A New Dimension of Health Care: Systematic Review of the Uses, Benefits, and Limitations of Social Media for Health Communication

This paper examines the ethics of using assistive technology such as video surveillance in the homes of people living with dementia. Ideation and concept elaboration around the introduction of a camera-based surveillance service in the homes of people with dementia, typically living alone, is explored. The paper reviews relevant literature on surveillance of people living with dementia, and summarises the findings from ideation and concept elaboration workshops, designed to capture the views of those involved in the care of people living with dementia at home. The research question relates to the ethical considerations of using assistive technologies that include video surveillance in the homes of people living with dementia, and the implications for a person living with dementia whenever video surveillance is used in their home and access to the camera is given to the person’s family. The review of related work indicated that such video surveillance may result in loss of autonomy or freedom for the person with dementia. The workshops reflected the findings from the related work, and revealed useful information to inform the service design, in particular in fine-tuning the service to find the best relationship between privacy and usefulness. Those who took part in the workshops supported the concept of the use of camera in the homes of people living with dementia, with some significant caveats around privacy. The research carried out in this work is small in scale but points towards an acceptance by many caregivers of people living with dementia of surveillance technologies. This paper indicates that those who care for people living with dementia at home are willing to make use of camera technology and therefore the value of this work is to help shed light on the direction for future research.

Health professionals working in primary care and public health have opportunities to address body weight status issues with their patients through face-to-face contact. The objectives of this all-Ireland project are: 1. to assess the attitudes, current practices/behaviours and knowledge of key health professional groups on body weight status; 2. to assess the health professional groups' ability to identify body weight status in both adults and children. The health professional groups are: (a) community related public health nurses; (b) school public health nurses; (c) GPs and practice nurses (primary care); and (d) occupational health nurses (workplace) from both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

Background: Youth suicide is a global issue and a type of death that can be prevented through early access to evidence-based mental health interventions, which can contribute to improved quality of life as well as health, educational and employment outcomes. Young people are encouraged to seek help for mental health problems, yet help-seeking rates remain low. Objective: The aim of this research was to explore how young people with a mental health problem decide to search and ask for professional help, and the impact of help-seeking experiences. Methods: Young people aged 16–25 years with experiences of help-seeking to mental health services were recruited (N = 18). Data analysis was informed by Constructivist Grounded Theory methods, and the findings were presented across four sub-categories: 1. Deciding to Seek Help; 2. Searching for the Right Help; 3. Reflecting on Help-seeking Experiences; and 4. Living with the Impacts of Help-seeking. Findings: Young people often sought help while highly distressed and required the skills and resources of a family member or friend to access the right type of help. Help-seeking was multi-episodic and had lasting positive and negative impacts. Young people’s help-seeking patterns were found to be similar to the ways in which they problem-solve in learning contexts, and the concept of a formal help-seeking skillset was presented. Conclusions: To minimise harm and improve provision and outcomes for young people’s health, education, and employment, research needs to urgently address the theoretical gap by developing distinct youth mental health help-seeking models or frameworks that acknowledge and incorporate how young people decide, search, and ask for help, and the important social relationships that support this process.

Background: This research is part of the STOP project, a H2020 RISE project funded by European Commission (GA No 823978) to address the challenge of preventing obesity in Europe. The interdisciplinary European STOP project aims to establish a data and knowledge ecosystem as a basis for the STOP Portal to enable healthcare professionals in decision support, and persons with obesity in analysis and feedback of health information to optimise healthy nutrition. The aim of this current randomised controlled trial (RCT) was to determine the effectiveness of the newly developed system for adults with overweight and obesity to lose weight. Methods: This was a pilot two-arm RCT: 1. intervention (n = 15) and 2. control (n = 15). All the participants were adults with overweight or obesity. The intervention group used the STOP Portal, while the control group did not use this system, no intervention. Participants were randomised into one of the two groups using a computer randomised programme. The primary outcome was percentage reported weight loss, by three months. Four data collection points for both the intervention and control groups at 1. baseline (month 0); 2. month 1; 3. month 2; and 4. month 3. The STOP Portal collects the following data: physiological data, knowledge resources, biomedical data, self-reporting activity and food data. Ethical approval was obtained. Results: A total of 30 adults registered for this pilot RCT and participated up to three months. The results clearly indicated that adults (18 years+) who were overweight or obese and were in the intervention group and using the STOP Portal significantly (P < 0.001) lost body weight (kg; % weight loss; BMI). Thus the STOP Portal was significantly effective for participants losing body weight. Conclusions: Overall, the STOP Portal is easy to use, fit for purpose and is significantly effective for adults with overweight and obesity to lose weight. Key messages: • Innovative online portal, STOP Portal, is significantly effective for adults with overweight and obesity to lose weight. • This project addresses obesity management and prevention through the foundation of an innovative platform to support persons with obesity with a better nutrition.