Information and resource management systems for Internet of Things: Energy management, communication protocols and future applications

The idea of the Internet of Things (IoT) has enabled the objects of our surroundings to intercommunicate with each other in diverse working environments by utilizing their embedded architectural and communication technologies. IoT has provided humans the capability to manipulate the operations and data available from different information systems using these intelligent objects available in the surroundings. The scope of IoT is to serve humanity across different domains of life covering industrial, health, home and day-to-day operations of Information Systems (IS). Due to the huge number of heterogeneous network elements interacting and working under IoT based information systems, there is an enormous need for resource management for the smooth running of IoT operations. The key aspect in IoT implementations is to have resource-constrained embedded devices and objects participating in IoT operations. It is important to meet the challenges raised during management and sharing of resources in IoT based information systems. Managing resources by implementing protocols, algorithms and techniques are required to enhance the scalability, reliability and stability in IoT operations across different fields of technology. This special issue opens the new areas of interest for the researchers in the domain of resource management in IoT operations

Non-Fungible Tokens in Business and Management -- A Review

Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) are a new development in blockchain technology. News around NFTs is surrounded by skepticism because unrealistically high prices are being paid online for these NFTs which are in the form of apparently simple digital arts and photographs. It is not clear if this is a trend, a hype, a bubble, or a legitimate novel way of holding and trading value. A literature review of peer-reviewed scholarly studies, performed in the context of business and management, is presented here. Moreover, we also discuss open issues, and challenges, and present future research directions. Analysis of these studies reveal that schools of thoughts are divided on the validity of this form of digital tokens. On one hand, there is a lot of criticism but on the other hand, we can find novel business models and applications of NFTs especially the feature of smart contracts. It can, therefore, be concluded that NFTs, even if not in their current form, are here to stay and may promise new ways of protecting digital assets in an immutable and easily traceable form

IEEE Access Special Section Editorial: Health Informatics for the Developing World

We live in a world with growing disparity in the quality of life available to people in the developed and developing countries. Healthcare in the developing world is fraught with numerous problems such as the lack of health infrastructure, and human resources, which results in very limited health coverage. The field of health informatics has made great strides in recent years towards improving public health systems in the developing world by augmenting them with state-of-the-art information and communication technologies (ICT). Through real-world deployment of these technologies, there is real hope that the health industry in the developing world will progress from its current, largely dysfunctional state to one that is more effective, personalized, and cost effective. Health informatics can usher a new era of personalized health analytics, with the potential to transform healthcare in the developing world. In conjunction with mHealth and eHealth, many other important health informatics trends—such as artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), big data, crowdsourcing, cloud computing—are also emerging. Exponentially growing heterogeneous data, with the help of big data analytics, has the potential to provide descriptive, predictive, and prescriptive health insights as well as enable new applications such as telemedicine and remote diagnostics and surgery. Such systems could enhance the overall process of monitoring, diagnosis, and prognosis of diseases