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)

An informatics based approach to respiratory healthcare.

By 2005 one person in every five UK households suffered with asthma. Research has shown that episodes of poor air quality can have a negative effect on respiratory health and is a growing concern for the asthmatic. To better inform clinical staff and patients to the contribution of poor air quality on patient health, this thesis defines an IT architecture that can be used by systems to identify environmental predictors leading to a decline in respiratory health of an individual patient. Personal environmental predictors of asthma exacerbation are identified by validating the delay between environmental predictors and decline in respiratory health. The concept is demonstrated using prototype software, and indicates that the analytical methods provide a mechanism to produce an early warning of impending asthma exacerbation due to poor air quality. The author has introduced the term enviromedics to describe this new field of research. Pattern recognition techniques are used to analyse patient-specific environments, and extract meaningful health predictors from the large quantities of data involved (often in the region of '/o million data points). This research proposes a suitable architecture that defines processes and techniques that enable the validation of patient-specific environmental predictors of respiratory decline. The design of the architecture was validated by implementing prototype applications that demonstrate, through hospital admissions data and personal lung function monitoring, that air quality can be used as a predictor of patient-specific health. The refined techniques developed during the research (such as Feature Detection Analysis) were also validated by the application prototypes. This thesis makes several contributions to knowledge, including: the process architecture; Feature Detection Analysis (FDA) that automates the detection of trend reversals within time series data; validation of the delay characteristic using a Self-organising Map (SOM) that is used as an unsupervised method of pattern recognition; Frequency, Boundary and Cluster Analysis (FBCA), an additional technique developed by this research to refine the SOM

An informatics based approach to respiratory healthcare

By 2005 one person in every five UK households suffered with asthma. Research has shown that episodes of poor air quality can have a negative effect on respiratory health and is a growing concern for the asthmatic. To better inform clinical staff and patients to the contribution of poor air quality on patient health, this thesis defines an IT architecture that can be used by systems to identify environmental predictors leading to a decline in respiratory health of an individual patient. Personal environmental predictors of asthma exacerbation are identified by validating the delay between environmental predictors and decline in respiratory health. The concept is demonstrated using prototype software, and indicates that the analytical methods provide a mechanism to produce an early warning of impending asthma exacerbation due to poor air quality. The author has introduced the term enviromedics to describe this new field of research. Pattern recognition techniques are used to analyse patient-specific environments, and extract meaningful health predictors from the large quantities of data involved (often in the region of '/o million data points). This research proposes a suitable architecture that defines processes and techniques that enable the validation of patient-specific environmental predictors of respiratory decline. The design of the architecture was validated by implementing prototype applications that demonstrate, through hospital admissions data and personal lung function monitoring, that air quality can be used as a predictor of patient-specific health. The refined techniques developed during the research (such as Feature Detection Analysis) were also validated by the application prototypes. This thesis makes several contributions to knowledge, including: the process architecture; Feature Detection Analysis (FDA) that automates the detection of trend reversals within time series data; validation of the delay characteristic using a Self-organising Map (SOM) that is used as an unsupervised method of pattern recognition; Frequency, Boundary and Cluster Analysis (FBCA), an additional technique developed by this research to refine the SOM.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Aerospace Medicine and Biology: A cumulative index to the 1974 issues of a continuing bibliography

This publication is a cumulative index to the abstracts contained in supplements 125 through 136 of Aerospace Medicine and Biology: A Continuing Bibliography. It includes three indexes--subject, personal author, and corporate source

Abstracts on Radio Direction Finding (1899 - 1995)

The files on this record represent the various databases that originally composed the CD-ROM issue of "Abstracts on Radio Direction Finding" database, which is now part of the Dudley Knox Library's Abstracts and Selected Full Text Documents on Radio Direction Finding (1899 - 1995) Collection. (See Calhoun record https://calhoun.nps.edu/handle/10945/57364 for further information on this collection and the bibliography). Due to issues of technological obsolescence preventing current and future audiences from accessing the bibliography, DKL exported and converted into the three files on this record the various databases contained in the CD-ROM. The contents of these files are: 1) RDFA_CompleteBibliography_xls.zip [RDFA_CompleteBibliography.xls: Metadata for the complete bibliography, in Excel 97-2003 Workbook format; RDFA_Glossary.xls: Glossary of terms, in Excel 97-2003 Workbookformat; RDFA_Biographies.xls: Biographies of leading figures, in Excel 97-2003 Workbook format]; 2) RDFA_CompleteBibliography_csv.zip [RDFA_CompleteBibliography.TXT: Metadata for the complete bibliography, in CSV format; RDFA_Glossary.TXT: Glossary of terms, in CSV format; RDFA_Biographies.TXT: Biographies of leading figures, in CSV format]; 3) RDFA_CompleteBibliography.pdf: A human readable display of the bibliographic data, as a means of double-checking any possible deviations due to conversion

Closing the digital gap: handheld computing, adult first-time users, and a user experience metric model

This thesis assesses the speed of adaptation and adoption of computing systems from an adult first-time user perspective in South Africa, with the aim of determining if it could ultimately lead to the reduction of the existing digital gap. As is evident from the social, educational, and economical gap for some observers, the reality of the existence of the digital gap in South Africa is undeniable. Constant non-targeted progress is made toward addressing imbalances, which seem to be more visible as the number of constant and permanent users is visibly increasing. These observed phenomena are mostly noticed amongst urban, educated, younger, middle-class citizens. The forgotten “missing middle” are left to fend for themselves. These are people who are still outside the digital drive the world is experiencing based on their schooling grade, geographical location, income level, and age. They were not in school when computer literacy was introduced, and they were too poor to teach themselves how to use a computer, too remote to observe the digital drive, and too old to learn from their peers. As citizens, their welfare matters, and when assessing the penetration of ICT in the country, their numbers also matter. One cannot ignore their presence and the difficulties and frustration that they experience when coming into contact with a computing system for the first time. The researcher is of the view that the presence of a computing system may not simply translate to the closure of the digital gap. In other words, people may gain access to a computer, but without computing usability skills or Internet connectivity it may not add value to their daily activities. Closing the digital gap in South Africa can be seen as political propaganda, but the reality is, how do we measure and assess it? It comes down to users, and in this particular case, attention is turned to the “missing middle”, here referred to as the adult first-time user. This is simply someone who is over the age of 18 years, lives in a rural community in South Africa, never completed school, and is using a computer for the first time. The researcher used a handheld tablet system as a tool to assess the participants’ adequacy in terms of the rate at which they complete tasks by developing mathematical equations which were placed together within an assessment metric that was later used to determine user proficiency, as well as their adaptation and user experience in order to determine if the participant can later adopt the device and take advantage of it. By so doing, the metric will comprise variables such as the user movement time, task completion success rate, task completion speed, user satisfaction, user reaction time, user completion rate per activity, time-based efficiency, and the assessment of the level of frustration any adult first-time user may experience while interacting with the system for the first time. The term “digital gap” may not be new to the ICT sphere, but no one has taken the step towards assessing it. The digital gap is no longer the absence of computing systems in many communities but rather the presence of inadequate user experience, which has not been properly measured and documented. The user experience metric (UXM) that was developed in this study provided the researcher with the opportunity to reassess the issue of systems adaptation, adoption, and usability by adult first-time users. This research is particularly driven by sound interaction design principles, user adaptation, and usability and user experiencePh. D. (Information Systems)School of Computin