Tag: eHealth

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Call for papers Conferences

ICT4DA 2017 is waiting for workshop participants

ICT4DA 2017 – International Conference on ICT for Development for Africa will take place in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia on 25-27 September 2017.

The Conference will bring together technology experts, researchers, industry and international authorities contributing towards the development of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the fields of socioeconomic development, international development, and human rights.

Topics of interest to the conference are divided into 5 main areas:

  1. E-Services
  2. Natural Language Processing
  3. Intelligent Systems
  4. Mobile and Wireless Communication
  5. Privacy and Security

Click HERE to see more.

All accepted papers will be published by Springer and made available through SpringerLink Digital Library, one of the world’s largest scientific libraries. Proceedings are submitted for inclusion to the leading indexing services: Elsevier (EI), Thomson Scientific (ISI), Scopus, Crossref, Google Scholar, DBLP. Authors of the Best Papers will be invited to submit an extended version of their work through one of the EAI Endorsed Publications.

Do not miss a chance to submit your paper to the ICT4DA workshops!

  • Workshop #1: ICT-Supported Innovation for building the African Knowledge Economy
  • Workshop #2: Affordable Broadband in Under-Served Regions Based on Innovative Communications Paradigms and Dynamic Spectrum Access Networks

Important dates:

Notification and Registration opens: 17 July 2017
Camera-ready Deadline: 7 August 2017
Workshop 1 Deadline: 15 July
Workshop 2 Deadline: 15 July

For further information about ICT4DA 2017, visit the official website of the conference.

Categories
Interviews

The bright future of pervasive health (video)

Nuria Oliver (Director of Research in Data Science at Vodafone, Chief Data Scientist at Data-Pop Alliance) is a General Co-chair of PervasiveHealth 2017, 11th EAI International Conference on Pervasive Computing Technologies for Healthcare, which will take place on May 23-26, 2017 in Barcelona, Spain.

Categories
Interviews

Bringing healthcare to homes with IoT (video)

We were thrilled to welcome Ian J. Craddock (University of Bristol, SPHERE) as the keynote speaker at HealthyIoT 2016, 3rd EAI International Conference on IoT Technologies for Healthcare, which took place on October 18-19, 2016 in Västerås, Sweden.

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News

Stretchy optical fibers are ready to be implanted

Biocompatible fibers could use light to stimulate cells or sense signs of disease.

Originally published by MIT News Office, written by Jennifer Chu.
Researchers from MIT and Harvard Medical School have developed a biocompatible and highly stretchable optical fiber made from hydrogel — an elastic, rubbery material composed mostly of water. The fiber, which is as bendable as a rope of licorice, may one day be implanted in the body to deliver therapeutic pulses of light or light up at the first sign of disease. The researchers say the fiber may serve as a long-lasting implant that would bend and twist with the body without breaking down. The team has published its results online in the journal Advanced Materials.
Using light to activate cells, and particularly neurons in the brain, is a highly active field known as optogenetics, in which researchers deliver short pulses of light to targeted tissues using needle-like fibers, through which they shine light from an LED source.
“But the brain is like a bowl of Jell-O, whereas these fibers are like glass — very rigid, which can possibly damage brain tissues,” says Xuanhe Zhao, the Robert N. Noyce Career Development Associate Professor in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering. “If these fibers could match the flexibility and softness of the brain, they could provide long-term more effective stimulation and therapy.”
The researchers tested the optical fibers’ ability to propagate light by shining a laser through fibers of various lengths. Each fiber transmitted light without significant  attenuation, or fading. They also found that fibers could be stretched over seven times their original length without breaking.
Now that they had developed a highly flexible and robust optical fiber, made from a hydrogel material that was also biocompatible, the researchers began to play with the fiber’s optical properties, to see if they could design a fiber that could sense when and where it was being stretched.
They first loaded a fiber with red, green, and blue organic dyes, placed at specific spots along the fiber’s length. Next, they shone a laser through the fiber and stretched, for instance, the red region. They measured the spectrum of light that made it all the way through the fiber, and noted the intensity of the red light. They reasoned that this intensity relates directly to the amount of light absorbed by the red dye, as a result of that region being stretched.
In other words, by measuring the amount of light at the far end of the fiber, the researchers can quantitatively determine where and by how much a fiber was stretched.
“When you stretch a certain portion of the fiber, the dimensions of that part of the fiber changes, along with the amount of light that region absorbs and scatters, so in this way, the fiber can serve as a sensor of strain,” Liu explains.
“This is like a multistrain sensor through a single fiber,” Yuk adds. “So it can be an implantable or wearable strain gauge.”
The researchers imagine that such stretchable, strain-sensing optical fibers could be implanted or fitted along the length of a patient’s arm or leg, to monitor for signs of improving mobility.
Zhao envisions the fibers may also serve as sensors, lighting up in response to signs of disease.
“We may be able to use optical fibers for long-term diagnostics, to optically monitor tumors or inflammation,” he says. “The applications can be impactful.”
“Hydrogel fibers are very interesting and provide a compelling direction for embedding light within the human body,” says Fiorenzo Omenetto, a professor of biological engineering at Tufts University, who was not involved in the work.  “These efforts in optimizing and managing the physical and mechanical properties of fibers are necessary and important next steps that will enable practical applications of medical relevance.”

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Call for papers Conferences

Deadline extension: ICT4DA 2017

ICT4DA 2017 – International Conference on ICT for Development for Africa will take place in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia on 30-31 January, 2017.

The Conference will bring together technology experts, researchers, industry and international authorities contributing towards the development of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the fields of socioeconomic development, international development, and human rights.

The Conference welcomes research papers in the following topics of interest:

E-Services

  • e-Health/ m-Helath
  • e-Agriculture/m-Agriculture
  • E-learning/m-Learning
  • E-Government/m-Government
  • E-Business/m-Business

Natural Language Processing

  • Speech Recognition
  • Speech Synthesis
  • Dialogue systems
  • Text processing
  • Phonology
  • Morphology
  • Syntax
  • Semantics
  • Discourse
  • POS Tagging
  • Parsing
  • Word Sense Disambiguation
  • Machine translation
  • Speech/Text  Corpora
  • Information Extraction
  • Automatic Text Summarization
  • Question Answering

Intelligent Systems

  • Artificial intelligence
  • Decision support systems
  • Prediction systems in different application areas
  • Autonomous multi-agent systems
  • Computer vision
  • Image processing
  • Robotics
  • Character recognition
  • Knowledge Base Systems
  • Data Mining
  • Machine Learning
  • Information Reterival
  • Recommended systems
  • Fuzzy logic

Mobile and Wireless Communication

  • Wireless communication
  • Wireless Sensor networks
  • Wireless cognitive networks
  • Cellular networks (LTE, LTE-Advanced, 5G)
  • Wireless local area network (802.11, WiMAX, etc)
  • Internet of every things
  • Ad hoc Networks
  • Energy Aware Mobile Computing
  • Mobile Cloud Computing
  • Semantic Web Technologies
  • Vehicular Ad hoc Networks
  • Energy efficient networking, communication and protocols
  • Energy efficiency in networking, wireless networks and vehicular networks
  • Energy efficiency in data centers and large-scale data processing
  • Intelligent Transport Systems and control
  • Wearable Computing
  • Body Area Networks
  • Social Network Applications to Mobile Computing
  • Context and Location Aware Applications and Services
  • Mobile Data Management and Analytics
  • Mobile Multimedia
  • Mobile User Interfaces and Interaction Technologies
  • Mobile User Experience

Privacy and Security

  • Identity and Trust Management
  • Crypto-analysis and Cryptography
  • Network and Wireless Security
  • Operating Systems Security
  • Biometrics
  • Smart cards
  • RFID
  • Access control
  • Intrusion detection

ICT4DA 2017 is proud to host  Prof. Lou Boves (Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen), who  has originated and coordinated a large number of national and European projects on automatic speech synthesis, automatic speech recognition, speaker verification, language modelling and speech-language resources, as a keynote speaker. 

All accepted papers will be published by Springer and made available through SpringerLink Digital Library, one of the world’s largest scientific libraries. Proceedings are submitted for inclusion to the leading indexing services: Elsevier (EI), Thomson Scientific (ISI), Scopus, Crossref, Google Scholar, DBLP. Authors of the Best Papers will be invited to submit an extended version of their work through one of the EAI Endorsed Publications.

Important dates:

Full Paper Submission deadline:  15th October 2016  21st October, 2016

Notification and Registration opens:  15th November 2016   21st November, 2016

Camera-ready deadline:  10th December 2016  16th December, 2016

For further information about ICT4DA 2017, visit the official website.

Categories
Call for papers Conferences

ICT4DA 2017 is calling for papers!

ICT4DA 2017 – International Conference on ICT for Development for Africa will take place in Bahir Dar, Ethiopia on 30-31 January, 2017.

The Conference will bring together technology experts, researchers, industry and international authorities contributing towards the development of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the fields of socioeconomic development, international development, and human rights.

The Conference welcomes research papers in the following topics of interest:

E-Services

  • e-Health/ m-Helath
  • e-Agriculture/m-Agriculture
  • E-learning/m-Learning
  • E-Government/m-Government
  • E-Business/m-Business

Natural Language Processing

  • Speech Recognition
  • Speech Synthesis
  • Dialogue systems
  • Text processing
  • Phonology
  • Morphology
  • Syntax
  • Semantics
  • Discourse
  • POS Tagging
  • Parsing
  • Word Sense Disambiguation
  • Machine translation
  • Speech/Text  Corpora
  • Information Extraction
  • Automatic Text Summarization
  • Question Answering

Intelligent Systems

  • Artificial intelligence
  • Decision support systems
  • Prediction systems in different application areas
  • Autonomous multi-agent systems
  • Computer vision
  • Image processing
  • Robotics
  • Character recognition
  • Knowledge Base Systems
  • Data Mining
  • Machine Learning
  • Information Reterival
  • Recommended systems
  • Fuzzy logic

Mobile and Wireless Communication

  • Wireless communication
  • Wireless Sensor networks
  • Wireless cognitive networks
  • Cellular networks (LTE, LTE-Advanced, 5G)
  • Wireless local area network (802.11, WiMAX, etc)
  • Internet of every things
  • Ad hoc Networks
  • Energy Aware Mobile Computing
  • Mobile Cloud Computing
  • Semantic Web Technologies
  • Vehicular Ad hoc Networks
  • Energy efficient networking, communication and protocols
  • Energy efficiency in networking, wireless networks and vehicular networks
  • Energy efficiency in data centers and large-scale data processing
  • Intelligent Transport Systems and control
  • Wearable Computing
  • Body Area Networks
  • Social Network Applications to Mobile Computing
  • Context and Location Aware Applications and Services
  • Mobile Data Management and Analytics
  • Mobile Multimedia
  • Mobile User Interfaces and Interaction Technologies
  • Mobile User Experience

Privacy and Security

  • Identity and Trust Management
  • Crypto-analysis and Cryptography
  • Network and Wireless Security
  • Operating Systems Security
  • Biometrics
  • Smart cards
  • RFID
  • Access control
  • Intrusion detection

All accepted papers will be published by Springer and made available through SpringerLink Digital Library, one of the world’s largest scientific libraries. Proceedings are submitted for inclusion to the leading indexing services: Elsevier (EI), Thomson Scientific (ISI), Scopus, Crossref, Google Scholar, DBLP. Authors of the Best Papers will be invited to submit an extended version of their work through one of the EAI Endorsed Publications.

Important dates:

Workshops proposal deadline:  30 July 2016

Full Paper Submission deadline:  15 September 2016

Exhibits and Demos:  15 September 2016

Notification and Registration opens:  1 November 2016

Camera-ready deadline:  30 November 2016

For further information about ICT4DA 2017, visit the official website.

Categories
Interviews

Video: Mindfulness in the technology age

Hear what Lilian Güntsche, the CEO and Founder of The Dignified Self, had to say at the eHealth 360° Summit 2016 in Budapest on mindfulness in the increasingly distracting world.
Find out more about the Summit in the photo gallery, report, aftervideo, and the website.

Categories
Papers

Sleep and fall detection in a single device will aid tomorrow's elderly

‘Elderly Monitoring System with Sleep and Fall Detector’  by Abdulakeem Odunmbaku, Amir-Mohammad Rahmani, Pasi Liljeberg, and Hannu Tenhunen
Best paper at HealthyIoT 2015, 2nd EAI International Conference on IoT Technologies for Health Care 
—
Western population is growing old. While we don’t usually describe the aging prognosis as a ‘demographic crisis’, our current trajectory certainly has a lot of people worried.  The population of the 60 and over age group is expected to reach 1.2 billion by the year 2025, and 2 billion by 2050, and regardless of how accurate these prognoses are, the trend is an undisputable fact. And it is about to put extreme pressure on our health care infrastructure. As the authors point out (and tackle the issue directly with a system design), IoT-powered technology will need to be one of the pillars that takes a load off of human resources – if the elderly are to be taken care of.
Two main activities in the elderly population have been put forward in previous research as activites that are relatively easy to track, but have significant value for diagnosis and crisis detection. Sleep monitoring and fall detection are two aspects which have been a focal point of many applications in the past already. Since low quality of sleep can lead to extensive health problems (such as high blood pressure), it can be a telling ambient indicator. Furthermore, a simple fall can result in a permanent handicap for an elderly person, especially when not treated immediately. Efficient fall detection can thus be a crucial element in preventing critical conditions for the elderly.
While assistive technologies have focused on either one or the other in the past, the authors of this paper set out to combine the two into a single device – one that is non-obtrusive, autonomous, and accessible.
The authors have chosen accelerometer to be the central component of their system – with very intuitive reasoning in terms of fall detection – and under the principle that the brain activity during sleep is equal to the motion produced by the body during sleep. The device’s requirements for both of these cases is simple – it needs to be attached to the body. An internet-connected smart watch was used for the prototype of this design, which also keeps the cost of the device relatively low – not having to develop a custom device from scratch.
If you wish to take a closer look at the back-end architecture of the system, the method of testing, and the results, you can get the full paper on ResearchGate.
This year’s edition of the conference, HealthyIoT 2016, is accepting submission until July 10th!
 
 
 
 

Categories
News

New non-invasive treatment method wipes out cancerous tumors

Original news release was issued by the The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), written by Joanna Carver.
We are running out of things to say about cancer. It just plain sucks, and every advancement in its treatment is a joyous occasion. Yesterday was certainly one of those days, with a report of an exciting sounding treatment coming out of UTSA Department of Biology. The method developed by associate professor Matthew Gdovin is non-invasive and targeted at especially serious or complicated cases.
Gdovin’s research involves injecting a chemical compound, nitrobenzaldehyde, into the tumor and allowing it to diffuse into the tissue. He then aims a beam of ultraviolet light at the tissue, causing the cells to become very acidic inside and, essentially, commit suicide. Within two hours, Gdovin estimates up to 95 percent of the targeted cancer cells are dead.

“There are so many types of cancer for which the prognosis is very poor,” Gdovin said. “We’re thinking outside the box and finding a way to do what for many people is simply impossible.”

Gdovin tested his method against triple negative breast cancer, one of the most aggressive types of cancer and one of the hardest to treat. The prognosis for triple negative breast cancer is usually very poor. After one treatment in the laboratory, he was able to stop the tumor from growing and double chances of survival in mice.
The method is considerably less invasive than chemotherapy, which affects the entire body. Gdovin’s approach targets the tumor specifically, removing hair loss, pain and feeling sick out of the equation. Only one injection and a flash of ultraviolet light to trigger the cancer-killing reaction is required.
Patients who suffer from especially aggressive forms of cancer, or have tumors in complicated or inaccessible locations are those who may benefit from this method the most. Since current treatment is not equipped for these cases, an effective alternative approach may give hope to a lot of people who previously had none.

Categories
News

3D printed kindey saves woman's organ during complicated tumor removal

Original news release was issued by Intermountain Healthcare.
There are medical cases, in which doctors will accept any help they can get. One such case happened in Utah with Linda Green, who sufferred from a cancerous tumor in a complicated spot by one of her kindeys. The precarious location of the tumor – near an artery, veins, and the ureter – has perplexed many doctors, until Green has met Jay Bishoff from the Intermountain Medical Centre in Murray, who came with an ingenious interdisciplinary solution.
He 3D-printed a model of the kidney to study the operation in unprecedented detail. Thanks to the model, doctors were able to maneuver around those sensitive areas and successfully remove the tumor and ultimately save the patient’s kidney.
Bishoff, and radiologist Talmage Shill, MD, prepared CT scans to produce a 3D rendering of Green’s kidney using technology at the Intermountain Transformation Lab, a facility that is the only one of it’s kind in the Intermountain West. Transformation Lab specialists Cory Smith and Billy Prows worked with Dr. Bishoff and Dr. Shill to render the CT scans for 3D printing. The team rendered and printed the model in two halves, so Dr. Bishoff could examine exactly how the tumor attached to the kidney. This is how he found a small nub that extended up into a pocket where the kidney collects urine.

“Without the 3-D model, the visual images of the CT scans would not have allowed us to identify this nub prior to the surgery,” he said. “The 3D printing technology allowed us to prepare a more complete plan for the patient’s surgery, show the patient the complexities of the procedure and what would be done during surgery to remove the tumor and save the kidney.”

Dr. Bishoff not only used the model to prepare for the surgery, but also brought it into the operating room to reference during the procedure. Through the multi-disciplinary team’s efforts, they managed to remove the tumor and save Green’s kidney.
“We’re giving doctors additional visual tools to see the anatomy in a different way,” said Smith. “In the transformation lab we talk about reimagining imaging — it’s the evolution of imaging.”
“While this technology is in its infancy, it is a big step forward in using new technologies like 3D printing to improve patient care,” Dr. Bishoff said.