Enhanced quality of electronic clinical record through open-source tool

Electronic records are significant to control healthcare information and save patient lives to increase the value of service in healthcare.This paper is drawn from an ongoing, large-scale research project of implementing an Electronic Clinical Record (ECR).The overall aim in this study is to introduce a new tool for the ECR deeper understanding of the complexities and challenges emerging from the implementation of the ECR, and in particular, to study how to manage a gradual transition to a digital record.The aim is to enable the physician and patient to get access to the electronic clinical record.It will propose a new open-source tool to improve the clinical systems.The objective of this research is to ensure sufficient in-depth knowledge of the challenges confronting service delivery related to health, especially in the healthcare sector; and a grasp of how the underlying ICT infrastructure and an ECR might be expected to assist in meeting these challenges.Results of our study identified the need for more research in this particular area as no definitive solution to the long-term access to electronic clinical records was revealed.Additionally, the research findings highlighted the fact that a few medical institutions may actually be concerned about long-term access to electronic records

Exploration and Optimization Of Friends’ Connections In Social Networks

One paragraph only. Over the past few years, the rapid growth and the exponential use of social digital media has led to an increase in popularity of social networks and the emergence of social computing. In general, social networks are structures made of social entities (e.g., individuals) that are linked by some specific types of interdependency such as friendship. Most users of social media (e.g., Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube) have many linkages in terms of friends, connections, and/or followers. Among all these linkages, some of them are more important than others. This paper discusses related work on social networks and method use in crawling online social network graph

A VOICE PRIORITY QUEUE (VPQ) SCHEDULER FOR VOIP OVER WLANs

The Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) application has observed the fastest growth in the world of telecommunication. The Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) is the most assuring of technologies among the wireless networks, which has facilitated high-rate voice services at low cost and good flexibility. In a voice conversation, each client works as a sender and as a receiver depending on the direction of traffic flow over the network. A VoIP application requires a higher throughput, less packet loss and a higher fairness index over the network. The packets of VoIP streaming may experience drops because of the competition among the different kinds of traffic flow over the network. A VoIP application is also sensitive to delay and requires the voice packets to arrive on time from the sender to the receiver side without any delay over WLANs. The scheduling system model for VoIP traffic is still an unresolved problem. A new traffic scheduler is necessary to offer higher throughput and a higher fairness index for a VoIP application. The objectives of this thesis are to propose a new scheduler and algorithms that support the VoIP application and to evaluate, validate and verify the newly proposed scheduler and algorithms with the existing scheduling algorithms over WLANs through simulation and experimental environment. We proposed a new Voice Priority Queue (VPQ) scheduling system model and algorithms to solve scheduling issues. VPQ system model is implemented in three stages. The first stage of the model is to ensure efficiency by producing a higher throughput and fairness for VoIP packets. The second stage will be designed for bursty Virtual-VoIP Flow (Virtual-VF) while the third stage is a Switch Movement (SM) technique. Furthermore, we compared the VPQ scheduler with other well known schedulers and algorithms. We observed in our simulation and experimental environment that the VPQ provides better results for the VoIP over WLANs

A Novel Voice Priority Queue (VPQ) Schedule and Algorithm for VoIP over WLAN Network

The VoIP deployment on Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs), which is based on IEEE 802.11 standards, is increasing. Currently, many schedulers have been introduced such as Weighted Fair Queueing (WFQ), Strict Priority (SP) General processor sharing (GPS), Deficit Round Robin (DRR), and Contention-Aware Temporally fair Scheduling (CATS). Unfortunately, the current scheduling techniques have some drawbacks on real-time applications and therefore will not be able to handle the VoIP packets in a proper way. The objective of this research is to propose a new scheduler system model for the VoIP application named final stage of Voice Priority Queue (VPQ) scheduler. The scheduler system model is to ensure efficiency by producing a higher throughput and fairness for VoIP packets. In this paper, only the final Stage of the VPQ packet scheduler and its algorithm are presented. Simulation topologies for VoIP traffic were implemented and analyzed using the Network Simulator (NS-2). The results show that this method can achieve a better and more accurate VoIP quality throughput and fairness index over WLANs

The VPQ scheduler in access point for VoIP over WLAN

The Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) application has observed the fastest growth in the world of telecommunication.VoIP is seen as a short-term and long-trem transmission for voice and audio traffic. Meanwhile, VoIP is moving on Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) based on IEEE 802.11 standards.Currently, there are many packet scheduling algorithms for real-time transmission over network.Unfortunately, the current scheduling will not be able to handle the VoIP packets with the proper manner and they have some drawbacks over real-time applications.The objective of this research is to propose a new Voice Priority Queue (VPQ) packet scheduling and algorithm to ensure more throughput, fairness and efficient packet scheduling for VoIP performance of queues and traffics.A new scheduler flexible which is capable of satisfying the VoIP traffic flows.Experimental topologies on NS-2 network simulator were analyzed for voice traffic. Preliminary results show that this can achieve maximum and more accurate VoIP quality throughput and fairness index in access point for VoIP over WLANs.We verified and validated VPQ an extensive experimental simulation study under various traffic flows over WLANs

On the cache performance of the information centric network

The current Internet model has proved more sustainable then the provisioned capacity at the time when the architecture was designed.The voluminous growth of traffic over the Internet has brought challenges for the exiting networking architecture.The information centric paradigm appears to offer efficient solution towards content dissemination model.It is a content-focused networking paradigm rather than host-to-host communication. Caching is one of the major components of information centric networks.This paper is intended to explore the impact of cache on critical attributes of networks.We have made a comparative analysis of in-network and edge network caching mechanism using network simulation.The results proved that in-network caching mechanism is far better than network edge caching with improved throughout, increase link capacity to avoid congestion

Realization of free space optics with OFDM under atmospheric turbulence

Free space optics (FSO) technology provides a promising solution for future broadband networks, offering high data transmission compared to RF technology. This work is focused on investigating the performance of an FSO system with OFDM and QAM. A 10 Gbps data stream is transmitted using a 4-level QAM sequence through the FSO system under different atmospheric conditions. Results indicate that the integration of SOA prolongs the maximum achievable distance with acceptable SNR to 185 km under clear weather conditions whereas under atmospheric fog, the maximum distance is extended to 2.5 k

Knowledge, attitude and practices regarding HIV/AIDS among adult fishermen in coastal areas of Karachi.

BACKGROUND: Migrant populations are at high risk of Human Immuno Deficiency Virus infection (HIV) and Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS). Studies of HIV/AIDS knowledge, attitudes and practices among fishermen in developing countries have shown gaps in knowledge and fear of contagion with ambivalent attitudes towards HIV/AIDS and inconsistent universal precautions adherence. The aim of this study was to determine the knowledge, attitude and practices regarding HIV/AIDS among adult fishermen in a coastal area of Karachi, Pakistan. METHODS: Community based cross sectional study was conducted among fishermen in coastal area of Karachi from June to September 2012. A total of 297 adult fishermen were selected by using simple random sampling technique from different sectors of coastal village. Data were collected using a structured validated questionnaire. The frequency distribution of both dependent and independent variables were worked out. Comparisons of knowledge, attitude and practices regarding HIV/AIDS by socio-demographic characteristics were made using logistic regression. RESULTS: Out of 297 fishermen, majority had in-appropriate knowledge (93.6%), negative attitude (75.8%) and less adherent sexual practices (91.6%). In univariate analysis, lower education and higher income were significantly associated (OR 2.25, 95% CI, 1.11, 4.55), (OR = 3.04 CI 1.03-9.02, p value 0.04) with negative attitude and un-safe practices towards HIV/AIDS respectively, whereas no significant association of socio-economic characteristics with knowledge, attitude and practices were observed in multivariate analysis. CONCLUSIONS: This study suggests that fishermen had very poor knowledge, negative attitudes towards HIV and AIDS and had unsafe sexual practices which suggest that they lack the basic understanding of HIV/AIDS infection. Extensive health education campaign should be provided to the vulnerable sections of the society for the control of HIV/AIDS

A low profile, dual-band, dual polarized antenna for indoor/outdoor wearable application

A planar, low-profile, dual-band and dual-polarized antenna on a semi-flex substrate is proposed in this paper. The antenna is fabricated on Rogers substrate with a thickness of 3.04 mm and sized at 70.4×76.14×3.11 mm3 (0.37λ0 ×0.40λ0 ×0.016λ0) only. The circular polarization property is enabled in the global navigation satellite system (GNSS) L1/E1 (lower) band by introducing a complementary split ring resonator on the antenna patch. Meanwhile, the antenna operates in the second (upper) 2.45 GHz WLAN band is enabled by etching a U-shaped slot on its ground plane. This simultaneous, dual-band and dual-polarized operation enables the proposed antenna to be applied in the indoor/outdoor wearable application. To isolate the antenna against the influence of the human body, a multiband artificial magnetic conductor (AMC) plane is added on the reverse side of the dual-band radiator. Comparison of the antenna without AMC in free space and when evaluated on the chest of a human body backed by AMC showed improved gain; from 3–5.1 dBi in the lower band, and from 1.53–5.03 dBi in the upper band. Besides that, the front-to-back ratio of the AMC backed monopole antenna also improved from 11–21.88 dB and from 2.5–24.5 dB in the GNSS and WLAN bands, respectively. Next, the specific absorption rate (SAR) of the monopole antenna with and without the AMC plane is assessed. Evaluation results indicate that the maximum SAR value decreased by up to 89.45 % in comparison with the antenna without AMC in the lower band. This indicates the effectiveness of the AMC array in increasing gain and FBR, besides reducing EM absorption in the human body

The usage pattern and willingness of undergraduate medical students for including social media platforms as a learning tool in medical education- an online survey

Background: The rapid growth and availability of smartphones and social media platforms (SMP) have changed the medical students' approach to learn and manage the information about their academic, personal and professional lives. Methods: An online survey was done in undergraduate medical students of PIMS, Karimnagar to collect information about usage pattern and perception of SMP, and willingness to participate for using SMP as a learning tool in medical education. Results: Total 433 (Females – 275) out of 600 students participated in the survey from the first year (125), secondyear (151) and third-year (157) MBBS students. Everyone is using some type of SMP. They find SMP nearly equal to lecture materials and subject notes as a useful learning tool and there was significantly increasing trend of perception of SMP being a useful learning tool from the first-year (79%), second-year (83%) to third-year (92%), (p=0.01). Almost 93% want to see SMP used at institute level in medical education. Female students (52.4%) are significantly more willing for active participation than male students (43%), p=0.04. First-year students (56%) are more ready for active participation followed by third (48.4%) and second (43.7%) year students, p=0.08. Conclusion: Most students are willing to include SMP in medical education as a learning tool and ready to participate in different activities if they get the required training. As all students have smartphones and efficiently utilizing different services on their devices, SMP can become an effective learning tool in medical education