Review on the Use of ICT Driven Solutions Towards Managing Global Pandemics

A pandemic is a contagious disease outbreak that happens over a large geographic area and affects a great portion of the population while new pathogens appear for which people have less immunity and no vaccines are available. The disease can spread from person to person in a very short time. Health workers are at greater risk of infection because of patients who are carriers. In the 21st century, where everyone is connected through digital technologies, information and communication technology (ICT) plays a critical role in improving healthcare for individuals and larger communities. ICT can be divided into a wide variety of application domains that signify its importance as a major technological paradigm. It is currently drawing large attention because of its potential to alleviate the burden on healthcare systems caused by the rise in chronic diseases, aging populations and pandemic situations. This study surveyed substantial knowledge on how effective ICT healthcare solutions can be used towards managing global pandemics. In order to make it more comprehensive, we also present a four-phase strategic framework that can be deployed to alleviate the strain on healthcare resources during a pandemic, which was derived from the reviewed literature. Further, we also discuss how ICT technologies can be used towards managing pandemic situations chronographically during the transformation from a simple disease outbreak into a global pandemic

Healthy Aging through Pervasive Predictive Analytics for Prevention and Rehabilitation of Chronic Conditions

The current aging of the population is linked to many societalchallenges, especially in healthcare. Co-morbid chronic conditionsare prevalent in older age and drastically affect people?swellbeing, but they are difficult to study due to the many healthdeterminants involved. For this reason, we propose amultidisciplinary ICT-based approach for the prevention andrehabilitation of chronic conditions using unobtrusive andpervasive sensors, interactive activities, and predictive analytics.This framework allows fine monitoring of older people?s healthand improved personalized care for healthy aging. To illustrate theadvantages of this pervasive and data-driven approach we setforth a conceptual model, in which we use cardiovascular disease,Alzheimer?s disease, depression and falls as examples of commonco-morbid conditions in older people

No soldiers left behind: An IoT-based low-power military mobile health system design

© 2013 IEEE. There has been an increasing prevalence of ad-hoc networks for various purposes and applications. These include Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN) and Wireless Body Area Networks (WBAN) which have emerging applications in health monitoring as well as user location tracking in emergency settings. Further applications can include real-Time actuation of IoT equipment, and activation of emergency alarms through the inference of a user\u27s situation using sensors and personal devices through a LPWAN. This has potential benefits for military networks and applications regarding the health of soldiers and field personnel during a mission. Due to the wireless nature of ad-hoc network devices, it is crucial to conserve battery power for sensors and equipment which transmit data to a central server. An inference system can be applied to devices to reduce data size for transfer and subsequently reduce battery consumption, however this could result in compromising accuracy. This paper presents a framework for secure automated messaging and data fusion as a solution to address the challenges of requiring data size reduction whilst maintaining a satisfactory accuracy rate. A Multilayer Inference System (MIS) was used to conserve the battery power of devices such as wearables and sensor devices. The results for this system showed a data reduction of 97.9% whilst maintaining satisfactory accuracy against existing single layer inference methods. Authentication accuracy can be further enhanced with additional biometrics and health data information

Implementation model of an integrated blockchain and IOT system to healthcare ecosystem

Mestrado em Gestão de Sistemas de InformaçãoNo cenário de transformação digital em que estão inseridos todos os setores de atividade, para melhorar a eficiência, a produtividade e reduzir o tempo e os custos, é necessário investir em novas tecnologias. Novas tecnologias como Internet of Things (IoT) e Blockchain são desenvolvidas para melhorar a eficiência de processamento, a criação de oportunidades de negócios, a regulamentação de requisitos, a segurança e transparência e descentralização de informações, e provavelmente serão as próximas tecnologias disruptivas que transformaram os diversos setores de atividade. Por sua vez, o setor saúde tem enfrentado dificuldades com o surgimento de novas doenças e precisa se transformar e se reinventar para manter sua legitimidade e continuar cumprindo suas obrigações para com os cidadãos. A implementação de novas tecnologias acaba sendo uma das abordagens mais eficazes para aumentar a eficiência, segurança, gerenciamento, análise de big data e performance dos dados. Devido a isso, este projeto propõe um modelo de framework Blockchain e IOT aplicada a saúde. A implementação engloba a criação de um aplicativo (i.e., pacientes) e um site (i.e., médicos, hospitais, farmácias, saúde publica), os dados partilhados pelos usuários são armazenados no blockchain conectado ao aplicativo e o acesso ao Blockchain é liberado por smartcontracts. O objetivo do modelo proposto é que os dados sejam descentralizados e possibilita o acesso a todos os conectados ao blockchain. E para não infringir a proteção dos dados pessoais dos pacientes, foi tomado o cuidado de que o usuário paciente seja o “proprietário” de todos os seus dados e compartilhe-os com qualquer entidade de saúde que deseja. Para atingir os objetivos mencionados, foi definida uma metodologia de validação por conceito do modelo proposto. A validação do conceito do modelo foi dividida em cinco etapas, seguida da análise qualitativa das entrevistas semiestruturadas realizadas com pacientes, médicos e gestores de saúde. Como resultado da validação por conceito foi observado que a opinião de todos os entrevistados é que a implementação do modelo proposto é vantajosa e poderá contribuir com avanços no setor saúde. Portanto, uma vez que médicos e hospitais tenham acesso a mais dados de saúde dos pacientes, esses dados podem colaborar para um diagnóstico mais preciso e o ecossistema da saúde obtém avanços tecnológicos que contribuem para uma melhor gestão dos dados e combate as novas doenças.In the digital transformation scenario in which all sectors of activity are inserted, to improve efficiency, productivity and reduce time and costs, it is necessary to invest in new technologies. New technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT) and Blockchain are being developed to improve processing efficiency, the creation of business opportunities, requirements regulation, security and transparency and information decentralization, and are likely to be the next disruptive technologies that have transformed the various sectors of activity. In turn, the health sector has confronted difficulties with the emergence of new diseases and needs to transform and reinvent itself in order to maintain its legitimacy and continue to fulfill its obligations to citizens. The implementation of new technologies is one of the most effective approaches to increase efficiency, security, management, big data analysis and data performance. Because of this, this project proposes a Blockchain and IOT framework model applied to health. The implementation includes the creation of an application (ie, patients) and a website (ie, doctors, hospitals, pharmacies, public health), the data shared by users is stored on the blockchain connected to the application and access to the Blockchain is released by smart contracts. The aim of the suggested model is that the data is decentralized and allows access to all those connected to the blockchain. And in order not to infringe on the protection of patients' personal data, care has been taken that the patient user is the “owner” of all his data and shares it with any health entity he wishes. To achieve the objectives was applied a validation methodology by concept of the proposed model. The validation of the model concept was divided into five stages, followed by a qualitative analysis of the semi-structured interviews conducted with patients, doctors and health managers. As a result of the concept validation, it was observed that the opinion of all interviewees is that the implementation of the proposed model is advantageous and may contribute to advances in the health ecosystem. Therefore, once doctors and hospitals have access to more patients health data, these data can collaborate for a more accurate diagnosis and the health ecosystem obtains technological advances that contribute to better data management and to fight new diseases.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Towards fog-driven IoT eHealth:Promises and challenges of IoT in medicine and healthcare

Internet of Things (IoT) offers a seamless platform to connect people and objects to one another for enriching and making our lives easier. This vision carries us from compute-based centralized schemes to a more distributed environment offering a vast amount of applications such as smart wearables, smart home, smart mobility, and smart cities. In this paper we discuss applicability of IoT in healthcare and medicine by presenting a holistic architecture of IoT eHealth ecosystem. Healthcare is becoming increasingly difficult to manage due to insufficient and less effective healthcare services to meet the increasing demands of rising aging population with chronic diseases. We propose that this requires a transition from the clinic-centric treatment to patient-centric healthcare where each agent such as hospital, patient, and services are seamlessly connected to each other. This patient-centric IoT eHealth ecosystem needs a multi-layer architecture: (1) device, (2) fog computing and (3) cloud to empower handling of complex data in terms of its variety, speed, and latency. This fog-driven IoT architecture is followed by various case examples of services and applications that are implemented on those layers. Those examples range from mobile health, assisted living, e-medicine, implants, early warning systems, to population monitoring in smart cities. We then finally address the challenges of IoT eHealth such as data management, scalability, regulations, interoperability, device–network–human interfaces, security, and privacy

mHealth Engineering: A Technology Review

In this paper, we review the technological bases of mobile health (mHealth). First, we derive a component-based mHealth architecture prototype from an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)-based multistage research and filter process. Second, we analyze medical databases with regard to these prototypic mhealth system components.. We show the current state of research literature concerning portable devices with standard and additional equipment, data transmission technology, interface, operating systems and software embedment, internal and external memory, and power-supply issues. We also focus on synergy effects by combining different mHealth technologies (e.g., BT-LE combined with RFID link technology). Finally, we also make suggestions for future improvements in mHealth technology (e.g., data-protection issues, energy supply, data processing and storage)

Remote Health Monitoring System using Non-Invasive Mobile Technology

Keeping track of a patient’s vitals at home is a difficult task. Especially senior citizens have to be constantly monitored and their family needs to be alerted about their health status regularly, while at work. We propose a unique system that automates this task. The system we propose, uses sensors and Bluetooth technology which helps achieve this task. The system uses temperature as well as heart beat sensors to keep track of the patient’s vitals. If the temperature or heart beat of the patient increases above a safe value, the system automatically sends an alert message to the doctor and the family members about the patient and also shows the live heartbeat and temperature of the patient. Our remote health monitoring system effectively uses an Android application to monitor the patient’s vitals and helps in saving precious time in terms of life and death

IoT in healthcare: A scientometric analysis

This paper reviews scientific articles and patents about Internet of Things (IoT) in healthcare. The aim is to explore both the domain of research and the one of practice simultaneously. We compare the annual growth, the country production, and the trend topics of publications and patents, by focusing on the most relevant themes concerning the IoT in the healthcare industry. The analysis started with the selection of the publications and patents for the period 2015–2020. Since this comparative analysis between scientometric data in healthcare is new, the findings of this study can represent the basis for future studies to determine novel research opportunities on IoT. The study provides scholars with a better understanding of IoT research in healthcare and simultaneously extends knowledge of entrepreneurship in this field. Practitioners may benefit from this review to understand new and underexplored opportunities