Mobile Big Data Analytics in Healthcare

Mobile and ubiquitous devices are everywhere around us generating considerable amount of data. The concept of mobile computing and analytics is expanding due to the fact that we are using mobile devices day in and out without even realizing it. These mobile devices use Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or mobile data to be intermittently connected to the world, generating, sending and receiving data on the move. Latest mobile applications incorporating graphics, video and audio are main causes of loading the mobile devices by consuming battery, memory and processing power. Mobile Big data analytics includes for instance, big health data, big location data, big social media data, and big heterogeneous data. Healthcare is undoubtedly one of the most data-intensive industries nowadays and the challenge is not only in acquiring, storing, processing and accessing data, but also in engendering useful insights out of it. These insights generated from health data may reduce health monitoring cost, enrich disease diagnosis, therapy, and care and even lead to human lives saving. The challenge in mobile data and Big data analytics is how to meet the growing performance demands of these activities while minimizing mobile resource consumption. This thesis proposes a scalable architecture for mobile big data analytics implementing three new algorithms (i.e. Mobile resources optimization, Mobile analytics customization and Mobile offloading), for the effective usage of resources in performing mobile data analytics. Mobile resources optimization algorithm monitors the resources and switches off unused network connections and application services whenever resources are limited. However, analytics customization algorithm attempts to save energy by customizing the analytics process while implementing some data-aware techniques. Finally, mobile offloading algorithm decides on the fly whether to process data locally or delegate it to a Cloud back-end server. The ultimate goal of this research is to provide healthcare decision makers with the advancements in mobile Big data analytics and support them in handling large and heterogeneous health datasets effectively on the move

Analyzing Social Construction of Knowledge Online by Employing Interaction Analysis, Learning Analytics, and Social Network Analysis

This article examines research methods for analyzing social construction of knowledge in online discussion forums. We begin with an examination of the Interaction Analysis Model (Gunawardena, Lowe, & Anderson, 1997) and its applicability to analyzing social construction of knowledge. Next, employing a dataset from an online discussion, we demonstrate how interaction analysis can be supplemented by employing other research techniques such as learning analytics and Social Network Analysis that shed light on the social dynamics that support knowledge construction. Learning analytics is the application of quantitative techniques for analyzing large volumes of distributed data ( big data ) in order to discover the factors that contribute to learning (Long & Siemens, 2011, p. 34). Social Network Analysis characterizes the information infrastructure that supports the construction of knowledge in social contexts (Scott, 2012). By combining interaction analysis with learning analytics and Social Network Analysis, we were able to conceptualize the process by which knowledge construction takes place in online platforms

An Analysis of Big Data on Health: Critique is Not Optional

The ‘social’ has always been a commercial and scientific resource – now in the digital age the competition regarding claims to which disciplines have justified understandings of this domain have intensified. The social sciences need to defend their subject area in order to preserve it. An application of the netnographic approach (Kozinets, 2010), social network analysis, data mining and machine-learning tools to highlight the certainties and uncertainties of Big Data and the Health Industry in order to start the process of uncovering the social and cultural forces that they are appropriating. What follows is the application of the tools of Big Data analytics on those that conduct Big Data analytics. There are competing discourses surrounding ‘Big Data’ and Health. On the one hand business, marketing and advertising interests are promoting Big Data as information that no longer requires theory or the scientific methodologies of old. On the other are voices from the academy; digital humanities and computational social sciences that wish to benefit from the volumes of available data. It is these (and other) competing discourses that are the target of this research. This paper argues that those engaged in ‘data without theory’ are generating a relational social mechanism similar to that of self-fulfilling prophesies of Merton, the network effects of Coleman and the bandwagon effects of Granovetter (Donati, 2015:66) and leaving no room for critique

Implementazione ed ottimizzazione di algoritmi per l'analisi di Biomedical Big Data

Big Data Analytics poses many challenges to the research community who has to handle several computational problems related to the vast amount of data. An increasing interest involves Biomedical data, aiming to get the so-called personalized medicine, where therapy plans are designed on the specific genotype and phenotype of an individual patient and algorithm optimization plays a key role to this purpose. In this work we discuss about several topics related to Biomedical Big Data Analytics, with a special attention to numerical issues and algorithmic solutions related to them. We introduce a novel feature selection algorithm tailored on omics datasets, proving its efficiency on synthetic and real high-throughput genomic datasets. We tested our algorithm against other state-of-art methods obtaining better or comparable results. We also implemented and optimized different types of deep learning models, testing their efficiency on biomedical image processing tasks. Three novel frameworks for deep learning neural network models development are discussed and used to describe the numerical improvements proposed on various topics. In the first implementation we optimize two Super Resolution models showing their results on NMR images and proving their efficiency in generalization tasks without a retraining. The second optimization involves a state-of-art Object Detection neural network architecture, obtaining a significant speedup in computational performance. In the third application we discuss about femur head segmentation problem on CT images using deep learning algorithms. The last section of this work involves the implementation of a novel biomedical database obtained by the harmonization of multiple data sources, that provides network-like relationships between biomedical entities. Data related to diseases and other biological relates were mined using web-scraping methods and a novel natural language processing pipeline was designed to maximize the overlap between the different data sources involved in this project

Street Smart in 5G : Vehicular Applications, Communication, and Computing

Recent advances in information technology have revolutionized the automotive industry, paving the way for next-generation smart vehicular mobility. Specifically, vehicles, roadside units, and other road users can collaborate to deliver novel services and applications that leverage, for example, big vehicular data and machine learning. Relatedly, fifth-generation cellular networks (5G) are being developed and deployed for low-latency, high-reliability, and high bandwidth communications. While 5G adjacent technologies such as edge computing allow for data offloading and computation at the edge of the network thus ensuring even lower latency and context-awareness. Overall, these developments provide a rich ecosystem for the evolution of vehicular applications, communications, and computing. Therefore in this work, we aim at providing a comprehensive overview of the state of research on vehicular computing in the emerging age of 5G and big data. In particular, this paper highlights several vehicular applications, investigates their requirements, details the enabling communication technologies and computing paradigms, and studies data analytics pipelines and the integration of these enabling technologies in response to application requirements.Peer reviewe

A systematic literature review of data science, data analytics and machine learning applied to healthcare engineering systems

The objective of this paper is to assess and synthesize the published literature related to the application of data analytics, big data, data mining, and machine learning to healthcare engineering systems. A systematic literature review (SLR) was conducted to obtain the most relevant papers related to the research study from three different platforms: EBSCOhost, ProQuest, and Scopus. The literature was assessed and synthesized, conducting analysis associated with the publications, authors, and content. From the SLR, 576 publications were identified and analyzed. The research area seems to show the characteristics of a growing field with new research areas evolving and applications being explored. In addition, the main authors and collaboration groups publishing in this research area were identified throughout a social network analysis. This could lead new and current authors to identify researchers with common interests on the field. The use of the SLR methodology does not guarantee that all relevant publications related to the research are covered and analyzed. However, the authors’ previous knowledge and the nature of the publications were used to select different platforms. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this paper represents the most comprehensive literature-based study on the fields of data analytics, big data, data mining, and machine learning applied to healthcare engineering systems.N/

Data mining and predictive analytics application on cellular networks to monitor and optimize quality of service and customer experience

This research study focuses on the application models of Data Mining and Machine Learning covering cellular network traffic, in the objective to arm Mobile Network Operators with full view of performance branches (Services, Device, Subscribers). The purpose is to optimize and minimize the time to detect service and subscriber patterns behaviour. Different data mining techniques and predictive algorithms have been applied on real cellular network datasets to uncover different data usage patterns using specific Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Key Quality Indicators (KQI). The following tools will be used to develop the concept: RStudio for Machine Learning and process visualization, Apache Spark, SparkSQL for data and big data processing and clicData for service Visualization. Two use cases have been studied during this research. In the first study, the process of Data and predictive Analytics are fully applied in the field of Telecommunications to efficiently address users’ experience, in the goal of increasing customer loyalty and decreasing churn or customer attrition. Using real cellular network transactions, prediction analytics are used to predict customers who are likely to churn, which can result in revenue loss. Prediction algorithms and models including Classification Tree, Random Forest, Neural Networks and Gradient boosting have been used with an exploratory Data Analysis, determining relationship between predicting variables. The data is segmented in to two, a training set to train the model and a testing set to test the model. The evaluation of the best performing model is based on the prediction accuracy, sensitivity, specificity and the Confusion Matrix on the test set. The second use case analyses Service Quality Management using modern data mining techniques and the advantages of in-memory big data processing with Apache Spark and SparkSQL to save cost on tool investment; thus, a low-cost Service Quality Management model is proposed and analyzed. With increase in Smart phone adoption, access to mobile internet services, applications such as streaming, interactive chats require a certain service level to ensure customer satisfaction. As a result, an SQM framework is developed with Service Quality Index (SQI) and Key Performance Index (KPI). The research concludes with recommendations and future studies around modern technology applications in Telecommunications including Internet of Things (IoT), Cloud and recommender systems.Cellular networks have evolved and are still evolving, from traditional GSM (Global System for Mobile Communication) Circuit switched which only supported voice services and extremely low data rate, to LTE all Packet networks accommodating high speed data used for various service applications such as video streaming, video conferencing, heavy torrent download; and for say in a near future the roll-out of the Fifth generation (5G) cellular networks, intended to support complex technologies such as IoT (Internet of Things), High Definition video streaming and projected to cater massive amount of data. With high demand on network services and easy access to mobile phones, billions of transactions are performed by subscribers. The transactions appear in the form of SMSs, Handovers, voice calls, web browsing activities, video and audio streaming, heavy downloads and uploads. Nevertheless, the stormy growth in data traffic and the high requirements of new services introduce bigger challenges to Mobile Network Operators (NMOs) in analysing the big data traffic flowing in the network. Therefore, Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE) turn in to a challenge. Inefficiency in mining, analysing data and applying predictive intelligence on network traffic can produce high rate of unhappy customers or subscribers, loss on revenue and negative services’ perspective. Researchers and Service Providers are investing in Data mining, Machine Learning and AI (Artificial Intelligence) methods to manage services and experience. This research study focuses on the application models of Data Mining and Machine Learning covering network traffic, in the objective to arm Mobile Network Operators with full view of performance branches (Services, Device, Subscribers). The purpose is to optimize and minimize the time to detect service and subscriber patterns behaviour. Different data mining techniques and predictive algorithms will be applied on cellular network datasets to uncover different data usage patterns using specific Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Key Quality Indicators (KQI). The following tools will be used to develop the concept: R-Studio for Machine Learning, Apache Spark, SparkSQL for data processing and clicData for Visualization.Electrical and Mining EngineeringM. Tech (Electrical Engineering