How will the Internet of Things enable Augmented Personalized Health?

Internet-of-Things (IoT) is profoundly redefining the way we create, consume, and share information. Health aficionados and citizens are increasingly using IoT technologies to track their sleep, food intake, activity, vital body signals, and other physiological observations. This is complemented by IoT systems that continuously collect health-related data from the environment and inside the living quarters. Together, these have created an opportunity for a new generation of healthcare solutions. However, interpreting data to understand an individual's health is challenging. It is usually necessary to look at that individual's clinical record and behavioral information, as well as social and environmental information affecting that individual. Interpreting how well a patient is doing also requires looking at his adherence to respective health objectives, application of relevant clinical knowledge and the desired outcomes. We resort to the vision of Augmented Personalized Healthcare (APH) to exploit the extensive variety of relevant data and medical knowledge using Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques to extend and enhance human health to presents various stages of augmented health management strategies: self-monitoring, self-appraisal, self-management, intervention, and disease progress tracking and prediction. kHealth technology, a specific incarnation of APH, and its application to Asthma and other diseases are used to provide illustrations and discuss alternatives for technology-assisted health management. Several prominent efforts involving IoT and patient-generated health data (PGHD) with respect converting multimodal data into actionable information (big data to smart data) are also identified. Roles of three components in an evidence-based semantic perception approach- Contextualization, Abstraction, and Personalization are discussed

Big Data Caching for Networking: Moving from Cloud to Edge

In order to cope with the relentless data tsunami in $5G$ wireless networks, current approaches such as acquiring new spectrum, deploying more base stations (BSs) and increasing nodes in mobile packet core networks are becoming ineffective in terms of scalability, cost and flexibility. In this regard, context-aware $5$G networks with edge/cloud computing and exploitation of \emph{big data} analytics can yield significant gains to mobile operators. In this article, proactive content caching in $5$G wireless networks is investigated in which a big data-enabled architecture is proposed. In this practical architecture, vast amount of data is harnessed for content popularity estimation and strategic contents are cached at the BSs to achieve higher users' satisfaction and backhaul offloading. To validate the proposed solution, we consider a real-world case study where several hours of mobile data traffic is collected from a major telecom operator in Turkey and a big data-enabled analysis is carried out leveraging tools from machine learning. Based on the available information and storage capacity, numerical studies show that several gains are achieved both in terms of users' satisfaction and backhaul offloading. For example, in the case of $16$ BSs with $30\%$ of content ratings and $13$ Gbyte of storage size ($78\%$ of total library size), proactive caching yields $100\%$ of users' satisfaction and offloads $98\%$ of the backhaul.Comment: accepted for publication in IEEE Communications Magazine, Special Issue on Communications, Caching, and Computing for Content-Centric Mobile Network

Adaptive planning for distributed systems using goal accomplishment tracking

Goal accomplishment tracking is the process of monitoring the progress of a task or series of tasks towards completing a goal. Goal accomplishment tracking is used to monitor goal progress in a variety of domains, including workflow processing, teleoperation and industrial manufacturing. Practically, it involves the constant monitoring of task execution, analysis of this data to determine the task progress and notification of interested parties. This information is usually used in a passive way to observe goal progress. However, responding to this information may prevent goal failures. In addition, responding proactively in an opportunistic way can also lead to goals being completed faster. This paper proposes an architecture to support the adaptive planning of tasks for fault tolerance or opportunistic task execution based on goal accomplishment tracking. It argues that dramatically increased performance can be gained by monitoring task execution and altering plans dynamically

Exploring entertainment medicine and professionalization of self-care : interview study among doctors on the potential effects of digital self-tracking

Background: Nowadays, digital self-tracking devices offer a plethora of possibilities to both healthy and chronically ill users who want to closely examine their body. This study suggests that self-tracking in a private setting will lead to shifting understandings in professional care. To provide more insight into these shifts, this paper seeks to lay bare the promises and challenges of self-tracking while staying close to the everyday professional experience of the physician. Objective: The aim of this study was to (1) offer an analysis of how medical doctors evaluate self-tracking methods in their practice and (2) explore the anticipated shifts that digital self-care will bring about in relation to our findings and those of other studies. Methods: A total of 12 in-depth semistructured interviews with general practitioners (GPs) and cardiologists were conducted in Flanders, Belgium, from November 2015 to November 2016. Thematic analysis was applied to examine the transcripts in an iterative process. Results: Four major themes arose in our body of data: (1) the patient as health manager, (2) health obsession and medicalization, (3) information management, and (4) shifting roles of the doctors and impact on the health care organization. Our research findings show a nuanced understanding of the potentials and pitfalls of different forms of self-tracking. The necessity of contextualization of self-tracking data and a professionalization of self-care through digital devices come to the fore as important overarching concepts. Conclusions: This interview study with Belgian doctors examines the potentials and challenges of self-monitoring while focusing on the everyday professional experience of the physician. The dialogue between our dataset and the existing literature affords a fine-grained image of digital self-care and its current meaning in a medical-professional landscape

At-risk brand relationships and threats to the bottom line

Like a stock portfolio, each relationship type offers a brand higher or lower growth opportunities and risks. The type of relationship is particularly relevant in brand crisis events. When a brand is hit by a crisis, it is not necessarily the most successful strategy to focus exclusively on protecting positive emotional relationships. At-risk relationships are affected more than others and can lead to a significant decline of brand value. Our cases highlight that at-risk relationships represent a critical, but often overlooked, aspect of a brand’s relationship portfolio. Risks range from negative word of mouth that might have a negative impact on potential new customers to clear retention risk. Marketers should manage these risks proactively by identifying and investigating the nature of their customer relationships and by responding frankly and credibly to crisis events.Published versio