Mobile Facial Recognition System for Patient Identification in Medical Emergencies for Developing Economies

Medical emergencies are part of the common daily lives of people in developing and under-developed economies. Frequently, some of these medical emergencies end up tragically for many people in these countries due to many reasons, among which is the delivery of medical treatment when the patient is uncommunicative or unresponsive. The ability of the attending medical personnel to access a patient’s medical history is critical for the quality of the treatment rendered. Unfortunately, today many lives are lost in low income economies during medical emergencies due to lack or inaccessibility of a patient’s medical information. One of the major contributing factors of this paucity in records is attributable to the absence of reliable and cost-efficient healthcare delivery systems that support patient identification and verification. Due to the current ubiquity of mobile devices with their concomitant digital cameras, this paper explores the feasibility and practicability of using mobile platform and facial recognition technology as a means to deploying a cost-efficient system for reliable patient identification and verification

Mobile Facial Recognition System for Patient Identification in Medical Emergencies for Developing Economies

Medical emergencies are part of the common daily lives of people in developing and under-developed economies. Frequently, some of these medical emergencies end up tragically for many people in these countries due to many reasons, among which is the delivery of medical treatment when the patient is uncommunicative or unresponsive. The ability of the attending medical personnel to access a patient’s medical history is critical for the quality of the treatment rendered. Unfortunately, today many lives are lost in low income economies during medical emergencies due to lack or inaccessibility of a patient’s medical information. One of the major contributing factors of this paucity in records is attributable to the absence of reliable and cost-efficient healthcare delivery systems that support patient identification and verification. Due to the current ubiquity of mobile devices with their concomitant digital cameras, this paper explores the feasibility and practicability of using mobile platform and facial recognition technology as a means to deploying a cost-efficient system for reliable patient identification and verification

Multimedia Object Modelling and Storage Allocation Strategies for Heterogeneous Parallel Access Storage Devices in Real Time Multimedia Computing Systems

The improvements in disk speeds have not kept up with improvements in processor and memory speeds. Conventional storage techniques, in the face of multimedia data, are inefficient and/or inadequate. Here, an efficient multimedia object allocation strategy is presented. We describe a multimedia object model, the object and storage device characteristics, and the fragmentation strategy. A bipartite graph approach is used for mapping fragments to storage devices and a cost function is used to determine an efficient allocation of an object and to balance the loads on the devices

Infant Feeding Practices Among Mothers and Their Infants Attending Maternal And Child Health In Enugu, Nigeria.

Inappropriate feeding of infants has long been observed in our society and it is one of the global problems responsible for about one-third of the cases of malnutrition world wide. The study assessed the Infant feeding Practices among mothers and their infants attending Maternal and child health in Enugu, Nigeria. Samples of 410 infants (0-12 months) and mother pair, were randomly selected from these hospitals: Institute of Child Health University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital, Poly Clinic Asata, Christ Specialist Hospital Ogui and ESUT Teaching Hospital (Parklane) all in Enugu State of Nigeria. These four hospitals were purposefully selected because of their involvement in maternal and child health. Information  on infant feeding practices, demographic data, socio-economic data, were obtained from the mothers with a structured and pre-tested questionnaire. The data obtained were analyzed with the use of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 16 to percentages, frequences and reprensented in a descriptive statistic in tables and charts. Results showed that most (43%) mothers were within the age of 26–30 years, 92.2% were married, 41% had secondary education, 45.1% were civil servants, 36.8% earned a monthly salary of less than ?10,000 per month. Majority (97.5%) of the infants were Breastfed, 53% initiated breastfeeding within one hour after birth, 65.3% breastfed on-demand, 62.2% of the infants were exclusive breastfed, only 34.5% were breastfed exclusively for a duration of 5–6 months, 38.8% of mothers practiced prelacteal feeding on their infants, 44% were fed on breastmilk substitute, 72.4% were fed on complementary food, 48.3% initiate complementary feeding at the age of 5 to 6 months, 70% were fed on Pap (Akamu, Ogi) as a complementary food. This study depicted high prevalence of inapropriate infant feeding practices among mothers despite all the nutrition education and promotion of optimal breastfeeding and adequate complementary feeding practices in our maternal and child care institute. Key Word: Infant, Breastfeeding, Exclusive breastfeeding, Complementary Feeding

Understanding adolescents’ moral stance on examination malpractice through the lenses of parenting styles, test anxiety, and their academic self-efficacy

Introduction. The increasing complex nature of academic dishonesty demands that empirical models are built to explain the psychosocial and motivational variables involved in the way examination malpractice is morally viewed by adolescents. This has been underexplored in Nigeria over the years given that available studies have not utilized designs that could give comprehensive understanding of pathways through which moral views of adolescents on examination malpractice could be predicted. Method. This study developed an empirical model using path analysis to explain the direct and indirect effects of parenting styles, test anxiety, academic self-efficacy on adolescents’ moral stance on examination malpractice scenarios. The multivariate predictor correlational research design was adopted. Dimensions of the parenting styles served as exogeneous variables while test anxiety, self-efficacy and moral stance on examination malpractice served as endogeneous variables with test anxiety and self-efficay serving as mediators. The sample size was made up of 741 senior seconday school students, classs one (SS1) from 15 secondary schools located in southeast geopolitical zone of Nigeria. Results. Findings showed, among others, that the final hypothesized model fit the data satisfactorily and that permissive parenting style and test anxiety significantly and positively predicted adolescents’ amoral stance on examination malpractice while authoritative parenting negatively predicted their amoral stance on examination malpractice. Permissive parenting style had both direct and indirect significant effects on adolescents’ moral stance on examination malpractice. Discussion and Conclusion. Discussion was based on the findings resulting to the conclusión that inappropriate parenting style and problematic psychological dispositions are factors that could influence the moral views of adolescents. For appropriate intervention to be mounted for students, there is the need to incorporate how adolescents are trained by their parents

A Mobile Solution to Drug Prescription and Dispensation with Privacy Protection for Developing Economies

It is unarguable that many countries within the developing economies have not been able to reap many of the benefits from the innovations in Computer and Information Technologies (CIT) as they pertain to the advances in healthcare delivery systems. The contributing factors to the problems in these countries are multifaceted, such as, ethnic, cultural, environmental, governance, and infrastructural. To address these problems, current efforts have focused mostly on the issues of disease control and management. However, insufficient attention has been given to the concomitant problems of medication (drug / prescription) management especially as they relate to information management between patients, physicians, and pharmacists. In most of these countries, the absence of integrated and reliable system for management and maintenance of a patient’s medical history exposes a patient to prescription and dispensation errors and/or mistakes by physicians and pharmacists, respectively. In this paper, taking cognizance of the infrastructural and other applicable impediments and deficiencies, the design and implementation of a mobilebased system (henceforth referred to as “iRx”) is presented. This system enables patients, physicians, and pharmacists to reliably interact in managing and maintaining an individual’s drug history. This management is subject to the patient’s authorization for anyone to access the applicable information

Ubiquitous Consumer-Centric System to Combating Product Counterfeiting and Boosting Entrepreneurship in Developing Economies

Counterfeiting has been a menacing problem to global economies; however, it has been more devastating to developing and under-developed countries as a result of its impacts on various aspects of the economic development and health conditions of those countries. The consequences are abundantly documented, evidential and troubling. In addition to the fact that counterfeiting results in distribution of fake, cheap, and substandard products, it has very dissuasive effects on the entrepreneurial fabrics of a society. As various governments and agencies attempt to combat the menace and mitigate the consequences, the perpetuators are becoming even more sophisticated and resolute – encouraged and motivated by the current technological terrains. Most current methods and techniques utilized in combating product counterfeiting usually tend to concentrate on the “detect, catch and prosecute” approach by those governments and agencies. Besides the resource extensiveness of this approach, which is mostly unattainable, the “detect or catch” part may happen, but the “prosecute” part has always been greatly marred by the corruptive environments that are usually endemic in those societies. When technology-based approaches are used in the war against counterfeiting to empower the consumers, either it’s non-ubiquitous, easily compromised by counterfeiters, difficult to use or not cost-effective to the consumers. As a result, what is needed is a technology and consumer-centric, ubiquitous, secure, easy-to-use, and cost-effective system to greatly alleviate this nuisance

A Mobile Solution to Drug Prescription and Dispensation with Privacy Protection for Developing Economies

It is unarguable that many countries within the developing economies have not been able to reap many of the benefits from the innovations in Computer and Information Technologies (CIT) as they pertain to the advances in healthcare delivery systems. The contributing factors to the problems in these countries are multifaceted, such as, ethnic, cultural, environmental, governance, and infrastructural. To address these problems, current efforts have focused mostly on the issues of disease control and management. However, insufficient attention has been given to the concomitant problems of medication (drug / prescription) management especially as they relate to information management between patients, physicians, and pharmacists. In most of these countries, the absence of integrated and reliable system for management and maintenance of a patient’s medical history exposes a patient to prescription and dispensation errors and/or mistakes by physicians and pharmacists, respectively. In this paper, taking cognizance of the infrastructural and other applicable impediments and deficiencies, the design and implementation of a mobilebased system (henceforth referred to as “iRx”) is presented. This system enables patients, physicians, and pharmacists to reliably interact in managing and maintaining an individual’s drug history. This management is subject to the patient’s authorization for anyone to access the applicable information

Life cycle activity areas for component-based software engineering processes

Although traditional software engineering focuses on development Component-based software engineering (CBSE) processes must focus on integration. In this paper, we elaborate on this focus into a process framework for CBSE consisting of four major activity areas: engineering, business, management, and overarching. We show how these activities are concurrent with respect to an iterative and incremental development model. Detailed discussions are also presented on the consequent issues, concerns, problems, and recommended solutions.