Pedometer Cell Phone Applications and Future Trends in Measuring Physical Activity

A huge proportion of the world population is suffering from lifestyle related and preventable welfare diseases. Physical activity is one important means of achieving beneficial health impacts and of reducing the risk of chronic disease. Pedometers are often used to measure physical activity. Nowadays, cell phones are very common, and pedometer applications enable measurements to be made by a device that is already owned. This chapter presents a study of the measurement accuracy of pedometer cell phone applications. The results show that only one combination of pedometer application and cell phone provided high accuracy when tested by different test persons. In some cases, the measurements indicate that the orientation of the cell phone used during measurement might be relevant. In addition, it would be valuable to gain knowledge about the overall and everyday physical activity pattern, which would be very valuable in contributing to a healthier population.

Cardiac Chamber Contour Extraction

Segmentation of echocardiography images presents a great challenge since such images contain strong speckle noise and artifacts. Most ultrasound segmentation methods are semi-automatic, requiring initial contour to be manually identified in the images. In this chapter, a level set algorithm based on the phase symmetry approach and on a new logarithmic-based stopping function is used to extract simultaneously the four heart cavities in a fully automatic way. The idea is to evaluate the algorithm potential for the clinical practice as an additional tool helping the physician´s decision. Thus, the extracted contours are compared with the ones sketched by four physicians using for that several metrics, namely distance error, maximum distance, pratt function, similarity angle, similarity region, hausdorff distance, accuracy, overlap, sensitivity, and specificity. The authors show that the proposed algorithm performs well, producing contours very similar to the physicians’ ones. The experimental work was based on echocardiography images of children.

Molecular Visualization with Supports of Interaction, Immersion, and Collaboration among Geographically Separated Research Groups

In the search for new drug and medication discovery, especially related to drug-receptor interaction, the importance of interaction among researchers is essential, either within the same room or dispersed throughout the world. The interaction in an online environment through the molecule shared view and information and ideas exchange via text and/or voice enable researchers to discuss molecule aspects under study, increasing the chances of reaching the new compound’s identification. In subsequent sections an architecture that uses concepts of Distributed Multiuser Virtual Reality, Computer-Supported Collaborative Work, and world-wide network communication techniques for creating a high performance system that allows real-time interaction among various geographically dispersed research groups studying molecular visualization and using hardware systems ranging from desktop to immersive systems as CAVEs is presented. Its construction was made possible by defining a structure based on local servers to each group, which communicate with each other on a remote network, and creating a protocol for communication among these servers that seeks agility to minimize the negative effects of packet loss and delay delivery, Internet characteristic problems.

Ontological Representation and an Architecture for Homecare Pervasive Systems

Queues in hospitals grow due to, among others, the increasing world population and delay in patient attendance. One way of solving this problem is developing systems to provide treatment directly in the homes of patients. These systems help to decrease queues, improving the attendance to those looking for assistance. In this chapter, the authors present an ontological representation of knowledge of homecare environments and the modeling of an architecture for pervasive systems to this kind of domain. Systems with this modeling aim to improve services provided by professionals during treatment of patients located in their houses. The authors used concepts of pervasive computing to provide access to information anytime and wherever the user is, once a homecare environment has a high level of dynamicity. The knowledge representation is done through ontologies due to the possibility of reuse of information stored, as well as the interoperability of information among different computational devices.

A Semantic Web Pragmatic Approach to Develop Clinical Ontologies, and thus Semantic Interoperability, based in HL7 v2.xml Messaging

The ISO/HL7 27931:2009 standard intends to establish a global interoperability framework for healthcare applications. However, being a messaging related protocol, it lacks a semantic foundation for interoperability at a machine treatable level intended through the Semantic Web. There is no alignment between the HL7 V2.xml message payloads and a meaning service like a suitable ontology. Careful application of Semantic Web tools and concepts can ease the path to the fundamental concept of Shared Semantics. In this chapter, the Semantic Web and Artificial Intelligence tools and techniques that allow aligned ontology population are presented and their applicability discussed. The authors present the coverage of HL7 RIM inadequacy for ontology mapping and how to circumvent it, NLP techniques for semi-automated ontology population, and the current trends about knowledge representation and reasoning that concur to the proposed achievement.

Adoption of Electronic Health Care Records

Political, economic, and safety concerns have militated for the adoption of Electronic Health Records by physicians in the United States, but current rates of adoption have failed to penetrate the 50% level. A qualitative phenomenological study of practicing physicians reveals stumbling blocks to adoption. Maintaining a physician’s perceived sense of control of the process is key. Electronic Health Records (EHRs) are critical to the support of research, quality control, cost reduction, and implementation of new technologies and methods in healthcare. Progress in the USA towards adoption of standardized EHRs has been halting. The authors discuss the results of a phenomenological study of physicians and draw conclusions that will assist all stakeholders in building a more consistent, comprehensive, and cost-effective healthcare system. When attempting to persuade physicians to migrate to an EMR-based solution, a strong focus on the control that physicians will have should be emphasized. The transition to an EHR system is eased by clearly articulating early in the process the potential benefits and the degree of control physicians can have in the use of the applications.

The Architecture and Early Findings of a Working SMS-Based System for Individuals with Mild to Moderate Depression

Depression is one of the leading mental health disorders in the world. With an exponential rate of growth, the disease will soon surpass the ability of health care professionals to monitor and treat individuals. The use of mobile technologies offers new insights into disease progression, real-time emotional reaction data collection, and care in vivo. This chapter describes the architecture of a software system that continuously monitors an individual’s emotional state through SMS and responds to the individual with supportive text messages. Along with early findings from the working system, the development of the emotional state queries and responses is described.

Patient Centered Design

Patient-Centered Design (PCD) is a particular type of User-Centered Design (UCD), where the end-user is a patient that will use an Information and Communications Technology (ICT) solution for healthcare. It focuses on needs, wants, and skills of the product’s primary user and implies involving end-users in the decision-making and development process of the solution. e-Therapy aims to provide support to therapy sessions through ICT solutions. It has grown in the last years, and in the mental health arena is being used for specific therapeutic contexts. It is an especially difficult environment due to specificities of the patients’ conditions and the physical access to patients being restricted and, sometimes, not even possible. Thus, a PCD approach can be accomplished through the health professionals involved, applying some of the most well known methods of UCD: interviews, questionnaires, focus groups, and participatory design. eSchi is an e-Therapy tool that complements traditional practices for the cognitive rehabilitation and training of schizophrenic patients. It was successfully developed using a PCD approach.

Alzheimer’s Disease Recognition with Artificial Neural Networks

Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is the most common cause of dementia, and is well known for its affect on memory loss and other intellectual abilities. The Electroencephalogram (EEG) has been used as a diagnosis tool for dementia for several decades. The main objective of this work was to develop an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) to classify EEG signals between AD patients and control subjects. For this purpose, two different methodologies and variations were used. The Short Time Fourier Transform (STFT) was applied to one of the methodologies and the Wavelet Transform (WT) was applied to the other methodology. The studied features of the EEG signals were the Relative Power in conventional EEG bands and their associated Spectral Ratios (r1, r2, r3, and r4). The best classification was performed by the ANN using the WT Biorthogonal 3.5 with AROC of 0.97, Sensitivity of 92.1%, Specificity of 90.8%, and 91.5% of Accuracy.

An Operating Theater Planning Decision Support System

The operating theater is the biggest hospital budget expenditure. The usage of surgery related resources and its intrinsic planning must be carefully devised in order to achieve better operational performance. However, from long to short term planning, the decision processes inherent to the operating theater are often the subject of empiricism. Moreover, the current hospital information systems available in Portuguese public hospitals lack a decision support system component, which could assist in achieving better planning solutions. This work reports the development of a centralized system for the operating theater planning to support decision-making tasks of surgeons, chief specialty managers, and hospital administration. Its main components concern surgery scheduling, operating theater’s resource allocation and performance measurement. The enhancement of the planning processes, the increase of policy compliance, and the overall performance of the operating theater compared to the former methodologies are also discussed.