250 research outputs found
A framework for development of android mobile electronic prescription transfer applications in compliance with security requirements mandated by the Australian healthcare industry
This thesis investigates mobile electronic transfer of prescription (ETP) in compliance with the security requirements mandated by the Australian healthcare industry and proposes a framework for the development of an Android mobile electronic prescription transfer application. Furthermore, and based upon the findings and knowledge from constructing this framework, another framework is also derived for assessing Android mobile ETP applications for their security compliance.
The centralised exchange model-based ETP solution currently used in the Australian healthcare industry is an expensive solution for on-going use. With challenges such as an aging population and the rising burden of chronic disease, the cost of the current ETP solutionâs operational infrastructure is certain to rise in the future. In an environment where it is increasingly beneficial for patients to engage in and manage their own information and subsequent care, this current solution fails to offer the patient direct access to their electronic prescription information. The current system also fails to incorporate certain features that would dramatically improve the quality of the patientâs care and safety, i.e. alerts for the patientâs drug allergies, harmful dosage and script expiration. Over a decade old, the current ETP solution was essentially designed and built to meet legislation and regulatory requirements, with change-averting its highest priority. With little, if any, provision for future growth and innovation, it was not designed to cater to the needs of the ETP process. This research identifies the gap within the current ETP implementation (i.e. dependency on infrastructure, significant on-going cost and limited availability of the patientâs medication history) and proposes a framework for building a secure mobile ETP solution on the Android mobile operating system platform which will address the identified gap.
The literature review part of this thesis examined the significance of ETP for the nationâs larger initiative to provide an improved and better maintainable healthcare system. The literature review also revealed the stance of each jurisdiction, from legislative and regulatory perspectives, in transitioning to the use of a fully electronic ETP solution. It identified the regulatory mandates of each jurisdiction for ETP as well as the security standards by which the current ETP implementation is iii governed so as to conform to those regulatory mandates. The literature review part of the thesis essentially identified and established how the Australian healthcare industryâs various prescription-related legislations and regulations are constructed, and the complexity of this construction for eTP.
The jurisdictional regulatory mandates identified in the literature review translate into a set of security requirements. These requirements establish the basis of the guiding framework for the development of a security-compliant Android mobile ETP application. A number of experimentations were conducted focusing on the native security features of the Android operating system, as well as wireless communication technologies such as NFC and Bluetooth, in order to propose an alternative mobile ETP solution with security assurance comparable to the current ETP implementation. The employment of a proof-of-concept prototype such as this alongside / coupled with a series of iterative experimentations strengthens the validity and practicality of the proposed framework.
The first experiment successfully proved that the Android operating system has sufficient encryption capabilities, in compliance with the security mandates, to secure the electronic prescription information from the data at rest perspective. The second experiment indicated that the use of NFC technology to implement the alternative transfer mechanism for exchanging electronic prescription information between ETP participating devices is not practical. The next iteration of the experimentation using Bluetooth technology proved that it can be utilised as an alternative electronic prescription transfer mechanism to the current approach using the Internet. These experiment outcomes concluded the partial but sufficient proofof- concept prototype for this research.
Extensive document analysis and iterative experimentations showed that the framework constructed by this research can guide the development of an alternative mobile ETP solution with both comparable security assurance to and better access to the patientâs medication history than the current solution. This alternative solution would present no operational dependence upon infrastructure and its associated, ongoing cost to the nationâs healthcare expenditure. In addition, use of this mobile ETP alternative has the potential to change the publicâs perception (i.e. acceptance from regulatory and security perspectives) of mobile healthcare solutions, thereby paving the way for further innovation and future enhancements in eHealth
Quality assessment technique for ubiquitous software and middleware
The new paradigm of computing or information systems is ubiquitous computing systems. The technology-oriented issues of ubiquitous computing systems have made researchers pay much attention to the feasibility study of the technologies rather than building quality assurance indices or guidelines. In this context, measuring quality is the key to developing high-quality ubiquitous computing products. For this reason, various quality models have been defined, adopted and enhanced over the years, for example, the need for one recognised standard quality model (ISO/IEC 9126) is the result of a consensus for a software quality model on three levels: characteristics, sub-characteristics, and metrics. However, it is very much unlikely that this scheme will be directly applicable to ubiquitous computing environments which are considerably different to conventional software, trailing a big concern which is being given to reformulate existing methods, and especially to elaborate new assessment techniques for ubiquitous computing environments. This paper selects appropriate quality characteristics for the ubiquitous computing environment, which can be used as the quality target for both ubiquitous computing product evaluation processes ad development processes. Further, each of the quality characteristics has been expanded with evaluation questions and metrics, in some cases with measures. In addition, this quality model has been applied to the industrial setting of the ubiquitous computing environment. These have revealed that while the approach was sound, there are some parts to be more developed in the future
Development of an autonomous distributed multiagent monitoring system for the automatic classification of end users
The purpose of this study is to investigate the feasibility of constructing a software Multi-Agent based monitoring and classification system and utilizing it to provide an automated and accurate classification for end users developing applications in the spreadsheet domain. Resulting in, is the creation of the Multi-Agent Classification System (MACS).
The Microsoftâs .NET Windows Service based agents were utilized to develop the Monitoring Agents of MACS. These agents function autonomously to provide continuous and periodic monitoring of spreadsheet workbooks by content. .NET Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) Services technology was used together with the Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) approach for the distribution of the agents over the World Wide Web in order to satisfy the monitoring and classification of the multiple developer aspect. The Prometheus agent oriented design methodology and its accompanying Prometheus Design Tool (PDT) was employed for specifying and designing the agents of MACS, and Visual Studio.NET 2008 for creating the agency using visual C# programming language.
MACS was evaluated against classification criteria from the literature with the support of using real-time data collected from a target group of excel spreadsheet developers over a network. The Monitoring Agents were configured to execute automatically, without any user intervention as windows service processes in the .NET web server application of the system. These distributed agents listen to and read the contents of excel spreadsheets development activities in terms of file and author properties, function and formulas used, and Visual Basic for Application (VBA) macro code constructs. Data gathered by the Monitoring Agents from various resources over a period of time was collected and filtered by a Database Updater Agent residing in the .NET client application of the system. This agent then transfers and stores the data in Oracle server database via Oracle stored procedures for further processing that leads to the classification of the end user developers.
Oracle data mining classification algorithms: Naive Bayes, Adaptive Naive Bayes, Decision Trees, and Support Vector Machine were utilized to analyse the results from the data gathering process in order to automate the classification of excel spreadsheet developers. The accuracy of the predictions achieved by the models was compared. The results of the comparison showed that Naive Bayes classifier achieved the best results with accuracy of 0.978. Therefore, the MACS can be utilized to provide a Multi-Agent based automated classification solution to spreadsheet developers with a high degree of accuracy
An Ontology for Product-Service Systems
Industries are transforming their business strategy from a product-centric to a more service-centric nature by bundling products and services into integrated solutions to enhance the relationship between their customers. Since Product- Service Systems design research is currently at a rudimentary stage, the development of a robust ontology for this area would be helpful. The advantages of a standardized ontology are that it could help researchers and practitioners to communicate their views without ambiguity and thus encourage the conception and implementation of useful methods and tools. In this paper, an initial structure of a PSS ontology from the design perspective is proposed and evaluated
A service oriented architecture to implement clinical guidelines for evidence-based medical practice
Health information technology (HIT) has been identified as the fundamental driver to streamline the healthcare delivery processes to improve care quality and reduce operational costs. Of the many facets of HIT is Clinical Decision Support (CDS) which provides the physician with patient-specific inferences, intelligently filtered and organized, at appropriate times. This research has been conducted to develop an agile solution to Clinical Decision Support at the point of care in a healthcare setting as a potential solution to the challenges of interoperability and the complexity of possible solutions. The capabilities of Business Process Management (BPM) and Workflow Management systems are leveraged to support a Service Oriented Architecture development approach for ensuring evidence based medical practice. The aim of this study is to present an architecture solution that is based on SOA principles and embeds clinical guidelines within a healthcare setting. Since the solution is designed to implement real life healthcare scenarios, it essentially supports evidence-based clinical guidelines that are liable to change over a period of time.
The thesis is divided into four parts. The first part consists of an Introduction to the study and a background to existing approaches for development and integration of Clinical Decision Support Systems. The second part focuses on the development of a Clinical Decision Support Framework based on Service Oriented Architecture. The CDS Framework is composed of standards based open source technologies including JBoss SwitchYard (enterprise service bus), rule-based CDS enabled by JBoss Drools, process modelling using Business Process Modelling and Notation. To ensure interoperability among various components, healthcare standards by HL7 and OMG are implemented. The third part provides implementation of this CDS Framework in healthcare scenarios. Two scenarios are concerned with the medical practice for diagnosis and early intervention (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease and Lung Cancer), one case study for Genetic data enablement of CDS systems (New born screening for Cystic Fibrosis) and the last case study is about using BPM techniques for managing healthcare organizational perspectives including human interaction with automated clinical workflows. The last part concludes the research with contributions in design and architecture of CDS systems.
This thesis has primarily adopted the Design Science Research Methodology for Information Systems. Additionally, Business Process Management Life Cycle, Agile Business Rules Development methodology and Pattern-Based Cycle for E-Workflow Design for individual case studies are used. Using evidence-based clinical guidelines published by UKâs National Institute of Health and Care Excellence, the integration of latest research in clinical practice has been employed in the automated workflows. The case studies implemented using the CDS Framework are evaluated against implementation requirements, conformance to SOA principles and response time using load testing strategy.
For a healthcare organization to achieve its strategic goals in administrative and clinical practice, this research has provided a standards based integration solution in the field of clinical decision support. A SOA based CDS can serve as a potential solution to complexities in IT interventions as the core data and business logic functions are loosely coupled from the presentation. Additionally, the results of this this research can serve as an exemplar for other industrial domains requiring rapid response to evolving business processes
Automated Injection of Curated Knowledge Into Real-Time Clinical Systems: CDS Architecture for the 21st Century
abstract: Clinical Decision Support (CDS) is primarily associated with alerts, reminders, order entry, rule-based invocation, diagnostic aids, and on-demand information retrieval. While valuable, these foci have been in production use for decades, and do not provide a broader, interoperable means of plugging structured clinical knowledge into live electronic health record (EHR) ecosystems for purposes of orchestrating the user experiences of patients and clinicians. To date, the gap between knowledge representation and user-facing EHR integration has been considered an âimplementation concernâ requiring unscalable manual human efforts and governance coordination. Drafting a questionnaire engineered to meet the specifications of the HL7 CDS Knowledge Artifact specification, for example, carries no reasonable expectation that it may be imported and deployed into a live system without significant burdens. Dramatic reduction of the time and effort gap in the research and application cycle could be revolutionary. Doing so, however, requires both a floor-to-ceiling precoordination of functional boundaries in the knowledge management lifecycle, as well as formalization of the human processes by which this occurs.
This research introduces ARTAKA: Architecture for Real-Time Application of Knowledge Artifacts, as a concrete floor-to-ceiling technological blueprint for both provider heath IT (HIT) and vendor organizations to incrementally introduce value into existing systems dynamically. This is made possible by service-ization of curated knowledge artifacts, then injected into a highly scalable backend infrastructure by automated orchestration through public marketplaces. Supplementary examples of client app integration are also provided. Compilation of knowledge into platform-specific form has been left flexible, in so far as implementations comply with ARTAKAâs Context Event Service (CES) communication and Health Services Platform (HSP) Marketplace service packaging standards.
Towards the goal of interoperable human processes, ARTAKAâs treatment of knowledge artifacts as a specialized form of software allows knowledge engineers to operate as a type of software engineering practice. Thus, nearly a century of software development processes, tools, policies, and lessons offer immediate benefit: in some cases, with remarkable parity. Analyses of experimentation is provided with guidelines in how choice aspects of software development life cycles (SDLCs) apply to knowledge artifact development in an ARTAKA environment.
Portions of this culminating document have been further initiated with Standards Developing Organizations (SDOs) intended to ultimately produce normative standards, as have active relationships with other bodies.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Biomedical Informatics 201
On-premise containerized, light-weight software solutions for Biomedicine
Bioinformatics software systems are critical tools for analysing large-scale biological
data, but their design and implementation can be challenging due to the need for reliability, scalability, and performance. This thesis investigates the impact of several
software approaches on the design and implementation of bioinformatics software
systems. These approaches include software patterns, microservices, distributed
computing, containerisation and container orchestration. The research focuses on
understanding how these techniques affect bioinformatics software systemsâ reliability, scalability, performance, and efficiency. Furthermore, this research highlights
the challenges and considerations involved in their implementation. This study also
examines potential solutions for implementing container orchestration in bioinformatics research teams with limited resources and the challenges of using container
orchestration. Additionally, the thesis considers microservices and distributed computing and how these can be optimised in the design and implementation process to
enhance the productivity and performance of bioinformatics software systems. The
research was conducted using a combination of software development, experimentation, and evaluation. The results show that implementing software patterns can
significantly improve the code accessibility and structure of bioinformatics software
systems. Specifically, microservices and containerisation also enhanced system reliability, scalability, and performance. Additionally, the study indicates that adopting
advanced software engineering practices, such as model-driven design and container
orchestration, can facilitate efficient and productive deployment and management of
bioinformatics software systems, even for researchers with limited resources. Overall, we develop a software system integrating all our findings. Our proposed system
demonstrated the ability to address challenges in bioinformatics. The thesis makes
several key contributions in addressing the research questions surrounding the design,
implementation, and optimisation of bioinformatics software systems using software
patterns, microservices, containerisation, and advanced software engineering principles and practices. Our findings suggest that incorporating these technologies can
significantly improve bioinformatics software systemsâ reliability, scalability, performance, efficiency, and productivity.Bioinformatische Software-Systeme stellen bedeutende Werkzeuge fĂŒr die Analyse
umfangreicher biologischer Daten dar. Ihre Entwicklung und Implementierung kann
jedoch aufgrund der erforderlichen ZuverlÀssigkeit, Skalierbarkeit und LeistungsfÀhigkeit eine Herausforderung darstellen. Das Ziel dieser Arbeit ist es, die Auswirkungen von Software-Mustern, Microservices, verteilten Systemen, Containerisierung
und Container-Orchestrierung auf die Architektur und Implementierung von bioinformatischen Software-Systemen zu untersuchen. Die Forschung konzentriert sich
darauf, zu verstehen, wie sich diese Techniken auf die ZuverlÀssigkeit, Skalierbarkeit,
LeistungsfÀhigkeit und Effizienz von bioinformatischen Software-Systemen auswirken
und welche Herausforderungen mit ihrer Konzeptualisierungen und Implementierung
verbunden sind. Diese Arbeit untersucht auch potenzielle Lösungen zur Implementierung von Container-Orchestrierung in bioinformatischen Forschungsteams mit begrenzten Ressourcen und die EinschrĂ€nkungen bei deren Verwendung in diesem Kontext. Des Weiteren werden die SchlĂŒsselfaktoren, die den Erfolg von bioinformatischen Software-Systemen mit Containerisierung, Microservices und verteiltem Computing beeinflussen, untersucht und wie diese im Design- und Implementierungsprozess optimiert werden können, um die ProduktivitĂ€t und Leistung bioinformatischer
Software-Systeme zu steigern. Die vorliegende Arbeit wurde mittels einer Kombination aus Software-Entwicklung, Experimenten und Evaluation durchgefĂŒhrt. Die
erzielten Ergebnisse zeigen, dass die Implementierung von Software-Mustern, die ZuverlÀssigkeit und Skalierbarkeit von bioinformatischen Software-Systemen erheblich
verbessern kann. Der Einsatz von Microservices und Containerisierung trug ebenfalls zur Steigerung der ZuverlÀssigkeit, Skalierbarkeit und LeistungsfÀhigkeit des
Systems bei. DarĂŒber hinaus legt die Arbeit dar, dass die Anwendung von SoftwareEngineering-Praktiken, wie modellgesteuertem Design und Container-Orchestrierung,
die effiziente und produktive Bereitstellung und Verwaltung von bioinformatischen
Software-Systemen erleichtern kann. Zudem löst die Implementierung dieses SoftwareSystems, Herausforderungen fĂŒr Forschungsgruppen mit begrenzten Ressourcen. Insgesamt hat das System gezeigt, dass es in der Lage ist, Herausforderungen im Bereich
der Bioinformatik zu bewĂ€ltigen und stellt somit ein wertvolles Werkzeug fĂŒr Forscher in diesem Bereich dar. Die vorliegende Arbeit leistet mehrere wichtige BeitrĂ€ge
zur Beantwortung von Forschungsfragen im Zusammenhang mit dem Entwurf, der
Implementierung und der Optimierung von Software-Systemen fĂŒr die Bioinformatik unter Verwendung von Prinzipien und Praktiken der Softwaretechnik. Unsere
Ergebnisse deuten darauf hin, dass die Einbindung dieser Technologien die ZuverlÀssigkeit, Skalierbarkeit, LeistungsfÀhigkeit, Effizienz und ProduktivitÀt bioinformatischer Software-Systeme erheblich verbessern kann
Engineering Agile Big-Data Systems
To be effective, data-intensive systems require extensive ongoing customisation to reflect changing user requirements, organisational policies, and the structure and interpretation of the data they hold. Manual customisation is expensive, time-consuming, and error-prone. In large complex systems, the value of the data can be such that exhaustive testing is necessary before any new feature can be added to the existing design. In most cases, the precise details of requirements, policies and data will change during the lifetime of the system, forcing a choice between expensive modification and continued operation with an inefficient design.Engineering Agile Big-Data Systems outlines an approach to dealing with these problems in software and data engineering, describing a methodology for aligning these processes throughout product lifecycles. It discusses tools which can be used to achieve these goals, and, in a number of case studies, shows how the tools and methodology have been used to improve a variety of academic and business systems
Recommended from our members
The college of extended learning online registration system
The purpose of this study was to build an online method to register for classes for the College of Extended Learning Online Registration System (CELORS). This system was initially built so that the College of Extended Learning could offer its students an online method to register for classes, in addition to the traditional methods of registering by phone, by fax, by mail, or in person. Over the last few years, the system has been routinely modified to meet the needs of the College to suit their ever-changing business rules
- âŠ