Indirect Wayfinding Navigation System for the Elderly

Difficulty in wayfinding is one of the signs of ageing. Different types of people have the same difficulty in navigation including older people, people with mild dementia, mild cognitive impairment, and head injury. These problems do not only impact the person’s life and expose them to different risks, but their caregivers also report personal issues such as depression. This study aims to address this issue by creating a smart phone application called Indirect Wayfinding (IW) that helps affected people and their caregivers by acting as a guide to the elderly person. This paper reviews and summarizes the shortages of the current GPS-based solutions that need to be overcome, and then proposes a solution that mainly uses geofencing technology. This paper outlines the conceptual design, the mobile application, an algorithm to detect the direction of the user, feedback on the design from the caregivers, and an evaluation of the geofencing technology

AdBo: A mobile application to boost adherence of physical exercises for elderly suffering from cognitive decline

According to the UN, the number of elderly people over the age of 60 will reach 2 billion by 2050. Aging is accompanied with functional and cognitive decline that impact elderly independence and quality of life. This often results in issues such as forgetting, fall, and depression. Physical exercises can help. However, only 16% of elderly above the age 65 years do enough exercise to meet HHS (Department of Health and Human Services) physical activity guidelines for Americans. Several barriers impact the elderly's adherence to physical exercises. In this paper, we discuss the barriers and proven strategies that can be used to overcome them. Then, we discuss the development of the AdBo smartphone application, which aims to increase the elderly adherence to physical exercises. The application will guide the elderly though appropriate exercises, measure cognition ability before and after the exercises regimen, and track cognitive improvement over time

Impact of Healthcare Insurance on the Efficiency of Emergency Services in Private-Sector Hospitals in Al-Ahssa, KSA: An Analytical Comparative Study for Insured and Non-Insured Patients

Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is in a peculiar situation regarding healthcare; there is the free healthcare provided by the governmental hospitals in addition to that offered by private-sector hospitals for insured and non-insured patients. Aims of the study are to evaluate the level of efficiency of ED services in private-sector hospitals and to compare between insured and non-insured patient regarding their evaluation of efficiency of services provided in ED in private-sector hospitals in Al-Ahssa region, KSA. Research design: descriptive comparative research design. Setting: The study was conducted in three EDs (emergency departments) of three private hospitals in Al-Ahssa region, KSA which are: Al Mana General Hospital, AlMosa Specialist Hospital and AlAhssa Hospital Subjects: convenient sample of 150 patients (97 patients were insured however 53 patients) at the EDs of the three private hospitals were selected. Tools for data collection: Self-administered Patient Evaluation Questionnaire (PEQ). Results: Insured patients have higher means of efficiency of ED services in private hospitals in all axes of efficiency than non-insured. Recommendations: MOH should develop a program of cost share between citizens and MOH to promote parallel access with MOH hospitals for non-insured patients. Also, there should be a continuous monitoring of patients’ experiences of the received healthcare services in private-sector hospitals. Key words: Health Insurance, Efficiency, Emergency Services

A localization-free interference and energy holes minimization routing for underwater wireless sensor networks

Interference and energy holes formation in underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs) threaten the reliable delivery of data packets from a source to a destination. Interference also causes inefficient utilization of the limited battery power of the sensor nodes in that more power is consumed in the retransmission of the lost packets. Energy holes are dead nodes close to the surface of water, and their early death interrupts data delivery even when the network has live nodes. This paper proposes a localization-free interference and energy holes minimization (LF-IEHM) routing protocol for UWSNs. The proposed algorithm overcomes interference during data packet forwarding by defining a unique packet holding time for every sensor node. The energy holes formation is mitigated by a variable transmission range of the sensor nodes. As compared to the conventional routing protocols, the proposed protocol does not require the localization information of the sensor nodes, which is cumbersome and difficult to obtain, as nodes change their positions with water currents. Simulation results show superior performance of the proposed scheme in terms of packets received at the final destination and end-to-end delay

Predicting Location of Tweets Using Machine Learning Approaches

Twitter, one of the most popular microblogging platforms, has tens of millions of active users worldwide, generating hundreds of millions of posts every day. Twitter posts, referred to as “tweets”, the short and the noisy text, bring many challenges with them, such as in the case of some emergency or disaster. Predicting the location of these tweets is important for social, security, human rights, and business reasons and has raised noteworthy consideration lately. However, most Twitter users disable the geo-tagging feature, and their home locations are neither standardized nor accurate. In this study, we applied four machine learning techniques named Logistic Regression, Random Forest, Multinomial Naïve Bayes, and Support Vector Machine with and without the utilization of the geo-distance matrix for location prediction of a tweet using its textual content. Our extensive experiments on our vast collection of Arabic tweets From Saudi Arabia with different feature sets yielded promising results with 67% accuracy

Energy Optimization for Smart Cities Using IoT

When it comes to smart cities, one of the biggest issues is energy optimization. This is because these cities employ a large number of interconnected devices to autonomously manage city operations, which consumes a lot of energy. This difficulty has been addressed in this paper by using the advantages of contemporary cutting-edge technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), 5 G, and cloud computing for energy efficiency in smart cities. With the use of these cutting-edge technologies, we have proposed a model that can be used to optimize energy consumption in smart homes and smart cities alike. Street lighting, building and street billboards, smart homes, and smart parking are among the four essential features of smart cities that would benefit from the proposed model’s energy savings. All smart city electric appliances will be equipped with IoT sensors that will detect movements and react to commands. In order to transport data swiftly between communication channels and the cloud, 5 G technology will be deployed, and the cloud technology will be used to store and retrieve data effectively. The suggested model was evaluated using mathematical modeling, and the findings indicate that the proposed model may assist in improving energy usage in smart cities

Development of an Approach to Evaluate Website Effectiveness

The internet has been used by individuals, organizations, and governments for business, sports, health, banking, advertisement, education, and other services. Many websites have been developed and designed in the last several decades. However, most have not been developed and designed according to a shared set of design standards. Consequently, there is a need for an approach to evaluate the effectiveness of a website. A literature review was conducted to develop such an approach. Four experts were then consulted to inspect and evaluate the approach, and a questionnaire was completed by three categories: Internet users, website developers, and others to determine its final version. This research resulted in the development of an approach to evaluate website effectiveness, composed of three major criteria: design, content, and functionality, and 17 sub-criteria. The significance of this new approach is that it allows stakeholders to evaluate their websites and determine how to improve them in order to achieve their vision and mission

Development of an Approach to Evaluate Website Effectiveness

The internet has been used by individuals, organizations, and governments for business, sports, health, banking, advertisement, education, and other services. Many websites have been developed and designed in the last several decades. However, most have not been developed and designed according to a shared set of design standards. Consequently, there is a need for an approach to evaluate the effectiveness of a website. A literature review was conducted to develop such an approach. Four experts were then consulted to inspect and evaluate the approach, and a questionnaire was completed by three categories: Internet users, website developers, and others to determine its final version. This research resulted in the development of an approach to evaluate website effectiveness, composed of three major criteria: design, content, and functionality, and 17 sub-criteria. The significance of this new approach is that it allows stakeholders to evaluate their websites and determine how to improve them in order to achieve their vision and mission

Routing Protocols for Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks: Taxonomy, Research Challenges, Routing Strategies and Future Directions

Recent research in underwater wireless sensor networks (UWSNs) has gained the attention of researchers in academia and industry for a number of applications. They include disaster and earthquake prediction, water quality and environment monitoring, leakage and mine detection, military surveillance and underwater navigation. However, the aquatic medium is associated with a number of limitations and challenges: long multipath delay, high interference and noise, harsh environment, low bandwidth and limited battery life of the sensor nodes. These challenges demand research techniques and strategies to be overcome in an efficient and effective fashion. The design of routing protocols for UWSNs is one of the promising solutions to cope with these challenges. This paper presents a survey of the routing protocols for UWSNs. For the ease of description, the addressed routing protocols are classified into two groups: localization-based and localization-free protocols. These groups are further subdivided according to the problems they address or the major parameters they consider during routing. Unlike the existing surveys, this survey considers only the latest and state-of-the-art routing protocols. In addition, every protocol is described in terms of its routing strategy and the problem it addresses and solves. The merit(s) of each protocol is (are) highlighted along with the cost. A description of the protocols in this fashion has a number of advantages for researchers, as compared to the existing surveys. Firstly, the description of the routing strategy of each protocol makes its routing operation easily understandable. Secondly, the demerit(s) of a protocol provides (provide) insight into overcoming its flaw(s) in future investigation. This, in turn, leads to the foundation of new protocols that are more intelligent, robust and efficient with respect to the desired parameters. Thirdly, a protocol can be selected for the appropriate application based on its described merit(s). Finally, open challenges and research directions are presented for future investigation

Delivering Digital Healthcare for Elderly: A Holistic Framework for the Adoption of Ambient Assisted Living

Adoption of Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) technologies for geriatric healthcare is suboptimal. This study aims to present the AAL Adoption Diamond Framework, encompassing a set of key enablers/barriers as factors, and describe our approach to developing this framework. A systematic literature review was conducted following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. SCOPUS, IEEE Xplore, PubMed, ProQuest, Science Direct, ACM Digital Library, SpringerLink, Wiley Online Library and grey literature were searched. Thematic analysis was performed to identify factors reported or perceived to be important for adopting AAL technologies. Of 3717 studies initially retrieved, 109 were thoroughly screened and 52 met our inclusion criteria. Nineteen unique technology adoption factors were identified. The most common factor was privacy (50%) whereas data accuracy and affordability were the least common factors (4%). The highest number of factors found per a given study was eleven whereas the average number of factors across all studies included in our sample was four (mean = 3.9). We formed an AAL technology adoption framework based on the retrieved information and named it the AAL Adoption Diamond Framework. This holistic framework was formed by organising the identified technology adoption factors into four key dimensions: Human, Technology, Business, and Organisation. To conclude, the AAL Adoption Diamond Framework is holistic in term of recognizing key factors for the adoption of AAL technologies, and novel and unmatched in term of structuring them into four overarching themes or dimensions, bringing together the individual and the systemic factors evolving around the adoption of AAL technology. This framework is useful for stakeholders (e.g., decision-makers, healthcare providers, and caregivers) to adopt and implement AAL technologies