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Introduction: As a complementary tool in health, the design of mobile applications to influence care and increase awareness of patients has grown a lot. The purpose of this study is to design and validate the content model of a mobile-based application for managing patients with low-back and neck pain. Methods: This descriptive-analytical study was conducted in two main stages to determine the content model of the application. The first stage consisted of three steps: finding the right exercise, determining the right scale to assess the pain intensity, and determining the appropriate features of the application. In the second stage, data elements collected from the previous stage were prepared in the form of a questionnaire that was given to 12 experts in physical therapy and sports medicine for validation. After collecting the questionnaire, data elements in all parts were analyzed based on the content validity ratio (CVR) and descriptive statistics indicators. Result: The content of the application was prepared in the three axes of exercises for low-back and neck pain, assessment of pain intensity, and features of the application. In the axis of sports exercises, 8 exercises for back pain and 3 exercises for neck pain were included according to the reference books. A Functional Rating Index (FRI) scale with 10 elements was selected in the axis of determining pain intensity. Also, 12 features such as the daily exercise section, using the animation, and using an audio file to explain how to do exercises were included in the model. Conclusion: According to the gaps identified in the existing applications, determining the content model of the application that is based on evidence and according to the opinion of experts is useful in improving the apps. The content model of this study was presented in 3 axes to increase the patient's willingness to do exercises, the correct way to perform exercises, conservative treatment, and check the progress of the treatment. The software developers can use these findings as a basis for designing new apps to manage low-back pain and neck pain.

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BACKGROUND: Traumatic brain injury (TBI) resulting from a forceful impact to the head can cause severe functional disabilities, with cognitive impairment being a major hindrance to patients' return to daily life. Encouraging patients to engage in rehabilitation programs consistently poses a significant challenge for therapists. To address this issue, gamification has gained momentum as an effective approach. This study aims to develop a serious game-based cognitive rehabilitation system tailored for patients with brain injury. METHODS: The study included four stages. Initially, the requirements were analyzed through focus groups. Then the system structure and game content were discussed and was agreed as a conceptual model. In second stage, the system design was drawn using various modeling diagrams. In third stage, a system prototype was developed using the Unity game engine and C# programming. Finally, a heuristic evaluation method was employed to assess usability. RESULTS: Based on the focus group meetings with seven participants, a conceptual model of the system structure and game content was designed. Game's interface was developed for both the therapist and patient versions. The focus groups determined a 2D casual gaming genre with a postman character and 10 missions on the smartphone platform. For example, in the first mission, the postman must move from mailboxes 1 to 10 and pick up the letters. This is according to Trail Making Test task. The 16 tasks in different subcategories of attention were selected to make these missions. The usability evaluation highlighted privacy, help and documentation, and aesthetic and minimalist design as the areas with the highest percentage of problems. CONCLUSIONS: Cognitive rehabilitation is vital in facilitating patients' faster return to daily routines and enhancing their quality-of-life following brain injury. Incorporating a game-based system provides patients with increased motivation to engage in various cognitive exercises. Additionally, continuous monitoring by specialists ensures effective patient management. The game-based system offers different game stages to strengthen and rehabilitate attention in patients with brain injury. In the next step, the clinical effects of this system will be evaluated.

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Background: This study was conducted to classify the types of evaluation methods in clinical health technologies based on a systematic review method. Methods: An electronic search was conducted in three scientific databases including Scopus, PubMed and ISI. The search strategy was performed in Jul to Nov 2021 and based on the three main concepts of "evaluation", "technology", "health. This search has been restricted to 10 years (2011-2021). Moreover, it only was limited to English and papers published in journals and conferences proceeding. Results: Overall, 8149 references were identified for title and abstract screening. Full text screening was performed for 2674 articles, with 174 meeting the criteria for study inclusion. Conclusion: Most of the technologies evaluated in these articles were associated with PC-based systems (N=107), and there have been fewer mobile apps (N=67). Most of used technologies were with goals of treatment (43%, N=74) and education (26%, N=45). Among all the methods, the most and the least used methods were usability (66%, N=115) and qualitative (1%, N=2) method, respectively. The most method for health clinical technologies is usability method especially in telemedicine field.

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Introduction: Parkinson's disease (PD) is the second most common neurological disorder. Patients with PD were affected by the COVID-19 pandemic in many different ways. This study's principal purpose is to assess PD patients' vulnerability to COVID-19 and its consequences. Method: This systematic review was performed based on Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyzes (PRISMA) guidelines. A thorough search was conducted in the Medline (through PubMed) and Scopus databases from inception to January 30, 2022. The Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) critical appraisal checklist was used to evaluate the studies. Results: Most of the studies (38%) had been conducted in Italy. Of the total number of studies, 17 (58%) were cross-sectional, seven (22%) were cohort, four (12%) were quasiexperimental, two (6%) were case-control, and one (3%) was a qualitative study. The PD duration in patients ranged from 3.26 to 13.40 years (IQR1: 5.7 yrs., median: 3.688 yrs., and IQR3: 8.815 yrs.). Meanwhile, the sample size ranged from 12 to 30872 participants (IQR1: 46, median: 96, and IQR3: 211). Despite worsening PD symptoms in the targeted population (persons with COVID-19 and Parkinson's disease), some studies found PD to be a risk factor for more severe COVID-19 disease. There are many adverse effects during the pandemic period in PD patients such as abnormalities of motor, nonmotor functioning, clinical outcomes, activities of daily living, and other outcomes. Conclusion: This study confirmed the negative effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on health-related quality of life and its determinants in patients with PD and their caregivers. Thus, due to the worsening symptoms of PD patients in the current pandemic, these people should be given more care and supervision to minimize their coronavirus exposure.

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PARTICIPANTS: Four electronic databases were searched on March 6, 2020 including Scopus, PubMed, ISI, and Embase. METHODS: Our search consisted of concepts of "self-care," "elderly" and "Mobile device." English journal papers and, RCTs conducted for individuals older than 60 in the last 10 years were included. A narrative approach was used to synthesize the data due to the heterogeneous nature of the data. RESULTS: Initially, 3047 studies were obtained and finally 19 studies were identified for deep analysis. 13 outcomes were identified in m-health interventions to help older adults' self-care. Each outcome has at least one or more positive results. The psychological status and clinical outcome measures were all significantly improved. CONCLUSION: According to the findings, it is not possible to draw a definite positive decision about the effectiveness of interventions on older adults because the measures are very diverse and have been measured with different tools. However, it might be declared that m-health interventions have one or more positive results and can be used along with other interventions to improve the health of older adults.

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Attention is a basic and main mental task and can play an important role in the functioning of other brain abilities such as intelligence, memory, learning, and perception, and its deficit occurs in 80% of patients with traumatic brain injury. The use of game-based tools for rehabilitation is rapidly expanding. Cognitive rehabilitation via video games is an emerging hot topic in cognitive science. Serious games serve a specific purpose in addition to entertainment. They can be more engaging than exercises since they replace reward and motivation systems with real-world motivations as a complement for rehabilitation activities. This study was aimed at identifying and categorizing serious computer games used for attention rehabilitation and evaluating their effects. Six electronic databases (Scopus, PubMed, ISI, Embase, IEEE, and Cochrane) were searched in August 2021. The search strategy consisted of three main concepts of "serious game", "cognitive deficits", and "cognitive rehabilitation". The inclusion criteria were (1) journal articles, (2) English language, (3) being published in the last 10 years, (4) human participants, and (5) game-based intervention. In the 30 included studies, 22 unique games were utilized for attention rehabilitation. Lumosity (20%), Brain Age (Dr. Kawashima's Brain Training) (10%), and MoHRS (6.66%) were the most common games among the studies. There were (57%) casual, (23%) action, (10%) simulation, and (10%) multiple genres. Of the 47 tools used in the studies, 5 utilized cross-modal oddball attention tasks, 4 utilized game performance, 3 utilized the paced auditory serial additional test (PASAT), and the rest employed other tools. A total of 73 outcome measures were related to attention, 42 measures did not have significant results, 30 were significantly improved, 1 was significantly deteriorated, and 4 articles did not have any specific measures for attention evaluation. Thus, the results revealed the positive effect of serious games on attention. However, issues such as absence of scientific teams, the variety of the disorders that cause defects, the variety of criteria, differences in measurements, lack of long-term follow-up, insufficient RCT studies, and small sample sizes should be considered when designing, developing, and using game-based systems to prevent bias.

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AIM: To design a fuzzy expert system to help detect and diagnose the severity of diabetic neuropathy. METHODS: The research was completed in 2014 and consisted of two main phases. In the first phase, the diagnostic parameters were determined based on the literature review and by investigating specialists' perspectives (n = 8). In the second phase, 244 medical records related to the patients who were visited in an endocrinology and metabolism research centre during the first six months of 2014 and were primarily diagnosed with diabetic neuropathy, were used to test the sensitivity, specificity, and accuracy of the fuzzy expert system. RESULTS: The final diagnostic parameters included the duration of diabetes, the score of a symptom examination based on the Michigan questionnaire, the score of a sign examination based on the Michigan questionnaire, the glycolysis haemoglobin level, fasting blood sugar, blood creatinine, and albuminuria. The output variable was the severity of diabetic neuropathy which was shown as a number between zero and 10, had been divided into four categories: absence of the disease, (the degree of severity) mild, moderate, and severe. The interface of the system was designed by ASP.Net (Active Server Pages Network Enabled Technology) and the system function was tested in terms of sensitivity (true positive rate) (89%), specificity (true negative rate) (98%), and accuracy (a proportion of true results, both positive and negative) (93%). CONCLUSION: The system designed in this study can help specialists and general practitioners to diagnose the disease more quickly to improve the quality of care for patients.