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Background: Despite significant advancements in healthcare technology, digital health solutions – especially those for serious mental illnesses – continue to fall short of their potential across both clinical practice and efficacy. The utility and impact of medicine, including digital medicine, hinges on relationships, trust, and engagement, particularly in the field of mental health. This paper details results from Phase 1 of a two-part study that seeks to engage people with schizophrenia, their family members, and clinicians in co-designing a digital mental health platform for use across different cultures and contexts in the United States and India. Methods: Each site interviewed a mix of clinicians, patients, and their family members in focus groups (n = 20) of two to six participants. Open-ended questions and discussions inquired about their own smartphone use and, after a demonstration of the mindLAMP platform, specific feedback on the app's utility, design, and functionality. Results: Our results based on thematic analysis indicate three common themes: increased use and interest in technology during coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), concerns over how data are used and shared, and a desire for concurrent human interaction to support app engagement. Conclusion: People with schizophrenia, their family members, and clinicians are open to integrating technology into treatment to better understand their condition and help inform treatment. However, app engagement is dependent on technology that is complementary – not substitutive – of therapeutic care from a clinician. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Recent guidelines from the European Society of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy (ESGE) and American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy (ASGE) recommend risk stratification according to liver function test (LFT) and abdominal ultrasound in patients with suspected choledocholithiasis. We evaluated and validated the clinical utility of these new risk stratification criteria for choledocholithiasis.Methods: We retrospectively analyzed prospectively maintained data of patients with suspected choledocholithiasis between January 2016 and December 2018 in patients undergoing cholecystectomy. Patients with common bile duct stricture, cirrhosis, and portal biliopathy were excluded. After LFT and ultrasound, all patients were stratified according to ESGE and ASGE criteria into high, intermediate, and low likelihood of choledocholithiasis.Results: 1042 patients were analyzed. Using ESGE guidelines, 213 patients (20.4 %) met high likelihood criteria, 637 (61.1 %) met intermediate, and 192 (18.4 %) met low likelihood criteria. Using ASGE guidelines, 230 (22.1 %), 678 (65.1 %), and 134 (12.9 %) met high, intermediate, and low likelihood criteria, respectively. Specificity and positive predictive value (PPV) of ASGE high likelihood criteria were 96.87 % (95 % confidence interval [CI] 95.37 - 97.98) and 89.57 % (95 %CI 85.20 - 92.75) for choledocholithiasis compared with 98.96 % (95 %CI 97.95 - 99.55) and 96.24 % (95 %CI 92.76 - 98.09), respectively, for ESGE criteria. ASGE classified 17 (7.4 %) additional patients as high likelihood compared with ESGE, only one of whom had choledocholithiasis. ASGE classified 58 (8.6 %) additional patients as intermediate, none of whom had choledocholithiasis.Conclusion: This study validates the clinical utility of new ESGE and ASGE criteria for predicting choledocholithiasis. ESGE risk stratification appears more specific than ASGE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The grading of fingerprint quality by fingerprint examiners as currently practised is a subjective process. Therefore, an objective system was devised to remove the subjectivity. The devised grading system is quantitative and uses three separate, easily available, software packages to ultimately identify the portions of a fingerprint that correspond to low-, medium-, and high-quality definitive minutiae as defined on the Universal Latent Workstation of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]