Using technology to enhance community health and territorial resources access

Partially supported by FWF Meitner Project M-3338.Improving access to health information and territorial resources can be a way to help strengthen health-related quality of life perception in disadvantaged communities. We argue that, in countries facing diverse economic and social disparities and challenges, technology can be leveraged to improve communities’ access to evidence-based, up-to-date, comprehensive, and culturally appropriate supportive territorial resources, thereby improving individuals’ quality of life, especially for those living with one or more chronic diseases. This paper discusses the benefits of introducing and designing a user-friendly, relevant, and effective web-based technology to broaden patients’ access to healthcare resources and tailored health information, supporting community-based quality of life transformation.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

A expansão do açaí no Brasil

Orientador: João Carlos Garzel Leodoro da SilvaCoorientador: Vitor Hugo Aranda Ferreira SilvaMonografia (especialização) - Universidade Federal do Paraná, Setor de Ciências Agrárias, Curso de MBA em Gestão de Florestas.Inclui referências: p. 31-35Resumo: A busca por uma alimentação mais saudável e equilibrada, produtos com o selo orgânico e com multibenefícios foram a chave para o sucesso da produção de açaí. Em razão disto, este trabalho teve por objetivo analisar a produção de açaí física e monetária a nível nacional, para o Estado do Pará, bem como analisar as exportações nacionais e internacionais. Com o aumento da demanda do fruto, iniciou-se o manejo dos açaizais nativos e investimento nas áreas de melhoramento genético aliado a tecnologias que possibilitaram o cultivo em terra firme, em grande escala. O açaí é um produto de grande importância socioeconômica, pois dele é possível aproveitar integralmente a matéria-prima, a polpa sendo destinada ao ramo alimentício, cosmético e medicinal; e por sua vez o caroço, para produção de mudas, adubação, complemento alimentar dos animais, além do artesanato e geração de energia. Para isto, utilizou-se dados das plataformas digitais do Ministério da Agricultura e Abastecimento (MAPA), Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE), Secretaria da Fazenda do Pará (SEFA), indicando a produção anual, os Estados que mais produzem e para qual local realizam suas vendas (nacional ou internacional). O açaí em 2017, foi o produto Florestal Não Madeireiro (PFNM) que contribuiu para economia brasileira com R$ 596 milhões. Ocupou o segundo lugar em produção extrativa com 219 mil toneladas, ficando atrás da erva-mate que extraiu 354 mil tonelada

A blockchain-based healthcare platform for secure personalised data sharing

Funding: This research is funded by the EU H2020 project SERUMS (grant 826278).To facilitate personalised healthcare provision across Europe, we envision solutions that enable the secure integration and sharing of medical health records. These solutions should address privacy concerns, such as granular access control to personal data, establishing what should be accessible when and by whom, whilst complying with collective regulatory frameworks such as the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and adhering to international standards on how to manage information security. The proposed healthcare system design integrates technologies such as blockchain and scalable data lakes with adequate system routines to guarantee the secure access of confidential data. In this paper, we present the essential architectural components for the secure integration of medical records in a blockchain-based platform. We present a patient-centric data retrieval approach which incorporates a structured format to compose access rules.Publisher PD

Conflict-free access rules for sharing smart patient health records

This research is funded by the EU H2020 project Serums (Securing Medical Data in Smart Patient-Centric Healthcare Systems), grant code 826278.With an increasing trend in personalised healthcare provision across Europe, we need solutions to enable the secure transnational sharing of medical records, establishing granular access rights to personal patient data. Access rules can establish what should be accessible by whom for how long, and comply with collective regulatory frameworks, such as the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). The challenge is to design and implement such systems integrating novel technologies like Blockchain and Data Lake to enhance security and access control. The blockchain module must deal with adequate policies and algorithms to guarantee that no data leaks occur when authorising data retrieval requests. The data lake module tackles the need for an efficient way to retrieve potential granular data from heterogeneous data sources. In this paper, we define a patient-centric authorisation approach, incorporating a structured format for composing access rules that enable secure data retrieval and automatic rules conflict checking.Postprin

A simulation-based approach for the behavioural analysis of cancer pathways

Cancer pathway is the name given to a patient’s journey from initial suspicion of cancer through to a confirmed diagnosis and, if applicable, the definition of a treatment plan. Typically, a cancer patient will undergo a series of procedures, which we designate as events, during their cancer care. The initial stage of the pathway, from suspected diagnosis to confirmed diagnosis and start of a treatment is called cancer waiting time(CWT). This paper focuses on the modelling and analysis of the CWT. Health boards are under pressure to ensure that the duration of CWT satisfies predefined targets. In this paper, we first create the visual representation of the pathway obtained from real patient data at a given health board, and then compare it with the standardised pathway considered by the board to find and flag a deviation in the execution of the cancer pathway. Next, we devise a discrete event simulation model for the cancer waiting time pathway. The input data is obtained from historical records of patients. The outcomes from this analysis highlight the pathway bottlenecks and transition times which maybe used to reveal potential improvements for CWT in the future.Postprin

Estimating capacity and resource allocation in healthcare settings using business process modelling and simulation

Healthcare involves complex decision making from planning to resource management. Resources in hospitals are usually allocated by experienced managers,however, due to an inherent process complexity, decisions are surrounded by uncertainties, variabilities, and constraints. Information Systems must be robust enough to provide support to stakeholders, capable of controlling and support work flows. The present work explores the required synergy when combining business processes with discrete event simulation. The objective is to estimate performance indices and address capacity management of a surgical center as a case study.Postprin

Interacting with next-generation smart patient-centric healthcare systems

Funding: EU H2020 project SERUMS: Securing Medical Data in Smart Patient-Centric Healthcare Systems (grant code 826278).There is a recognised move towards more personalised health with citizens at the centre of healthcare provision. In particular, there is an emphasis on the right of citizens to decide who,why and when, should have access to their medical records. The EU project SERUMS is developing a tool-chain for the secure access of distributed medical information preserving the privacy levels imposed by GDPR, national and/or organisational regulations. We propose a user-centred approach to demonstrate how technologies can converge to enable doctors and patients to interact with integrated healthcare records. In addition, it will allow us to evaluate and evolve our tool-chain.Postprin

Integrating healthcare data for enhanced citizen-centred care and analytics

This research is funded by the EU H2020 project SERUMS: Securing Medical Data in Smart Patient-Centric Healthcare Systems (grant code 826278).The potential of healthcare systems worldwide is expanding as new medical devices and data sources are regularly presented to healthcare providers which could be used to personalise, improve and revise treatments further. However, there is presently a large gap between the data collected, the systems that store the data, and any ability to perform big data analytics to combinations of such data. This paper suggests a novel approach to integrate data from multiple sources and formats, by providing a uniform structure to the data in a healthcare data lake with multiple zones reflecting how refined the data is: from raw to curated when ready to be consumed or used for analysis. The integration further requires solutions that can be proven to be secure, such as patient-centric data sharing agreements (smart contracts) on a blockchain, and novel privacy-preserving methods for extracting metadata from data sources, originally derived from partially-structured or from completely unstructured data. Work presented here is being developed as part of an EU project with the ultimate aim to develop solutions for integrating healthcare data for enhanced citizen-centred care and analytics across Europe.Publisher PD

Security and usability of a personalized user authentication paradigm : insights from a longitudinal study with three healthcare organizations

Funding information: This research has been partially supported by the EU Horizon 2020 Grant 826278 "Securing Medical Data in Smart Patient-Centric Healthcare Systems" (Serums) , and the Research and Innovation Foundation (Project DiversePass: COMPLEMENTARY/0916/0182).This paper proposes a user-adaptable and personalized authentication paradigm for healthcare organizations, which anticipates to seamlessly reflect patients’ episodic and autobiographical memories to graphical and textual passwords aiming to improve the security strength of user-selected passwords and provide a positive user experience. We report on a longitudinal study that spanned over three years in which three public European healthcare organizations participated in order to design and evaluate the aforementioned paradigm. Three studies were conducted (n=169) with different stakeholders: i) a verification study aiming to identify existing authentication practices of the three healthcare organizations with diverse stakeholders (n=9); ii) a patient-centric feasibility study during which users interacted with the proposed authentication system (n=68); and iii) a human guessing attack study focusing on vulnerabilities among people sharing common experiences within location-aware images used for graphical passwords (n=92). Results revealed that the suggested paradigm scored high with regards to users’ likeability, perceived security, usability and trust, but more importantly it assists the creation of more secure passwords. On the downside, the suggested paradigm introduces password guessing vulnerabilities by individuals sharing common experiences with the end-users. Findings are expected to scaffold the design of more patient-centric knowledge-based authentication mechanisms within nowadays dynamic computation realms.PostprintPeer reviewe

Considerações para implementação de ferramentas multiplataforma para monitramento de sistemas virtualizados

A virtualização através do uso de máquinas virtuais sobre máquinas físicas, para executar diferentes sistemas em diferentes domínios de aplicação tem sido uma abordagem comumente adotada em diferentes contextos. A possibilidade de se abstrair plataformas, infraestrutura ou software como um serviço passou a ser uma técnica válida para executar sistemas usando Computação na Nuvem (Cloud Computing) onde a virtualização é uma das principais tecnologias para efetivar sua utilização. O uso de ambientes virtualizados é determinante, entretanto, em muitos casos, estas tecnologias são escolhidas sem levar em conta o desempenho ou outros atributos não funcionais, tais como a garantia de qualidade de serviço (QoS), resiliência, confiabilidade, tolerância a falhas e escalabilidade, para citar algumas. O objetivo deste trabalho foca nas considerações principais para concepção de uma ferramenta completa de monitoramento e inspeção de sistemas virtualizados. A ideia é poder estimar as melhores configurações de software e hardware para plataformas virtualizadas sem que ocorra degradação de desempenho. Para demonstrar a efetividade da técnica foi implementada como exemplo uma ferramenta de propósito específico de monitoramento chamada VM-MON, descrita no presente trabalho