The case of public transport infrastructure in Malta, and its impact on the elderly

The concept of equity is essential in transport because inequities lead to the formation of transport-disadvantaged groups, such as the elderly, disabled and low-income people. This paper focuses on the elderly. Due to age-related circumstances, several elderly persons have to surrender on driving, consequently they become highly dependent on public transport. Hence, accessible public transport is crucial to provide them with the necessary mobility. This research considers accessibility as a key indicator for transport equity, since the latter primarily deals with the provision of equal access to opportunities. The study focuses on the case of Malta's public transport system, which is composed of the bus service. The uniqueness of the Maltese case is that transport policy is fragmented, and is not focused on equity. This paper looks at three aspects of accessibility related to road infrastructure, public transport infrastructure, and the bus fleet. The first aspect refers to accessibility at the macro scale, for instance, pavements may not be solely designed to cater for the bus service, but they are an integrative part of it. The meso scale refers to accessibility of infrastructure in physical and cyber form, such as access to and on bus stops and access to online travel information. The bus fleet refers to the micro scale of accessibility, which may include boarding and alighting the vehicle, and access on the vehicle. The research approach involves a review of existing Maltese public transport policy, with speci c focus on whether accessibility for the elderly is considered in the context of the afore-mentioned scales. It is envisaged that the minimal or non-existent policy on accessibility in public transport that focuses on elderly, makes this population segment at a double disadvantage. The research concludes with implications for policy related to public transport accessibility in a Maltese ageing society.peer-reviewe

Pervasive adaptive data acquisition gateway for critical healthcare

The data acquisition process in real-time is fundamental to provide appropriate services and improve health professionals decision. In this paper a pervasive adaptive data acquisition architecture of medical devices (e.g. vital signs, ventilators and sensors) is presented. The architecture was deployed in a real context in an Intensive Care Unit. It is providing clinical data in real-time to the INTCare system. The gateway is composed by several agents able to collect a set of patients’ variables (vital signs, ventilation) across the network. The paper shows as example the ventilation acquisition process. The clients are installed in a machine near the patient bed. Then they are connected to the ventilators and the data monitored is sent to a multithreading server which using Health Level Seven protocols records the data in the database. The agents associated to gateway are able to collect, analyse, interpret and store the data in the repository. This gateway is composed by a fault tolerant system that ensures a data store in the database even if the agents are disconnected. The gateway is pervasive, universal, and interoperable and it is able to adapt to any service using streaming data.This work has been supported by FCT - Fundacao para a Ciencia e Tecnologia within the Project Scope UID/CEC/00319/2013 and the contract PTDC/EEI-SII/1302/2012

A pervasive approach to a real-time intelligent decision support system in intensive medicine

The decision on the most appropriate procedure to provide to the patients the best healthcare possible is a critical and complex task in Intensive Care Units (ICU). Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSS) should deal with huge amounts of data and online monitoring, analyzing numerous parameters and providing outputs in a short real-time. Although the advances attained in this area of knowledge new challenges should be taken into account in future CDSS developments, principally in ICUs environments. The next generation of CDSS will be pervasive and ubiquitous providing the doctors with the appropriate services and information in order to support decisions regardless the time or the local where they are. Consequently new requirements arise namely the privacy of data and the security in data access. This paper will present a pervasive perspective of the decision making process in the context of INTCare system, an intelligent decision support system for intensive medicine. Three scenarios are explored using data mining models continuously assessed and optimized. Some preliminary results are depicted and discussed.Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT

Mobile services and applications: towards a balanced adoption model

This paper synthesizes prior research to develop a novel model for the study of the adoption of mobile business services and applications incorporating a demand and supply perspective. The model complements and extends existing models while also leveraging data from industry reports; in particular, it focuses on the interrelationships between participants in the mobile services value chain and the impact of these interrelationships on the adoption of new services in a competitive and technology-saturated service market. There has been to date limited research reported that has considered the dynamics of the interrelationships between customers and (layers of) multiple service providers as a factor in the adoption and acceptance process; the proposed model addresses this gap and advocates the use of a combination of design science and service science methodologies. It is concluded that not mobility per se but the way mobility is used to create value plays a significant role as an adoption driver, and that the quality of the service and its relevance to personal or business lifestyle are the most important decision making factors. It is also asserted that while innovative mobile services (i.e., services that are not already offered using a different technology) may be compelling if they meet lifestyle needs, mobile services replacing or complementing existing ones will be favored by customers only if their quality is exceptional and motivates ‘switching’ to the mobile service

Assistive and wearable technology for elderly

The current technology is able to assist the daily activities of elderly without depend on others. That’s because the physical condition of the elderly began to decreasing. The decreased physical conditions can include slow body movements, lack of balance of the body, decreased coordination of movement between limbs, memory loss, and decreased capacity to process information. With those many limitations possessed by elderly, they used technology to help them. There are two kind of technology that used to help elderly, those technology are wearable technology and assistive technology. This paper will discussed about some wearable technology and assistive technology that can help the problems experienced by elderly

Cognition, technology and games for the elderly: An introduction to ELDERGAMES Project

Eldergames is a EU-funded project to develop games using advanced visualisation and interaction interfaces to improve the cognitive, functional and social skills of older users. The project merges two major areas to which technology for elderly people is applied: health and social engagement. Its platform will allow users to improve their cognitive skills and individual well-being by playing on a mixed-reality platform; in addition, it will offer the unusual experience of communicating with people located in other countries without the need to share the same language. After introducing the field of gerontology and the project, this paper describes the main cognitive abilities that change with aging (perception, attention, memory, and other more specific processes such as decision-making), and that have to be taken into account while designing a technology for elderly people. Some guidelines that are specifically meant to ensure usability of these products are listed in the conclusions

Using Wireless Sensor Networks for Aged Care: The Patient's Perspective

This paper presents the findings of a qualitative study on the perceptions and thoughts of elderly people on the use of current sensor network technology for assisted aged care. Focus groups of elderly people were presented with examples of current sensor nodes and example scenarios of their use, and then invited to provide input on a range of issues surrounding the design and use of the technology. The focus group findings were verified with a health care professional as a control measure. This study examines sensing based interaction, implementation methodologies and user acceptance issues specifically for the elderly, and from the elderly's perspective. A significant finding of the study is that the two most important factors for elderly acceptance of sensor technology are cost and contro