Using Interactive Digital Television Middleware Tools to Promote Facilities for Healthcare and Social Services

This chapter introduces the use of middleware tools in applications for healthcare and social services, focusing on solutions designed for Interactive Digital Television (IDTV), and discusses its implications to modern roles for easing patient and caretaker relations. The authors explore the capacities of such solutions to assist the patients in their personal needs, optimizing the time and tasks of the caretaker. They discuss the limits of the use of Internet in satisfying the needs of communication of elderly and other patients, and then they propose new roles for caretaking based on this new reality. The authors also present an architecture that allows the remote use and control of electronic devices via IDTV set-top boxes for the middleware Ginga. They show applications based on this architecture that promote healthcare and social services, as a set of infrared lights coupled to a hat that can be used as input for impaired patients, and how an accelerometer can be used with IDTV applications for treatment and entertainment. Before concluding, the authors point out research directions on the topics discussed in this chapter.

Improving Health using Therapies 2.0 with Ubiquitous Wireless Access

Improved 4G communication technologies in conjunction to Web 2.0 technologies are contributing to design and implement new and exciting healthcare services for citizens that can be accessed any time and any place. Tobacco is a risk factor causing increased morbidity and mortality in developed countries. Smoking cessation is a hard challenge for several people that can be achieve with the help of Web 2.0 and wireless access technologies to multimedia information. There are a lot of basic Web 1.0 portals for smoking cessation. The authors present an overview of serious damages or even death provoked by nicotine poisoning, an overview of on-line group therapies, and their user-centric Web 2.0 Portal intended for smoking cessation. They demonstrate innovative and effective facts of their Web 2.0 portal: Wireless access, scheduled agendas, and video on-demand services.

Maturity and Metrics in Health Organizations Information Systems

This chapter discusses the issues and choices that researchers and technicians should consider when adapting maturity models to healthcare organizations needs. It discusses the practical utilization of maturity models, including different maners of exploring a model’s usefulness. For a more complete understanding of maturity models and their applicability, the selection of criteria and processes of measurement, called metrics, is briefly reviewed in terms of indicators and daily procedures. Finally, some issues of management information systems security are briefly addressed, along with a note on measuring security assessment.

ICT Aspects of Next-Generation-Sequencing Applied to Molecular Diagnostics

Next-Generation-Sequencing (NGS) techniques are currently on the rise. This is seen as a revolution by (most) geneticists. The wealth of data stemming from Next-Generation-Sequencing will without a doubt lead to significant advances in the field of molecular diagnostics. On the clinical side, this will be higher detection rates of the genetic causes of particular diseases in patients. On the scientific side, NGS techniques will lead to the discovering of genes related to certain diseases (see, for example, Mardis, et al., 2009; Haack, et al., 2010; Lupski, et al., 2010). However, these advances come at a price: geneticists will be confronted with different and new ICT issues related to NGS. Because of the so far unknown amount of data stemming from NGS, these ICT issues need to be taken seriously. The purpose of this chapter is to give an overview on the different ICT aspects that come with the introduction of Next-Generation-Sequencing in molecular diagnostics.

The Reality of Accessibility in the Public Health Systems

This chapter deals with accessibility, a relevant and important concept for every citizen in the improvement of their quality of life in any environment or daily situation. Specifically, an empirical study about accessibility in the public health centers of a Basic Health Area (BHA) of Jaén is carried out. From this study, accessibility deficiencies in health buildings are revealed, and explicit proposals are provided with the aim of improving accessibility in different scopes such as information and communications. The improvement plans based on the use of Technology, Information, and Communication (TIC) tools help sensory disabled users that attend to the Health Center.

Researching an Activity-Driven Approach to Information Systems Development

The primary objective of this chapter is to introduce a socio-technical approach called the Activity-Driven (AD) approach to Information Systems Development (ISD) in healthcare and social services. The approach is based on the application of Activity Theory in ISD and on participatory and cooperative design principles. It has been studied and developed for over a decade in cooperation between IS researchers and healthcare professionals around twenty practice-oriented research cases, hosted by the participating health facilities. The authors define the AD approach and describe the characteristics of the AD approach and the continuum of the interrelated research projects since 1998. They also provide a glance at the business utilisation of the approach and discuss the tentative educational experiences of the approach. The aim is to contribute to the knowledge of socio-technical ISD by providing a versatile description of the AD approach, the characteristics, and the long-term cooperative multidisciplinary research efforts, and show the interplay between the AD approach that was developed and the conditions under which it was elaborated.

Contingencies and Convergence in European Social Security

In Western European welfare states, one of the uses of ICT is the delivery of integrated public services in social security. In order to do this, the deployment of ICT (especially in the back office) requires coordination among various central and local levels of government, and among social insurance executive institutions, welfare authorities, and job centers. Viewing ICT-enabled integration as a technological and managerial “practice,” the authors analyze ICT coordination in various institutional regimes (in a decentralized regime like Denmark, a decentralized unity state like The Netherlands, and in a federal state like Austria). By a comparative case study, the authors investigate whether ICT coordination adapts to the institutional context in which it is shaped (contingency-approach), or whether in various institutional contexts coordination practices more or less resemble each other (convergence-approach). Two methods are used to gather data. First, for each country policy, documents and strategy papers are analyzed by using a structured code list. Second, in each country five key respondents at ministerial level and five respondents at local/regional level are interviewed. The authors reflect on the findings by discussing the role of ICTs in providing coordinated and integrated services in various welfare state regimes.

The Information and Communication Strategies Focused on Young People and Adolescents within the Field of Public Health

Within the framework of the implementation of the Integrated National Healthcare System (SNIS) along with national policies of information and communication at the República Oriental del Uruguay, a research is being conducted, focusing on adolescents and young people in vulnerable contexts in the city of Montevideo, taking them as both real and potential users of healthcare information. It also centers in the mediators in the flow of communication and information, especially among healthcare staff. From a multi-interdisciplinary approach, this investigation aims at identifying the behaviors and needs of the target population in relation to the information and ICTs, the availability and access to personal technological resources, its context of use (the community, their everyday lives, the institutions), the process of interaction among the different social actors in the sector, as well as in the communication flow within the organizational culture of these services. On this basis, it will provide models to design electronic information resources according to the social needs, and which may contribute to the inclusion of all citizens in the so-called Information Society.

Geographical Information Management Approaches

The existence of adequate and reliable information to assess population health is essential to build solid strategies for public health promotion and social care, as to help demonstrate efficient investment in these areas. There are several health-related databases, covering different scales: World, Europe, or National, including several datasets with different details. These different datasets should be reviewed and selected on the basis of their ability to support efficient strategies associated with monitoring population health and their usefulness in the promotion of health care efficiency. To understand the relevance of these database infrastructures when integrated with Web-based, geographical information management tools, and use these to improve the knowledge of health issues, this chapter integrates examples related to enhancing the performance analysis of this collaborative spatial data infrastructure in three distinct areas: national health systems and health care; disease prevalence studies in different countries, and integrated analysis of environment quality and public health.

New Telerehabilitation Services for the Elderly

The world’s population is getting older with the percentage of people over 60 increasing more rapidly than any other age group. Telerehabilitation may help minimise the pressure this puts on the traditional healthcare system, but recent studies showed ease of use, usability, and accessibility as unsolved problems, especially for older people who may have little experience or confidence in using technology. Current migration towards multimodal interaction has benefits for seniors, allowing hearing and vision problems to be addressed by exploring redundancy and complementarity of modalities. This chapter presents and contextualizes work in progress in a new telerehabilitation service targeting the combined needs of the elderly to have professionally monitored exercises without leaving their homes with their need regarding interaction, directly related to age-related effects on, for example, vision, hearing, and cognitive capabilities. After a brief general overview of the service, additional information on its two supporting applications are presented, including information on user interfaces. First results from a preliminary evaluation are also included.