Workshop MobiHealthInf 2009 Abstracts

Full Papers
Full Papers
Paper Nr: 1
Title:

Velocity Effect on the Gait Evaluation Differential Entropy Measure
Authors:

Nikolaos Papadakis, Costas Savakis , Pavlos Katonis , Dimitris Christakis , K Stergiopoulos , George Tzagkarakis and Nikolaos Kampanis
Abstract: Gait Evaluation Differential Entropy Measure (GEDEM) [ ] is a new quantitative approach to evaluating the condition of a subject by monitoring the acceleration[ ][ ]. The approach is capable to identify medical conditions [2,3] and is also not dependent on age, weight, height or BMI. The initial studies [ ][ ][ ] required the walking on the ground along a straight line for 20-30 seconds. Due to the promising results of the method, work is currently carried out on a treadmill. The treadmill alleviates the constraint of long corridors, and additionally offers better control on the gait velocity, minimum deviation in the coronal plane, and less variability in the GEDEM values[ , ]. This work determines the relationship between the gait velocity and the GEDEM. The gait velocity is a measurement parameter that influences the gait acceleration spectrum and therefore it is expected to influence GEDEM values. This work determines the effect of gait velocity on GEDEM values.
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Paper Nr: 2
Title:

An unconventional approach to healthcare (geographic) information systems using a custom VB interface to Autocad
Authors:

Ernesto Iadanza
Abstract: This article shows how to approach to complexity government in a healthcare structure, using biomedical and architectural skills together with informatics to improve healthcare management. The developed system, called SACS, is a custom VB software that drives Autocad. It provides a mapping of every single hospital room in terms of beds, square meters, destination of use, functional area and many other details. Each room is considered as part of a ward introducing the concept of Main Destination of Use (MDU). System reports can be used via web by hospital top management as well as by clinical engineer, who can assess parameters like the maintenance state of an equipment or its obsolescence, being aware of the hospital context in which this equipment has been used.
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Paper Nr: 4
Title:

A Three-Tiered Architecture for Large-Scale Wireless Hospital Sensor Networks

Authors:

Jamila Ben Slimane, YeQiong Song, Mounir Frikha and Anis Koubâa
Abstract: The Utra Wide Band physical layer specified by the IEEE 802.15.4a standard [1] presents numerous advantages comparing with its original IEEE 802.15.4 standard, namely high accuracy positioning ability, high data rate up to 27 mbps, extended communication range, low power consumption and low complexity. Actually, many research and development activities focus on the design of UWB sensor nodes entities. However nodes interactions or network configuration are neglected. For that, we propose in this paper to investigate the use of UWB for large scale Wireless Hospital Sensor Networks (WHSNs) to benefit from the advantages offered by the UWB technology. This evolving networking paradigm promises to revolutionize healthcare by allowing inexpensive, non-invasive, pervasive and ubiquitous, ambulatory health monitoring. We present the design of new system architecture, based on IEEE 802.15.4a compliant sensors, suitable for health monitoring application in high dense hospital environment. The proposed system architecture is intended to support large-scale deployment and to improve the network performance in terms of energy efficiency, real-time guarantees and Quality-of-Service (QoS).
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Paper Nr: 5
Title:

Supporting Registration and Treatment of Clubfoot Using Mobile Devices
Authors:

Weiqin Chen and Dag Skjelvik
Abstract: In current congenital clubfoot treatment, clinicians use paper forms to register and monitor the treatment process. Routines for registration and archiving are scarce, and the guideline for treating clubfoot is not always followed strictly. This paper presents a PDA-based system (GenSupport) that can support the registration of patient information, supervise the treatment process, as well as provide advice during treatment. GenSupport has been evaluated in order to investigate the perceived usefulness of such a system. The evaluation results indicate that GenSupport has the possibility of improving the routines for registration and archiving of patient information as well as supporting the treatment of clubfoot. The advice provided by GenSupport was perceived particularly useful for inexperienced clinicians.
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Paper Nr: 6
Title:

Standard for Personalized eHealth Services
Authors:

Torbjørn Sund, Nick Hine, Mike Pluke and Francoise Petersen
Abstract: Stimulated by the rapid development in ICT, wireless communication and sensor development, patient care is moving out of the institution and into the personal realm. The move requires that eHealth systems should be tailored to the user, including personalization and adaptation to user context. This paper describes ongoing work to establish a standard for such personalization. The standard builds on the user's preferences and current situation, which together define the current user profile. This profile can then be used by eHealth services and devices to ensure a user experience tailored to each person and situation. The work surveys relevant areas of personalization, like identity management, profile management etc, addressing those aspects of personalization that are specific to eHealth: user capabilities, care provider roles and functions, health related information, and confidentiality measures.
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Paper Nr: 7
Title:

Data Collection Methods for Analyzing Task-Based Information Access in Molecular Medicine
Authors:

Kal Jarvelin, Sami Serola, Sanna Kumpulainen, Gareth Jones, Aiden Doherty, Daragh Byrne and Alan Smeaton
Abstract: An important area of improving access to health information is the study of task-based information access in the health domain. This is a significant context for developing information retrieval (IR) systems. Due to the complexities of this context, its study requires multiple and often tedious means of data collection, which yields a lot of data for analysis, but also allows triangulation so as to increase the reliability of the findings. In addition to traditional means of data collection, such as questionnaires, interviews and observation, there are novel opportunities provided by logging and photographic surveillance such as the SenseCam. Together they yield an understanding of information needs, the sources used, and their access strategies. The present paper examines the strengths and weaknesses of the traditional and the more novel means of data collection and addresses the challenges in their application in molecular medicine, which intensively uses digital information sources.
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Paper Nr: 8
Title:

A Distributed Elderly healthcare System
Authors:

Shahram Nourizadeh, Jean-pierre Thomesse, Claude Deroussent and YeQiong Song
Abstract: The recent advances of ICT allow developing new generation of tele-homecare systems to enable elderly health monitoring and management and ease their daily life. Such a system can reduce the amount of admissions to hospital, facilitate more efficient clinical visits, and may replace a hospital stay by living at home. In this paper we present a patient oriented distributed tele-homecare system, by which we created a new concept of building smart home by integrating telemedicine and home automation systems.
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Paper Nr: 10
Title:

MARIKA: A Mobile Assistance System for Supporting Home Care
Authors:

Tobias Umblia, Albert Hein, Thomas Karopka and Ilvio Bruder
Abstract: Documentation of care activities is a very time-consuming task of home healthcare, but necessary due to legal requirements. Automating the care documentation would relieve the nurses from writing it down by hand, resulting in more time for the patients. The MARIKA project presented in this paper is addressing this problem through the development of a system which assists the home care personnel by automatically recording care activities, and integrates with other systems involved in the care process. Technical approaches for two major building blocks of such a system are described: A hybrid, sensor-based activity recognition approach, and a mediator-based data and function integration approach.
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Paper Nr: 11
Title:

Spontaneous Speech Database for the Romanian Language with Medical Applicability
Authors:

Cristina S. Petrea, Andi Buzo, Corneliu Burileanu, Vladimir Popescu and Diana Hanes
Abstract: The research in the field of spontaneous speech for Romanian language has direct applicability in the medical process of patient remote monitoring and in helping the dyslexics and the dyspraxic people. It is an unexplored domain, with high potential for worthy results in speech recognition area. The goal is to achieve performance in helping persons with disabilities and common patients. This paper describes the statistical results and the achievements obtained in the field of spontaneous speech recognition, beginning with the new Romanian corpus, built from scratch with words and triphones. The challenge is to create a spontaneous speech recognition tool for Romanian language with medical applicability for the benefit of persons with difficulties in mobility, communication and even common people.
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Paper Nr: 13
Title:

Remote Patient Monitoring In home Environments
Authors:

Paulo Gonçalves, Pedro Sobral, José M. Torres and Rui S. Moreira
Abstract: The humanity is currently facing the difficulties of an aged society with an ever-growing predominance of chronic diseases and associated problems (e.g., mobility issues, possibility of falls, etc.). Traditional hospital or clinical internment is not an efficient answer both in terms of human, therapeutic or economical aspects. Alternatively, ambulatory and home healthcare are becoming preferred and predominant solutions. However, home environments are not suited nor prepared for monitoring and helping to take care of elderly or disabled people. To overcome some of these issues, this paper proposes a wireless low cost hardware solution based on a microcontroller with several sensors (cf. temperature, oxymeter, 3-axis accelerometer) which allows monitoring several physiological parameters (e.g., temperature, heart bit, etc.) and infer human activities (e.g., standing, walking, falling, etc.) of home confined people. A similar platform with ambient temperature and light sensors was created for monitoring the home environment. The collected data is pre-processed on the sensor nodes and then transmitted to a wireless gateway where the backend logs the patient activities and his health conditions as well as the living surroundings. Finally, a web application is provide to healthcare professionals for viewing, analyzing and statistically operating these logs, thus empowering homecare.
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Paper Nr: 14
Title:

A DIGITAL FILTER MODEL OF CARDIOVASCULAR SYSTEM AND ITS PZ PLOTS IN ASSISTANCE OF THE MEDICAL SIGNAL MONITORING AND HEART CONDITION DIAGNOSIS
Authors:

Susan Vasana
Abstract: In an effort to take advantage of advancements in digital signal processing and bio-medical technologies, this research has investigated the feasibility of creating a digital filter model for cardiovascular system. This is based on the understanding that ABP (Arterial Blood Pressure) waveforms are the cardiovascular system responses of the heart pumping impulses. The digital filter model is designed to be able to regenerate the periodic ABP signal as the system impulse response to the stimulus of ECG (electrocardio-gram) impulses. The digital filter model of cardiovascular system is designed and the system pole-zero pattern (PZ plot) are displayed in the paper. To identify how the model PZ plot can be used in assistance the diagnosis of cardiovascular condition, the number of filter coefficients, or the number of samples in a period of the simulated models, has been explored and the resolution impacts on PZ plot have been observed. The regenerated signal waveforms from the model with limited resolution are also compared with the original measured ABP signal waveforms for accuracy. Using the modern Digital Signal Processing (DSP) technology, we can implement the model and its PZ plot within mobile/portable blood pressure monitors with real-time display.
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Paper Nr: 15
Title:

Arogyashree: a Distributed File System for Large Scale Internet-Based Telemedicine
Authors:

Kovendhan Ponnavaikko and D Janakiram
Abstract: Today, a typical telemedicine system involves a small set of hospitals providing remote healthcare services to a small section of the society using nodal centers, mobile health units, etc. However, the benefits of a telemedicine system increase with scale. One of the key requirements of such a large scale system is to allow large numbers of patient medical records, in the form of electronic files, to be efficiently stored and accessed from widely distributed locations. In this paper, we address the need for a distributed file system to manage patient data in large scale telemedicine systems. We use the resources of unreliable Internet edge nodes distributed among hospitals, labs, etc., to provide reliable file system services to patients and doctors. Besides building an Internet-based system that scales with the number of nodes and files, we also attempt to optimize record access times for doctors to provide timely responses.
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