Angelina Kouroubali

Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas | forth · Computational Bio-Medicine Laboratory (CBML)

The development of electronic services for healthcare presents challenges related to the effective cooperation of systems and stakeholders in a highly regulated environment. In order to facilitate healthcare for all at the point of need it is important to establish the necessary conditions to guide the development and implementation of digital heal...

The term frailty is often used to describe a particular state of health, related to the ageing process, often experienced by older people. The most common indicators of frailty are weakness, fatigue, weight loss, low physical activity, poor balance, low gait speed, visual impairment and cognitive impairment. The objective of this work is the creati...

BACKGROUND Stress and anxiety are psychophysiological responses commonly experienced by patients during a perioperative process that can increase pre- and post-surgical complications to a comprehensive and positive recovery. Preventing and intervening stress and anxiety can help patients achieve positive outcomes on health and wellbeing. Similarly,...

Background Stress and anxiety are psychophysiological responses commonly experienced by patients during the perioperative process that can increase presurgical and postsurgical complications to a comprehensive and positive recovery. Preventing and intervening in stress and anxiety can help patients achieve positive health and well-being outcomes. S...

Background: Major chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease (CVD), diabetes, and cancer impose a significant burden on people and health care systems around the globe. Recently, deep learning (DL) has shown great potential for the development of intelligent mobile health (mHealth) interventions for chronic diseases that could revolutionize th...

Informal care is considered to be important for the wellbeing and resilience of the elderly. However, solutions for the effective collaboration of healthcare professionals, patients, and informal caregivers are not yet widely available. The purpose of this paper is to present the development of a digital platform that uses innovative tools and arti...

This work presents, analyzes, and discusses the digital transformation challenges that need to be addressed for the development of quality electronic medical record (EMR) systems in Greece in the aftermath of the 2019 coronavirus disease pandemic. The authors highlight quality EMR characteristics and provide an overview of factors affecting their a...

The coronavirus pandemic of 2019 has accelerated the shifting of attitudes of health and social care professionals towards digital technology use, mainly through online consultations and telemedicine services, aiming at the de-congestion of health units. While the improvement of patient experience becomes a higher priority for healthcare profession...

The lives of millions of people have been affected during the coronavirus pandemic that spread throughout the world in 2020. Society is changing establishing new norms for healthcare education, social life, and business. Digital health has seen an accelerated implementation throughout the world in response to the pandemic challenges. In this perspe...

BACKGROUND Major chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and cancer impose a significant burden on people and the healthcare systems around the globe. Recently, Deep Learning (DL) has shown great potential towards the development of intelligent mobile health (mHealth) interventions for chronic diseases which could revolutionize t...

Background: Major chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease (CVD), diabetes, and cancer impose a significant burden on people and health care systems around the globe. Recently, deep learning (DL) has shown great potential for the development of intelligent mobile health (mHealth) interventions for chronic diseases that could revolutionize t...

INTRODUCTION: The ongoing coronavirus pandemic is affecting the lives of millions of people, changing society by enacting new rules for social life, business and travel. The world community (i.e. international organizations, public administrations, businesses, and citizens) has conducted a huge effort in delivering digital solutions to properly add...

We protect the community. We protect ourselves. We decongest the health system. We stay safe in COVID-19. One of the many responses to the global call against the world pandemic of COVID-19 resulted in “Safe in COVID-19”, an electronic platform developed by the Institute of Computer Science of the Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas (FO...

Background: The status of the data-driven management of cancer care as well as the challenges, opportunities, and recommendations aimed at accelerating the rate of progress in this field are topics of great interest. Two international workshops, one conducted in June 2019 in Cordoba, Spain, and one in October 2019 in Athens, Greece, were organized...

Background: A vast amount of mobile apps have been developed during the past few months in an attempt to “flatten the curve” of the increasing number of COVID-19 cases. Objective: This systematic review aims to shed light into studies found in the scientific literature that have used and evaluated mobile apps for the prevention, management, treatm...

The ongoing coronavirus pandemic, is affecting the lives of millions of people, while changing our society by establishing new norms for social life, business, and traveling. The digital health domain has already tried to respond to the pandemic challenges, by the rapid development and release of mobile apps aiming to "flatten the curve" of the inc...

During the burst of the coronavirus pandemic, in early-midst 2020, public health authorities worldwide considered appropriate identification, isolation and contact tracing as the most appropriate strategy for infection containment. This work presents an outbreak response tool, designed for public health authorities to effectively track suspect, pro...

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed several challenges on citizens and health systems. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) can be a valuable tool in providing tools for self-assessment and reporting of physical symptoms, early detection of symptom changes, up to date information towards citizen empowerment, personalized recommendations and c...

Background: Patients undergoing elective surgery often face symptoms of anxiety and stress. Healthcare systems have limited time and resources to provide individualized stress relief interventions. Research has shown that stress relief interventions and educational resources can improve health outcomes and speed recovery. Objectives: Digital health...

BACKGROUND A vast amount of mobile apps have been developed during the past few months in an attempt to “flatten the curve” of the increasing number of COVID-19 cases. OBJECTIVE This systematic review aims to shed light into studies found in the scientific literature, which have used and evaluated mobile apps for the prevention, management, treatm...

BACKGROUND The status of the data-driven management of cancer care as well as the challenges, opportunities, and recommendations aimed at accelerating the rate of progress in this field are topics of great interest. Two international workshops, one conducted in June 2019 in Cordoba, Spain, and one in October 2019 in Athens, Greece, were organized b...

Chronic pain is one of the most common health problems affecting daily activity, employment, relationships and emotional functioning. Unfortunately, the lack of specialized health care personnel, and the high heterogeneity in terms of clinical manifestation and treatment results contribute in failure to manage efficiently and effectively pain. Info...

The purpose of this work is to analyze the digital transformation challenges related to the implementation of quality electronic medical record systems in Greece, within the wider frame of the European digital single market. The authors explore characteristics of quality, interoperable and secure electronic medical records, and provide an overview...

This paper analyzes the clinical and technological characteristics of cancer mobile apps that enable patients to securely record, manage, and share their information. It proposes an integrated approach towards developing quality mobile health apps for cancer and discusses issues relevant to the enhancement of patient experience and acceptance, adhe...

Reliable and secure access to and sharing of medical data can help patients practice self-care, promote patient engagement and improve their communication with healthcare professionals. This requires overcoming several interoperability, usability, ethics, security, and regulatory issues. The existence of a common interoperability framework can acce...

Every year a large number of hospitalizations and deaths are associated with exposure to high temperatures. Studies have shown that for every 1 o C rise in temperatures above 28 o C the probability of mortality for vulnerable groups of the population increases. Interior relative humidity fluctuations can also cause health issues [1]. Relative humid...

The development of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the medical environment will introduce innovations that connect the expert clinician with a continuously and constantly monitoring process of patients throughout the medical infrastructure. The processing of the recorded bio-signals, imaging data and clinical information will be correlated with the...

The development of electronic services for healthcare presents challenges related to the effective cooperation of systems and stakeholders in a highly regulated environment. Assessing the interoperability maturity of the provided services helps to identify interoperability issues in public administration. This paper presents a typical healthcare di...

When interoperability policies and consistent implementations are in place, digital tools for citizen empowerment can be developed and used to provide information that would otherwise be unavailable to citizens.

Healthcare is a highly regulated domain. Seamless, online access to integrated electronic health records for citizens is still far from becoming a reality. The implementation of personally managed health data systems still needs to overcome several interoperability, usability, ethics, security, and regulatory issues to deliver the envisioned benefi...

Processing and managing sensitive health data requires a high standard of security and privacy measures to ensure that all ethical and legal requirements are respected. Data anonymization is one of the key technologies to this purpose. However, the plethora and the complexity of the available anonymization techniques make it difficult for a non-exp...

Chronic pain is one of the most common health problems affecting daily activity, employment, relationships and emotional functioning. Unfortunately, the lack of specialized health care personnel, and the high heterogeneity in terms of clinical manifestation and treatment results contribute in failure to manage efficiently and effectively pain. Info...

Anxiety and stress are very common symptoms of patients facing a forthcoming surgery. However, limited time and resources within healthcare systems make the provision of stress relief interventions difficult to provide. Research has shown that provision of preoperative stress relief and educational resources can improve health outcomes and speed re...

The ever-growing demand for acquiring, managing, and exploiting patient health-related information has led to the development of several mobile health apps to support cancer patients. This chapter analyzes the clinical and technological characteristics of mobile apps enabling cancer patients to securely record, manage, and share their information o...

Modern health systems depend on interaction between several cooperating actors. These include-amongst others-patients, caretakers, general practitioners , health specialists, pharmacies, laboratories, hospitals, clinics, insurance organizations, and research centers, from both public and private sectors. Interop-erability of information and communi...

Because of the increasing ageing population, the frequency of chronic diseases has been growing in Europe over the past decades. In addition, the ever-growing demand for acquiring, managing and exploiting patient health related information has led to the development of many electronic health (eHealth) systems and applications. However, despite the...

Chronic pain is one of the most common health problems affecting daily activity, employment, relationships and emotional functioning. Unfortunately, limited access to pain experts, the high heterogeneity in terms of clinical manifestation and treatment results, contribute in failure to manage efficiently and effectively pain. Information and Commun...

The ever-growing demand for acquiring, managing and exploiting patient health related information has led to the development of several eHealth applications. However, despite the number of Information Technology (IT) systems already developed and the apparent need for such systems, end users can only collect online and exploit, only a limited set o...

The ever-growing demand for acquiring, managing and exploiting patient health related in-formation has led to the development of many e-Health systems and applications. However, despite the number of systems already developed and the apparent need for such systems, end users can only collect online and exploit, only a limited set of information for...

The ever-growing demand for acquiring, managing and exploiting patient health related information has led to the development of many e-Health systems and applications. However, despite the number of systems already developed and the apparent need for such systems, end users can only collect online and exploit, only a limited set of information for...

Sensor-based health systems can often become difficult to use, extend and sustain. We propose a framework for designing sensor-based health monitoring systems aiming to provide extensible and usable monitoring services in the scope of pervasive patient care. Our approach relies on a distributed system for monitoring the patient health status anytim...

Like several other chronic diseases the proper and effective management of diabetes requires the full involvement of patients and informal caregivers by implementing self care for personal health maintenance with treatment of diabetes and prevention of complications. Patient empowerment is a necessary pre-requisite of effective disease self-managem...

This paper analyzes the methodology and preliminary results of the usability evaluation of large scale technology services for the prevention and management of chronic conditions of elderly people. REMOTE, a three years European project in the Ambient Assisted Living domain, aims to define and establish a multidisciplinary and integrated approach t...

Η υιοθέτηση και ουσιαστική χρήση του Ηλεκτρονικού Φακέλου Υγείας (ΗΦΥ) αποφέρει πολλαπλά οφέλη στους φορείς παροχής υπηρεσιών υγείας (ΦΠΥΥ), όπως βελτίωση στην ποιότητα, την ακρίβεια και διαθεσιμότητα της πληροφορίας, αύξηση της ταχύτητας επεξεργασίας αιτημάτων, και άρα βελτίωση της παραγωγικότητας. Επίσης, ο ΗΦΥ μπορεί να προσφέρει άμεση πρόσβαση...

Η υιοθέτηση και ουσιαστική χρήση του Ηλεκτρονικού Φακέλου Υγείας (ΗΦΥ) αποφέρει πολλαπλά οφέλη στους φορείς παροχής υπηρεσιών υγείας (ΦΠΥΥ), όπως βελτίωση στην ποιότητα, την ακρίβεια και διαθεσιμότητα της πληροφορίας, αύξηση της ταχύτητας επεξεργασίας αιτημάτων, και άρα βελτίωση της παραγωγικότητας. Επίσης, ο ΗΦΥ μπορεί να προσφέρει άμεση πρόσβαση...

Background: Diabetes, a metabolic disorder, has reached epidemic proportions in developed countries. The disease has two main forms: type 1 and type 2. Disease management entails administration of insulin in combination with careful blood glucose monitoring (type 1) or involves the adjustment of diet and exercise level, the use of oral anti-diabet...

Η τεχνική αναφορά αποτελεί τεκμηριωμένη πρόταση για την εφαρμογή, υιοθέτηση, και ουσιαστική χρήση του Ηλεκτρονικού Φακέλου Υγείας (ΗΦΥ) σε φορείς του Εθνικού Συστήματος Υγείας. Η αναφορά, προσδιορίζει την έννοια και τις λειτουργίες των συστημάτων ΗΦΥ. Επίσης, αναλύει την σημασία της πιστοποίησης και τα στάδια εφαρμογής συστημάτων ΗΦΥ προκειμένου να...

Predictions, risk assessment and risk profiling are among the various decision support techniques that medical professionals increasingly rely on to provide early diagnose in patients with elevated risks and to slow down the rapid increase in prevalence of chronic diseases. The introduction of risk assessment tools and applications for chronic dise...

This paper analyzes the methodology and preliminary results of four focus groups conducted for the diabetes project Reaction, a four year European project that aims to develop an intelligent service platform for remote monitoring of glucose levels with diabetes management and therapy to patients in different healthcare regimes across Europe. The fo...

This paper draws upon the experience of production level implementations, initiated through public procurement, of four regional health information networks (RHINs). The RHINs are being implemented in four regional health authorities (RHAs) in Greece to support patient-centred services. This paper focuses on three key areas: (i) engineering issues...

Dealing with life threatening situations demands efficiency and effectiveness of operations including optimizing the emergency response time, and utilizing resources and personnel as best appropriate for each incident. In this paper, we look at the efforts of the regional Emergency Medical Department (EMD) of Crete to introduce new technologies for...

Adoption of EHRs by U.S. ambulatory practices has been slow despite the perceived benefits of their use. Most evaluations of EHR implementations in the literature apply to large practice settings. While there are similarities relating to EHR implementation in large and small practice settings, the authors argue that scale is an important differenti...

The paper presents an application of the "Fit between Individuals, Task and Technology" (FITT) framework to analyze the socio-organizational-technical factors that influence IT adoption in the healthcare domain. The FITT framework was employed as the theoretical instrument for a retrospective analysis of a 15-year effort in implementing IT systems...

In this paper we extend transactive memory systems (TMS) theory to develop an understanding of the distributed coordination of expertise in high-reliability organizations. We illustrate our conceptual developments in a study of emergency management and response in Greece. We focus on the interaction between operators/dispatchers, ambulance crew, an...

OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to investigate the perception and attitudes of people in Greece regarding the use of the internet for Health and Illness (H&I). It is the Creek part of a survey conducted concurrently in 7 European countries in 2005 and 2007, to establish eHealth consumer trends across Europe. METHOD: 1000 men and women aged bet...

The rising of chronic illness and the continuous aging of the global population requires a re-organization of health care systems based on relations and exchange of information to address patient needs in the community. The re-organization of health care systems involves interconnected changes and the development of integrated health care informati...

Pre-hospital emergency care plays a vital role in saving human lives making it an important part of the health care sector. Efficiency and effectiveness of operations is crucial especially when dealing with life-threatening situations that require immediate and specialised response. In Crete, the National Centre for Emergency Care has established s...

The implementation of health information systems is known to be complex and challenging. To facilitate the introduction of IS in health care, research should investigate the way IS affects human actions and organizational structures and the reasons it affects them that way. Studying the dynamic relationship between cause and effect could help make...

The Washington Heights-Inwood Community Health Management Information System (WHICHIS) at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center (CPMC) provides 15 community physician practices with seamless networking to the CPMC Wide-Area Network. The costs and benefits of the project were evaluated. Installation costs, including hardware, office management so...

Community Health Information Networks (CHINs) require the ability to provide computer network connections to many remote sites. During the implementation of the Washington Heights and Inwood Community Health Management Information System (WHICHIS) at the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center (CPMC), a number of remote connectivity issues have been e...