A feasibility study for the provision of electronic healthcare tools and services in areas of Greece, Cyprus and Italy

Background: Through this paper, we present the initial steps for the creation of an integrated platform for the provision of a series of eHealth tools and services to both citizens and travelers in isolated areas of thesoutheast Mediterranean, and on board ships travelling across it. The platform was created through an INTERREG IIIB ARCHIMED project called INTERMED. Methods: The support of primary healthcare, home care and the continuous education of physicians are the three major issues that the proposed platform is trying to facilitate. The proposed system is based on state-of-the-art telemedicine systems and is able to provide the following healthcare services: i) Telecollaboration and teleconsultation services between remotely located healthcare providers, ii) telemedicine services in emergencies, iii) home telecare services for "at risk" citizens such as the elderly and patients with chronic diseases, and iv) eLearning services for the continuous training through seminars of both healthcare personnel (physicians, nurses etc) and persons supporting "at risk" citizens. These systems support data transmission over simple phone lines, internet connections, integrated services digital network/digital subscriber lines, satellite links, mobile networks (GPRS/3G), and wireless local area networks. The data corresponds, among others, to voice, vital biosignals, still medical images, video, and data used by eLearning applications. The proposed platform comprises several systems, each supporting different services. These were integrated using a common data storage and exchange scheme in order to achieve system interoperability in terms of software, language and national characteristics. Results: The platform has been installed and evaluated in different rural and urban sites in Greece, Cyprus and Italy. The evaluation was mainly related to technical issues and user satisfaction. The selected sites are, among others, rural health centers, ambulances, homes of "at-risk" citizens, and a ferry. Conclusions: The results proved the functionality and utilization of the platform in various rural places in Greece, Cyprus and Italy. However, further actions are needed to enable the local healthcare systems and the different population groups to be familiarized with, and use in their everyday lives, mature technological solutions for the provision of healthcare services

The VITI program: Final Report

In this report we present our findings and results from the VITI program in 2000. The focus of the research work undertaken by VITI has been to provide electronic meeting environments that are easy to use and afford as natural a collaboration experience as possible. This final report is structured into three parts. Part one concerns the VITI infrastructure and consists of two sections. The first section describes the process of establishing the infrastructure, concentrating on how the work was done. The second section presents the actual infrastructure that is in place today, concentrating on what has been put in place. Part two examines the use the VITI infrastructure has been put to, giving examples of activities it has supported and discussing strengths and weaknesses that have emerged through this use. Finally part three considers the future of distributed electronic meeting environments. It is recommended that the report be read in the order in which it is presented. However, each section has been written as a standalone document and can be read independently of the others

Creating Technology-enhanced Practice: A University-Home Care-Corporate Alliance

Insuring full benefit of consumer health informatics innovations requires integrating the technology into nursing practice, yet many valuable innovations are developed in research projects and never reach full integration. To avoid this outcome, a team of researchers partnered with a home care agency’s staff and patients and their corporate parent’s Information Systems and Research group to create a Technology-Enhanced Practice (TEP) designed to enhance care of home bound patients and their family care givers. The technology core of TEP, the HeartCare2 web site, was built in a collaborative process and deployed within the existing patient portal of the clinical partner. This paper describes the innovation and the experience of bringing it into full operation

The usefulness of Usability and User Experience evaluation methods on an e-Learning platform development from a developer's perspective: A case study

The development of a web platform is a complex and interdisciplinary task, where people with different roles such as project manager, designer or developer participate. Different usability and User Experience evaluation methods can be used in each stage of the development life cycle, but not all of them have the same influence in the software development and in the final product or system. This article presents the study of the impact of these methods applied in the context of an e-Learning platform development. The results show that the impact has been strong from a developer's perspective. Developer team members considered that usability and User Experience evaluation allowed them mainly to identify design mistakes, improve the platform's usability and understand the end users and their needs in a better way. Interviews with potential users, clickmaps and scrollmaps were rated as the most useful methods. Finally, these methods were considered unanimously very useful in the context of the entire software development, only comparable to SCRUM meetings and overcoming the rest of involved factors

Information Outlook, June 1997

Volume 1, Issue 6https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/sla_io_1997/1005/thumbnail.jp

Knowledge Society and the flat World of Thomas L. Friedman

The traditional society became lately the knowledge society. As the name states, knowledge is the most important asset of our times. There are different opinions on knowledge society and on globalization, but we will deal in this paper with Thomas Friedman’s flat world. The world got smaller with the developments in information and communication technology. Globalization has three periods and ten flatteners widely described by Friedman in his book. Technology changes the way we communicate, collaborate and share our knowledge.knowledge society, information technology, globalization, flattener

Linking law: practical guidelines for delivering law to rural Victoria using e-learning technologies

Provides information, analysis and practical tips for organisations seeking to use digital technologies to enhance general and professional legal education for people living in remote, rural and regional (RRR) Victoria. Introduction These guidelines provide information, analysis and practical tips for organisations seeking to use digital technologies to enhance general and professional legal education for people living in remote, rural and regional (RRR) Victoria. Given the difficulties people living in RRR areas still face in having to take time away from work and home and travel long distances to attend many legal educational events, it makes sense to explore these options. However, it can be particularly difficult for organisations seeking to engage with RRR people to choose between educational technologies and techniques, given the considerable hype and movement in the field at present. Options are plentiful and complex, with multiple practical and organisational considerations attached to each, and the situation changes frequently as technologies improve. The increasing reach of high-speed internet and mobile networks is creating opportunities for different and more engaging educational methods to be used in most regional and rural areas, but fast internet is not the be-all and end-all. There is much that can be achieved with intelligent use of a range of lower-tech options including low-speed internet, phone, DVD and regional site-based educational technologies. These guidelines aim to identify a range of practical, digitally based options that are available for different educational purposes, and provide sets of protocols for implementing these options so that RRR people can gain maximum educational benefit and organisations can access guidance on best practice. In many cases, standard good practice in the use of these technologies is all that is needed to include people living in RRR areas effectively in community and professional education. Many metropolitan participants can also benefit from the availability of low-bandwidth options, recordings, provision for individual online access to videoconferenced events and so on. This document begins with an overview of the landscape for digitally based legal community and professional education in RRR Victoria. The requirements of RRR people for legal information and assistance have been described well in recent publications. There is no doubt that digital technologies can help address some of these needs, but technical and non-technical barriers exist, and section 3, ‘Needs, capabilities and barriers in the legal digital education landscape’, sets out briefly what the relevant capabilities and barriers are for RRR people in Victoria. The major part of this document contains guidelines for choosing and implementing a wide range of digitally based education options. The guidelines highlight a range of factors reflecting important practical and pedagogical concerns, including access, cost, need for specialist IT support, cohort size, and ability to support particular learning designs and types of communication. A planning framework focusing on educational approaches is provided as a starting point in section 4, ‘Planning for learning using digital technologies’

An introduction to learning technology in tertiary education in the UK.

Contents: 1. The Learning Technology Arena 2. The Learning Technology Community 3. Learning Technology Tools 4. Key issues and developments in the Learning Technology Field 5. Implementing Learning Technologies 6. Further Resource