Ethics and Design in the Brazilian Context

Often driven by practical and immediate requirements, more and more people are incorporating technology into a variety of aspects of their lives, often without reflecting on the consequences of using them. On the other hand, studies on interactive system development that lead to behavioral change have been gaining ground on the agenda of large HCI conferences. This movement brings to the forefront the fundamental issues of ethics in design and technology use. A designer’s intentions, when directing certain actions or behaviors, are not always explicit or desired by the stakeholders affected by the use of the technology. Systems that induce an undesired purchase, or even those that use conditioning strategies to cause a behavioral change are examples of such intentions. The challenge proposed is therefore about the relationship between design and personal freedom in a way that these technology users do not become victims, either passively or submissively, of the effects of its use. This advance allows for the redefinition of the relationship between man and technology, and the application of new forms of designing and developing interactive systems that take into account the ethical aspects of this relationship

ICTs and Family Physicians Human Capital Upgrading.Delightful Chimera or Harsh Reality?

In the present paper we provide a quantitative assessment of ICTs role in Family Physicians/General Practitioners (GPs) medical daily practice and scientific performance. It focus on the Portuguese underexplored context, where the Health Sector has been under pressure for wide and profound reforms. These reforms have been extensively relying on ICTs, namely on the Internet. Based on the responses of 342 GPs, we concluded that 94% uses the Internet and 57% agrees that the Internet is essential to their medical daily practice. This is a slightly lower percentage than that observed for other European physicians (62%). GPs tend to use the Internet mainly for professional purposes. On average, they spend 10 hours/week on the Internet for professional purposes. Further data shows that to have or to be enrolled in advanced training fosters the use of the Internet for professional purposes, which in its turn, tends to grant GPs access to more and up-to-date information and knowledge on these matters. A worrisome evidence is that at the workplace, a substantial proportion of GPs (over 70%) do not use the Internet or other related ICTs, namely Telemedicine. Although Electronic Prescription is used by roughly 60% of the respondent GPs, for all other activities – teleconsultation, telediagnosis, and telemonitoring – only a meagre percentage of physicians (10%) claim to use such technologies. Thus, Telemedicine at the workplace is still a chimera. Notwithstanding such dishearten scenario, our data shows that the Internet for the respondent GPs has a critical role on updating and improving their professional knowledge basis. They recognise, however, that the vast majority of GPs lack specific and general training in ICT-related technologies. In fact, half of them agree that they need to attend specific training actions on ICTs. A large percentage of GPs admitted that in the previous year they did not take any professional training targeting ICTs and those who did undertook rather short-term (less than one week) courses: Because of that, such training handicap uncovers that a large part of Portuguese GPs may be unable to reap the benefits of ICTs in their daily medical practice.GPs; Human Capital; Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs)

Creating a Religious Properties Database for the City of New Bedford: an Analysis of Best Practices and Available Systems

This policy analysis was written to provide the city of New Bedford, the Waterfront Historic Area League, Inter-church Council of Greater New Bedford, and the congregations with possible database systems to consider in creating their historic religious properties database. It also provides the best methodology to use when choosing a database. Deciding on who will be involved in the choosing process, determining a budget, and listing the mandatory requirements the database should provide are all important to consider in the decision making process

The New Innovation Frontier? Intellectual Property and the European Court of Human Rights

This article provides the first comprehensive analysis of the intellectual property case law of the European Court of Human Rights ( ECHR ). Within the last three years, the ECHR has issued a trio of intellectual property rulings interpreting the right of property protected by the European Convention on Human Rights. These decisions, which view intellectual property through the lens of fundamental rights, have important consequences for the region\u27s innovation and creativity policies. The cases are also emblematic of a growing number of controversies in domestic and international law over the intersection of human rights, property rights, and intellectual property. The article analyzes this trend and uses it to develop three distinct paradigms to identify the proper place of intellectual property issues in the European human rights system. It concludes that the ECHR should find a violation of the right of property in intellectual property disputes only in cases of arbitrary government conduct

The cloud paradigm: Are you tuned for the lyrics?

Major players, business angels and opinion-makers are broadcasting beguiled lyrics on the most recent IT hype: your software should ascend to the clouds. There are many clouds and the stake is high. Distractedly, many of us became assiduous users of the cloud, but perhaps due to the legacy systems and legacy knowledge, IT professionals, mainly those many that work in business information systems for the long tail, are not as much plunged into producing cloud-based systems for their clients. This keynote will delve into several aspects of this cloud paradigm, from more generic concerns regarding security and value for money, to more specific worries that reach software engineers in general. Do we need a different software development process? Are development techniques and tools mature enough? What about the role of open-source in the cloud? How do we assess the quality in cloud-based development? Please stay tuned for more!info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Love thy neighbour? Coronavirus politics and their impact on EU freedoms and rule of law in the Schengen Area. CEPS Paper in Liberty and Security in Europe No. 2020-04, April 2020

Restrictions on international and intra-EU traffic of persons have been at the heart of the political responses to the coronavirus pandemic. Border controls and suspensions of entry and exist have been presented as key policy priorities to prevent the spread of the virus in the EU. These measures pose however fundamental questions as to the raison d’être of the Union, and the foundations of the Single Market, the Schengen system and European citizenship. They are also profoundly intrusive regarding the fundamental rights of individuals and in many cases derogate domestic and EU rule of law checks and balances over executive decisions. This Paper examines the legality of cross-border mobility restrictions introduced in the name of COVID-19. It provides an in-depth typology and comprehensive assessment of measures including the reintroduction of internal border controls, restrictions of specific international traffic modes and intra-EU and international ‘travel bans’. Many of these have been adopted in combination with declarations of a ‘state of emergency’

Digital contact tracing and data protection: assessing the French and Portuguese applications

The rapid outbreak of COVID-19 has necessitated a global response to manage the transmission, spread, and impact of the virus. Many countries started developing digital contact tracing applications to contribute to the process of lifting the restrictions imposed on its citizens. Generally, the protection of personal data is a right that appears in constitutional and legal provisions, and its processing can only be performed under very restricted circumstances, the protection of health being a valid justification. This article focusses on the systems developed as digital contact tracing tools in France (StopCovid) and in Portugal (STAYAWAY COVID), presenting their characteristics and the most relevant aspects concerning the processing of personal data. The most relevant positive characteristics of these systems are their voluntary adoption, their developers’ concern with the people’s security and privacy, and the transparency of their functioning. With the negative characteristics, the most relevant are the restricted interoperability with the systems from other EU countries, and the permanent risk to people’s privacy of collecting lists of contacts and the circumstances of their interactions with other users of the systems

Remote support to victims of violence against women and domestic violence during the COVID-19 pandemic

Purpose – This paper aims to characterize the type of support provided to victims of violence against women and domestic violence (VAWDV) during the first lockdown, assessing the training of professionals to use remote support (RS). Design/methodology/approach – This cross-sectional study involves a sample of 196 support professionals, mainly women (91.8%) and who integrate the Portuguese National Support Network for victims of domestic violence (NSNVDV) (Mean age = 36.49; SD = 10.52). Findings – Telephone emerges as themain RS communication media used in the lockdown (43.9%) and the emergency state periods (57.1%). Participants reported to have never used any social applications (41.8% vs 41.8%) or videoconference (46.4% vs 58.2%), in both periods assessed, i.e. lockdown and emergency state, respectively, and 82.7% assumed to have no training with RS to assist VAWDV victims. However, support professionals recognized several advantages in using RS such as dealing with isolation, reducing inhibition, fear and shame and in promoting the victims’ empowerment. Research limitations/implications – Given the exploratory nature of this study, only descriptive analyzes were conducted. Originality/value – During the COVID-19 pandemic, little is known about effective RS given by professionals to victims of VAWDV in the Portuguese context. The paper aims to add knowledge to the studied field.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Developing a distributed electronic health-record store for India

The DIGHT project is addressing the problem of building a scalable and highly available information store for the Electronic Health Records (EHRs) of the over one billion citizens of India

Internet of things for medication control: service implementation and testing

RFID technology (Radio Frequency IDentification) enables putting an identification label (e.g. tag) into a certain object and, by means of a reader, get the information related to it without any physical contact. The use of these tags in medical context enables a rapid and precise identification of each patient and, by means of Internet of Things (IoT), enables a ubiquitous and quick access to medical related records. These technologies, RFID and IoT, integrated within a suitable system, promote a better physician-patient interaction. A simple IoT-enabled system can send warnings to any physician, nurse or other health caregiver. Therefore, with a simple IoT architecture one may remotely monitor and control the patient's well being. This paper presents an IoT architecture, using RFID tags, able to easily and remotely establish a medication control system, beginning from physicians prescription to pharmaceutical drug administration. This paper presents the implementation and analysis of a prototype service, with a web interface, allowing for a first evaluation of the proposed service. The prototype service - based on RFID, EPC (Electronic Product Code) and ONS (Object Name Service) - and its web interface are presented and evaluated. Some use cases are presented and evaluated using this prototype service entitled "RFID-based IoT for medication control".Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT