Ubiquitous Computing for Remote Cardiac Patient Monitoring: A Survey

New wireless technologies, such as wireless LAN and sensor networks, for telecardiology purposes give new possibilities for monitoring vital parameters with wearable biomedical sensors, and give patients the freedom to be mobile and still be under continuous monitoring and thereby better quality of patient care. This paper will detail the architecture and quality-of-service (QoS) characteristics in integrated wireless telecardiology platforms. It will also discuss the current promising hardware/software platforms for wireless cardiac monitoring. The design methodology and challenges are provided for realistic implementation

Mobile Cloud Computing Model and Big Data Analysis for Healthcare Applications

Mobile devices are increasingly becoming an indispensable part of people\u27s daily life, facilitating to perform a variety of useful tasks. Mobile cloud computing integrates mobile and cloud computing to expand their capabilities and benefits and overcomes their limitations, such as limited memory, CPU power, and battery life. Big data analytics technologies enable extracting value from data having four Vs: volume, variety, velocity, and veracity. This paper discusses networked healthcare and the role of mobile cloud computing and big data analytics in its enablement. The motivation and development of networked healthcare applications and systems is presented along with the adoption of cloud computing in healthcare. A cloudlet-based mobile cloud-computing infrastructure to be used for healthcare big data applications is described. The techniques, tools, and applications of big data analytics are reviewed. Conclusions are drawn concerning the design of networked healthcare systems using big data and mobile cloud-computing technologies. An outlook on networked healthcare is given

Information Technology Project Update: 2011-2012

Marshall University Information Technology (MUIT) strives to provide seamless access to global resources, a robust infrastructure and current tools to support our faculty, staff and students, and high levels of technology to compete and excel in a world characterized by constant change with increased mobility. MUIT engages in collaborative relationships within the University and with the local community acting as a trusted partner anticipating needs and responding with innovative solutions in support of the University’s mission of teaching, research, and service via extensive research and planning endeavors

Introducing Wireless Grids Technology to the Field of Telemedicine

While telemedicine and technology-enabled education are not new concepts and have significant bodies of research, in depth application to management and treatment of veteran Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) is relatively new. The conflicts in the Southwest Asia over the last two decades have significantly increased the need for healthcare and support services for these returning warriors. Creative thinking and innovative technologies are needed to meet the growing and changing demand of these patients in the face of many competing demands within the U.S. healthcare sector. This doctoral research study investigated the potential for a platform-agnostic (ad hoc) networking technology to serve as a trusted social networking and training platform for healthcare providers who are striving to provide quality healthcare that meets the needs of veterans suffering from PTSD and TBI. This research study analyzed the effectiveness of a digitally networked environment to deliver desired training and certification outcomes in a military healthcare environment. The level of acceptance of an ad hoc network technology (GridstreamRx) by healthcare professionals using it as an enabler of collaboration during the training process was evaluated. The results also assessed the readiness of healthcare professionals to use this Information Communications Technology (ICT), or analogous new applications and services, to help them perform their healthcare responsibilities. This thesis study, accomplished with the support of the U.S. Army and National Science Foundation, took place at two large military medical centers over a twelve-month period of time. Data was gathered from 568 healthcare professionals using quantitative survey instruments. Ninety-six respondents provided additional quantitative and qualitative inputs at various times during a proscribed training regimen. DeLone and McLean\u27s 2003 Information System Success Model, modified by findings of more recent research, provided the theoretical lens for analyzing the data from 32 of the training participants in determining the perceived net benefit of the GridstreamRx technology. The data gathered for the study showed, at the 95% level of confidence, that a majority of the professionals of these two medical centers would perceive a positive net benefit from using GridstreamRx in a healthcare training environment. The conclusion from this analysis was that not only are the healthcare providers in this study ready to use ICT and social networking in this professional setting, but also that GridstreamRx is an acceptable platform for performing these functions. The study participants provided input with respect to their priorities regarding information sharing techniques, functionality, and suggestions for improving the platform. The outcomes confirmed that GridstreamRx can be a successful introduction of ad hoc networking to telemedicine. This thesis concluded with recommendations for scholars and practitioners to pursue in the future; and should be followed up with further research and actions in order to build toward a Fully Integrated Virtual Healthcare Environment (FivHe)

Evaluación del throughput de servicios de teleeducación en tiempo real soportados en una red móvil Ad-Hoc

Tele-education went from being an option to becoming a necessity given the current public health problems. Due to this, the educational sector has included blended courses as part of its training offer. Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) will therefore, become an important resource to work, under this class format, with students outside the classroom, in accordance with the standards recommended inside a university campus. MANETs require certain parameters that ensure the quality of communications and identify the factors that influence Quality of Service (QoS). The purpose of this study is to determine the factors that affect the quality of communications in a tele-education environment. For this purpose, the QoS of a MANET supporting a real-time video streaming is evaluated based on throughput. As a result, the main factors that directly or indirectly affect the operation of the network could be identified, which may help in making decisions regarding aspects such as the number of nodes and the node mobility speed. Moreover, the versatility and scalability of the MANET was proven, as when the number of nodes went from 5 to 10, throughput increased by 14 %. This also occurred with the transmission rate factor when the video was streamed in a channel with a variable bitrate (64–4096 kbps).Hoy en día, la teleeducación pasó de ser una opción a una necesidad provocada por problemas de salud pública. Por ello, el sector educativo ha adoptado, como parte de su oferta formativa, el formato de cursos semipresenciales. Por tanto, la red móvil ad hoc network (MANET) debe ser un recurso importante para trabajar bajo este formato con estudiantes fuera del aula según las normas recomendadas dentro del campus universitario. Esta red requiere parámetros que aseguren la calidad de la comunicación e identifiquen los factores que inciden en la calidad del servicio (QoS). Este trabajo tiene como objetivo determinar los factores que afectan la calidad de la comunicación en un entorno educativo mediante la evaluación de la QoS de la red a través del parámetro throughput con la transmisión de un servicio de teleeducación en tiempo real como el video streaming soportado en una MANET. Como resultado se pudo identificar los principales factores que afectan de forma directa o indirecta el funcionamiento de la red para poder tomar decisiones con respecto al número de nodos y a la velocidad de movilidad de estos, entre otros. De esta forma, fue posible demostrar la versatilidad y escalabilidad de la MANET que, al aumentar la red de 5 a 10 nodos, incremento el throughput en un 14 %. Igualmente sucedió con el factor de tasa de transmisión con la emisión de un video compartiendo un canal con una velocidad de bits variable de 64 – 4096 kbps. &nbsp

Performance evaluation of cooperation strategies for m-health services and applications

Health telematics are becoming a major improvement for patients’ lives, especially for disabled, elderly, and chronically ill people. Information and communication technologies have rapidly grown along with the mobile Internet concept of anywhere and anytime connection. In this context, Mobile Health (m-Health) proposes healthcare services delivering, overcoming geographical, temporal and even organizational barriers. Pervasive and m-Health services aim to respond several emerging problems in health services, including the increasing number of chronic diseases related to lifestyle, high costs in existing national health services, the need to empower patients and families to self-care and manage their own healthcare, and the need to provide direct access to health services, regardless the time and place. Mobile Health (m- Health) systems include the use of mobile devices and applications that interact with patients and caretakers. However, mobile devices have several constraints (such as, processor, energy, and storage resource limitations), affecting the quality of service and user experience. Architectures based on mobile devices and wireless communications presents several challenged issues and constraints, such as, battery and storage capacity, broadcast constraints, interferences, disconnections, noises, limited bandwidths, and network delays. In this sense, cooperation-based approaches are presented as a solution to solve such limitations, focusing on increasing network connectivity, communication rates, and reliability. Cooperation is an important research topic that has been growing in recent years. With the advent of wireless networks, several recent studies present cooperation mechanisms and algorithms as a solution to improve wireless networks performance. In the absence of a stable network infrastructure, mobile nodes cooperate with each other performing all networking functionalities. For example, it can support intermediate nodes forwarding packets between two distant nodes. This Thesis proposes a novel cooperation strategy for m-Health services and applications. This reputation-based scheme uses a Web-service to handle all the nodes reputation and networking permissions. Its main goal is to provide Internet services to mobile devices without network connectivity through cooperation with neighbor devices. Therefore resolving the above mentioned network problems and resulting in a major improvement for m-Health network architectures performances. A performance evaluation of this proposal through a real network scenario demonstrating and validating this cooperative scheme using a real m-Health application is presented. A cryptography solution for m-Health applications under cooperative environments, called DE4MHA, is also proposed and evaluated using the same real network scenario and the same m-Health application. Finally, this work proposes, a generalized cooperative application framework, called MobiCoop, that extends the incentive-based cooperative scheme for m-Health applications for all mobile applications. Its performance evaluation is also presented through a real network scenario demonstrating and validating MobiCoop using different mobile applications