Smart system for children's chronic illness monitoring

[EN] Sick children need a continuous monitoring, but this involves high costs for the government and for the parents. The use of information and communication technologies (ICT) jointly with artificial intelligence and smart devices can reduce these costs, help the children and assist their parents. This paper presents a smart architecture for children's chronic illness monitoring that will let the caregivers (parents, teachers and doctors) to remotely monitor the health of the children based on the sensors embedded in the smartphones and smart wearable devices. The proposed architecture includes a smart algorithm developed to intelligently detect if a parameter has exceeded a threshold, thus it may imply an emergency or not. To check the correct operation of this system, we have developed a small wearable device that is able to measure the heart rate and the body temperature. We have designed a secure mechanism to stablish a Bluetooth connection with the smartphone. In addition, the system is able to perform the data fusion in both the information packetizing process, which contributes to improve the protocol performance, and in the measured values combination, where it is used a stochastic approach. As a result, our system can fusion data from different sensors in real-time and detect automatically strange situations for sending a warning to the caregivers. Finally, the consumed bandwidth and battery autonomy of the developed device have been measured.This work has been partially supported by the "Ministerio de EducaciOn, Cultura y Deporte", through the "Ayudas para contratos predoctorales de Formacion del Profesorado Universitario FPU (Convocatoria 2014)". Grant number FPU14/02953.Sendra, S.; Parra-Boronat, L.; Lloret, J.; Tomás Gironés, J. (2018). Smart system for children's chronic illness monitoring. Information Fusion. 40:76-86. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.inffus.2017.06.002S76864

An m-health application for cerebral stroke detection and monitoring using cloud services

[EN] Over 25 million people suffered from cerebral strokes in a span of 23 years. Many systems are being developed to monitor and improve the life of patients that suffer from different diseases. However, solutions for cerebral strokes are hard to find. Moreover, due to their widespread utilization, smartphones have presented themselves as the most appropriate devices for many e-health systems. In this paper, we propose a cerebral stroke detection solution that employs the cloud to store and analyze data in order to provide statistics to public institutions. Moreover, the prototype of the application is presented. The three most important symptoms of cerebral strokes were considered to develop the tasks that are conducted. Thus, the first task detects smiles, the second task employs voice recognition to determine if a sentence is repeated correctly and, the third task determines if the arms can be raised. Several tests were performed in order to verify the application. Results show its ability to determine whether users have the symptoms of cerebral stroke or not.This work has been partially supported by the pre-doctoral student grant "Ayudas para contratos predoctorales de Formacion del Profesorado Universitario FPU (Convocatoria 2014)" by the "Ministerio de Educacion, Cultura y Deporte", with reference: FPU14/02953.García-García, L.; Tomás Gironés, J.; Parra-Boronat, L.; Lloret, J. (2019). An m-health application for cerebral stroke detection and monitoring using cloud services. International Journal of Information Management. 45:319-327. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2018.06.004S3193274

System for monitoring the wellness state of people in domestic environments employing emoticon-based HCI

[EN] Wellness state is affected by the habitability state of the domestic environment. Monitoring it can help to discover the causes of a low wellness levels aiding people in the improvement of their quality of life. In this paper, we propose a system to monitor the wellness state of people utilizing Likert¿s scale to determine the state of the user through an emoticon-based human¿computer interaction. The system is intended for domestic environments and measures the habitability conditions of the dwelling (such as temperature, humidity, luminosity and noise) employing sensors. An algorithm is designed in order to establish how to measure those conditions and to calculate the statistics that allows tracking their progress. The obtained information is presented to the user to compare his/her wellness state with the habitability conditions. Measures in a real domestic environment were performed in order to determine the configuration of our system. The energy efficiency of the algorithm provides an improvement between 99.36 and 99.62% in the energy consumption depending on the selected parameters.This work has been partially supported by the “Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación”, through the “Plan Nacional de I+D+i 2008–2011” and by the “Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte”, through the grand “Ayudas para contratos predoctorales de Formación del Profesorado Universitario FPU14/02953”.García-García, L.; Parra-Boronat, L.; Romero Martínez, JO.; Lloret, J. (2017). System for monitoring the wellness state of people in domestic environments employing emoticon-based HCI. The Journal of Supercomputing. 1-25. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11227-017-2214-4S125Sendra S, Parra L, Lloret J, Tomás J (2017) Smart system for children’s chronic illness monitoring. Inf Fusion 40:76–86Lloret J, Parra L, Taha M, Tomás J (2017) An architecture and protocol for smart continuous eHealth monitoring using 5G. Comput Netw. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comnet.2017.05.018 (in press)Hettler B (1976) The six dimensions of wellness. National Wellness Institute. http://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.nationalwellness.org/resource/resmgr/docs/sixdimensionsfactsheet.pdf . Accessed 12 Dec 2017Dunn HL (1959) What high-level wellness means. Can J Public Health 50(11):447–457Herbes DJ, Mulder CH (2016) Housing and subjective well-being of older adults in Europe. J Hous Built Environ. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10901-016-9526-1OECD (2015) How’s life? measuring well-being. http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/economics/how-s-life_23089679;jsessionid=55pjippucpjrq.x-oecd-live-02 . Accessed 12 Dec 2017Donaldson GC, Seemungal T, Jeffries DJ, Wedzicha JA (1999) Effect of temperature on lung function and symptoms in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Eur Respir J ERS 13(4):844–849Schwartz J, Samet J, Patz J (2004) Hospital admissions for heart disease: the effects of temperature and humidity. Epidemiology 15(6):755–761National Institute of Statistics of Spain (2005) Defunciones según causa de muerte en 2003. http://www.ine.es/prensa/np393.pdf . Accessed 12 Dec 2017Grimes A, Denne T, Howden-Dhapman P, Arnold R, Telfar-Barnard L, Preval N, Young C (2012) Cost benefit analysis of the warm up New Zealand: heat smart programme. University of Wellington, Wellington. http://sustainablecities.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/NZIF_CBA_report2.pdf . Accessed 12 Dec 2017Martínez-Pérez B, de la Torre-Díez I, Candelas-Plasencia S, López-Coronado M (2013) Developement and evaluation of tools for measuring the quality of experience (QoE) in mHealth applications. J Med Syst 37(5):9976Walther JB, D’addario KP (2001) The impacts of emotions on message interpretation in computer-mediated communication. Soc Sci Comput Rev 19(3):324–347Ghayvat H, Liu J, Mukhopadhay SC, Gui X (2015) Wellness sensor networks: a proposal and implementation for smart home for assisted living. 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A new system to detect coronavirus social distance violation

In this paper, a novel solution to avoid new infections is presented. Instead of tracing users’ locations, the presence of individuals is detected by analysing the voices, and people’s faces are detected by the camera. To do this, two different Android applications were implemented. The first one uses the camera to detect people’s faces whenever the user answers or performs a phone call. Firebase Platform will be used to detect faces captured by the camera and determine its size and estimate their distance to the phone terminal. The second application uses voice biometrics to differentiate the users’ voice from unknown speakers and creates a neural network model based on 5 samples of the user’s voice. This feature will only be activated whenever the user is surfing the Internet or using other applications to prevent undesired contacts. Currently, the patient’s tracking is performed by geolocation or by using Bluetooth connection. Although face detection and voice recognition are existing methods, this paper aims to use them and integrate both in a single device. Our application cannot violate privacy since it does not save the data used to carry out the detection and does not associate this data to people

Design and Implementation of a Wireless Thermometer for Long-term Monitoring

Cílem bakalářské práce je návrh a realizace senzoru pro měření tělesné teploty s přenosem dat pomocí technologie Bluetooth. Práce popisuje možnosti měření tělesné teploty a analyzuje vhodnou volbu senzoru a mikrokontroleru. Zaměřuje se především na dlouhou výdrž baterie, kompatibilitu, přesnost měření a minimalizaci zařízení. Použitý je mikrokontroler Bluegiga BLE112 se specifikací Bluetooth 4.0, který umožňuje tvorbu vlastních GATT profilů zapsaných pomocí XML skriptu programovacím jazykem BGScriptTM. Data jsou odesílána do Android aplikace, kde můžou být dále ukládána a analyzována. Výsledek této práce umožňuje dlouhodobé měření tělesné teploty, které zohledňuje teplotní záznam pacienta.The aim of the bachelor thesis is to design and implement sensor for body temperature measurement with data transfer using Bluetooth technology. The paper describes the possibility of measuring body temperature and analyzes the appropriate choice of sensor and microcontroller. It mainly focuses on long battery life, compatibility, measurement accuracy and device minimization. Bluegiga BLE 112 microcontroller with Bluetooth 4.0 specification is used to create custom profiles written using XML script. Bluegiga BLE 112 microcontroller uses the BGScriptTM programming language. Data is sent to Android apps where it can be further saved and analyzed. The outcome of this work should allow a long-term measurement of body temperature, which takes into account the patient's temperature record.450 - Katedra kybernetiky a biomedicínského inženýrstvívelmi dobř

Human Service Professionals’ Perceived Ability to Support Title I Schools During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Human service professional practitioners (HSPPs) who work in Title I schools help students overcome challenges including absenteeism and behavioral problems and serve as liaisons between the school, family, and student. The pivot to online education during the COVID-19 school shutdowns meant that HSPP services also pivoted. The purpose of this generic qualitative study was to understand how HSPPs perceived their ability to serve Title I students during the pandemic through the lens of Bandura’s self-efficacy theory. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 15 HSPPs who delivered services to Title I students before and during the pandemic. Participants reported their service delivery was effective prior to the pandemic despite a lack of resources. Themes from coding analysis included (a) an ability to effectively deliver services before the COVID-19 pandemic despite a lack of resources; (b) not feeling that their job was undoable; (c) significant disruptions in pandemic service delivery (increasing student needs, changes in job responsibilities, communication/trust issues); (d) there was no way to be prepared; and (e) they gained helpful insights into professional priorities, the use of new organizational tools, and new resources for disruptions. Results could be used by HSPPs, education administrators, and stakeholders in the development of comprehensive virtual plans in schools, which could help parents, HSPPs, and school administrators pivot more smoothly and mitigate potential issues during these types of events

Human Service Professionals’ Perceived Ability to Support Title I Schools During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Human service professional practitioners (HSPPs) who work in Title I schools help students overcome challenges including absenteeism and behavioral problems and serve as liaisons between the school, family, and student. The pivot to online education during the COVID-19 school shutdowns meant that HSPP services also pivoted. The purpose of this generic qualitative study was to understand how HSPPs perceived their ability to serve Title I students during the pandemic through the lens of Bandura’s self-efficacy theory. Semistructured interviews were conducted with 15 HSPPs who delivered services to Title I students before and during the pandemic. Participants reported their service delivery was effective prior to the pandemic despite a lack of resources. Themes from coding analysis included (a) an ability to effectively deliver services before the COVID-19 pandemic despite a lack of resources; (b) not feeling that their job was undoable; (c) significant disruptions in pandemic service delivery (increasing student needs, changes in job responsibilities, communication/trust issues); (d) there was no way to be prepared; and (e) they gained helpful insights into professional priorities, the use of new organizational tools, and new resources for disruptions. Results could be used by HSPPs, education administrators, and stakeholders in the development of comprehensive virtual plans in schools, which could help parents, HSPPs, and school administrators pivot more smoothly and mitigate potential issues during these types of events