Analysis and Evaluation of COVID-19 Web Applications for Health Professionals: Challenges and Opportunities
The multidisciplinary nature of the work required for research in the COVID-19 pandemic has created new challenges for health professionals in the battle against the virus. They need to be equipped with novel tools, applications, and resources—that have emerged during the pandemic—to gain access to...
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Format: | Article |
Language: | English |
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MDPI AG
2020-11-01
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Series: | Healthcare |
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Online Access: | https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9032/8/4/466 |
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author | Hamid Mukhtar Hafiz Farooq Ahmad Muhammad Zahid Khan Nasim Ullah |
author_facet | Hamid Mukhtar Hafiz Farooq Ahmad Muhammad Zahid Khan Nasim Ullah |
author_sort | Hamid Mukhtar |
collection | DOAJ |
description | The multidisciplinary nature of the work required for research in the COVID-19 pandemic has created new challenges for health professionals in the battle against the virus. They need to be equipped with novel tools, applications, and resources—that have emerged during the pandemic—to gain access to breakthrough findings; know the latest developments; and to address their specific needs for rapid data acquisition, analysis, evaluation, and reporting. Because of the complex nature of the virus, healthcare systems worldwide are severely impacted as the treatment and the vaccine for COVID-19 disease are not yet discovered. This leads to frequent changes in regulations and policies by governments and international organizations. Our analysis suggests that given the abundance of information sources, finding the most suitable application for analysis, evaluation, or reporting, is one of such challenges. However, health professionals and policy-makers need access to the most relevant, reliable, trusted, and latest information and applications that can be used in their day-to-day tasks of COVID-19 research and analysis. In this article, we present our analysis of various novel and important <i>web-based applications</i> that have been specifically developed during the COVID-19 pandemic and that can be used by the health professionals community to help in advancing their analysis and research. These applications comprise search portals and their associated information repositories for literature and clinical trials, data sources, tracking dashboards, and forecasting models. We present a list of the minimally essential online, web-based applications to serve a multitude of purposes, from hundreds of those developed since the beginning of the pandemic. A critical analysis is provided for the selected applications based on 17 features that can be useful for researchers and analysts for their evaluations. These features make up our evaluation framework and have not been used previously for analysis and evaluation. Therefore, knowledge of these applications will not only increase productivity but will also allow us to explore new dimensions for using existing applications with more control, better management, and greater outcome of their research. In addition, the features used in our framework can be applied for future evaluations of similar applications and health professionals can adapt them for evaluation of other applications not covered in this analysis. |
first_indexed | 2024-03-10T15:02:13Z |
format | Article |
id | doaj.art-7d89696d52714e05bcc0a1b38658bf88 |
institution | Directory Open Access Journal |
issn | 2227-9032 |
language | English |
last_indexed | 2024-03-10T15:02:13Z |
publishDate | 2020-11-01 |
publisher | MDPI AG |
record_format | Article |
series | Healthcare |
spelling | doaj.art-7d89696d52714e05bcc0a1b38658bf882023-11-20T20:05:54ZengMDPI AGHealthcare2227-90322020-11-018446610.3390/healthcare8040466Analysis and Evaluation of COVID-19 Web Applications for Health Professionals: Challenges and OpportunitiesHamid Mukhtar0Hafiz Farooq Ahmad1Muhammad Zahid Khan2Nasim Ullah3Department of Computer Science, SEECS, National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), Islamabad 44000, PakistanCollege of Computer Sciences and Information Technology (CCSIT), King Faisal University, Alahssa 31982, Saudi ArabiaDepartment of Computer Science & I.T, University of Malakand, Chakdara 18800, PakistanDepartment of Electrical Engineering, College of Engineering, Taif University, P.O. Box 11099, Taif 21944, Saudi ArabiaThe multidisciplinary nature of the work required for research in the COVID-19 pandemic has created new challenges for health professionals in the battle against the virus. They need to be equipped with novel tools, applications, and resources—that have emerged during the pandemic—to gain access to breakthrough findings; know the latest developments; and to address their specific needs for rapid data acquisition, analysis, evaluation, and reporting. Because of the complex nature of the virus, healthcare systems worldwide are severely impacted as the treatment and the vaccine for COVID-19 disease are not yet discovered. This leads to frequent changes in regulations and policies by governments and international organizations. Our analysis suggests that given the abundance of information sources, finding the most suitable application for analysis, evaluation, or reporting, is one of such challenges. However, health professionals and policy-makers need access to the most relevant, reliable, trusted, and latest information and applications that can be used in their day-to-day tasks of COVID-19 research and analysis. In this article, we present our analysis of various novel and important <i>web-based applications</i> that have been specifically developed during the COVID-19 pandemic and that can be used by the health professionals community to help in advancing their analysis and research. These applications comprise search portals and their associated information repositories for literature and clinical trials, data sources, tracking dashboards, and forecasting models. We present a list of the minimally essential online, web-based applications to serve a multitude of purposes, from hundreds of those developed since the beginning of the pandemic. A critical analysis is provided for the selected applications based on 17 features that can be useful for researchers and analysts for their evaluations. These features make up our evaluation framework and have not been used previously for analysis and evaluation. Therefore, knowledge of these applications will not only increase productivity but will also allow us to explore new dimensions for using existing applications with more control, better management, and greater outcome of their research. In addition, the features used in our framework can be applied for future evaluations of similar applications and health professionals can adapt them for evaluation of other applications not covered in this analysis.https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9032/8/4/466APIdashboardinterfacemetadatavisualization |
spellingShingle | Hamid Mukhtar Hafiz Farooq Ahmad Muhammad Zahid Khan Nasim Ullah Analysis and Evaluation of COVID-19 Web Applications for Health Professionals: Challenges and Opportunities Healthcare API dashboard interface metadata visualization |
title | Analysis and Evaluation of COVID-19 Web Applications for Health Professionals: Challenges and Opportunities |
title_full | Analysis and Evaluation of COVID-19 Web Applications for Health Professionals: Challenges and Opportunities |
title_fullStr | Analysis and Evaluation of COVID-19 Web Applications for Health Professionals: Challenges and Opportunities |
title_full_unstemmed | Analysis and Evaluation of COVID-19 Web Applications for Health Professionals: Challenges and Opportunities |
title_short | Analysis and Evaluation of COVID-19 Web Applications for Health Professionals: Challenges and Opportunities |
title_sort | analysis and evaluation of covid 19 web applications for health professionals challenges and opportunities |
topic | API dashboard interface metadata visualization |
url | https://www.mdpi.com/2227-9032/8/4/466 |
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