Background: Usually patients receive healthcare services from multiple hospitals, and consequently their healthcare data are dispersed over many facilities’ paper and electronic-based record systems. Therefore, many countries have encouraged the research on data interoperability, access, and patient authorization. This study is an important part of a national project to build an information exchange environment for cross-hospital digital medical records carried out by the Department of Health (DOH) of Taiwan in May 2008. The key objective of the core project is to set up a portable data exchange environment in order to enable people to maintain and own their essential health information. This study is aimed at exploring the factors influencing behavior and adoption of USB-based Personal Health Records (PHR) in Taiwan. Methods: Quota sampling was used, and structured questionnaires were distributed to the outpatient department at ten medical centers which participated in the DOH project to establish the information exchange environment across hospitals. A total of 3000 questionnaires were distributed and 1549 responses were collected, out of those 1465 were valid, accumulating the response rate to 48.83%. Results: 1025 out of 1465 respondents had expressed their willingness to apply for the USB-PHR. Detailed analysis of the data reflected that there was a remarkable difference in the “usage intention” between the PHR adopters and non-adopters (χ2 =182.4, p < 0.001). From the result of multivariate logistic regression analyses, we found the key factors affecting patients’ adoption pattern were Usage Intention (OR, 9.43, 95%C.I., 5.87-15.16), Perceived Usefulness (OR, 1.60; 95%C.I., 1.11-2.29) and Subjective Norm (OR, 1.47; 95%C.I., 1.21-1.78). Conclusions: Higher Usage Intentions, Perceived Usefulness and Subjective Norm of patients were found to be the key factors influencing PHR adoption. Thus, we suggest that government and hospitals should promote the potential usefulness of PHR, and physicians should encourage patients' to adopt the PHR.

We use Taiwanese national health insurance research database (NHIRD) to investigate whether thrombolism (carotid artery disease (CAD) as a surrogate) or embolism (atrial fibrillation (AF) as a surrogate) plays roles in later retinal artery occlusion (RAO) development and examine their relative weights. The relative risks of RAO between AF and CAD patients and controls were compared by estimating the crude hazard ratio with logistic regression. Kaplan-Meier analysis was used to calculate the cumulative incidence rates of developing RAO, and a log-rank test was used to analyze the differences between the survival curves. Separate Cox proportional hazard regressions were done to compute the RAO-free rate after adjusting for possible confounding factors such as age and sex. The crude hazard ratios were 7.98 for the AF group and 5.27 for the CAD group, and the adjusted hazard ratios were 8.32 and 5.34 for the AF and CAD groups, respectively. The observation time with RAO-free was shorter for AF compared with CAD group (1490 versus 1819 days). AF and CAD were both risk factors for RAO with different hazard ratios. To tackle both AF and CAD is crucial for curbing RAO.

Introduction: Pancreatic cancer is associated with poor prognosis. Considering the increased global incidence of diabetes cases and that individuals with diabetes are considered a high‐risk subpopulation for pancreatic cancer, it is critical to detect the risk of pancreatic cancer within populations of person living = with diabetes. This study aimed to develop a novel prediction model for pancreatic cancer risk among patients with diabetes, using = a real‐world database containing clinical features and employing numerous artificial intelligent approach algorithms.Methods: This retrospective observational study analyzed data on patients with Type 2 diabetes from a multisite Taiwanese EMR database between 2009 and 2019. Predictors were selected in accordance with the literature review and clinical perspectives. The prediction models were constructed using machine learning algorithms such as logistic regression, linear discriminant analysis, gradient boosting machine, and random forest.Results: The cohort consisted of 66,384 patients. The Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA) model generated the highest AUROC of 0.9073, followed by the Voting Ensemble and Gradient Boosting machine models. LDA, the best model, exhibited an accuracy of 84.03%, a sensitivity of 0.8611, and a specificity of 0.8403. The most significant predictors identified for pancreatic cancer risk were glucose, glycated hemoglobin, hyperlipidemia comorbidity, antidiabetic drug use, and lipid‐modifying drug use.Conclusion: This study successfully developed a highly accurate 4‐year risk model for pancreatic cancer in patients with diabetes using real‐world clinical data and multiple machine‐learning algorithms. Potentially, our predictors offer an opportunity to identify pancreatic cancer early and thus increase prevention and invention windows to impact survival in diabetic patients.

Background: Dry eye syndrome (DES) is one of the key clinical features and possibly an early clinical presentation of Sjögren’s syndrome (SS). We explore DES prevalence and assess the likelihood of DES patients to develop SS in Taiwan through the National Health Insurance Research Database (NHIRD). Methods: Through a cohort comparison study, longitudinal data from the NHIRD (2000 to 2008) in Taiwan was used to probe the prevalence of DES and the odds that DES patients would later develop SS. Results: The prevalence of DES in the present study is 4.87%. The incidence rates of developing SS were 4.8% for the DES group and 1.5% for comparison group. The median age and interquartile range of DES and comparison patients was 49.8 (10) and 48.7 (15) years old, respectively. The crude hazard ratio (with 95% confidence interval) for DES patients to develop SS was 3.13 (3.10–3.50) for the DES group, and the adjusted hazard ratio (with 95% confidence interval) was 3.64 (3.43–3.87). The observation period and interquartile range for DES and comparison patients to develop SS later were 1418 (781–2316) versus 1641 (971–2512) days respectively. Conclusions: DES patients carried a higher risk for developing SS (hazard ratio 3.13) and presented for SS 3.88 years earlier than comparison group patients in this study.