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The purpose of this study is to investigate and compare the views of doctors, nursing staff and hospitalized patients on the level of information they provide and receive respectively in public hospitals, focusing on the factors that affect their communication.

The study used a cross-sectional survey with a sample of 426 participants from two general hospitals in Greece–Pella and KAT Attica. Data were collected through a questionnaire in March–May 2020 and was analyzed with mean comparisons and correlations.

The results showed discrepancy in the satisfaction rate, with 67.3% satisfied patients from doctors' communication vs. 83.7% satisfied doctors. Improvements in hospital staff – patient communication are required especially on alternative therapies' discussion and time spent on communication. All respondents agreed that staff shortage is a deterrent factor for effective communication. Seamless for all respondents' groups, the factors that affect the communication satisfaction level are the duration of communication, time allowed for expressing questions and interest in patients' personal situation.

Strengthening the communication skills of medical staff and providing clear guidelines on when and how to inform patients are essential.

This study contributes to the growing body of research on doctor–patient communication. Its originality lies on the fact that communication satisfaction level was examined simultaneously for doctors, nurses and patients. The study provides additional evidence supporting the link among satisfaction and duration of communication and personalized relationship. The study's findings are important in the training of medical staff and the management of patients' expectations.

Left atrial appendage occlusion (LAAO) is a structural interventional cardiology procedure that offers several possibilities for the application of additive manufacturing technologies. The literature shows a growing interest in the use of 3D-printed models for LAAO procedure planning and occlusion device choice. This study aims to describe a full workflow to create a 3D-printed LAA model for LAAO procedure planning.

The workflow starts with the patient’s computed tomography diagnostic image selection. Segmentation in a commercial software provides initial geometrical models in standard tessellation language (STL) format that are then preprocessed for print in dedicated software. Models are printed using a commercial stereolithography machine and postprocessing is performed.

Models produced with the described workflow have been used at the Careggi Hospital of Florence as LAAO auxiliary planning tool in 10 cases of interest, demonstrating a good correlation with state-of-the-art software for device selection and improving the surgeon’s understanding of patient anatomy and device positioning.

3D-printed models for the LAAO planning are already described in the literature. The novelty of the article lies in the detailed description of a robust workflow for the creation of these models. The robustness of the method is demonstrated by the coherent results obtained for the 10 different cases studied.

The purpose of this paper is twofold: First, it analyzes demand and supply-side factors that influence patient flows to and from Austria. Second, building on the empirical research and existing conceptualizations, the study offers a general extended framework to guide future comparative analysis.

The paper draws on multiple data sources including a literature review, secondary data, website analysis and semi-structured interviews with patients and health providers. Content analysis was carried out to identify common motives for seeking care abroad and providers' orientation towards medical travel.

Outbound medical travel is largely determined by factors of access, affordability and vicinity, while inbound medical travel is predominately driven by a lack of adequate medical infrastructure in source countries and quality, both in terms of medical and service quality. Providers distinguish themselves according to the extent they take part in medical travel.

The findings emerging from a single country case study approach cannot be generalized across settings and contexts, albeit contributing to a better understanding of current medical travel patterns in Europe.

Unlike most recent contributions, this study focuses both on inbound and outbound medical travel in Austria and investigates patient flows for distinctive treatments and drivers. While analysis of the supply-side of medical travel is often limited to tourism studies, this study provides a critical insight into developments in Europe from a health policy perspective, acknowledging that diverse medical travel patterns in Europe coexist.

22q11.2 deletion syndrome (22q11DS) is a risk factor for psychiatric illnesses, including schizophrenia and anxiety. Small studies have shown that several neuroleptic medications are effective in treating psychosis in this population, but are also associated with an increased risk of adverse effects - particularly, seizures. In this case, we discuss a 34-year-old patient presenting with late onset schizophrenia, which ultimately led to her diagnosis of 22q11DS. Subsequent management of the patient's psychosis with asenapine was complicated by concurrent anxiety and panic disorder; thus, we examine the role of anxiolytic therapy in conjunction with antipsychotics in this patient population.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the way technology affects the provision of prehospital emergency care, upgrading the quality of services offered and significantly reducing the risk of premature termination of the patients.

The paper presents the development of the eEKAB, a pilot emergency medical information system that simulates the main services offered by the Greek National Instant Aid Centre (EKAB). The eEKAB was developed on an agile system methodology. From a technical perspective, the features and the technology were mainly chosen to provide reliable and user-friendly interfaces that will attract many users. eEKAB is based on three important pillars for offering health care to the patients: the “On-time Incident Reporting”, the “On-time Arrival at the Incident” and “Transfer to the Health Center”. According to the literature review, the emergency medical services (EMS) systems that combine all the features are very few.

It reduces the total time of the EMS procedures and it allows for an easier management of EMS, by providing a better allocation of human resources and a better geographical distribution of ambulances. The evaluation displayed that it is a very helpful application for the ambulance drivers as it reduces the ambulance response time to arrive in the patient's location and contributes significantly to the general performance of the prehospital medical care system. Also, the survey verified the importance of implementing eEKAB on a larger scale beyond the pilot usage. It is worth mentioning that the younger ambulance drivers had a more positive view for the purpose of the application.

The paper clearly identifies implications for further research. Regarding interoperability, the mobile app cooperates with the Operational Center of EKAB, while further collaboration could be achieved with other operational ambulance handling center, mainly, of the private sector. The system can evolve to include better communications among the EKAB departments. Particularly, the ambulance crew as well as the doctors should be informed with more incident features such as the emergency signal so that they know whether to open the siren, the patient's name, etc. The authors are currently working on implementing some features to provide effective medical health services to the patient in the ambulance.

eEKAB will have very significant implications in case of its enforcement, such as the reduction of the total time of EMS procedures with a corresponding reduction of the operating costs of an accident management system and an ambulance fleet handling system while in parallel informing in time the doctors/clinics. It will provide better distribution of ambulances as well as of total human resources. It will greatly assist ambulance drivers, while reducing ambulance response time to reach the patient's location. In other words, the authors will have a better performance of the whole prehospital care system.

Providing emergency care before the hospital is of great importance for upgrading the quality of health services provided at the accident site, thus significantly reducing the risk of premature death of patients. This in itself has a significant social implication.

The paper demonstrates a solid understanding in the field of the EMS systems and the corresponding medical services offered. It proposes the development of an effective, feasible and innovative EMS information system that will improve the existing emergency health care system in Greece (EKAB). An in depth literature review and presentation of the adopted new technologies and the respective architecture take place. An evaluation and statistical validation were conducted for proving the high applicability of eEKAB in case of real-life running.