23 research outputs found
Design and implementing an instrument for psychophysiologycal diagnosis (case of electrodermal activity EDA)
Advances in electronics, and particularly in instrumentation have made possible the modernization of medical
equipment and the emergence of neuroimaging. However despite the groundwork laid by Fere and Tarchanoff since 1888,
a delay occurs in the field of psychophysiology. In this paper we describe a new instrument based on FERE’s method,
designed and implemented for EDA’s record and analysis.
The hard and soft parts of the instrument are based on the
skills of microcontroller ATmega168. An amplitude analysis achieves the diagnosis skills of the instrument.Досягнення в електроніці, й особливо в інструментарії, зробили можливою модернізацію медичного обладнання та появу нейровізуалізації. Однак незважаючи на
грунтовну роботу, яка проводилася Фере і Тархановим з
1888 р., у галузі психофізіології у подальшому спостерігалося відставання. У цій статті ми описуємо нове обладнання, засноване на методі Фере, спроектоване і впроваджене для реєстрації та аналізу показників електродермальної активності. Усі частини цього обладнання зроблені на основі мікроконтролера АТmega168
New intelligent network approach for monitoring physiological parameters : the case of Benin
Benin health system is facing many challenges as: (i) affordable high-quality health care to a growing population providing need, (ii) patients’ hospitalization time reduction, (iii) and presence time of the nursing staff optimization. Such challenges can be solved by remote monitoring of patients. To achieve this, five steps were followed. 1) Identification of the Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) systems’ characteristics and the patient physiological parameters’ monitoring. 2) The national Integrated Patient Monitoring Network (RIMP) architecture modeling in a cloud of Technocenters. 3) Cross-analysis between the characteristics and the functional requirements identified. 4) Each Technocenter’s functionality simulation through: a) the design approach choice inspired by the life cycle of V systems; b) functional modeling through SysML Language; c) the communication technology and different architectures of sensor networks choice studying. 5) An estimate of the material resources of the national RIMP according to physiological parameters. A National Integrated Network for Patient Monitoring (RNIMP) remotely, ambulatory or not, was designed for Beninese health system. The implementation of the RNIMP will contribute to improve patients’ care in Benin. The proposed network is supported by a repository that can be used for its implementation, monitoring and evaluation. It is a table of 36 characteristic elements each of which must satisfy 5 requirements relating to: medical application, design factors, safety, performance indicators and materiovigilance
Ineffective Healthcare Technology Management in Benin’s Public Health Sector: The Perceptions of Key Actors and Their Ability to Address the Main Problems
Background: Low-income countries face many contextual challenges to manage healthcare technologies effectively,
as the majority are imported and resources are constrained to a greater extent. Previous healthcare technology
management (HTM) policies in Benin have failed to produce better quality of care for the population and costeffectiveness for the government. This study aims to identify and assess the main problems facing HTM in Benin’s
public health sector, as well as the ability of key actors within the sector to address these problems.
Methods: We conducted 2 surveys in 117 selected health facilities. The first survey was based on 377 questionnaires
and 259 interviews, and the second involved observation and group interviews at health facilities. The Temple-Bird
Healthcare Technology Package System (TBHTPS), tailored to the context of Benin’s health system, was used as a
conceptual framework.
Results: The findings of the first survey show that 85% of key actors in Benin’s HTM sector characterized the
system as failing in components of the TBHTPS framework. Biomedical, clinical, healthcare technology engineers
and technicians perceived problems most severely, followed by users of equipment, managers and hospital
directors, international organization officers, local and foreign suppliers, and finally policy-makers, planners and
administrators at the Ministry of Health (MoH). The 5 most important challenges to be addressed are policy,
strategic management and planning, and technology needs assessment and selection – categorized as major
enabling inputs (MEI) in HTM by the TBHTPS framework – and installation and commissioning, training and skill
development and procurement, which are import and use activities (IUA). The ability of each key actor to address
these problems (the degree of political or administrative power they possess) was inversely proportional to their
perception of the severity of the problems. Observational data gathered during site visits described a different set
of challenges including maintenance and repair, distribution, installation and commissioning, use and training and
personnel skill development.
Conclusion: The lack of experiential and technical knowledge in policy development processes could underpin
many of the continuing problems in Benin’s HTM system. Before solutions can be devised to these problems, it is
necessary to investigate their root causes, and which problems are most amenable to policy development
A framework for assessing healthcare facilities in low-resource settings : field studies in Benin and Uganda
Purpose. The aim of this paper is to present and validate a framework for assessing healthcare facilities in low-resource settings to collect evidence and inform policies on the harmonisation, regulation and contextualised design of medical devices.
Methods. A literature review and focus groups with several experts of medical device design, clinical engineering, health technology assessment and management, allowed the creation of a protocol, comprising two parts: a semi-structured interview and electrical safety measures.
Results. Three hospitals were assessed in Benin and three in Uganda. All the health centres resulted to be facing typical challenges for low-resource settings, including the lack of funding, expertise, a well-established maintenance program, spare parts and consumables, and unreliable power supplies.
Conclusion. As there is a paucity of information regarding low-resource settings, the proposed framework can be used by clinical or biomedical engineers to assess and thereby propose actions for improving the conditions of healthcare settings
N-Beats as an EHG signal forecasting method for labour prediction in full term pregnancy
The early prediction of onset labour is critical for avoiding the risk of death due to pregnancy delay. Low-income countries often struggle to deliver timely service to pregnant women due to a lack of infrastructure and healthcare facilities, resulting in pregnancy complications and, eventually, death. In this regard, several artificial-intelligence-based methods have been proposed based on the detection of contractions using electrohysterogram (EHG) signals. However, the forecasting of pregnancy contractions based on real-time EHG signals is a challenging task. This study proposes a novel model based on neural basis expansion analysis for interpretable time series (N-BEATS) which predicts labour based on EHG forecasting and contraction classification over a given time horizon. The publicly available TPEHG database of Physiobank was exploited in order to train and test the model, where signals from full-term pregnant women and signals recorded after 26 weeks of gestation were collected. For these signals, the 30 most commonly used classification parameters in the literature were calculated, and principal component analysis (PCA) was utilized to select the 15 most representative parameters (all the domains combined). The results show that neural basis expansion analysis for interpretable time series (N-BEATS) forecasting can forecast EHG signals through training after few iterations. Similarly, the forecasting signal’s duration is determined by the length of the recordings. We then deployed XG-Boost, which achieved the classification accuracy of 99 percent, outperforming the state-of-the-art approaches using a number of classification features greater than or equal to 15
Integridad en vídeos de dispositivos móviles
Trabajo de Fin de Grado en Ingeniería Informática (Universidad Complutense, Facultad de Informática, curso 2015/2016)Con frecuencia una persona conectada a Internet sube vídeos a una red social desde su móvil. Esto es así por la popularización de los smartphones de bajo coste y por el incremento del uso de las redes sociales multimedia. Cuando se visionan éstos, surge la pregunta: ¿Habrá sido editado? ¿Es verdadero? Actualmente, las técnicas forenses para imágenes son bastante sofisticadas. En cambio, las orientadas a vídeos digitales y, particularmente, a vídeos digitales de dispositivos móviles, están apenas en sus comienzos. Este trabajo forma parte de un proyecto de investigación financiado por la Comisión Europea dentro del Programa Marco de Investigación e Innovación Horizonte 2020 denominado RAMSES que tiene, entre otros objetivos, el desarrollo de una potente herramienta de análisis forense para vídeos digitales de dispositivos móviles. Más concretamente, la contribución que aporta el presente trabajo a la citada herramienta es el diseño e implementación de un método de análisis forense que indica al usuario las zonas del vídeo que son poco fiables, lo cual es muy útil a la hora de detectar manipulaciones.People, connected to the Internet, on a regular basis, upload videos to Social Networks, using mobile phones. This is due to the popularisation of low-end Smartphones, and to the rise of Multimedia Oriented Social Networks. When we watch a homemade video, we ask ourselves if it has been edited, whether it’s fake or not. When working with photographs, forensic techniques and methods are quite sophisticated. On the other side, implementations of forensic methods applied to Digital Video, are still in an early stage. This work is a part of a much bigger project, financed by The EU Framework Programme for Research and Innovation Horizon 2020, named as RAMSES. It has objectives such as developing a powerful Forensic Tool on mobile devices digital video, among others. More specifically, the contribution made by this work to the above mentioned tool, is the design and implementation of a forensic analysis technique which pinpoints the not very reliable areas of a video. That is quite useful when detecting tampering.Depto. de Ingeniería de Software e Inteligencia Artificial (ISIA)Fac. de InformáticaTRUEunpu
Operaciones de Defensa en el Ciberespacio desde una perspectiva MILDEC
Durante años, el ciberespacio ha sido considerado como el quinto dominio de batalla. No es
de extrañar que las tácticas de guerra tradicionales se hayan traducido al Ciberespacio, tales
como las tácticas de guerrilla, guerra asimétrica, engaño, atribución, entre otros.
Recientemente, en las doctrinas de OTAN y Países Miembros se empieza a hablar de
Operaciones Ofensivas en el Ciberespacio. Dichas operaciones son de apoyo o de actuación
directa en dicho quinto dominio de batalla, como parte de una planificación inherentemente
conjunta y/o combinada. Sin embargo, en el año de 2022, las operaciones en el ciberespacio
siguen predominantemente basadas en efectos, donde su finalidad típicamente escala hacia
una pretensión de objetivos estratégicos no convencionales (diplomáticos, económicos,
sociales, políticos, etc.). No es de extrañar pues su proximidad a las operaciones MILDEC
(‘Military Deception’ o Engaño Militar), siendo su uso en operaciones de defensa vinculado a
conceptos como la estratagema o la disuasión; en ocasiones vinculadas a operaciones
psicológicas y/o de información (de cara a articular una misión o narrativa paralela a la realidad
englobando esta narrativa de engaño todos los dominios excepto el de ciberespacio). De ahí
que es necesario realizar una síntesis del uso del ciberespacio como campo de batalla desde
una perspectiva OTAN y proponer puntos de entrada de procedimientos MILDEC
Instrument d’aide au diagnostic en psychophysiologie : Cas de l’activite electrodermale (AED)
Les progrès de l’électronique et en particulier ceux réalisés en instrumentation ont rendu possible la modernisation des électrophysiographes et l’émergence de la neuro-imagerie. Toutefois malgré les bases posées par FERE et TARCHANOFF depuis 1888, un retard s’observe dans les domaines de la psychophysiologie compte tenu de la quasi-inexistence d’un outil fiable d’aide au diagnostic. Dans cet article, un appui est pris sur la méthode de FERE pour concevoir et réaliser un instrument d’enregistrement et d’analyse de l’activité électrodermale. En effet, peu exploitée dans les diagnostics psychiatriques, l’activité électrodermale est un paramètre physiologique qui traduit de façon instantanée l’état émotif ou mental d’une personne à travers la variation de la conductance cutanée. Ainsi, une tension continue constante de 500 mV appliquée aux bornes de deux électrodes placées sur les phalanges distales de l’index et du majeur de la main non dominante de cinq (5) candidats, défendant leur mémoire de fin de formation, a permis d’enregistrer les variations de la conductance de leur peau. La valeur analogique mesurée est échantillonnée par le convertisseur analogique-numérique de l’ATmega168, avant d’être transmise via une liaison série sur l’ordinateur pour enfin faire l’objet d’une analyse d’amplitude.
Advances in electronics and in particular those made in instrumentation have made possible the modernization of electrophysiographs and the emergence of neuro-imaging. However despite the groundwork laid by FERE and TARCHANOFF since 1888, a delay occurs in the field of psychiatry and psychophysiology, given the virtual absence of a tool for diagnosis. In this project, basis is taken on the method of FERE to design and implement an instrument for recording and analysis of ElectroDermal Activity. Indeed, little used in psychiatric diagnosis, electrodermal activity is a physiological parameter which expresses the instantaneous emotional or mental state of a person through the change in skin conductance or potential. Thus, we applied a constant voltage of 500 mV at the terminals of two electrodes placed on the distal phalanges of index and middle fingers of the non-dominant hand of five (5) candidates, defending their thesis at the end of training, and we recorded the changes in conductance of their skin. The measured analog value is sampled by the analog-digital converter of the ATmega168, before being transmitted via a serial port on the computer for amplitude analysis. 
The impact of Benin’s first public procurement code and its amendment on healthcare equipment acquisition prices
Purpose: To satisfy donors and reduce public procurement acquisition prices, Benin has implemented and amended its first public procurement code guided by top-down principles of good governance. Design/methodology/approach: This study aims to measure the impact of the code and its amendment on public procurement acquisition prices of health-care equipment from 1995 to 2010. Findings: A segmented linear regression analysis was performed using interrupted time-series data. The analysis shows that the code and its amendment did not reduce acquisition prices, indicating the limited impact of the code. The authors recommend the implementation of bottom-up processes in establishing the public procurement system, and the development of a reference pricelist of the most widely used health-care equipment, as possible solutions for improving the effectiveness of the code