scholarly journals Maternal and Child Healthcare Service by Portable Health Clinic System Using a Triage Protocol

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rafiqul Islam ◽  
Kimiyo Kikuchi ◽  
Yoko Sato ◽  
Rieko Izukura ◽  
Nusrat Jahan ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Rural Communities ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Continuum Of Care ◽  
Appropriate Technology ◽  
Health Clinic ◽  
Care Protocol ◽  
Triage Protocol ◽  
Mother And Child ◽  
Child Healthcare

The number of deaths of a mother and child caused by maternal and child healthcare (MCH) issues has been greatly decreased recently, but still, the number is extremely high especially in developing countries. Although the governments have been given a priority in this issue, the lack of financial and human resources brings a limit. Thus, the use of low-cost but appropriate technology is required. Portable Health Clinic (PHC), a telemedicine system developed for providing primary healthcare, is such a technology. This study aimed to address this MCH issue with the aid of a low-cost PHC service involving a continuum-of-care protocol to the rural communities of Bangladesh. Moreover, this study introduces a triage protocol to distinguish high-risk patients from the early stage of the continuum of care who need special care and refer to specialized physicians to prevent unwanted deaths.

scholarly journals Portable Health Clinic as a Telemedicine System with Appropriate Technologies for Unreached Communities

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rafiqul Islam-Maruf ◽  
Ashir Ahmed ◽  
Fumihiko Yokota ◽  
Kimiyo Kikuchi ◽  
Mariko Nishikitani ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Rural Communities ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Healthcare Services ◽  
Poor Quality ◽  
Health Clinic ◽  
Special Treatment ◽  
Health Coverage ◽  
Telemedicine System ◽  
Quality Healthcare ◽  
Main Barrier

Poor healthcare infrastructure is the main barrier for providing quality healthcare services to rural communities in developing countries. Thus, these populations remain unreached, and there is a need to establish a method for ensuring the provision of appropriate and adequate healthcare services to these individuals. The portable health clinic (PHC) system has been developed as an effective telemedicine system to meet this objective. A trained village health worker can use this simple system for collecting vital information of the patient, upload the data to the online server, and connect village patients with a remote doctor to enable the provision of online consultancy using video conferencing. Although the PHC was initially developed to ensure primary healthcare service with a focus on non-communicable diseases, a major cause of death, gradually, tele-pathology, tele-eye care, maternal and child health care, and COVID-19 care modules have been added to provide special treatment in these areas as per local needs. The modular PHC system will continue to grow with the addition of novel features that aim to address the local needs. The low-cost and easy operation of the PHC system make it ideal for ensuring global health coverage in communities where inadequate medical facilities and poor-quality healthcare resources remain major issues.

scholarly journals Evaluasi Usability Aplikasi Elektronik-Kesehatan Ibu dan Anak (e-KIA)

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (6) ◽  
pp. 1277
Author(s):  
Fitra Abdurrachman Bachtiar ◽  
Retno Indah Rokhmawati ◽  
Fajar Pradana ◽  
Intan Yusuf Habibie
Keyword(s):  
Information Technology ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
Early Warning ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Visual Representation ◽  
Usability Testing ◽  
Evaluation Instrument ◽  
Content Organization ◽  
Mother And Child ◽  
Child Healthcare

<p>Teknologi informasi sudah berkembang disemua bidang dan tidak terkecuali sudah diterapkan ke bidang kesehatan. Salah satu langkah awal penerapan teknologi informasi pada bidang kesehatan adalah dengan membangun aplikasi untuk memonitor kesehatan ibu dan anak yang disebut dengan <em>e</em>-KIA. Aplikasi <em>e</em>-KIA yang sudah dibangun saat ini masih belum diketahui tingkat usabilitas dari penggunaan aplikasi tersebut. Pengujian <em>usability</em> ini penting untuk dilakukan sebelum aplikasi tersebut digunakan oleh masyarakat secara luas dan dapat digunakan sebagai <em>early warning</em> untuk mendeteksi kemungkinan-kemungkinan kesalahan yang terjadi. Untuk mengatasi hal tersebut pengujian <em>usability</em> dilakukan pada aplikasi <em>e</em>-KIA. Pengujian <em>usability</em> dimulai dengan melakukan studi litearatur terkait. Kemudian dilakukan pemilihan evaluator sekaligus melakukan <em>briefing</em> proses evaluasi. Tahap selanjutnya adalah merancang instrumen untuk evaluasi dan merancang skenario evaluasi. Evaluasi <em>usability</em> yang dilakukan difokuskan pada 3 hal yaitu <em>Severity Ranking (SR)</em>, <em>Ease of Fixing Ranking</em> (EFR), dan Kategori Masalah. Masalah yang ditemukan kemudian dikategorikan berdasarkan 10 prinsip heuristik Nielsen dan disederhanakan menjadi kategori <em>Selection Driven Command</em> (perbaikan interaksi), <em>Content Organization</em> (kelengkapan konten informasi), dan <em>Visual Representation</em> (pemilihan komponen desain yang tepat). Dari hasil evaluasi tersebut didapatkan temuan masalah <em>Selection Driven Command</em> (perbaikan interaksi) sejumlah 18 temuan, <em>Content Organization</em> (kelengkapan konten informasi) sejumlah 10 temuan, dan <em>Visual Representation</em> (pemilihan komponen desain yang tepat) sejumlah 7 temuan.</p><p> </p><p><strong><em>Abstract</em></strong></p><p><em><em>Information technology has emerged in all aspect including in the healthcare field. e-KIA is an application to monitor mother and child healthcare as initial steps in implementing information technology in the healthcare field. As a newly developed application, the usability level of e-KIA is not known yet. Usability testing is important steps to be taken before the application will be used by stakeholders. Usability testing could be used to identify problems that may occur in the early stage and could be used as early warning to application aspects need to be fixed. e-KIA Usability Testing is conducted to overcome the specified problems. Usability testing started by taking the literature review followed by evaluator selection and evaluation briefing. The next step is designing an evaluation instrument and evaluation scenario. The conducted usability testing is focus on Severity Ranking (SR), Ease of Fixing Ranking (EFR), and Problem Category. The identified problems are then categorized into Nielsen’s 10 Heuristic Principal. The identified problems are simplified to three categories of Selection Driven Command, Content Organization, and Visual Representation. The experiment has found 18 problems in Selection Driven category, 10 problem in Content Organization, and 7 problems in Visual Representation category. </em></em></p>

Tools of Transformation: Appropriate Technology in U.S. Countercultural Literature

2012 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 75-93
Author(s):  
Peter Mortensen
Keyword(s):  
Low Cost ◽  
Appropriate Technology ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Environmental Transformation ◽  
Buckminster Fuller ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Environmentally Sound ◽  
User Friendly ◽  
Second Wave

This essay takes its cue from second-wave ecocriticism and from recent scholarly interest in the “appropriate technology” movement that evolved during the 1960s and 1970s in California and elsewhere. “Appropriate technology” (or AT) refers to a loosely-knit group of writers, engineers and designers active in the years around 1970, and more generally to the counterculture’s promotion, development and application of technologies that were small-scale, low-cost, user-friendly, human-empowering and environmentally sound. Focusing on two roughly contemporary but now largely forgotten American texts Sidney Goldfarb’s lyric poem “Solar-Heated-Rhombic-Dodecahedron” (1969) and Gurney Norman’s novel Divine Right’s Trip (1971)—I consider how “hip” literary writers contributed to eco-technological discourse and argue for the 1960s counterculture’s relevance to present-day ecological concerns. Goldfarb’s and Norman’s texts interest me because they conceptualize iconic 1960s technologies—especially the Buckminster Fuller-inspired geodesic dome and the Volkswagen van—not as inherently alienating machines but as tools of profound individual, social and environmental transformation. Synthesizing antimodernist back-to-nature desires with modernist enthusiasm for (certain kinds of) machinery, these texts adumbrate a humanity- and modernity-centered post-wilderness model of environmentalism that resonates with the dilemmas that we face in our increasingly resource-impoverished, rapidly warming and densely populated world.

scholarly journals Automation of absolute protein-ligand binding free energy calculations for docking refinement and compound evaluation

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Germano Heinzelmann ◽  
Michael K. Gilson
Keyword(s):  
Free Energy ◽  
Early Stage ◽  
Binding Free Energy ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Free Energy Calculations ◽  
Free Energies ◽  
Energy Calculations ◽  
Drug Candidates ◽  
Binding Free Energy Calculations ◽  
Binding Free Energies

AbstractAbsolute binding free energy calculations with explicit solvent molecular simulations can provide estimates of protein-ligand affinities, and thus reduce the time and costs needed to find new drug candidates. However, these calculations can be complex to implement and perform. Here, we introduce the software BAT.py, a Python tool that invokes the AMBER simulation package to automate the calculation of binding free energies for a protein with a series of ligands. The software supports the attach-pull-release (APR) and double decoupling (DD) binding free energy methods, as well as the simultaneous decoupling-recoupling (SDR) method, a variant of double decoupling that avoids numerical artifacts associated with charged ligands. We report encouraging initial test applications of this software both to re-rank docked poses and to estimate overall binding free energies. We also show that it is practical to carry out these calculations cheaply by using graphical processing units in common machines that can be built for this purpose. The combination of automation and low cost positions this procedure to be applied in a relatively high-throughput mode and thus stands to enable new applications in early-stage drug discovery.

scholarly journals IoT Platform for Energy Sustainability in University Campuses

Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 357
Author(s):  
Pedro Moura ◽  
José Ignacio Moreno ◽  
Gregorio López López ◽  
Manuel Alvarez-Campana
Keyword(s):  
Energy Demand ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Sustainable Use ◽  
High Energy ◽  
Appropriate Technology ◽  
Monitoring And Control ◽  
Energy Sustainability ◽  
University Campuses ◽  
Iot Platform

University campuses are normally constituted of large buildings responsible for high energy demand, and are also important as demonstration sites for new technologies and systems. This paper presents the results of achieving energy sustainability in a testbed composed of a set of four buildings that constitute the Telecommunications Engineering School of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. In the paper, after characterizing the consumption of university buildings for a complete year, different options to achieve more sustainable use of energy are presented, considering the integration of renewable generation sources, namely photovoltaic generation, and monitoring and controlling electricity demand. To ensure the implementation of the desired monitoring and control, an internet of things (IoT) platform based on wireless sensor network (WSN) infrastructure was designed and installed. Such a platform supports a smart system to control the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) and lighting systems in buildings. Furthermore, the paper presents the developed IoT-based platform, as well as the implemented services. As a result, the paper illustrates how providing old existing buildings with the appropriate technology can contribute to the objective of transforming such buildings into nearly zero-energy buildings (nZEB) at a low cost.

Low-Cost Queuing Management System for Health Clinic

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siti Nur Syafiqah Mohd Razak ◽  
Syed Farid Syed Adnan
Keyword(s):  
Management System ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Health Clinic

VERMICOMPOSTING TECHNOLOGY FOR STABILIZING THE SEWAGE SLUDGE FROM RURAL WASTE WATER TREATMENT PLANTS

2008 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
V. Lina Cardoso ◽  
C. Esperanza Ramírez ◽  
E. Violeta Escalante
Keyword(s):  
Rural Communities ◽  
Sewage Sludge ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Waste Water Treatment ◽  
Treatment Plant ◽  
Microbiological Quality ◽  
Fecal Coliforms ◽  
Nitrogen And Phosphorus ◽  
Sludge Management

There are problems associated with sludge management in small treatment plants (&lt;10 L/s) located in rural communities, due to costly conventional technology for sludge stabilization. Many of these plants have only sludge drying beds. Mexican Institute of Water Technology has proposed developing suitable low-cost technologies, one of which is vermicomposting a biodegradation system using earthworms of the species Eisenia foetida (earthworm) which stabilize sludge and reduce its pathogenicity. The objective of this work is to present two case studies where vermicomposting technology has been applied in Mexico. The first study corresponds to a plant where 4.8 m3/month of sludge are produced; for these wastes, a vermicomposting system was built and installed. The second study is a treatment plant where 9 m3/month of sludge are produced; experimental tests were conducted with sludge and water hyacinth and a vermicomposting system was designed. The vermicomposts were analyzed using parameters defined by Mexican standards. In regards to stabilization, TVS was reduced by 38% and the microbiological quality of the vermicompost was Class A and B, with a reduction in fecal coliforms and Helminth eggs according to NOM-004-SEMARNAT-2002. A CRETI (Corrosivity, Reactivity, Explosivity, Toxicity and Ignitability) analysis (NOM-052-SEMARNAT-2005) was used to show that the process reduced the concentration of releasable sulfides. The agronomic quality of the vermicompost exhibited a high content of organic matter comparable to many organic manures and high content of nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus. It is concluded that it is possible to improve the conditions of sewage sludge management in small plants of rural communities with a minimum investment (less than $10,000.00 USD) and with a requirement of a minimum area of 60 to 70 m2 for a production of less than 9 m3/month of dehydrated sludge (80% humidity).

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