Journal of

Background and Aim: Aging is a physiological process that is an unavoidable property of life. Decline in some dimensions of aging such as activity, income, health care and changes in life style are associated with increased risk of physical and mental health disorders. The aim of this study was to investigate the association between living areas and the demographic characteristics of elderly people in Tehran.

Materials and Methods: A cross - sectional / analytical study was conducted. The sample was consisted of 5600 elderly people and data was collected by using a questionnaire All analyses were undertaken using SPSS (Version 11.5).

Results: The results of this study showed that more 50% of subjects were illiterate and 30.5% of the were in schooling level. 62% of them reported at least one disease. We found significant differences between residences of north and south regions of Tehran for many of investigated variables.

Conclusion: These findings indicated that we need to pay more attention to elderly status specially those who are living in southern region.

Background and Aim: Adverse events in hospitals are found to be a major problem of all health systems in the world. In fact, drug interaction side effects are now the fourth leading cause of death in the U.S. The aim of the current study was to identify the opinions of clinicians working in Shariati and Emam hospitals towards the use of computer applications for detecting drug-food interactions.

Materials and Methods: Ninety clinicians including physicians, pharmacists and nurses were selected randomly in the current descriptive- analytical study. The opinions of clinicians toward using computer application systems for detecting drug-food interactions were assessed by a questionnaire. The questionnaire's validity and repeatability was examined in a pilot study. Cronbach's alpha was 0.85 which indicated an acceptable level of repeatability of the questionnaire. The questionnaire was distributed among the academic staffs in order to determine its validity.

Results: 95.4% of clinicians had positive attitudes towards the requirement of computer application to detect drug-food interactions. Around 94% of them showed their willingness towards using the computer application systems. Therefore, use of computer application seems to be necessary in health system.

Conclusions: The collection and analysis of data encourages further investments in computerized system to prevent drug-food interaction. Such built-in warning systems in hospitals alert doctors to drug-food interaction and improvement in patient care. Screening each patient's medication plan for drug-food interactions can reduce medical error and improve the quality of health care

 Background and Aim: The hypothesis of supplier induced demand has attracted a lot of attention over the past three decades. Most studies in this field agree that healthcare providers have the ability to influence the demand for their products. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the role of institutions in the phenomenon of induced demand. This study has been done using experts' experiences in Isfahan University of Medical Sciences.

 Materials and Methods: This is a qualitative study in which the semi-structured interview was used for data generation. The participants were those informed in this regard and considered as experts. For data saturation, purposive sampling was done. In this study, 17 people were interviewed, and criteria such as reliability and stability were considered. The anonymity of the interviewees was guaranteed. The data were transcribed and categorized, and then analyzed using thematic analysis.

 Results: In the present study, thematic analysis was conducted and 30 sub-themes and 2 main themes were extracted. The two main themes were healthcare insurance organizations and other health organizations. Each of the themes had its own sub-themes.

 Conclusion: The findings help health policy-makers have a better picture regarding the role of various institutions in the phenomenon of induced demand.

Background and Aim: Considering the potential damages caused by inaccurate, inadequate and incomplete information published in web pages, the aim of this study was to evaluate Persian-language web pages containing nutritional information, using Silberg criteria.

Materials and Methods: Internet pages related to nutrition were found in “peyvandha.ir” and by searching 20 nutrition-related keywords in five search engines. The first fifty results of every keyword in every search engine were evaluated according to the inclusion criteria. From every website/weblog, three issues were randomly chosen. The Silberg checklist and the qualitative questionnaire were completed and the data were analyzed using SPSS software.

Results: In total, 56 websites /weblogs (47 websites and 9 weblogs) were found to have nutrition-related information. Among these websites/weblogs, 40 were active in the field of nutrition, 14 in health-related fields, and the rest in news, general information and cooking. Mean Silberg score (out of 9) was 2.3±1.9 for websites and 1.75±1.3 for weblogs. The highest score in this study was 8 (one website) and the lowest score was zero (13 websites/weblogs). In 82.5% of websites/weblogs, the sources used in compiling the articles were not mentioned and 64.9% of them lacked their authors’ names. Of all websites/weblogs, 94% didn’t have any disclaimer rejecting the responsibility for accuracy of the information.

Conclusion: Due to the poor quality of internet pages on the one hand and the importance of nutritional knowledge on the other, the development of reliable Persian-language web pages to improve public awareness of nutritional issues is necessary.