41,418 research outputs found
The Ethical Implications of Personal Health Monitoring
Personal Health Monitoring (PHM) uses electronic devices which monitor and record health-related data outside a hospital, usually within the home. This paper examines the ethical issues raised by PHM. Eight themes describing the ethical implications of PHM are identified through a review of 68 academic articles concerning PHM. The identified themes include privacy, autonomy, obtrusiveness and visibility, stigma and identity, medicalisation, social isolation, delivery of care, and safety and technological need. The issues around each of these are discussed. The system / lifeworld perspective of Habermas is applied to develop an understanding of the role of PHMs as mediators of communication between the institutional and the domestic environment. Furthermore, links are established between the ethical issues to demonstrate that the ethics of PHM involves a complex network of ethical interactions. The paper extends the discussion of the critical effect PHMs have on the patientâs identity and concludes that a holistic understanding of the ethical issues surrounding PHMs will help both researchers and practitioners in developing effective PHM implementations
Assistive technology design and development for acceptable robotics companions for ageing years
© 2013 Farshid Amirabdollahian et al., licensee Versita Sp. z o. o. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs license, which means that the text may be used for non-commercial purposes, provided credit is given to the author.A new stream of research and development responds to changes in life expectancy across the world. It includes technologies which enhance well-being of individuals, specifically for older people. The ACCOMPANY project focuses on home companion technologies and issues surrounding technology development for assistive purposes. The project responds to some overlooked aspects of technology design, divided into multiple areas such as empathic and social human-robot interaction, robot learning and memory visualisation, and monitoring personsâ activities at home. To bring these aspects together, a dedicated task is identified to ensure technological integration of these multiple approaches on an existing robotic platform, Care-O-BotÂź3 in the context of a smart-home environment utilising a multitude of sensor arrays. Formative and summative evaluation cycles are then used to assess the emerging prototype towards identifying acceptable behaviours and roles for the robot, for example role as a butler or a trainer, while also comparing user requirements to achieved progress. In a novel approach, the project considers ethical concerns and by highlighting principles such as autonomy, independence, enablement, safety and privacy, it embarks on providing a discussion medium where user views on these principles and the existing tension between some of these principles, for example tension between privacy and autonomy over safety, can be captured and considered in design cycles and throughout project developmentsPeer reviewe
Health Diplomacy the Adaptation of Global Health Interventions to Local Needs in sub-Saharan Africa and Thailand: Evaluating Findings from Project Accept (HPTN 043).
Study-based global health interventions, especially those that are conducted on an international or multi-site basis, frequently require site-specific adaptations in order to (1) respond to socio-cultural differences in risk determinants, (2) to make interventions more relevant to target population needs, and (3) in recognition of 'global health diplomacy' issues. We report on the adaptations development, approval and implementation process from the Project Accept voluntary counseling and testing, community mobilization and post-test support services intervention. We reviewed all relevant documentation collected during the study intervention period (e.g. monthly progress reports; bi-annual steering committee presentations) and conducted a series of semi-structured interviews with project directors and between 12 and 23 field staff at each study site in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Thailand and Tanzania during 2009. Respondents were asked to describe (1) the adaptations development and approval process and (2) the most successful site-specific adaptations from the perspective of facilitating intervention implementation. Across sites, proposed adaptations were identified by field staff and submitted to project directors for review on a formally planned basis. The cross-site intervention sub-committee then ensured fidelity to the study protocol before approval. Successfully-implemented adaptations included: intervention delivery adaptations (e.g. development of tailored counseling messages for immigrant labour groups in South Africa) political, environmental and infrastructural adaptations (e.g. use of local community centers as VCT venues in Zimbabwe); religious adaptations (e.g. dividing clients by gender in Muslim areas of Tanzania); economic adaptations (e.g. co-provision of income generating skills classes in Zimbabwe); epidemiological adaptations (e.g. provision of 'youth-friendly' services in South Africa, Zimbabwe and Tanzania), and social adaptations (e.g. modification of terminology to local dialects in Thailand: and adjustment of service delivery schedules to suit seasonal and daily work schedules across sites). Adaptation selection, development and approval during multi-site global health research studies should be a planned process that maintains fidelity to the study protocol. The successful implementation of appropriate site-specific adaptations may have important implications for intervention implementation, from both a service uptake and a global health diplomacy perspective
Ethical User stories : Industrial study
Publisher Copyright: © 2022 Copyright for this paper by its authorsIn Port terminals a progressive change is underway in digitalizing traditional systems to SMART systems with the aid of AI. This study follows one of such progressions, the SMARTER project. SMARTER is a sub research and development project of the Sea for Value program of DIMECC company, Finland to create replicable models for digitalization for future terminals which involves the use of AI enabled tools. AI and Autonomous Systems (AS) are the direction that software systems are taking today. But due to ethical challenges involved in the use of AI systems and increased emphasis on ethical practices in the use and design of AI systems, our study provides an ethical angle, Ethical User Stories (EUS). We use an ethically aligned design tool the ECCOLA method to transfer ethical requirements into EUS for non-functional requirements for an aspect of the logistics system, passenger flow. Over the span of six months, 125 EUS using the ECCOLA method were collected through a series of workshops for the passenger flow use case and the findings are revealed in this paper. This project is in the field of maritime industry and concentrates on digitalization of port terminals and this particular paper focuses on the passenger flow. Results are positive towards the practice of Ethical User Stories.Peer reviewe
Quantum surveillance and 'shared secrets'. A biometric step too far? CEPS Liberty and Security in Europe, July 2010
It is no longer sensible to regard biometrics as having neutral socio-economic, legal and political impacts. Newer generation biometrics are fluid and include behavioural and emotional data that can be combined with other data. Therefore, a range of issues needs to be reviewed in light of the increasing privatisation of âsecurityâ that escapes effective, democratic parliamentary and regulatory control and oversight at national, international and EU levels, argues Juliet Lodge, Professor and co-Director of the Jean Monnet European Centre of Excellence at the University of Leeds, U
A Structural Equation Model for implementation of Smart Card Technology in public healthcare
The improvement of health care, efficiency, safety, and quality of delivery and access for patients highly portray a rather significant increase in public healthcare. The emergence of this proliferation of healthcare technology is then expected to grow. Therefore, Information technology (IT) has become significant part of providing consistent care quality by healthcare professionals to patients. The study seeks to explain on factors that influence the implementation of Smart Card Technology in South African public healthcare institutions. This was a cross-sectional study conducted in four Tshwane hospitals in Gauteng province, South Africa in 2021. A quantitative research method approach was used. respondents were selected using the purposive sampling method. using a self-administered questionnaire completed by (n=406) healthcare professionals from Steve Biko academic hospital, Tshwane District hospital, Kalafong hospital and Pretoria West Hospital were analysed. The structural equation modeling (SEM) and principal component analysis (PCA) methods in statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) were used to analyse the data. The factor analysis in this study used 15 variables were used for the conceptual framework. The findings generally supported the hypothesized model. The study recommends that a framework for the implementation of SCT be developed in public healthcare
The intention to use mobile digital library technology: A focus group study in the United Arab Emirates
IGI Global (âIGIâ) granted Brunel University London the permission to archive this article in BURA (http://bura.brunel.ac.uk).This paper presents a qualitative study on student adoption of mobile library technology in a developing world context. The findings support the applicability of a number of existing constructs from the technology acceptance literature, such as perceived ease of use, social influence and trust. However, they also suggest the need to modify some adoption factors previously found in the literature to fit the specific context of mobile library adoption. Perceived value was found to be a more relevant overarching adoption factor than perceived usefulness for this context. Facilitating conditions were identified as important but these differed somewhat from those covered in earlier literature. The research also uncovered the importance of trialability for this type of application. The findings provide a basis for improving theory in the area of mobile library adoption and suggest a number of practical design recommendations to help designers of mobile library technology to create applications that meet user needs
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Towards successful e-Payment systems: An empirical identification and analysis of critical factors
This research aims to explore the factors relating to e-payment system to be implemented where electronic processes enable the facilitation of online transactions. A secondary analysis revealed six factors which are argued to be âcriticalâ for customer adoption of these systems. The findings were further augmented by an online survey of 155 respondents where the perceived importance of the critical factors were correlated through: security, trust, perceived advantage, assurance seals, perceived risk and usability. The results demonstrate that three of the critical factors were necessary (security, advantage, web assurance seals) and three were relatively sufficient (perceived risk, trust and usability) through customer intentions to adopt an e-payment system. The study provides a valid overall awareness that these critical factors are important in designing a successful e-payment system
Big data in higher education: an action research on managing student engagement with business intelligence
This research aims to explore the value of Big Data in student engagement management. It presents an action research on applying BI in a UK higher education institution that has developed and implemented a student engagement tracking system (SES) for better student engagement management. The SES collects data from various sources, including RFID tracking devices across many locations in the campus and student online activities. This public funded research project has enhanced the current SES with BI solutions and raised awareness on the value of the Big Data in improving student experience. The action research concerns with the organizational wide development and deployment of Intelligent Student Engagement System involving a diverse range of stakeholders. The activities undertaken to date have revealed interesting findings and implications for advancing our understanding and research in leveraging the benefit of the Big Data in Higher Education from a socio-technical perspective
New Technologies and Mixed-Use Convergence How Humans and Algorithms are Adapting to Each Other
Human experience with technology has shifted from technological contexts requiring occasional intervention by a fraction of people mostly in command of technologies, to technological contexts that require constant ongoing participation from most people to complete tasks. We examine the current state of `mixed-use' new technologies integration with legacy systems, and whether the human assistance required to complete tasks and processes could function as a training ground for future smart systems, or whether increasing `co-dependence with' or `training of' algorithmic systems, enhancing task completion and inadvertently educating systems in human behaviour and intelligence, will simply subsume people into the algorithmic landscape. As the Internet of Things (IoT) arises in conjunction with advancing robotics and drone technology, semi and fully automated algorithmic systems are being developed that intersect with human experience in new and heterogeneous ways. Many new technologies are not yet flexible enough to support the choices people require in their daily lives, due to limitations in the algorithmic `logics' used that restrict options to predetermined pathways conceived of by programmers. This greatly limits human agency, and presently the potential to overcome problems that arise in processes. In this mixed-use period, we have the opportunity to develop new ways to address ethical guidance as knowledge that machines can learn. We explore promoting embedding of ethically-based principles into automated contexts through: (1) developing mutually agreed automated external ethical review systems (human or otherwise) that evaluate conformance across multiple ethical codes and provide feedback to designers, agents, and users on the distribution of conformance; (2) focusing on review systems to drive distributed development of embedded ethical principles in individual services by responding to this feedback to develop ongoing correction through dynamic adaption or incremental releases; and (3) using multi-agent simulation tools to forecast scenarios in real time
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