Enhancing pharmaceutical packaging through a technology ecosystem to facilitate the reuse of medicines and reduce medicinal waste

The idea of reusing dispensed medicines is appealing to the general public provided its benefits are illustrated, its risks minimized, and the logistics resolved. For example, medicine reuse could help reduce medicinal waste, protect the environment and improve public health. However, the associated technologies and legislation facilitating medicine reuse are generally not available. The availability of suitable technologies could arguably help shape stakeholders’ beliefs and in turn, uptake of a future medicine reuse scheme by tackling the risks and facilitating the practicalities. A literature survey is undertaken to lay down the groundwork for implementing technologies on and around pharmaceutical packaging in order to meet stakeholders’ previously expressed misgivings about medicine reuse (’stakeholder requirements’), and propose a novel ecosystem for, in effect, reusing returned medicines. Methods: A structured literature search examining the application of existing technologies on pharmaceutical packaging to enable medicine reuse was conducted and presented as a narrative review. Results: Reviewed technologies are classified according to different stakeholders’ requirements, and a novel ecosystem from a technology perspective is suggested as a solution to reusing medicines. Conclusion: Active sensing technologies applying to pharmaceutical packaging using printed electronics enlist medicines to be part of the Internet of Things network. Validating the quality and safety of returned medicines through this network seems to be the most effective way for reusing medicines and the correct application of technologies may be the key enabler

m-Reading: Fiction reading from mobile phones

Mobile phones are reportedly the most rapidly expanding e-reading device worldwide. However, the embodied, cognitive and affective implications of smartphone-supported fiction reading for leisure (m-reading) have yet to be investigated empirically. Revisiting the theoretical work of digitization scholar Anne Mangen, we argue that the digital reading experience is not only contingent on patterns of embodied reader–device interaction (Mangen, 2008 and later) but also embedded in the immediate environment and broader situational context. We call this the situation constraint. Its application to Mangen’s general framework enables us to identify four novel research areas, wherein m-reading should be investigated with regard to its unique affordances. The areas are reader–device affectivity, situated embodiment, attention training and long-term immersion

Predicting sex as a soft-biometrics from device interaction swipe gestures

Touch and multi-touch gestures are becoming the most common way to interact with technology such as smart phones, tablets and other mobile devices. The latest touch-screen input capacities have tremendously increased the quantity and quality of available gesture data, which has led to the exploration of its use in multiple disciplines from psychology to biometrics. Following research studies undertaken in similar modalities such as keystroke and mouse usage biometrics, the present work proposes the use of swipe gesture data for the prediction of soft-biometrics, specifically the user's sex. This paper details the software and protocol used for the data collection, the feature set extracted and subsequent machine learning analysis. Within this analysis, the BestFirst feature selection technique and classification algorithms (naïve Bayes, logistic regression, support vector machine and decision tree) have been tested. The results of this exploratory analysis have confirmed the possibility of sex prediction from the swipe gesture data, obtaining an encouraging 78% accuracy rate using swipe gesture data from two different directions. These results will hopefully encourage further research in this area, where the prediction of soft-biometrics traits from swipe gesture data can play an important role in enhancing the authentication processes based on touch-screen devices

Enabling medicine reuse using a digital time temperature humidity sensor in an internet of pharmaceutical things concept

Medicinal waste due to improper handling of unwanted medicines creates health and environmental risks. However, the re-dispensing of unused prescribed medicines from patients seems to be accepted by stakeholders when quality and safety requirements are met. Reusing dispensed medicines may help reduce waste, but a comprehensive validation method is not generally available. The design of a novel digital time temperature and humidity indicator based on an Internet of Pharmaceutical Things concept is proposed to facilitate the validation, and a prototype is presented using smart sensors with cloud connectivity acting as the key technology for verifying and enabling the reuse of returned medicines. Deficiency of existing technologies is evaluated based on the results of this development, and recommendations for future research are suggested

Smartphone software for department of computer science

The presented document provides an overview of the Smartphone Software for Department of Computer Science project development through out several phases: analysis of the project proposal, preliminary study of the concepts involved in the project, design decisions and modeling, implementation, experiments and conclusions obtained in the end, as well as a reflection on possible future system improvements. The final version of the system, which was built after the design and implementation decisions made through out the development of the project, is a prototype mainly composed of an application for Android smartphones leaning on a distributed architecture in order to provide all its expected functionalities. Thus, the system is based on a mixture of the two main distributed systems architectural models: client-server and peer-to-peer. The functionalities that lean on the client-server architecture are those whose data are relative to information of general interest and need to be always (ideally) available: consulting news, information and schedules for courses, frequently asked questions, maps and indoors positioning. On the other hand, functionalities such as the chat system and the possibility of contacting with the students of a certain course depend on the availability of the users, so a peer-to-peer architectural model was developed to support them. Regarding the system functionalities, the in-door localization and the chat system were determined as the most relevant ones. With the aim to provide those functionalities, the choice made was to implement an in-door positioning based on the RedPin model and, on the other hand, to make use of an already existing Java solution to build a chat system by means of multicast DNS and DNS Service Discovery: JmDNS