Pastor.i: a smartphone application to facilitate grazing management

Grazing in extensive beef farming systems is often manage in an empirical way based on past experience and on the visual appreciation of animal behavior and forage potential. Records of entrances and exits of the animals in the paddocks are rare. However, knowing the occupation period and the animal density, when coupled with biomass defines the grazing pressure. This knowledge is essential for planning and making informed decisions, that influence the profitability of the farm. Moreover, adequate grazing pressure is crucial for the sustainability of many SSPs where system maintenance is dependent on the balance between grazing pressure and regeneration or maintenance of trees and shrubs. Pastor.i is a smartphone application (APP) designed to allow pasture data logging to be very simple. The application is synchronized with the website and allows the producer to have in his pocket all the farm, being possible to identify the paddock, calculate the area, record the movements of the animals and consult the occupation history of the paddock. The application calculates the actual stocking rate, that can be associated with the location of the animals, obtained if the animals are using collars with GPS, which allows to know the areas of the paddock that are most grazed, visualized through heat maps. The information enables localized actions, such as fertilizing or sowing, to improve areas that are not grazed. The application also allows you to save photos of the sward. This temporal photographic record provides information on the condition of trees, the botanical composition and on the tendency of grazing to improve or to worsen coverage. The APP is available for download, is compatible with Android and is being tested with focus groups

Ceres Smartphone Application

http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/106042/1/me589f13section001project13_report.pd

Implementation of a Geographic Information System-Based Smartphone Application for Health Vigilance in Older Adults by Village Health Volunteers (OSOMO)

This paper mainly studies the smartphone application for health vigilance in elderly adults, based on geographic information system (GIS) for village health volunteers (OSOMO in Thai) to monitor elderly’s health. Eight areas from 4 provinces of 7th health territory (Roi Et, Khon Kaen, Maha Sarakham, and Kalasin) were employed for research. The smartphone application called “OSOMO Prompt” was created for both iPhone (iOS) and Android devices for 1,246 OSOMOs. The comparison results of the difference of mean scores of knowledge of before and after using the “OSOMO Prompt” smartphone application, showed that the trial group, 240 elderly participants had the mean scores after smartphone application use of 1.69, higher than before use smartphone application. The results also indicated a statistically significant difference (p-value < .001) at 95%, confidence interval between 2.15–1.22. In conclusion, the “OSOMO Prompt” smartphone application was proved as a tool for village health volunteers to make health decision for the elderly persons. Moreover, the system was easy to use and could improve the quality of the elderly’s healthcare

A validation study of a smartphone application for functional mobility assessment of the elderly

AbstractBackgroundTo minimize the reaction time and position judgment error using stopwatch-timed measures, we developed a smartphone application to measure performance in the five-time sit-to-stand (FTSTS) and timed up-and-go (TUG) tests.ObjectiveThis study aimed to validate this smartphone application by comparing its measurement with a laboratory-based reference condition.MethodsThirty-two healthy elderly people were asked to perform the FTSTS and TUG tests in a randomized sequence. During the tests, their performance was concurrently measured by the smartphone application and a force sensor installed in the backrest of a chair. The intraclass correlation coefficient [ICC(2,1)] and Bland–Altman analysis were used to calculate the measurement consistency and agreement, respectively, between these two methods.ResultsThe smartphone application demonstrated excellent measurement consistency with the lab-based reference condition for the FTSTS test [ICC(2,1) = 0.988] and TUG test [ICC(2,1) = 0.946]. We observed a positive bias of 0.27 seconds (95% limits of agreement, −1.22 to 1.76 seconds) for the FTSTS test and 0.48 seconds (95% limits of agreement, −1.66 to 2.63 seconds) for the TUG test.ConclusionWe cross-validated the newly developed smartphone application with the laboratory-based reference condition during the examination of FTSTS and TUG test performance in healthy elderly

Validation of smartphone step count algorithm used in STARFISH smartphone application

BACKGROUND: Smartphone sensors are underutilised in rehabilitation. OBJECTIVE: To validate the step count algorithm used in the STARFISH smartphone application. METHODS: Twenty-two healthy adults (8 male, 14 female) walked on a treadmill for 5 minutes at 0.44, 0.67, 0.90 and 1.33 m⋅s-1 . Each wore an activPAL TM and four Samsung Galaxy S3TM smartphones, with the STARFISH application running, in: 1) a belt carrycase, 2) a trouser or skirt pocket), 3a) a handbag on shoulder for females or 3b) shirt pocket for males and 4) an upper arm strap. Step counts of the STARFISH application and the activPALTM were compared at corresponding speeds and Bland-Altman statistics used to assess level of agreement (LOA). RESULTS: The LOA between the STARFISH application and activPALTM varied across the four speeds and positions, but improved as speed increased. The LOA ranged from 105–177% at 0.44 m⋅s-1; 50–98% at 0.67 m⋅s-1; 19–67% at 0.9 m⋅s-1 and 8–53% at 1.33 m⋅s-1. The best LOAs were at 1.33 m⋅s-1 in the shirt pocket (8%) and upper arm strap (12%) positions. CONCLUSIONS: Step counts measured by the STARFISH smartphone application are valid in most body positions especially at walking speeds of 0.9 m⋅s-1 and above

A validation study of a smartphone application for functional mobility assessment of the elderly

Background: To minimize the reaction time and position judgment error using stopwatch-timed measures, we developed a smartphone application to measure performance in the five-time sit-to-stand (FTSTS) and timed up-and-go (TUG) tests. Objective: This study aimed to validate this smartphone application by comparing its measurement with a laboratory-based reference condition. Methods: Thirty-two healthy elderly people were asked to perform the FTSTS and TUG tests in a randomized sequence. During the tests, their performance was concurrently measured by the smartphone application and a force sensor installed in the backrest of a chair. The intraclass correlation coefficient [ICC(2,1)] and Blande-Altman analysis were used to calculate the measurement consistency and agreement, respectively, between these two methods. Results: The smartphone application demonstrated excellent measurement consistency with the lab-based reference condition for the FTSTS test [ICC(2,1) = 0.988] and TUG test [ICC(2,1) = 0.946]. We observed a positive bias of 0.27 seconds (95% limits of agreement, -1.22 to 1.76 seconds) for the FTSTS test and 0.48 seconds (95% limits of agreement, -1.66 to 2.63 seconds) for the TUG test. Conclusion: We cross-validated the newly developed smartphone application with the laboratory-based reference condition during the examination of FTSTS and TUG test performance in healthy elderly

Telehealth System to Improve Medication Management of Autism Spectrum Disorder Remotely

Approximately 1 in 88 children in the United States are being diagnosed with the Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder that carries with it lifelong physical, emotional, and behavioral consequences. Early diagnosis and treatment can help reduce the severity of the symptoms. To assist healthcare providers in the management of the autism symptoms, a new smartphone application was developed that allows physicians to observe patient behaviors between office visits, and to manage the patient’s medication based on the information observed. An evaluation was conducted to determine ease of use of the smartphone application by two physicians and three caregivers of patients with autism. The results showed that the new smartphone application will be able to assist the physician in monitoring patients with ASD more accurately than when only using subjective reports provided by caregivers during office visits. The smartphone application technology promises to help both caregivers and physicians in improving medication management for their autism patients. The research project was conducted collaboratively between Boise State University and Behavioral Imaging Solutions, Inc. The research protocol was approved by the BSU IRB

Measuring the Effects of Prosthetic Tactile Pacing on Overt Stuttering Frequency in Adults Who Stutter

While the cause has been historically enigmatic, persistent stuttering exhibits distinct behavioral, neural and genetic characteristics. Throughout many years, a variety of motoric treatments have attempted to ameliorate overt stuttering behaviors; however, most therapeutic options provide unstable, effortful, and/or unnatural sounding results with high relapse rates. Conversely, research documents natural sounding speech coupled with stable and effortless reductions in overt stuttering frequency when a person who stutters is exposed to speech feedback of a second speech signal (i.e. choral speech). The most prolific clinical use of this technology is a prosthetically introduced auditory second speech signal; yet its current application has several technological and environmental limitations, and may not be tolerated well by users. Conversely, the tactile modality may be more comfortable relative to prosthetic implementation and thus better suited for activities of daily living. Prosthetic tactile speech feedback, in the form of a tactile second speech signal, is still a young technology and is currently in development. However, an immediate and inexpensive alternative to real-time speech feedback of a tactile second speech signal may be vibrotactile pacing administered through a smartphone application. Thirteen adults with persistent stuttering participated in this study, which included data collection sessions once a week for four weeks over videoconference. Participants read three ~300 syllable, junior high passages under three different speaking conditions, including a control, a deactivated phone, and a activated smartphone application; moments of overt stuttering were counted by the primary investigator as well as a trained research assistant. The results of this study demonstrate a main effect of the tactile pacing smartphone application on overt stuttering frequency. Bonferroni post hoc analysis reveals significant differences between the control speaking condition and the vibrotactile smartphone application (p=.000) as well as between the deactivated smartphone and the vibrotactile smartphone application (p=.033). Based on these data, an inexpensive tactile pacing smartphone application, such as the StutterLess application used in this study, might be an inexpensive and beneficial prosthetic treatment option