E-Health: Value Proposition and Technologies Enabling Collaborative Healthcare

E-health, enabled by ubiquitous computing and communication technologies, is facilitating a fundamental shift in the age old praxis of healthcare. It is revolutionizing healthcare in the 21st century in much the same way as the arrival of modern medicine and vaccines did in the 19th century. E-health lies at the intersection of diverse disciplines including healthcare, computer science, information systems, economics, and political science. The broad impact of E-health on diverse domains, complexity of supporting technologies, and the dizzying interplay of theories bridging multiple disciplines creates a rich problem space for information system researchers and calls on to conduct cross-disciplinary research. In the current paper we present salient characteristics of e-health and discuss its value proposition. The value proposition of e-health presents the entire range of processes supporting the healthcare sector. We also present research opportunities as e-health takes center stage in the delivery of healthcare

Ubiquitous Healthcare Information System: Toward Crossing the Security Chasm

Ubiquitous healthcare information system is increasingly seen as a viable option for reducing the inherent time lag and inaccuracies in the traditional model of healthcare and promoting the delivery and practice of evidence-based healthcare―as and when needed―without any location and time constraints. Although promising, the realization of ubiquitous healthcare information system brings several threats and risks rooted in real-time collection, analysis, storage, transmission, and access of critical medical data. In this research, we address information security concerns pertaining to the paradigm of ubiquitous healthcare information system. To accomplish this we use National Institute for Standards and Technology’s (NIST’s) system development lifecycle model (SDLC) as the underlying framework to explore the current state of ubiquitous healthcare from the perspective of security. We then leverage the model to propose future research directions in this area. By implementing the NIST’s SDLC model in such a manner, we offer a different dynamic of healthcare security that has not been addressed in literature before

A Wireless ECG Monitoring System for Healthcare

With aging of population, there has been a significant increase in the number of patients suffering from cardiovascular diseases. This results in an increased cost of healthcare associated with hospitalization, treatment and monitoring. In this paper, an architectural framework of a system that utilizes mobile technologies to enable continuous, wireless, electrocardiogram (ECG) monitoring of patients anytime anywhere is presented. The intelligent agents residing in the system detect any anomalous ECG readings and trigger an alarm that would be sent to the healthcare center in case of an emergency. The proposed system would not only provide a better quality of life to the patients by giving them the independence to move around freely in addition to continuous monitoring of heart but will also save healthcare costs associated with prolonged hospitalization of cardiac patients

Strategies Towards Chronic Disease Management via Medication Compliance

In the wake of the 21st century, healthcare systems around the globe are faced with an exponential rise in expenses, heavy utilization of services associated with a steep rise in aging population, and limited financial as well as human resources to manage the growing healthcare needs. A large percentage of chronic diseases deteriorate to the point where a crisis is reached resulting in unnecessary long-term hospitalization at massive cost to the healthcare sector. A critical inference drawn from epidemiological data and past studies is that preventing occurrences of acute episodes holds the key to providing quality healthcare, reducing incidences of prolonged hospitalizations and resultant healthcare expenses. This research is a work-in-progress that seeks to explore innovative strategies towards promoting medication compliance among chronic patients. This paper discusses the need for medication compliance and the cost of non-compliance to the healthcare sector. Salient behavioral, organizational, and technical research issues, opportunities, and challenges associated with promoting medication compliance via communication, computing, and sensing technologies are discussed. Potential benefits and costs of deploying innovative IT based medication compliance are also presented

BlockTheFall: Wearable Device-based Fall Detection Framework Powered by Machine Learning and Blockchain for Elderly Care

Falls among the elderly are a major health concern, frequently resulting in serious injuries and a reduced quality of life. In this paper, we propose "BlockTheFall," a wearable device-based fall detection framework which detects falls in real time by using sensor data from wearable devices. To accurately identify patterns and detect falls, the collected sensor data is analyzed using machine learning algorithms. To ensure data integrity and security, the framework stores and verifies fall event data using blockchain technology. The proposed framework aims to provide an efficient and dependable solution for fall detection with improved emergency response, and elderly individuals' overall well-being. Further experiments and evaluations are being carried out to validate the effectiveness and feasibility of the proposed framework, which has shown promising results in distinguishing genuine falls from simulated falls. By providing timely and accurate fall detection and response, this framework has the potential to substantially boost the quality of elderly care.Comment: Accepted to publish in The 1st IEEE International Workshop on Digital and Public Healt

Telehealth in Medicine: Predictions 2023–2024

Each year, Telehealth and Medicine Today asks experts in the field to share their insights into the future and predict how telehealth will influence uptake and healthcare in the new year

Quality at a Glance: An Audit of Web-Crawled Multilingual Datasets

With the success of large-scale pre-training and multilingual modeling in Natural Language Processing (NLP), recent years have seen a proliferation of large, web-mined text datasets covering hundreds of languages. We manually audit the quality of 205 language-specific corpora released with five major public datasets (CCAligned, ParaCrawl, WikiMatrix, OSCAR, mC4). Lower-resource corpora have systematic issues: At least 15 corpora have no usable text, and a significant fraction contains less than 50% sentences of acceptable quality. In addition, many are mislabeled or use nonstandard/ambiguous language codes. We demonstrate that these issues are easy to detect even for non-proficient speakers, and supplement the human audit with automatic analyses. Finally, we recommend techniques to evaluate and improve multilingual corpora and discuss potential risks that come with low-quality data releases.Comment: Accepted at TACL; pre-MIT Press publication versio

Patient Monitoring via Mobile Ad Hoc Network: Power Management, Reliability, and Delays

ABSTRACT PATIENT MONITORING VIA MOBILE AD HOC NETWORK - MAXIMIZING RELIABILITY WHILE MINIMIZING POWER USAGE AND DELAYS BY SWETA SNEHA May 22nd, 2008 Committee Chair: Dr. Upkar Varshney Major Department: Computer Information Systems Comprehensive monitoring of patients based on wireless and mobile technologies has been proposed for early detection of anomalies, provision of prompt medical attention, and corresponding reduction in healthcare expenses associated with unnecessary hospitalizations and treatment. However the quality and reliability of patient monitoring applications have not been satisfactory, primarily due to their sole dependence on infrastructure-oriented wireless networks such as wide-area cellular networks and wireless LANs with unpredictable and spotty coverage. The current research is exploratory in nature and seeks to investigate the feasibility of leveraging mobile ad hoc network for extending the coverage of infrastructure oriented networks when the coverage from the latter is limited/non-existent. Although exciting, there are several challenges associated with leveraging mobile ad hoc network in the context of patient monitoring. The current research focuses on power management of the low-powered monitoring devices with the goal to maximize reliability and minimize delays. The PRD protocols leveraging variable-rate transmit power and the PM-PRD scheme are designed to achieve the aforementioned objective. The PRD protocols manage power transmitted by the source and intermediate routing devices in end to end signal transmission with the obejective to maximize end to end reliability. The PM-PRD scheme operationalizes an appropriate PRD protocol in end to end signal transmission for diverse patient monitoring scenarios with the objective to maximize reliability, optimize power usage, and minimize delays in end to end signal transmission. Analytical modeling technique is utilized for modeling diverse monitoring scenarios in terms of the independent variables and assessing the performance of the research artifacts in terms of the dependent variables. The evaluation criterion of the research artifacts is maximization of reliability and minimization of power usage and delays for diverse monitoring scenarios. The performance evaluation of the PRD protocols is based on maximization of end to end reliability in signal transmission. The utility of the PM-PRD scheme is associated with operationalizing an appropriate protocol for a given monitoring scenario. Appropriateness of a protocol for a given scenario is based on the performance of the PRD protocols with respect to the dependent variables (i.e., end to end reliability, end to end power usage, and end to end delays). Hence the performance evaluation of the PRD protocols in terms of the dependent variables is utilized to (a) discover the best protocol and (b) validate the accuracy and utility of the PM-PRD scheme in allocating the best protocol for diverse monitoring scenarios. The results validate the effectiveness of the research artifacts in maximizing reliability while minimizing power usage and delays in end to end signal transmission via a multi-hop mobile ad hoc network. Consequently the research establishes the feasibility of multi-hop mobile ad hoc network in supplementing the spotty network coverage of infrastructure oriented networks thereby enhancing the quality and dependability of the process of signal transmission associated with patient monitoring applications