34 research outputs found

    Access Control In and For the Real World

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    Access control is a core component of any information-security strategy. Researchers have spent tremendous energy over the past forty years defining abstract access-control models and proving various properties about them. However, surprisingly little attention has been paid to how well these models work in real socio-technical systems (i.e., real human organizations). This dissertation describes the results of two qualitative studies (involving 52 participants from four companies, drawn from the financial, software, and healthcare sectors) and observes that the current practice of access control is dysfunctional at best. It diagnoses the broken assumptions that are at the heart of this dysfunction, and offers a new definition of the access-control problem that is grounded in the requirements and limitations of the real world

    Integrated Framework for Data Quality and Security Evaluation on Mobile Devices

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    Data quality (DQ) is an important concept that is used in the design and employment of information, data management, decision making, and engineering systems with multiple applications already available for solving specific problems. Unfortunately, conventional approaches to DQ evaluation commonly do not pay enough attention or even ignore the security and privacy of the evaluated data. In this research, we develop a framework for the DQ evaluation of the sensor originated data acquired from smartphones, that incorporates security and privacy aspects into the DQ evaluation pipeline. The framework provides support for selecting the DQ metrics and implementing their calculus by integrating diverse sensor data quality and security metrics. The framework employs a knowledge graph to facilitate its adaptation in new applications development and enables knowledge accumulation. Privacy aspects evaluation is demonstrated by the detection of novel and sophisticated attacks on data privacy on the example of colluded applications attack recognition. We develop multiple calculi for DQ and security evaluation, such as a hierarchical fuzzy rules expert system, neural networks, and an algebraic function. Case studies that demonstrate the framework\u27s performance in solving real-life tasks are presented, and the achieved results are analyzed. These case studies confirm the framework\u27s capability of performing comprehensive DQ evaluations. The framework development resulted in producing multiple products, and tools such as datasets and Android OS applications. The datasets include the knowledge base of sensors embedded in modern mobile devices and their quality analysis, technological signals recordings of smartphones during the normal usage, and attacks on users\u27 privacy. These datasets are made available for public use and can be used for future research in the field of data quality and security. We also released under an open-source license a set of Android OS tools that can be used for data quality and security evaluation

    The Impact of Digital Technologies on Public Health in Developed and Developing Countries

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    This open access book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 18th International Conference on String Processing and Information Retrieval, ICOST 2020, held in Hammamet, Tunisia, in June 2020.* The 17 full papers and 23 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 49 submissions. They cover topics such as: IoT and AI solutions for e-health; biomedical and health informatics; behavior and activity monitoring; behavior and activity monitoring; and wellbeing technology. *This conference was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic

    Improving Access and Mental Health for Youth Through Virtual Models of Care

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    The overall objective of this research is to evaluate the use of a mobile health smartphone application (app) to improve the mental health of youth between the ages of 14–25 years, with symptoms of anxiety/depression. This project includes 115 youth who are accessing outpatient mental health services at one of three hospitals and two community agencies. The youth and care providers are using eHealth technology to enhance care. The technology uses mobile questionnaires to help promote self-assessment and track changes to support the plan of care. The technology also allows secure virtual treatment visits that youth can participate in through mobile devices. This longitudinal study uses participatory action research with mixed methods. The majority of participants identified themselves as Caucasian (66.9%). Expectedly, the demographics revealed that Anxiety Disorders and Mood Disorders were highly prevalent within the sample (71.9% and 67.5% respectively). Findings from the qualitative summary established that both staff and youth found the software and platform beneficial

    E-health reference framework for personalised information provision to promote sound lifestyles

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    In the present context of increased healthcare demand and costs, health maintenance by prevention is a major strategic objective of public health systems. Western societies increasingly suffer from lifestyle-related diseases triggered by an unbalanced diet, physical inactivity, smoking or alcohol abuse. The majority of these diseases can be eliminated through preventative action, such as promoting positive health determinants. Focus of healthcare needs to gradually move out from the acute-care hospital, to the patient; interventions should move from the acute phase of the disease, and towards prevention monitoring and screening, detection and treatment. The possibilities of ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) are fully exploited to provide life related information and services, consistency and personalization and ubiquity for health in order to strengthen prevention and treatment trends as well as to provide continuity of care demands. Prevention healthcare communication needs to be conveyed from the public health authorities to the population. This communication is essential so as to engage individuals with the policy envisaged by the public healthcare authorities and provide them with the relevant information to feel empowered. In order to be effective, there is the need to analyse how to deliver these messages with the use of new technologies. In this sense, there are a few personalised healthcare communication methodologies to deliver tailored information to individuals in the field of healthcare promotion. However, these methodologies do not take into account how this information would be delivered by means of new ICT; there is the need of structured healthcare communication to be delivered by means of e-health to provide personalised information. This research intends to understand whether tailored communication is effective in enhancing the capacity of individuals to be empowered regarding their healthcare knowledge. Besides, it is envisaged to work out whether the use of e-health systems can be boosted by personalising the provision of information. As such, a novel framework to deliver a personalised healthcare communication has been conceived, designed, implemented and evaluated. This framework contemplates the use of e-health in order to support individuals and empower them to take an active control of their healthcare. The proposed framework is a modification of an existing healthcare communication methodology that was enhanced in order to adapt it to the provision of information by new ICT devices. The first steps of the methodology were modified to create a new tailored information model to be delivered through new technological devices. In order for the personalised information delivered to be more effective a new dimension was considered: the acceptance of ICT. In this sense, this research proposes, a new e-health acceptance framework that adds a deeper insight to previous existing initiatives and by considering different elements of individuals’ behaviours regarding both the healthcare dimension as well as the acceptance of technology. Further to the conception of the new model, new tools to create the personalised information were conceived, designed and implemented together with the assistance of healthcare professionals. This would entail the possibility of an intervention by means of an e-health application to follow the same protocols as a face-to-face process. Hence, tailored information to individuals could be delivered depending on a number of psychological and physical factors. These intermediate tools made possible the development of the entire healthcare communication framework, and although they are not part of the hypothesis as such, their development has proved to be essential for the whole implementation of the e-health communication framework. In subsequent stages, the communication strategy was implemented by building a personalised e-health system to delivered information in the field of healthcare promotion. This system was implemented by using the most up-to-date Internet technologies to make the most out of the user experience, both in terms of human-computer-interaction and in the way the information is presented. In this way, the process by which individuals are empowered in order to take proactive decisions concerning their healthcare is clearly enhanced. Finally the complete framework was evaluated at different stages with the various stakeholders in order to understand whether personalised e-health platforms are more efficient in empowering individuals than general information e-health systems. SINOPSIS Cerca del 80% de las enfermedades cardiovasculares, la diabetes mellitus tipo 2 y el 40% de la incidencia de cáncer se podrían evitar con una dieta sana, una actividad física regular y la supresión del uso del tabaco. Sin embargo, la responsabilidad de esta mejora en la calidad de vida recae cada vez más sobre el propio individuo, haciendo de la motivación y de la facilidad de acceso a la información, así como de la confianza en ésta, los principales pilares de la promoción de la salud. Es importante concienciar a los ciudadanos de que ser responsables de su propia salud ofrece ventajas sustanciales. Estar bien informado sobre temas relacionados con la salud y los servicios ofrecidos por las distintas instituciones supone una mayor autonomía y un mejor control de la propia vida. Las Tecnologías de la Información y las Comunicaciones (TIC) son consideradas una respuesta potencial a la demanda de un mejor cuidado de la salud, mejoras en resultados médicos, y el mantenimiento de una calidad de vida relativamente alta. Entre las características de las TIC, se puede citar la actualización automática de la información y la adaptación y personalización de la misma. Sin embargo, a pesar del creciente interés en la adopción y puesta en práctica de las TIC en el sector de e-health, aún hay una enorme carencia de teorías que definan cómo el uso de dichas tecnologías puede asistir al usuario para cambiar con eficacia su estilo de vida. La Informática de Salud Pública trata de comprender, entre otros aspectos, los mecanismos de comunicación de información relativa a la prevención y promoción de la salud. En este campo, numerosas teorías de comunicación buscan entender los mecanismos que llevan a los individuos a tomar una actitud frente al cambio (por ejemplo, dejar de fumar, hacerse una mamografía, etc). Sin embargo, no existe ningún marco de comunicación que contemple cómo esta información puede ser provista por medio de las TIC, con el fin de aunar los beneficios que trae consigo la prevención y promoción de la salud, y el hecho de que se usen las TIC para su difusión. En esta tesis doctoral se propone un nuevo marco de actuación que tiene como objetivo la provisión de información de prevención sanitaria personalizada por medio del uso de las nuevas TIC. En este sentido, se presenta una revisión del estado de la cuestión en la actualidad, para posteriormente realizar un nuevo modelo de provisión de información personalizada, que incluye distintas facetas hasta ahora no contempladas, tales como, el tener en cuenta los aspectos que influyen en los individuos acerca de su relación frente a la salud y al uso de la tecnología. Posteriormente, se han realizado diversas tareas como la creación de herramientas específicas que ayudan a la clasificación de los individuos con el fin de proveer información relevante. Además se han creado los distintos mensajes de información personalizada con la ayuda de profesionales en comunicación de salud, así como médicos expertos en el área, intentando recrear una intervención presencial a lo largo del tiempo, para ser provista mediante el uso de las TIC. Para demostrar las hipótesis de partida, se han implementado dos aplicaciones que tienen como fin la provisión de información personalizada a través del uso de las TIC. Estas dos aplicaciones abarcan distintos ámbitos; la primera se desarrolla en el entorno de la promoción de una dieta sana, y tiene como fin proporcionar información sobre los beneficios de comer equilibradamente. Esta información se facilita a través de tecnologías Web. La segunda, se centra en la prevención secundaria y tiene como objetivo, fomentar la actividad física a través del teléfono móvil. Finalmente, la evaluación del marco de información personalizada mediante el uso de las TIC ha revelado el interés de este tipo de plataformas; a este respecto, los individuos encuestados afirman que el hecho de que la información sea personalizada les impulsa a un mayor uso de las plataformas de e-health al ser la información presentada relevante y acorde a sus necesidades. Éstos afirman sentirse más empoderados mediante este tipo de sistemas a tomar decisiones fundamentadas con respecto a su salud

    The use of an electronic health record (EHR) in a maternity shared-care environment

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    The Impact of Digital Technologies on Public Health in Developed and Developing Countries

    Get PDF
    This open access book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 18th International Conference on String Processing and Information Retrieval, ICOST 2020, held in Hammamet, Tunisia, in June 2020.* The 17 full papers and 23 short papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 49 submissions. They cover topics such as: IoT and AI solutions for e-health; biomedical and health informatics; behavior and activity monitoring; behavior and activity monitoring; and wellbeing technology. *This conference was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic

    A Contextualist Approach to Telehealth Innovations

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    A Contextualist Approach to Telehealth Innovations By Sunyoung Cho Abstract Healthcare is considered one of the most important social issues in the U.S. as well as in other societies with ever-increasing costs of medical service provision. The information-intensive nature of the healthcare industry and the perception of information technology (IT) as a way to ease up healthcare costs and improve quality have lead to increased use of and experiments with IT-based innovations. These activities present interesting research opportunities for IS researchers and they have led to an increasing body of knowledge on healthcare information systems. This research aims at contributing to this line of research by adopting a contextualist approach to examine the adoption, use, and further diffusion of telehealth innovations. A contextualist approach provides a particularly interesting and relevant perspective to study adoption and diffusion processes of healthcare innovations. The adopted contextualist approach is process-oriented, it applies multiple levels of analysis, and it accommodates different theoretical lenses to make sense of the two telehealth innovations under investigation. A key assumption is that innovations should be understood as ongoing processes of change, not just technologies, or isolated change events with clear boundaries. Healthcare innovations have in this view much broader connotations, including development of IT-based applications, their adoption and diffusion over time, and the interactions between many stakeholders and organizations that shape the innovation in a specific context. The contextualist approach suggested by Pettigrew is adopted as an overarching framework for multiple studies based on empirical investigation of two telehealth innovations; the main focus is on a telestroke innovation in the U.S. while a radiology innovation in Sweden serves as a complementary case. Each study is documented as an independent research publication with its own theoretical perspective and contributions. The overall contextualist approach and the related findings are then summarized across the individual studies. Telehealth innovations are particularly interesting examples of healthcare information systems. They leverage contemporary network infrastructures and interaction devices to allow provision of healthcare services, clinical information, and education over distance, thereby reducing the costs and improving the availability of medical services. The two telehealth innovations are investigated through in-depth case studies. This theses summary presents the theoretical background for the studies; it motivates and details how the qualitative case studies based on critical realist assumptions were designed and conducted; it outlines the resulting research publications; and it discusses the contributions of investigating telehealth innovations from a contextualist approach
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