Focus on: New trends, challenges and perspectives on healthcare cognitive computing: from information extraction to healthcare analytics

The focus of this special issue is cognitive computing in healthcare, due to the ever-increasing interest it is gaining for both research purposes and clinical applications. Indeed, cognitive computing is a challenging technology in many fields of application (Banavar, 2016) such as, e.g., medicine, education or eco- nomics (Coccoli et al., 2016) especially for the management of huge quantities of information where cognitive computing techniques push applications based on the use of big data (Coccoli et al., 2017). An unprecedented amount of data is made available from a heterogeneous variety of sources and this is true also in the case of health data, which can be exploited in many ways by means of sophisticated cognitive computing solutions and related technologies, such as, e.g., information extraction, natural language processing, and analytics. Also, from the point of view of programming they set challenging issues (see, e.g., Coccoli et al., 2015). In fact, the amount of healthcare that is now available and, potentially useful to care teams, reached 150 Exabytes worldwide and about 80% of this huge volume of data is in an unstructured form, being thus somehow invisible to systems. Hence, it is clear that cognitive computing and data analytics are the two key factors we have for make use – at least partially – of such a big volume of data. This can lead to personalized health solutions and healthcare systems that are more reliable, effective and efficient also re- ducing their expenditures. Healthcare will have a big impact on industry and research. However, this field, which seems to be a new era for our society, requires many scientific endeavours. Just to name a few, you need to create a hybrid and secure cloud to guarantee the security and confidentiality of health data, especially when smartphones or similar devices are used with specific app (see, e.g., Mazurczyk & Caviglione, 2015). Beside the cloud, you also need to consider novel ar- chitectures and data platforms that shall be different from the existing ones,because 90% of health and biomedical data are images and also because 80% of health data in the world is not available on the Web. This special issue wants to review state-of-the-art of issues and solutions of cognitive computing, focusing also on the current challenges and perspecti- ves and includes a heterogeneous collection of papers covering the following topics: information extraction in healthcare applications, semantic analysis in medicine, data analytics in healthcare, machine learning and cognitive com- puting, data architecture for healthcare, data platform for healthcare, hybrid cloud for healthcare

An Empirical Study on Personal Health Records System based on Individual and Environmental Features

To promote the adoption of PHR system, understanding the factors that affect patients’ adoption of PHR system is of necessity. Based on previous research, this paper tries to develop a model to explore those elements that influence the behavior intentions of patients from the perspective of consumers. It is assumed that individual features and environmental features affect individuals’ attitudes to PHR. Data from 265 participants’ response to questionnaire was collected. The SPSS and partial least squares (PLS) technique was adopted to examine the casual relationships this paper hypothesized. The results show that affordability and coercive pressure have the significant effect on individuals’ attitude towards PHR. Therefore, suggestion regarding what developers, institutions and government should do to improve the adoption rate of PHR was raised

A Survey on the Status of Smart Healthcare from the Universal Village Perspective

This survey paper discusses the condition of smart healthcare implementation. It discusses the current healthcare problems and how smart healthcare technologies ease the problems. Our group, Universal Village, realizes that the integration and interaction between parties in a system will maximize the effectiveness and benefit for the system. Based on this idea, this paper considers the smart city system as a whole, and talks about how smart healthcare interacts with infrastructures and functions inside and outside of the smart healthcare field. Then, it analyzes how a more powerful integrated system can be built from the smart healthcare system. In the end, several case studies are listed. Based on our analysis and the case studies, this paper then ended with the future prospects of the smart healthcare.Open access journalThis item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]

PENGEMBANGAN STRATEGI IS/IT DALAM BERBAGAI BIDANG BISNIS: STATE OF THE ART

ABSTRACTIS/IT strategy is one of the keys to a company's success in running a business. IS/IT is usually in line with existing business strategies. In the last few decades, many IS/IT models have been developed and implemented with the aim of improving business management by utilizing the latest technology. Motivated by the application of IS/IT in various business models, this paper aims to emphasize the importance of this strategy in business transformation. This paper contains an overview of the strategy and identification of IS/IT strategies that have been implemented in various business areas. This paper is expected to provide additional knowledge for researchers, communities and IS/IT practitioners in developing and implementing better IS/IT in the future. Keywords: IS/IT strategy, business strategy, management I

Telehealth Utilization among Low Income Population during COVID-19: An Analysis of COVID-19 Research Database

The COVID-19 Research Database is a public data platform. This platform is a result of private and public partnerships across industries to facilitate data sharing and promote public health research. We analyzed its linked database and examined claims of 2,850,831 unique persons to investigate demographic, socio-economic, and behavioral causes for telehealth utilization in the low-income population. Our results suggest that patients who had higher education, income, and full-time employment were more likely to use telehealth. Patients who had unhealthy behaviors such as smoking were less likely to use telehealth. Our findings suggest that interventions to bolster education, employment, and healthy behaviors should be considered to promote the use of telehealth services

A review on healthcare information systems and consensus protocols in blockchain technology

This research article published by the International Journal of Advanced Technology and Engineering Exploration, Vol 5(49), 2018Blockchain is a distributed ledger technology whereby transactions are bundled into blocks that are chained together cryptographically by hash pointers. Blockchain solutions add trust and privacy to the existing internet due to its tampering resistance and advanced cryptography characteristics. In healthcare systems, the technology has been implemented to ensure transparency, auditability, interoperability, and proper governance and management of patient information. This study evaluates blockchain based healthcare systems. Three most common systems were chosen from public, private/consortium blockchains. The evaluation was done using framework for performance monitoring for blockchain systems. To describe resource usage, we used five performance evaluation metrics i.e. memory consumption, disk write and read performance, network data utilization, transaction execution per unit time, and central processing unit (CPU) usage. The study revealed that the system developed using consortium-based platform outperformed private and public blockchain for more transactions per unit time, and proper utilization of resources of connected nodes such as CPU, Memory, and Disk storage

Soluciones TIC para envejecimiento activo y saludable en el hogar, en el puesto de trabajo y en la sociedad

[SPA] Esta tesis doctoral se presenta bajo la modalidad de compendio de publicaciones.La presente tesis doctoral compendia las publicaciones resultado de varios años de trabajo en el marco de tres líneas de investigación relacionadas con envejecimiento activo y soluciones e-health y Ambient Assisted Living para la población de edad más avanzada: Mobiliario inteligente y espacios inteligentes, envejecimiento activo y saludable, y soluciones de las Tecnologías de la Información y las Comunicaciones (TIC) enfocadas al cuidado de la salud en general y a las personas mayores en particular. Dichos trabajos muestran los resultados de un análisis del estado del arte, patentes y otros, para poder establecer una definición precisa del concepto de Mobiliario Inteligente con el objetivo de destacar sus propiedades en cuanto a funcionalidad y al elemento digital activo y conectado. Además, es necesario destacar que el mobiliario inteligente debe ser considerado como un ente integrado en el concepto de ciudades inteligentes o calidad de vida. Por ello la investigación del estado del arte se centra en envejecimiento de la población activa, tendencias recientes, direcciones futuras y envejecimiento en el trabajo. El objetivo es poder extraer conclusiones en cuanto a los principales problemas de motivación y proponer respuestas eficaces que apoyen el envejecimiento en el trabajo y soluciones e-health que permita a la población senior vivir de manera independiente durante más tiempo a través, tanto de una arquitectura IoT de bajo rango para ayudar a abordar los retos de despliegue de servicios e-health en áreas rurales, como de un sistema de teleasistencia basado en el cuidado proactivo, el envejecimiento activo, la prevención y las necesidades de los usuarios y sus entornos. [ENG] This doctoral dissertation has been presented in the form of thesis by publication. The present doctoral thesis summarises a set of publications resulting from several years of work within the framework of three research lines on active ageing and e-health solutions and Ambient Assisted Living for the ageing population: Smart furniture and Smart habitats, active and healthy ageing and Information and Communication Technology solutions focused on health care in general and on the adult population in particular. Such works show the results of an analysis of the state of the art, patents, and others, to establish a precise definition of the concept of Smart Furniture to highlight its properties in terms of functionality and the active and connected digital element, and to underline that smart furniture must be considered as an integrated entity in the concept of Smart Cities or Quality of Life. For this reason, the state-of-the- art research focuses on the aging workforce, recent trends, future directions, and aging at work. The aim is to draw conclusions on the main motivational issues and to propose effective responses that support the concept of aging at work, as well as e-health solutions for the senior population to live independently for longer through both, a low-range IoT architecture to help address the challenges of deploying a e-health system in rural areas, and a tele-assistance system based on proactivity, prevention, and users’ needs and their environments.Esta tesis doctoral se presenta bajo la modalidad de compendio de publicaciones. Está formada por un total de cuatro artículos. Artículo 1.-: Krejcar, O., Maresova, P., Selamat, A., Melero, F. J., Barakovic, S., Husic, J. B., Herrera-Viedma, E., Frischer, R., & Kuca, K., 2019. Smart furniture as a component of a smart city—definition based on key technologies specification. IEEE Access, volumen 7. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2927778. Artículo 2.-: Barakovic Husic, J., Melero, F. J., Barakovic, S., Lameski, P., Zdravevski, E., Maresova, P., Krejcar, O., Chorveb, I., Garcia, N.M, & Trajkovik, V., 2020. Aging at Work: A Review of Recent Trends and Future Directions. International journal of environmental research and public health, volumen 17 https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17207659. Artículo 3.-: Dimitrievski, A., Filiposka, S., Melero, F. J., Zdravevski, E., Lameski, P., Pires, I. M., Garcia N.M., Lousado, J.P. & Trajkovik, V., 2021. Rural Healthcare IoT Architecture Based on Low-Energy LoRa. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public health, volumen 18. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18147660 Artículo 4.-: Melero, F. J., Bueno, M.V., Martínez, R., Maestre, R., Beteta, M.A., Puebla, T., Bleda, A.L., Sánchez, G., Pérez, R. & Álvarez, M., 2022. Design and Development of a Heterogeneous Active Assisted Living Solution for Monitoring and Following-up with Chronic Heart Failure Patients in Spain. Sensors, Volumen 22, https://doi.org/10.3390/s22228961Escuela Internacional de Doctorado de la Universidad Politécnica de CartagenaUniversidad Politécnica de CartagenaPrograma de Doctorado en Tecnologías de la Información y las Comunicacione

Big data analytics framework for childhood infectious disease surveillance system using modified mapreduce algorithm: a case study of Tanzania

A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master’s in Information and Communication Science and Engineering of the Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and TechnologyTanzania has been affected with a potential emerging and re-emerging of infectious diseases such as diarrhea, acute respiratory infections, pneumonia, hepatitis, and measles. There is an increasing trend for the occurrences of new emerging pandemic diseases such as the coronavirus (Covid-19) in 2020 as well as re-occurrence of old infectious diseases such as cholera epidemic in 2015-2017, chikungunya and dengue fever outbreak in 2010, 2012, 2014, 2018, and 2019 which affected different regions in Tanzania. These diseases by far are the main causes of the high mortality rate for women and children of 0-5 years of age. The traditional disease surveillance system as the foundation of the public healthcare practices has been facing challenges in data collection and analysis using health big data sources to prevent and control infectious diseases. Health big data sources on infectious diseases have been recognized as the potential supplement for the provision of evidence-based decision-making worldwide. Tanzania as one of the resource-limited setting countries has lagged because of the challenges in information technology infrastructure and public healthcare resources. The traditional disease surveillance system is still paper-based, semi-automated, and limited in scope which relies on clinical-oriented patient data sources and leaving out nontraditional and pre-diagnostic unstructured big data sources. This research study aimed to improve the traditional infectious disease surveillance system to employ big data analytics technology in healthcare data collection and analysis to improve decision-making. Big data analytics framework for the childhood infectious disease surveillance system was developed which guides healthcare professionals to streamline the collection and analysis of health big data for infectious disease surveillance. The framework was then fairly compared with the existing framework in its performance using infrastructures, data size and transformation, and running-time execution of the systems. The experimental results indicate the efficiency of the framework system performance with the highest running time execution of about 56% quicker over the traditional system. Also, it has the best performance in processing multiple data structures using additional processing units. In particular, the proposed framework can be adopted to improve the prenatal and postnatal healthcare system in Tanzania

Usabilidade pedagógica: um fator determinante na adoção do e-Learning no ensino superior

O artigo que apresentamos neste simpósio doutoral surge no âmbito do Curso de Doutoramento em Educação, especialidade em Tecnologias de Informação e Comunicação na Educação, do Instituto de Educação da Universidade de Lisboa. O estudo tem como objetivo principal propor e testar um modelo que permita explicar a intenção comportamental dos docentes do Ensino Superior aquando da adoção e uso continuado das plataformas de e-Learning. Para o efeito procura-se compreender o contributo da usabilidade pedagógica como fator determinante no processo de adoção da tecnologia