Supporting eradication of maternal child malnutrition in developing countries: a case from Nicaragua scenario.

World Health Organization actively stresses the importance of health, nutrition and well-being of the mother to foster children development. This issue is critical in the rural areas of developing countries where monitoring of health status of children is hardly performed since population suffers from a lack of access to health care. The aim of this research is to design, implement and deploy an e-health information and communication system to support health care in 26 rural communities of Cusmapa, Nicaragua. The final solution consists of an hybrid WiMAX/WiFi architecture that provides good quality communications through VoIP taking advantage of low cost WiFi mobile devices. Thus, a WiMAX base station was installed in the health center to provide a radio link with the rural health post "El Carrizo" sited 7,4 km. in line of sight. This service makes possible personal broadband voice and data communication facilities with the health center based on WiFi enabled devices such as laptops and cellular phones without communications cost. A free software PBX was installed at "San José de Cusmapa" health care site to enable communications for physicians, nurses and a technician through mobile telephones with IEEE 802.11 b/g protocol and SIP provided by the project. Additionally, the rural health post staff (midwives, brigade) received two mobile phones with these same features. In a complementary way, the deployed health information system is ready to analyze the distribution of maternal-child population at risk and the distribution of diseases on a geographical baseline. The system works with four information layers: fertile women, children, people with disabilities and diseases. Thus, authorized staff can obtain reports about prenatal monitoring tasks, status of the communities, malnutrition, and immunization control. Data need to be updated by health care staff in order to timely detect the source of problem to implement measures addressed to alleviate and improve health status population permanently. Ongoing research is focused on a mobile platform that collects and automatically updates in the information system, the height and weight of the children locally gathered in the remote communities. This research is being granted by the program Millennium Rural Communities of the Technical University of Madrid

Mobile Devices and Android Apps for Drug Administration to Patients with Parkinson’s Disease

Parkinsonova bolezen (PB) je nevrodegenerativna motnja, ki se pojavi po 60. letu starosti, pri nekaterih lahko tudi prej. Najbolj opazni in težki simptomi so tresavica, bradikinezija (počasno gibanje), togost in nestabilnost pacienta. Za PB znanost in medicina še nista odkrili zdravila, so pa na voljo terapije, ki pomagajo omiliti simptome, kot sta dopaminska terapija in globinska možganska stimulacija. Najbolj pogosta terapija med PB pacienti je dopaminska terapija, vendar ima tudi neprijetne stranske učinke, kot je disleksija: resnost stranskega učinka je odvisna od velikosti odmerka zdravila. Številne raziskave se ukvarjajo s problematiko disleksije, toda zelo malo se jih usmerja v osebnostni pristop k terapiji za PB. Ta raziskava je usmerjena v osebnostni pristop zdravljenja PB s pomočjo mobilnih in brezžičnih naprav za ocenitev resnosti simptomov PB ter primernega odmerka zdravila za pacienta s PB preko pritiska na ekran pametnega telefona. Aplicirani pritisk je preveden v analogni električni signal in nato v niz digitalnih podatkov, ki so s pomočjo CPLD-ja (Complex Programming Logic Device) poslani do pametnega telefona. Z aplikacijo, vključeno na androidnem operacijskem sistemu, so digitalni podatki obdelani preko različnih matematičnih funkcij: FFT (Fast Fourier Transformations), reakcijski čas in čas premikanja ter s prenosno funkcijo tretjega reda za izračun priporočljive količine zdravila. Raziskava obravnava tudi problematiko ustvarjanja novih prenosnih naprav, ki bi s svojo prisotnostjo na trgu prispevale k boljšemu zdravju prebivalstva, ter njihove prednosti in slabosti.Parkinson\u27s disease (PD) is neurodegenerative disorder, which usually occurs after the age of 60 and in some cases even earlier. One of the most notable and severe symptoms are tremor, bradykinesia (slow-movement), rigidity and postural instability. Medical sciences haven’t found a cure for the PD, however there are treatments like Dopamine treatment and Deep Brain Stimulation, which may alleviate the symptoms. The most frequently used Dopamine treatment, may have severe side effect, such as Dyskinesia, which brings new barrier into PD patients’ lives: the severity of Dyskinesia is related to the level of drug administration to PD patients. Various approaches to addressing Dyskinesia do exist, but none of them administers PD drugs according to individual patient needs. This research proposes the use of mobile and wireless hardware and software technologies for estimating the severity of PD symptoms, and administering PD drugs according to the measurements of PD patient’s pressures of his/her finger on the screen of a mobile device. This pressure, translated into analogue voltage, and digital bits, with the help of CPLD (Complex Programming Logic Device) is sent to a smart phone and taken by an App in the Android environment. The computations performed by the App will through FFT (Fast Fourier Transformations), Reaction time and Movement time calculate the severity of the PD symptoms and decide on the appropriate amount of drug administration for that patient, at the moment when the measurement has been taken. The novelty of the proposal is twofold. It allows a high level of personalisation in the PD treatment and uses the latest hardware and software technologies to bring new solution in the field of drug administration to PD patients. The research also debates the issue of creating new gadgets for pervasive healthcare, which is juxtaposed to the powerful Android operating environments and proliferation of smart phones. They can together challenge our need for developing more healthcare gadgets in future