health expenditure per capita, PMI USAID funding; weakly with island status, urban population share, latitude, coastal population share, total government expenditure and trade openness, Global Fund funding, World Bank funding, UK government funding, and UNICEF funding per capita. Policy score 2, which captures variation not related to malaria endemicity, is significantly weakly related to the ICRG index, PMI USAID funding per capita and small country status.ConclusionsThe results suggest that malaria burden and economic development are bidirectionally related. Economic development can contribute to a reduction in the malaria burden. Country size does not negatively impact malaria burden, but it does account for greater development assistance per capita from selected international agencies. National malaria policy is associated with parameters related to public governance and is modified in small countries. Small country bias is present in the distribution of socio-economic resources and the allocation of foreign aid. Small countries are characterized by distinct environmental and socio-political properties.
| S-EPMC7856723 | biostudies-literature
Project description:What types of vaccines are citizens most likely to accept? We argue that citizens' identification with their nation may lead them to prefer vaccines developed and produced within their national borders, to the exclusion and/or detriment of vaccines from other nations. We administered a conjoint experiment requesting 15,000 adult citizens across 14 individual countries from around the world to assess 450,000 profiles of vaccines that randomly varied on seven attributes. Beyond vaccine fundamentals such as efficacy rate, number of doses, and duration of the protection, we find that citizens systematically favor vaccines developed and produced in their own country of residence. The extent of preference in favor of vaccines developed and produced within the national borders is particularly large among citizens who identify more strongly with their nation, suggesting nationalism plays a role in explaining the bias in favor of vaccines developed and produced locally. This public opinion bias on vaccine preferences has significant theoretical and practical implications.
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Project description:The European Medicines Agency (EMA) and national regulators share the responsibility to communicate to healthcare providers postmarketing safety events but little is known about the consistency of this process. We aimed to compare public availability of safety-related communications and drug withdrawals from the EMA and European Union member countries for novel medicines.We performed a cross-sectional analysis using public Dear Healthcare Professional Communications (DHPCs) for all novel medicines authorized between 2001 and 2010 by the EMA and available for use in France, Netherlands, Spain, and the United Kingdom. Between 2001 and 2010, the EMA approved 185 novel medicines. DHPCs could not be ascertained for the EMA. Among the 4 national regulators, as of April 30, 2013, at least one safety DHPC or withdrawal occurred for 53 (28.6%) medicines, totaling 90 DHPCs and 5 withdrawals. Among these 53 medicines, all 4 national agencies issued at least one communication for 17 (32.1%), three of the four for 25 (47.2%), two of the four for 6 (11.3%), and one of the four for 5 (9.4%). Five drugs were reported to be withdrawn, three by all four countries, one by three and one by two. Among the 95 DHPCs and withdrawals, 20 (21.1%) were issued by all 4 national regulators, 37 (38.9%) by 3 of the 4, 22 (23.2%) by 2 of the 4, and 16 (16.8%) by one. Consistency of making publicly available all identified safety DHPC or withdrawal across regulator pairs varied from 33% to 73% agreement.Safety communications were not made publicly available by the EMA. Among the 4 European member countries with national regulators that make DHPCs publicly available since at least 2001, there were substantial inconsistencies in safety communications for novel medicines. The impact of those inconsistencies in terms of public health remains to be determined.
| S-EPMC4204813 | biostudies-other
Project description:ObjectivesPoor electronic health record (EHR) usability is associated with patient safety concerns, user dissatisfaction, and provider burnout. EHR certification requires vendors to perform user testing. However, there are no such requirements for site-specific implementations. Health care organizations customize EHR implementations, potentially introducing usability problems. Site-specific usability evaluations may help to identify these concerns, and "discount" usability methods afford health systems a means of doing so even without dedicated usability specialists. This report characterizes a site-specific discount user testing program launched at an academic medical center. We describe lessons learned and highlight three of the EHR features in detail to demonstrate the impact of testing on implementation decisions and on users.MethodsThirteen new EHR features which had already undergone heuristic evaluation and iterative design were evaluated over the course of three user test events. Each event included five to six users. Participants used think aloud technique. Measures of user efficiency, effectiveness, and satisfaction were collected. Usability concerns were characterized by the type of usability heuristic violated and by correctability.ResultsUsability concerns occurred at a rate of 2.5 per feature tested. Seventy percent of the usability concerns were deemed correctable prior to implementation. The first highlighted feature was moved to production despite low single ease question (SEQ) scores which may have predicted its subsequent withdrawal from production based on post implementation feedback. Another feature was rebuilt based on usability findings, and a new version was retested and moved to production. A third feature highlights an easily correctable usability concern identified in user testing. Quantitative usability metrics generally reinforced qualitative findings.ConclusionSimplified user testing with a limited number of participants identifies correctable usability concerns, even after heuristic evaluation. Our discount usability approach to site-specific usability has a role in implementations and may improve the usability of the EHR for the end user.
| S-EPMC9629979 | biostudies-literature