Occupational safety and health practice: a study at Infrastructure construction work

Safety is the state of being “safe”, the condition of being protected against physical, social, spiritual, financial, political, emotional, occupational, psychological, educational or other types of consequences of failure, damage, error, accidents, harm or any other event which could be considered non-desirable. Health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. In that case, Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) is an act that ensure the well-being of workers in a broad scope of many specialized fields. This study is focused on the construction of a police headquarters located in Seriab, Perlis. A big number of construction companies in Malaysia might not perform safety practice for their workers, lack of safety appliances, and did not perform a regular safety check-up on their workers as the reason was they want to earn more profits and they took the safety measures of their foreign workers for granted. Note that most of construction workers in Malaysia are immigrants. The data collection was carried out through site investigation using Preliminary Hazard analysis (PHA), HIRARC form and interview session with a worker in the construction site. The objective of this study is to spread the awareness of the importance of safety among workers in the construction site based on the existing potential hazards. This report was initially to identify the hazard on the construction site and to analyse the occupational safety and health factor in the workplace. The results are to analyse and suggest recommendations for improving occupational safety and health act in the construction site. Practicing a good safety measures in the workplace will ensure the well-being of workers

Personal heart monitoring and rehabilitation system using smart phones

This paper discusses a personalized heart monitoring system using smart phones and wireless (bio) sensors. Based on several scenarios we present the functionality of a prototype we have built. The application is capable of monitoring the health of high risk cardiac patients. The smart phone application analyses in real-time sensor and environmental data and can automatically alert the ambulance and pre assigned caregivers when a heart patient is in danger. It also transmits sensor data to a healthcare centre for remote monitoring by a nurse or cardiologist. The system can be personalized and rehabilitation programs can monitor the progress of a patient. Rehabilitation programs can be used to give advice (e.g. exercise more) or to reassure the patient. © 2006 IEEE

Miniaturized and Wearable Electrocardiogram (ECG) Device with Wireless Transmission

ECG Holter is a device used to acquire and monitor the user heart rhythm. However, it is available only in a major healthcare facility as it is very costly. The objective of this work is to develop a portable ECG monitoring device with wireless transmission for early arrhythmia detection and personal monitoring. The heart of the device is based on Atmel ATmega328p processor, which acquires user ECG data through Analog Devices AD8232 ECG analog front-end chip. Data captured is stored offline in memory card before it is transmitted wirelessly to a cloud server for analysis purpose. Experiments indicate that the device able to sample the ECG data up to 1000 samples per second and Wi-Fi based transmission serves the best for data transfer to the cloud server. User and physician can easily access the data for viewing and analysis, eliminating the needs for users to travel to the hospital for ECG acquisition

Heart Rate and Motion Monitoring System

Modern day technology for medical and health monitoring devices are nowhere near the state of technology in consumer products.  Due to an increasing number of retirees (Baby boomers) and the high cost of medical related products and services, a huge market demand for low‐cost medical/health monitoring devices exists in today’s society.  Heart related disease; the number one killer in developed nations possesses a great threat to the health of our society both directly and indirectly from economical, environmental, political, and other aspects.  Our proposed Heart Rate and Motion Monitoring System (HRMMS) can help the general public with the awareness and prevention of heart related diseases in its early phase by analyzing heart rate with respect to the physical activity of users.  Irregular heart conditions can be sent to medical practitioners remotely through a custom application on the user’s cell phone

Personal heart monitoring system using smart phones to detect life threatening arrhythmias

This paper discusses a personalized heart monitoring system using smart phones and wireless (bio) sensors. We combine ubiquitous computing with mobile health technology to monitor the wellbeing of high risk cardiac patients. The smart phone analyses in real-time the ECG data and determines whether the person needs external help. We focus on two life threatening arrhythmias: Ventricular Fibrillation (VF) and Ventricular Tachycardia (VT), The smart phone can automatically alert the ambulance and pre assigned caregivers when a VF/VT arrhythmia is detected. The system can be personalized to the needs and requirements of the patient. It can be used to give advice (e.g. exercise more) or to reassure the patient when the bio-sensors and environmental data are within predefined ranges. © 2006 IEEE

A second look at the mobile-only internet: job seekers in Khayelitsha, South Africa describe their first 6 months of mobile internet use

Using an ethnographic action research approach, the study explores the challenges, practices, and emergent framings of mobile-only Internet use in a resource-constrained setting. We trained eight women in a nongovernmental organization’s collective in South Africa, none of whom had used a personal computer, how to access the Internet on mobile handsets they already owned. Six months after training, most continued to use the mobile Internet for a combination of utility, entertainment, and connection, but they had encountered barriers, including affordability and difficulty of use. Participants’ assessments mingled aspirational and actual utility of the channel with and against a background of socioeconomic constraints. Discussion links the digital literacy perspective to the broader theoretical frameworks of domestication, adaptive structuration, and appropriation

Exploring Mobile-only Internet Use: Results of a Training Study in Urban South Africa

Using an ethnographic action research approach, the study explores the challenges, practices, and emergent framings of mobile-only Internet use in a resource-constrained setting. We trained eight women in a nongovernmental organization’s collective in South Africa, none of whom had used a personal computer, how to access the Internet on mobile handsets they already owned. Six months after training, most continued to use the mobile Internet for a combination of utility, entertainment, and connection, but they had encountered barriers, including affordability and difficulty of use. Participants’ assessments mingled aspirational and actual utility of the channel with and against a background of socioeconomic constraints. Discussion links the digital literacy perspective to the broader theoretical frameworks of domestication, adaptive structuration, and appropriation

"i-Internet? Intle” (beautiful): Exploring first time internet use via mobile phones in a South African women’s collective

Using an ethnographic action research approach, the study explores the challenges, practices, and emergent framings of mobile-only Internet use in a resource-constrained setting. We trained eight women in a nongovernmental organization’s collective in South Africa, none of whom had used a personal computer, how to access the Internet on mobile handsets they already owned. Six months after training, most continued to use the mobile Internet for a combination of utility, entertainment, and connection, but they had encountered barriers, including affordability and difficulty of use. Participants’ assessments mingled aspirational and actual utility of the channel with and against a background of socioeconomic constraints. Discussion links the digital literacy perspective to the broader theoretical frameworks of domestication, adaptive structuration, and appropriation

A business model framework for the Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) is an emerging technology with research interests transcending disciplines of computer sciences and computer engineering to agriculture, business management, civil engineering, architecture, medical sciences, social science etc. This is because of the potential expanding range of its application areas of wind mill operation and irrigation control, supply chain and logistics, manufacturing, home and office environment, healthcare, social care, etc. As it is usually the case with emerging technologies, IoT is faced with the challenge of bridging the gap between the technology development and corresponding business model design. Without a workable business model, the IoT paradigm may end up in research labs and subsequently fade away. A business model should show how lucrative it is to be in the IoT business by adding value to the customer and generating revenue for the business firm. This research is a contribution towards the goal of developing a business model for IoT, with customer/user value potential as the focal point. The comprehensive literature review carried out during this research (i) outlines the concept of business models; (ii) investigates through desk research, existing digital technology business models with focus on two (2) established digital technology firms and identified five generic components of their business models including but not limited to subscription, training, price, satisfaction, and trust, which were used for the primary investigation; (iii) investigates the IoT state-of-the-arts by elaborating on the IoT space and precursor technologies that are part of its ecosystem with the aim of describing, illustrating and developing application prototypes for three IoT scenarios of health monitoring, the use of the library and borrowing of books (a novel idea), and home environment; (iv) evaluates business model framework representation maps in current use, and specifically modified the general structure, content, and performance framework map to design an adoption framework map called a customer-focused business model framework map for IoT (CBMF4IoT). The unique approach to business model research involved conducting a user-led experiment to investigate the likelihood of IoT adoption of existing digital technology business models, as the customer value potential aspect of a business model design was the focal point of this research. Specifically, the experiment was aimed at determining if there was any significant differences in user inclinations towards the five generic components of existing digital technology business models based on smartphone context and IoT products context in a within-subjects design, with sample population drawn from University of Sussex community. The experimental design relied on participants' past experiences with smartphone for them to indicate their pre-purchase inclinations towards the five generics components. For the IoT products context, descriptions and diagrammatic illustration of the three IoT scenarios with their corresponding Just-in-Mind clickable prototypes served as educational tools to enable participants to be acquainted with IoT in order for them to indicate their potential pre-purchase inclinations towards the five generic components. A unique procedure for business model adoption likelihood was designed using the Sign test for high, low, and medium likelihood of adoption. The results of this test indicate medium likelihood of adoption for three of the generic components and low likelihood of adoption for two of the generic components. The results of this test was then fed to the CBMF4IoT. This thesis demonstrates that reusability of successful digital technology business models could potentially result in market success for an emerging digital technology in a B2C context, as users opinion formed the bases for the conclusions, instead of the conventional opinion gathering from only experts, business owners, and practitioners for a BM research