Soon after the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic was proclaimed, digital health services were widely adopted to respond to this public health emergency, including comprehensive monitoring technologies, telehealth, creative diagnostic, and therapeutic decision-making methods. The World Health Organization suggested that artificial intelligence might be a valuable way of dealing with the crisis. Artificial intelligence is an essential technology of the fourth industrial revolution that is a critical nonmedical intervention for overcoming the present global health crisis, developing next-generation pandemic preparation, and regaining resilience. While artificial intelligence has much potential, it raises fundamental privacy, transparency, and safety concerns. This study seeks to address these issues and looks forward to an intelligent healthcare future based on best practices and lessons learned by employing telehealth and artificial intelligence during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Background: Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has affected health and lifestyle behaviors of people globally. This project aims to identify the impact of COVID-19 on lifestyle behavior of individuals in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region during confinement. Methods: We conducted an online survey in 17 countries (Egypt, Jordan, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar, Yemen, Syria, Palestine, Algeria, Morocco, Libya, Tunisia, Iraq, and Sudan) from the MENA region on August and September 2020. The questionnaire included self-reported information on lifestyle behaviors, including physical activity, eating habits, smoking, watching television, social media use and sleep before and during the pandemic. Logistic regression was performed to analyze the impact of COVID-19 on lifestyle behaviors. Results: A total of 5896 participants were included in the final analysis and 62.8% were females. The BMI of the participants was 25.4 ± 5.8 kg/m². Around 38.4% of the participants stopped practicing any physical activities during the confinement (P < 0.001), and 57.1% reported spending more than 2 h on social media (P < 0.001). There were no significant changes in smoking habits. Also, 30.9% reported an improvement in their eating habits compared with 24.8% reported worsening of their eating habits. Fast-food consumption decreased significantly in 48.8% of the study population. This direct/indirect exposure to COVID-19 was associated with an increased consumption of carbohydrates (OR = 1.09; 95% CI = 1.02–1.17; P = 0.01), egg (OR = 1.08; 95% CI = 1.02–1.16; P = 0.01), sugar (OR = 1.09; 95% CI = 1.02–1.16; P = 0.02), meat, and poultry (OR = 1.13; 95% CI = 1.06–1.20; P < 0.01). There was also associated increase in hours spent on watching television (OR = 1.07; 95% CI = 1.02–1.12; P < 0.01) and social media (OR = 1.09; 95% CI = 1.01–1.18; P = 0.03). However, our results showed a reduction in sleeping hours among those exposed to COVID-19 infection (OR = 0.85; 95% CI = 0.77–0.94; P < 0.01). Conclusions: The COVID-19 pandemic was associated with an increase in food consumption and sedentary life. Being exposed to COVID-19 by direct infection or through an infected household is a significant predictor of amplifying these changes. Public health interventions are needed to address healthy lifestyle behaviors during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Background: Mobile health applications (mHealth apps) offer enormous promise for illness monitoring and treatment to improve the provided medical care and promote health and wellbeing. Objective: We applied bibliometric quantitative analysis and network visualization to highlight research trends and areas of particular interest. We expect by summarizing the trends in mHealth app research, our work will serve as a roadmap for future investigations. Methods: Relevant English publications were extracted from the Scopus database. VOSviewer (version 1.6.17) was used to build coauthorship networks of authors, countries, and the co-occurrence networks of author keywords. Results: We analyzed 550 published articles on mHealth apps from 2020 to February 1, 2021. The yearly publications increased from 130 to 390 in 2021. JMIR mHealth and uHealth (33/550, 6.0%), J. Med. Internet Res. (27/550, 4.9%), JMIR Res. Protoc. (22/550, 4.0%) were the widest journals for these publications. The United States has the largest number of publications (143/550, 26.0%), and England ranks second (96/550, 17.5%). The top three productive authors were: Giansanti D., Samuel G., Lucivero F., and Zhang L. Frequent authors’ keywords have formed major 4 clusters representing the hot topics in the field: (1) artificial intelligence and telehealthcare; (2) digital contact tracing apps, privacy and security concerns; (3) mHealth apps and mental health; (4) mHealth apps in public health and health promotion. Conclusions: mHealth apps undergo current developments, and they remain hot topics in COVID-19. These findings might be useful in determining future perspectives to improve infectious disease control and present innovative solutions for healthcare.