Defining and Characterizing the Landscape of E-Health

There has been a surge of electronic health (e-health) technologies encompassing a range of services available to various stakeholders within the healthcare system in both developed and developing countries. As technology has evolved, the features and functionalities offered by e-health technologies have grown dramatically, leading to a proliferation of advanced technical solutions. As a result of this increased focus, various definitions for what constitutes the term e-health have emerged in the literature. This lack of consensus is further inhibited by a dearth of research documenting the characteristics (i.e., features and functionalities) of such e-health technologies. The authors propose to define and characterize the landscape of e-health technologies from an information systems (IS) perspective in this chapter. By examining existing literature and reviewing the market place, this study reveals that there is a need to integrate the various features and functions of e-health technologies, thereby arguing that integration and interoperability is important for the growth of e-health.

Use of Technology in Problem-Based Learning in Health Science

Recent advances in the field of digital technology have had a significant role in changing the concept of learning and teaching for both students and teachers. These developments have enabled educational systems to move from their traditional classroom-based teaching models to a more enhanced blended/e-learning approach including an array of electronic learning tools such as digital microscopy, electronic cell counter, 3D virtual reality, and demonstration videos. An integration of these digital tools along with contemporary face-to-face teaching can significantly improve student learning outcomes and provide convenient and flexible access to education and training. This model demonstrated a positive impact on laboratory-based courses such as Laboratory Medicine at Griffith University. The objective of this chapter is to highlight the impact and advantages of this particular model from the student- and teacher-based perspective. This chapter will also discuss some of the challenges of implementing this mode of teaching and provide future directions.

Comprehensive E-Learning Appraisal System

The healthcare sector in the 21st century presents a big technological development. All fields of medicine are deepening their knowledge, which increases the volume of material that must be handled by professionals in each specialty. This large volume of material should be taken into account by health professionals, because it contributes to a better quality of care. The traditional way of teaching has been face-to-face classes; however, with rising technologies, virtual training via computers and virtual teachers are being implemented in some institutions. This change in the way of teaching also leads to changes in how to assess the knowledge gained through this method of learning. The aim of this chapter is to provide a small analysis of online training courses for health professionals, and deepen into an appraisal system developed to integrate different complementary variables, and how they can be implemented as a method addressed to assess online courses in a more comprehensive way.

User Resistance to Health Information Technology

The use of information technology (IT) in healthcare to improve outcomes is now a global phenomenon. If effectively implemented and efficiently leveraged, these technologies will greatly lower healthcare costs, improve safety, and elevate the quality of health. Nevertheless, health IT implementation and adoption continues to meet challenges. Reports show that physicians, nurses, and other healthcare professionals continue to resist health IT. Researchers have proposed models to explain this notion, and till date, there still is a lack of an overarching paradigm to view the concept. Resistance is a complex phenomenon that defies simple explanation and analysis. It requires well-accepted theories or paradigms encompassing the full range of variables associated with it. Understanding and mitigating user resistance is a great step toward improving sector-wide adoption. In this chapter, the authors survey extant theories of resistance and provide a paradigmatic lens for leveraging this knowledge to practical solutions in health IT adoption.

Maintenance Policies Optimization of Medical Equipment in a Health Care Organization

The aim of this chapter is to minimize the corrective breakdowns produced in the electromedical equipment of a healthcare organization. To this, an optimization plan of maintenance policies will be developed. This plan includes the creation of preventive maintenance datasheets. The data used in this research has been obtained from the computerized maintenance management system, which is owned by the healthcare organization. Different types of rankings have been made in the stocks to prioritize items by family of equipment and by average work orders by equipment generated. The maintenance tasks are optimized to preserve the satisfactory working conditions and the performance of equipment in the healthcare organization optimizing available resources. All of this is intended to anticipate the maintenance activity to breakdowns and to prevent the care quality from diminishing by increasing the patient waiting time by unavailability of medical equipment in the treatments and diagnostic tests.

RNA Interference Therapeutics and Human Diseases

Defective protein synthesis leads to diseases. If protein synthesis can be controlled, disease causing molecules can be tailored in some way. This is the perception behind RNA interference. RNA interference (RNAi) therapeutics is branch of medicine which deals with the treatment of diseases while controlling the gene expression at RNA level. The motive of this chapter is to discover the state-of-the-art of RNAi therapeutics, to explore various techniques used by RNAi therapeutics to fight from diseases, and discuss the future prospects of it.

Concerns and Challenges of Cloud Platforms for Bioinformatics

Bioinformatics traditionally concerns applying computational approaches for the management and the exploitation of large volumes of biomedical data that continues to expand in size and in distribution. Although the application of cloud computing in biomedical areas is still preliminary, an increasing number of biomedical applications rely on the Cloud for processing large datasets. This chapter investigates the extent to which cloud technology offers a viable platform for developing and deploying applications that support users in searching and integrating information offered by bioinformatics resources. The chapter outlines the basic features that such computing applications should exhibit and the challenging issues they deal with. The architecture and the functionality of the cloud-based environments are presented to stress how cloud platforms could offer added-value service components and flexibility that make their adoption attractive for bioinformatics.

Building Gene Networks by Analyzing Gene Expression Profiles

The possible applications of modeling and simulation in the field of bioinformatics are very extensive, ranging from understanding basic metabolic paths to exploring genetic variability. Experimental results carried out with DNA microarrays allow researchers to measure expression levels for thousands of genes simultaneously, across different conditions and over time. A key step in the analysis of gene expression data is the detection of groups of genes that manifest similar expression patterns. In this chapter, the authors examine various methods for analyzing gene expression data, addressing the important topics of (1) selecting the most differentially expressed genes, (2) grouping them by means of their relationships, and (3) classifying samples based on gene expressions.

A Validation Study of Rehabilitation Exercise Monitoring Using Kinect

In this chapter, the authors present their work on a validation study of using Microsoft Kinect to monitor rehabilitation exercises. Differing from other validation efforts, the authors focus on a system-level assessment instead of the joint-level comparison with reference motion capture systems. They assess the feasibility of using Kinect by examining the enforceability of a set of correctness rules defined for each exercise, which are invariances of each exercise and hence independent from the coordinate system used. This method is more advantageous in that (1) it does not require coordinate system transformation between those of the reference motion capture system and of the Kinect-based system, (2) it does not require an exact match of the Kinect joints and the corresponding external marker placements or derived joint centers often used in reference motion capture systems, and (3) the correctness rules and their mapping for Kinect motion data analysis developed in this study are readily implementable for a real motion monitoring system for physical therapy.

Pervasive Mobile Health

Pervasive mobile health is mobile health that provides healthcare services that are accessible regardless of time and place where patients can continuously be connected through their smart mobile devices. It offers healthcare providers a more comprehensive perspective of patients' conditions and thus aids in achieving complex healthcare goal(s) such as building lasting relationships with patients. The service can be further extended to accommodate customers' participation in health and healthcare processes to improve healthcare services by extending roles of patients. The advancement of the web technologies, especially social networks, push e-health to embrace mobile devices (m-health) and personalize customer-centric services with a possibility to extend and improve services by enabling active participation of patients, patients' families, and the community at large in healthcare processes and personal health decision making. This chapter addresses some important concepts of m-health, challenges, future trends, and some related terminologies to provide a holistic view of m-health.