New Advances in Information Systems and Technologies

In recent years the use of mobile technology has become very common and popular. It is important to provide correct and useful nutritional information to diabetic patients, which can be easily accessed by mobile technology. However, providing such information to patients using mobile application is limited. One method is to use mobile technology, which is a very effective method in the expansion of information process visually, especially in health-related areas by using mobile devices. Therefore, the integration of mobile application with Diabetes management can provide useful nutritional and health information in order to improve the lifestyle of diabetic patients. This paper presents a comprehensive review of the state of the art in mobile application for Diabetes management.

Indoor environments are characterized by several pollutant sources. As people typically spend more than 90 % of their time in indoor environments. Thus, indoor air quality (iAQ) is recognized as an important factor to be controlled for the occupants’ health and comfort. The majority of the monitoring systems presently available is very expensive and only allow to collect random samples. This work describes the system (iAQ), a low-cost indoor air quality monitoring wireless sensor network system, developed using Arduino, XBee modules and micro sensors, for storage and availability of monitoring data on a web portal in real time. Five micro sensors of environmental parameters (air temperature, humidity, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and luminosity) were used. Other sensors can be added for monitoring specific pollutants. The results reveal that the system can provide an effective indoor air quality assessment to prevent exposure risk. In fact, the indoor air quality may be extremely different compared to what is expected for a quality living environment.

This paper presents action research results on critical features that impact the implementation and acceptance of Electronic Patient Records Management Systems (EPRMS) by health facilities. The paper also discusses automation approaches as well as initial benefits reported by health facilities. The EPRMS is in use by over 15 health facilities in Uganda. The goal is to create a paperless environment for a group of health facilities in a resource constrained environment. The EPRMS incorporates features for Electronic Patient Records (EPR), Electronic Medical Records (EMR) and Hospital Management. A phased-roll out approach was used as a way to ease challenges of insufficient resources such as computers, unstable local area network, frequent power outages and skills-gap among others. The first phase covered Outpatient Departments (OPD) for production deployment while Inpatients, Maternal and Child Health(MCH), HIV/AIDS care centres are setup in training mode awaiting the next phase of roll out. After a year of use, we administered a questionnaire to understand the impact and challenges of EPRMS. The respondents were hospital administrators and managers. In addition to the questionnaire, the Uganda Catholic Medical Bureau (UCMB) has its internal annual reporting process. The results reported are from the questionnaire, UCMB internal reporting, our observations and interactions with key stakeholders during implementation. Our finding indicate EMR and EPR functionality are not highly rated by hospital managers while Hospital Management features are considered important.

Public Health planning and administration comprises 3 broad functions viz., health needs assessments, policy development, and administration of services. Health Informatics plays a significant role for effectiveness of each of these functions. This paper presents practical technical learnings from implementation of performance improvement measures for a large Open Source based Data Analytics platform for Public Health. This paper is unique in its attempt to categorize the problem on the above lines. The authors present a study of a real-life large data warehouse and public health data mining implementation that has faced significant challenges and discuss solutions to address those challenges. With rapidly changing technology landscape, specifically in data and analytics space, dynamic changes to population composition and the resultant expectations from public health, research focused on public health data integration and data mining needs higher attention. The paper concludes with summary of best practices discussed and future directions.

Nowadays some mHealth paradigms are being subject to changes with the emergence and advances in Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) using low power data exchange systems like Bluetooth for sensors. This paper shows a different approach of MCC applied to mHealth by introducing a new architecture developed to an application for mobile devices, treating ECG signals using Cloud Data storage and a specially developed frame architecture between the sensor and the mobile device to detect and correct as many errors as possible. The proposed approach not only shows the convergence of MCC, but also focuses on the mHealth scenario to show some benefits of its use in the modern world. A secure link algorithm was also developed between mobile devices and the ECG sensor transmitter.

The security effectiveness based on users’ behaviors is becoming a top priority of Health Information System (HIS). In the first step of this study, through the review of previous studies ‘Self-efficacy in Information Security’ (SEIS) and ‘Security Competency’ (SCMP) were identified as the important factors to transforming HIS users to the first line of defense in the security. Subsequently, a conceptual model was proposed taking into mentioned factors for HIS security effectiveness. Then, this quantitative study used the structural equation modeling to examine the proposed model based on survey data collected from a sample of 263 HIS users from eight hospitals in Iran. The result shows that SEIS is one of the important factors to cultivate of good end users’ behaviors toward HIS security effectiveness. However SCMP appears a feasible alternative to providing SEIS. This study also confirms the mediation effects of SEIS on the relationship between SCMP and HIS security effectiveness. The results of this research paper can be used by HIS and IT managers to implement their information security process more effectively.

The concept of applications (apps) as medical devices emerges as an important one in the field of mobile health (m-health). Within this field, apps have been used as tools that can drastically change the quality of healthcare on a global scale, as well as radically alter the reach of medical investigation. The use of gamification techniques to inspire the experience of app users has also stimulated the field of m-health, using the mechanics of games to improve the thought processes of app users. The article evaluates four m-health apps from the standpoint of the gamification of their functionalities. To this end, we have adopted the analytical framework of Werback and Hunter and used a six-step system. Our results empirically confirm some of the evidence found in the current literature; that is, the majority of apps that use gamification elements aim to achieve publicity as a secondary objective.

Rehabilitation using video games is more motivating than standard rehabilitation. There are several games developed for balance rehabilitation however, they focus on different aspects, apply a variety of assessment and were developed using a myriad of approaches. In order to provide an overview about specially purposed games for balance rehabilitation, a systematic literature mapping was conducted to assess how they were developed, what software evaluation and clinical assessment were applied and the devices they used. A total of 514 studies were analyzed, but only 44 of them satisfied the inclusion and exclusion criteria. As a result, we verified that most studies used attachment based commercial devices; usability is the most used criteria to evaluate the game and questionnaires are used for it. There is no consensus on clinical assessment metrics and a remarkable lack of design methodology used. From the plethora of serious games found in the literature it is clear that much research need to be done but games can already be considered an acceptable approach for balance promotion.

The maturity models are instruments to facilitate organizational management, including the management of its information systems function. These instruments are used also in hospitals. The objective of this article is to identify and compare the maturity models for management of information systems and technologies (IST) in healthcare. For each maturity model, it is described the methodology of development and validation, as well as the scope, stages and their characteristics by dimensions or influence factors. This study resulted in the need to develop a maturity model based on a holistic approach. It will include a comprehensive set of influencing factors to reach all areas and subsystems of health care organizations.

Diffusion MRI (dMRI) is highly sensitive in detecting early cerebral ischemic changes in acute stroke, and in pre-clinical assessment of white matter (WM) anatomy using tractography, thus being an important component of health informatics. In clinical settings, the computation time is critical, and so finding forms of reducing the processing time in high computation processes such as Diffusion Spectrum Imaging (DSI) dMRI data processing is extremely relevant. We analyse here a method for reducing the computation of the dMRI-based axonal orientation distribution function h by using a Monte Carlo sampling-based methods for voxel selection, and so obtained a reduction in required data sampling of about 20 %. In this work we show that the convergence to the correct value in this type of dMRI data-processing is linear and not exponential, implying that the Monte Carlo approach in this type of dMRI data processing improves its speed, but further improvements are needed.

Multimodal neuroimaging studies are of major interest in the clinical and research setting, enabling the combined study of the structure and function of the human brain. However, the amount of procedures applied, associated with the production of large volumes of data creates obstacles to the organization, maintenance and sharing of neuroimaging data. Taking this into account, we developed a NoSQL based solution that automates the process of organizing and sharing neuroimaging data. This system is composed by an application, which recognizes the files to be stored through the use of a standardized nomenclature of the files generated in the processing workflows. Additionally, the system is distributed in order to store data as documents enabling users to upload and retrieve files to/from the system in different locations. The prototype enhances the research process, through the simplification and reduction of the time spent organizing and sharing information.

This paper presents some preliminary validation study results pertaining to our ongoing attempts to develop a noninvasive scoliosis and other spine disorder automated diagnostic solution implemented using commodity sensors only, thus limiting its overall cost, but still achieving adequate precision. The cost of many such commercial solutions is prohibitive to have them acquired and used by student healthcare institutes in countries such as Serbia, thus we are developing a low-cost one. If proven effective our solutions will be open-sourced.

In recent decades, argentinian universities, are inserted into the productive environment from creating business incubators university, turned into one of the mechanisms for technology transfer reference. These companies, known as Spin-Off, ideally arise from the knowledge generated within universities. This paper presents a brief summary, the findings of a study of the main characteristics and current status, degree of technological linkage of argentinian universities geographically located in the north, to the conversion of scientific research in business and commercial value. The information was obtained through semi-structured interviews with a representative sample of spin-off members of accredited at the Ministry of Industry of the Nation and of secondary sources for the analysis of the factors affecting the growth of these companies interviews. The creation of companies born in the university is a complex phenomenon to study multifactorial reasons for intervening in it. This exploratory study can give some guidance to universities not copy a system, but that adapt best practices to their regional needs, academic infrastructure and economic investments and to obtain optimal results in the creation of technology-based companies.

This paper shows the importance of a high-fidelity human simulator as a methodological tool able to make a significant contribution to the learning process of nursing technician students of the Federal Education, Science and Technology Institute of Roraima (IFRR). From this simulator you can build several scenarios of specific nursing procedures for the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) in order to be efficiently used in the teaching-learning process. The academic literature contributions available regarding the use of simulators in the teaching process of Health Science were evaluated. The use of this methodological resource should be seen as a trend in the clinical reasoning of nursing students, improving their knowledge and developing psychomotor skills.

The growing popularity of smartphones with their multiple functionalities have made these devices a valuable asset to teaching and learning. The study presents the assessment of free-download electronic dictionaries for iOS, Android and Windows operating systems. Three monolingual (Portuguese) and three bilingual dictionaries (Portuguese-English) were evaluated by a class of Engineering students at a federal institution. The main objective of the investigation was to find out how participants evaluated the constituent elements of the apps and their usability features. The study also verified how students perceived the apps as valid reference instruments to be used in both formal and informal learning situations, and what school level is suit to introduce them as pedagogical tools. Data were collected using a questionnaire with mixed-type questions, including the students’ habits of consulting dictionaries. Results may serve as parameters for eventual selection of this educational resource for both teachers and learners.

Collaborative learning has been getting more importance in educational environment as one type of mobile learning application. In this learning environment there are a shift of learning approach, i.e. in a traditional approach the focus is on the teacher and in static and repetitive contents, oppositely with a collaborative learning the learn is centered in the students where they have a critical apprehension of contents that goes beyond the classroom, students could learning in different places. Learning supported by mobile technologies is becoming a new approach towards education, and it is single in the way that offers opportunities to learn anywhere and anytime. This paper introduces the foundations of collaborative learning supported by mobile technologies as well as presenting and analysing the evolution of collaborative learning supported by mobile devices in Portuguese (North region) Higher Education Institutions between 2009/2010 and 2014/2015.

Data produced by the use of mobile devices (smartphones and wearables) can be used to obtain patterns and indicators of user behavior. This paper focuses on obtaining sleep-related indicators to apply them in educational settings. Initially the most relevant indicators defined in the literature and available in existing mobile platforms are studied. Based on them, we propose new indicators that can be calculated automatically and transparently analyzing the data generated by mobile device sensors. The ultimate goal of these indicators is to facilitate the construction of software services (recommenders and detectors of risk situations) to improve the learning processes of students.

Undergraduate students of a Software Engineering degree must be able to select the appropriate paradigm to solve a problem. They must also be able to know the foundations of concurrent and parallel programming. In the Software Engineering degree taught in the University of Oviedo, both competencies were assigned to the Programming Technology and Paradigms course. In this article, we present the approach we followed in the design of that course to teach object-oriented, functional, concurrent and parallel programming to second year undergraduate students with basic knowledge of Java. Due to the time limitations of the course, the proposed design uses one single programming language besides Java. We describe the most important challenges we faced and how we addressed them.

This work focuses on data mining in relational databases, aiming to detect behaviors related to school dropouts and disapproval by mapping the factors that influence this dropout. This work is relevant by the fact that the dropout and school disapproval are big factors of concern to all who care about education in Brasil. At the end of it, we intend to point out the need to implement solutions that enable access to results dynamically, thus allowing educators can early diagnose the causes of school dropout and disapproval, and allow for relevant pedagogical actions. This way, we intend to reduce the school dropout and school disapproval, towards a more efficient teaching and learning process at Brazilian federal education institution named Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia do Rio Grande do Norte - IFRN.

Starting in the 50s, aiming to empower financial executives, the games have evolved to help in-company teaching. The need to empower employees to carry out their tasks and teaches them about the company’s culture has made several corporate universities adopt this methodology. In this context is presented a serious game in order to allow the sales executive to experiences a financially management of a company. It facilitates learning how to sell using financial techniques in a dynamic way. This sales philosophy is a gap in a globalized world where the high added value solution suppliers can differentiate themselves from the competitors. To provide this result phabrika simulate a corporation where the executive go through different management situations in a controlled environment without businesses risk. The game is based on theoretical concepts of games, simulations and accounting, assuming game evolution and corporate universities history. Throughout the game and its conclusion the participants will be able to learn and improve their sales skills.

This paper presents in its introduction, considerations regarding the strong contrasts and the huge necessity of human values reconfiguration in all activities due to the hyperconnected contemporary society. Both authors are part of School of the Future—USP Research Laboratory. Considerations regarding students self-perception and their comprehension on teacher’s digital literacies are shown based on a previous research they conducted, entitled “#ConnectedYouthBrazil Research”. The study mixed quantitative and qualitative methods, which included survey, Internet monitoring (E-Meter), in-depth interviews and focus groups. The results here presented help to keep the discussion about the reshaping of education in Brazil in the agenda to enlighten its future.

Projects for implementing Information Technology in Teaching (ITE) do not achieve the expected success because they concentrate all the effort on specific elements, not focusing on a systemic view that enables to enhance the use of that technology. The goal of this paper is to propose a systemic approach that covers multiple dimensions and enables a successful implementation of information and communication technologies in educational scenario. By combining emerging teaching technologies to coherent didactic strategies, having an appropriate technological infrastructure as support, we will create the necessary lócus to perform a meaningful learning experience. The necessity of attributing meaning to educational innovation, beyond the simple instrumental training, reinforces the dimensional interdependence proposed in this paper.

This article presents how the interactions between digital technologies and learning processes have been studied in the last years. Using the Systematic Review of Literature it was possible to identify and analyze the studies involved with this subject since the first registered publication until the most recent. This way, it was clear to comprehend what information there is about it, and what still can be explored with new studies. It was discovered that there is still a lot to be studied about the possible contributions of digital technologies and pedagogical architectures on learning processes.

It is well known that (1) problems have a structure, (2) often this structure comes from its input, output or internal objects, (3) this structure organizes the problem resolution. Decomposition of a problem by its structure is a typical path in problem resolution. In this article we will do the inverse: composition of simple problems using structure-builder operators. We will start by (1) discuss problem structures, (2) select a set of important structure-builder operators, (3) study their properties, (4) apply them to a simple math case-study.

This work surveys the Brazilian scientific production regarding Digital Games (DG) for Math Literacy. Math literacy is divided into three stages: fundamental, numbering and operations. Through a systematic literature mapping, 16.483 papers from all the main events and journals in the computing and informatics in education areas over the last decade were analyzed. Among the few (7) DG found all comply to the features of a Serious Game (SG); most focused on the four basic operations, especially on the multiplication operation; none focused on the fundamentals or numbering; they were meant for children of the first cycle of elementary school; the participation of educators occurred in 5 but in only 2 of them the participation occurred in the designing phase of the game. The majority of SG were evaluated against usability issues rather than learning aspects. The results indicate that Brazilian research on DG for Math Literacy is yet to mature and there is a remarkable absence of SG developments for the initial stages of Math Literacy by the Brazilian scientific community.

This paper proposes an approach that allows an exploration of three linked representations within a tutoring system for helping students in problem solving situations to develop skills on designing digital logic circuits. Specifically, we provide a learning environment by considering situations that essentially consist of mapping a logic expression into another equivalent. This environment can work on two basic situations: (i) the students are asked to solve problems, having the possibility to receive personalized assistance or (ii) the tutoring system resolves problems asked by students. The problems and solutions have to be specified in two symbolic representations: Boolean algebra or Propositional Logic, having each expression automatically mapped into its equivalent expression displayed in gate logic language. The tutoring system architecture is presented, as well as its aspects of implementation. The proposed and implemented approach to the tutoring system was evaluated through scenarios of problems with adequate coverage, demonstrating its feasibility.

The Web 2.0 technologies have significantly increased the access and use of contents on the websites, in the field of Education OCW provide students, faculties and self-learners the opportunity to access the prestigious Universities in the world. The aim of this study is to propose the integration of social technologies in the cycle of production and publishing of OCW in order to enhance the social and collaborative learning. The proposal is based on the analysis of literature review and application of quantitative and qualitative methods in a case study, the level of acceptance and expectations of integrating social technologies in Open Educational Resources (REA). The obtained results are a social and collaborative production cycle (REACS) complemented by social technologies implemented to Educommons platform to promote access, use and collaboration of this kind of resources. The case study and its implementation conclude that it is possible to enhance the social and collaborative learning in Open Course Ware.

There has been observed, after a questionnaire applied to accounting science students in a public university, a significant lack of motivation of them with respect to the discipline of Systems and Information Technology, as part of the solid formation in this undergraduate course. In addition, it was also observed that there were many different specific interests among the students concerning accounting profession specializations. To mitigate this problem regarding motivation and diversity aspects, we propose an approach using a hypermedia-based online educational system for improving teaching and learning processes in the mentioned discipline for accounting science. This paper gives an overview of our approach with the current system, discussing its design and implementation aspects concerning its main components: adaptive model, student model, and domain model. We evaluated this approach with respect to its associated system and preliminary results indicated that it is feasible concerning its potential for adaptively assisting its users.

This paper considers the power allocation to maximize the sum-rate of the users when the total allocated power is limited in the ultra-dense network (UDN). In the paper, we first regard the interference caused by the specified base station (BS) to the other mobile station (MS) as a constant, and obtain the expression of the allocated power of each BS. However, it is not a closed-form solution, we apply the classic water-filling algorithm to get the optimum power allocation by some times of iterations. Finally, the simulation results show that the power allocation scheme can greatly improve the sum-rate of the users compared to the average power allocation.

Ultra-Dense Network (UND) is seen as a major development trend in the evolution of future networks, due to its ability to provide more capacity to the whole system and meet higher users’ Quality of Service (QoS). Mobility Load Balancing (MLB) is an important Self-Organizing Network (SON) use case in Ultra-Dense Networks. In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm with concurrent MLB among ultra-dense cells. Simulation results show that balancing load among multi-cells by implementing the proposed MLB scheme is compared with the conventional MLB scheme.

An empirical model for the synthesis of microstrip butterfly antenna without ground plane is proposed in this work. A fast design method, properly taking into account the effect of feed connector, is discussed to obtain a compact radiating element (75 % reduction with respect to standard patch antenna), with a large bandwidth (about 18 %) and an excellent rejection of cross-polar field components. Experimental validations on an UHF butterfly antenna prototype are discussed to show the effectiveness of the approach.

With the development of wireless access technology and mobile internet, the demand of network traffic is growing rapidly. Traditional radio access network can not satisfy the requirement of ever growing capacity. C-RAN (Cloud-Radio Access Network) is a novel radio access network architecture which can support growing users’ needs. In C-RAN architecture, BBUs (Base Band Units) decouple from RRHs (Remote Radio Heads) and are centralized and shared among RRHs in BBU pool. RRHs can be flexibly and densely arranged to increase network capacity. But the deployment of dense network brings great pressure to network management. The current C-RAN architecture can not effectively deal with the changes of network station caused by users’ mobility. The SDN technology can simplify and optimize the network management. Hence we propose a SDN-enabled C-RAN architecture, it can intelligently and dynamically build RAN under the control of SDN controller. And we put forward a use case to briefly describe the working procedure.

A simple setup for the evaluation of the environmental effects on the performance of a passive tags-based commercial RFID system is described in this work. A standard classroom/office room is assumed as test scenario, and the evaluation of field emission as well as the minimum power threshold required for an accurate detection in the presence of obstacles is performed. This preliminary measurement campaign can be helpfully applied to properly highlight the potentialities as well as the limitations of the RFID systems when applied for the accurate tracking of items located into a real noisy scenario.

An integrated system for landslides early warning, based on a flexible network architecture and including different sensors, is described to monitoring landslides evolution in critical scenarios. Particular focus is devoted on the experimental assessment of an L-band Software Defined Radar sensor, specifically designed for the application, by discussing the measurement results obtained on a real landslide scenario located on the A3 highway in Calabria (Italy). In particular, a mathematical estimator useful for the proper detection of landslide movements is defined and applied to the measured range profiles, thus demonstrating the usefulness of the proposed radar monitoring approach.

A very simple modeling approach is adopted in this paper to perform a fast preliminary investigation of a novel broadband varactor loaded phasing line, specifically designed to add frequency agility features to an existing active aperture-coupled reflectarray cell. The proposed circuit-model approach is adopted to compare frequency performances of radial and linear phasing line geometries. The method allows to demonstrate the effective contribution of a radial line geometry for the enhancement of the unit cell frequency operational range.

Telecom infrastructures are facing unprecedented challenges, with increasing demands on network capacity. With the increased demand for high-speed data services and the constant evolution of broadband access technologies, operators are faced with a number of issues when choosing the technology and building the network. Today, network operators are facing the challenge of how to expand the existing access network infrastructure into networks capable of satisfying the user’s requirements. Thus, in this context, providers need to identify the technological solution that enables them to profitably serve customers and support future needs. However, the identification of the “best” solution is a difficult task.

It is crucial for companies to acknowledge the need for applying security policies because, without such policies, there is no reliable way to define, implement, and enforce a security plan within an organization. Small and medium sized enterprises (SME) are no exception. Within the organizational universe, SMEs assume a unique relevance due to their high number, which makes information security efficiency a paramount issue. There are several measures which can be implemented in order to ensure the effective protection of information assets, among which the adoption of ISS policies stands out. A recent survey concluded that from 307 SMEs, only 15 indicated to have an ISS policy [1]. The conclusion drawn from that study was that the adoption of ISS policies has not become a reality yet. As an attempt to mitigate this fact, security policies were formulated, implemented and adopted in 10 SMEs which had stated not to have this security measure. These interventions were conceived as Action Research (AR) projects.

It is recognized that there is a disparity between broadband availability in urban and rural areas. The pre-existing telecommunications infrastructure is generally poor and unevenly distributed in favor of urban centers. In most rural areas, low population density and high deployment costs discourage private investments, creating a negative feedback of limited capacity, high prices, and low service demand. Building telecommunications networks in rural areas is costly. Further, in many cases, there is not a good commercial business case for rural deployments. Whereas established and competitive service providers already offer solutions for urban and suburban areas, there is little or no commitment to connect areas that include smaller towns and rural villages. The deployment of access network broadband services on low-competition areas is characterized by low subscriber densities, longer loop lengths, lower duct availability, and consequently higher infrastructure cost compared to high-competition areas.

Portuguese teacher placements’ system is a centralized system managed by the Portuguese government, specifically by the Ministry of Education and Science. It is a system with some issues and, therefore, has been criticized by its stakeholders, mainly by teachers. This paper aims to do a systematic review and a meta-analysis of the Portuguese teacher placements’ system. An objective is to understand and describe how similar system works in European Union countries. Another objective is to interview school specialists, in this particular case—teachers, to find solutions for teacher placements’ system. Finally, from solutions from European Union countries and from solutions arising from schools’ specialists, a set of requirements is identified that the teacher placements’ system should take into account, in order to avoid the issues identified.

Since the dawn of human civilization that cooperation among individuals is observed. In the most primitive stage this phenomenon was manifested through hunting groups, progressing to the construction of objects and buildings and in a later phase in the construction of modern society itself. Nowadays with the advent of technology and rise of ICT, collaborative processes across workgroups in organizations have been increasingly supported by this concept. The use of technology for supporting collaborative processes of working groups led to the creation of areas of study as CSCW and Groupware. In the health area, collaborative platforms have been used for supporting medical distance learning, social networks for collaboration, patient monitoring, discussion forums and sharing of medical media content. This paper has the goal of analyzing technological advances and the application of collaborative platforms in the health area, through an exploratory work of literature and application analysis and discussion.

The current urge on using Internet for both social and professional tasks, alongside with the existence of over 80 million European citizens with some sort of disability as led to the need for an accessible Web [1]. Given, the also increasing thrive for searching the web for health related information and the assumption of heath care institutions as the creators of this type of information, a research study was developed in order to evaluate the accessibility levels of the Iberian health care institutions. From this study, that used ACESSWEB as the evaluation platform, it was possible to perceive that none of the evaluated websites was WCAG 2.0 compliant and that, despite the poor results, Spanish websites presented more accessibility concerns than the Portuguese. Hence, the situation is critical and a significant effort must be done in order to allow citizens with disabilities to have access to the much needed health related information.

The evolution of the “network society” over the past five years has resulted in the proliferation of the proximity of online media in the communications ecosystem of the Iberian Peninsula. Portuguese and Spanish hyperlocal media has created a local supply of initiatives involving communities which are promoted with the intention of being present in the network society and, at the same time, existing in the spheres of communication of leading social networks. Although most hyperlocal online media is not part of media groups or cross-border organizations, the fact is they apply fairly similar criteria when designing their strategies for social networks. The analysis of a web-native and hyperlocal media outlet in Portugal and two in Spain (one in Galicia and another in Madrid) shows how proximity is an incentive for renewed forms of technologically mediated communication in local communities.

Interactive documentary is an interactive non-fiction genre, within digital storytelling, that is developed in the diversification period in the digital context and, particularly, on the Internet. The digital convergence of media favors the creation of complex products, characterized by navigation and interaction, as well as new audiences’ participation. Social networks open ways for promotion, contribution and personalization of interactive documentary. In this research, we have made a selection of significant projects from the period 2010-2015 and coming from all over the world, in which the development of the genre and the use of social networks have been analyzed.

This work analyzes the impact derived from viewing different political ads (with positive and negative emotional content), belonging to the campaigns of the main candidates to presidential elections of the Republic of Ecuador, celebrated on February 13rd, 2013. To perform this task, a sample of 20 Ecuadorian University students was considered, and the Heart Rate Variability (HRV) of each of the participants was measured when viewing the different electoral ads. The results obtained were analyzed considering the ideology indicated by the students in a former questionnaire. The investigation shows a perspective of neurosciences applied to social sciences, employing tools commonly used in health sciences to measure perception. The results obtained do not show clear variations in the HRV indexes related to viewing the political ads. However, noticeable differences were observed when students were divided into several groups, according to their political ideology.

In the television of Ecuador a commercial model has predominated. It has not allowed the production of national content, situation that in recent years has changed thanks to the transition to Terrestrial Digital Television and the implementation of the Communications Law that promotes, both technically and legally, the domestic production to meet the demand for quality content. In addition, the digital phenomenon and the regulation in communication would allow to meet the right to communication. The research presents the changes in the composition of content of private television of Ecuador between 2010 and 2015; and the findings of media actors. The effectiveness and exploitation of technological and legal changes will depend on the ability of agreements between companies, society and the government.

Journalism today is looking for new ways to ensure its survival in a context of reconfiguration of media and communication processes. It tests several options, even it is aware that it is at risk of being trapped in some dimensions of the digital world. As the change progresses, there arise renewed proposals, placed between traditional and huge technological companies and social networks (namely, Google and Facebook), which appear as symptoms of a new era. And, while we wait for the hypothetical arrival of that improved background, both media and journalism look for their own room in social networks (from journalism in streaming to slow journalism). Their main goal is to experiment and to ensure their role in the networked society.

Today’s tourist industry is characterised by its increasingly profitable and competitive nature, forcing destinations to seek forms of differentiation in order to attract greater numbers of tourists. However, this is challenging task, and tourism promoters and managers are required to plan and design effective marketing strategies tailored to communicate and highlight the tourist attractions of their destinations. In this sense, adapting to the new scenario created by social media has revolutionized communication. Destinations are now required to make full use of the advantages these communication tools offer. The aim of this research is to analyse the tourist positioning of Ecuador, Colombia and Peru on the social medium Facebook. The conclusions indicate that the countries analysed should improve their optimisation strategies in order to take full advantage of the interactive potential Facebook offers, thereby optimising their future position as tourist destinations.

The objective of this paper is to analyze the importance of social media in improving knowledge exchange, which may be reflected in improving the quality of higher education institutions. For this purpose, we study the relevance of three Spanish universities in Facebook. Although the importance of Facebook has been demonstrated in education, very few researches provide concrete evidence on its use as a mean of communication. Findings reveal that Facebook has an important role in terms of Social Capital by identifying communication strategies in order to achieve a higher efficiency, brand image and reputation.

In this research work, the management of the social networks of the transmedia project “EnchufeTV” is analyzed. The methodology is quantitative and qualitative, four monitoring tools of social media ware applied to gather information and collect statistical data between June and July 2015. The research was complemented by interviews to experts in the subject. It can be seen that social media is the ideal platform for new content, viralization and wider dissemination and expansion of the content, although EnchufeTV does not fully exploits the advantages of social media and it does not post in large-scale. It is ratified that projects such as “EnchufeTV” mean a breakthrough in terms of audiovisual content on the Web in Ecuador.

In recent years wine tourism has contributed to the positive evolution of tourist destinations, providing opportunities for development for local economies through the generation of employment and its multiplying effects on other transversal sectors. Oenology gives tourists the chance to discover more about local culture and enjoy sensorial experiences and sensations whilst indulging in the pleasure of tasting a region’s traditional wines. In this sense, and in the specific case of Ecuador, the presence of prestigious wine-making companies with an excellent national and international reputation contribute to boosting wine tourism. Mention must be made of two of the country’s leading wine producers: ‘Dos Hemisferios’, situated in the province of Guayas, in the region of Playas, and the ‘Chaupi Estancia Winery’, in the province of Pichincha, in Yaruquí. This study aims to identify the positioning of these companies, as representatives of Ecuador’s wine industry, on the social medium Facebook. The conclusions point to the need to take advantage of the opportunities social media offer today as a communication channel, in order to improve the position of wine tourism in Ecuador.

Digitisation has modified the way we use the media and the needs of society, which has led public media to expand the development of their mission with new and improved services. The EU28 State public media are devoting part of their efforts—particularly regarding to the economic part—to innovation and development actions in order to reinforce their position in an increasingly competitive market. This research presents an assessment of the progress in innovation of these corporations until mid-2015, giving particular emphasis to web platforms, apps, smart TV and laboratory of ideas. The methodology to undertake such study is based on the analysis of the departments and reports on innovation and development of every European state public media.

Through the last hundred years, the innovation of media relied on the technologies of distribution and dissemination of contents, that innovation has now moved to business models. Radio and TV borrow the funding model of advertising, initiated by the press, which then pierce the web. Digital technologies impact not only the forms of distribution of content but also its marketing models, monetization and financing as well as strategies and alliances that media organizations must adapt to new competitive scenarios. This article examines the changes brought about by innovation in business models for marketing advertising and in the product or service information both in the press and on traditional television.

The emergence of virtual environments as a context, as a tool, and as a research objective (in other words, the Internet as a new anthropological space), has led to the adoption of new specific techniques to apprehend these new fields, and not only as sources. Virtual environments are also seen as universes in which take place communication processes that, without entirely disengage from those produced in physical settings, have some pecularities that require a new approach methodology. Therefore, this theoretical article is intended to serve as critical review of the virtual ethnography, while analyzing the limits and possibilities of this technique in the fields of political and corporate communication, since this tool can be very useful in this fields.

Convergence in mass media goes beyond the simple integration of the act of production, the usage of multi-media, and remodeling management. It refers to a multi-dimensional process that affects the technological, business, and professional fields, as well as users of mass media, thereby promoting the integration of tools, spaces, work methods, and previously disaggregated languages. Ecuadorian media began to seek convergence in 1998. This article analyzes the state of the art of digital convergence in Ecuador based on two case studies: El Telégrafo and El Universo. The conclusions of this study stress the need for information provider companies to assume the challenges that are implied in reaching audiences that are becoming more and more diverse.

This research work explores a new way of presenting and representing information about patients in critical care, which is the use of a timeline to display information. This is accomplished with the development of an interactive Pervasive Patient Timeline able to give to the intensivists an access in real-time to an environment containing patients clinical information from the moment in which the patients are admitted in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) until their discharge This solution allows the intensivists to analyse data regarding vital signs, medication, exams, data mining predictions, among others. Due to the pervasive features, intensivists can have access to the timeline anywhere and anytime, allowing them to make decisions when they need to be made. This platform is patient-centred and is prepared to support the decision process allowing the intensivists to provide better care to patients due the inclusion of clinical forecasts.

All recognized successful Ecuador’s students have the opportunity to apply for a scholarship abroad within a set of relevant world’s universities listed on-line on SENESCYT’s website. Students are invited to choose from a list with more than 1500 universities. From those, they only have no more information than each university general URL address. Considering student’s limitation to compare and analyze all available courses it is frequent to exist students that complaint about their selection due their capacity to understand all available possibilities. Along this work we develop a proposal design for a pervasive recommendation system based on students’ profile for scholarship’s application based on their profile and universities programs’ main characteristics.

Football is considered nowadays one of the most popular sports. In the betting world, it has acquired an outstanding position, which moves millions of euros during the period of a single football match. The lack of profitability of football betting users has been stressed as a problem. This lack gave origin to this research proposal, which it is going to analyse the possibility of existing a way to support the users to increase their profits on their bets. Data mining models were induced with the purpose of supporting the gamblers to increase their profits in the medium/long term. Being conscience that the models can fail, the results achieved by four of the seven targets in the models are encouraging and suggest that the system can help to increase the profits. All defined targets have two possible classes to predict, for example, if there are more or less than 7.5 corners in a single game. The data mining models of the targets, more or less than 7.5 corners, 8.5 corners, 1.5 goals and 3.5 goals achieved the pre-defined thresholds. The models were implemented in a prototype, which it is a pervasive decision support system. This system was developed with the purpose to be an interface for any user, both for an expert user as to a user who has no knowledge in football games.

Current data mining engines are difficult to use, requiring optimizations by data mining experts in order to provide optimal results. To solve this problem a new concept was devised, by maintaining the functionality of current data mining tools and adding pervasive characteristics such as invisibility and ubiquity which focus on their users, providing better ease of use and usefulness, by providing autonomous and intelligent data mining processes. This article introduces an architecture to implement a data mining engine, composed by four major components: database; Middleware (control); Middleware (processing); and interface. These components are interlinked but provide independent scaling, allowing for a system that adapts to the user’s needs. A prototype has been developed in order to test the architecture. The results are very promising and showed their functionality and the need for further improvements.

The data acquisition process in real-time is fundamental to provide appropriate services and improve health professionals decision. In this paper a pervasive adaptive data acquisition architecture of medical devices (e.g. vital signs, ventilators and sensors) is presented. The architecture was deployed in a real context in an Intensive Care Unit. It is providing clinical data in real-time to the INTC are system. The gateway is composed by several agents able to collect a set of patients’ variables (vital signs, ventilation) across the network. The paper shows as example the ventilation acquisition process. The clients are installed in a machine near the patient bed. Then they are connected to the ventilators and the data monitored is sent to a multithreading server which using Health Level Seven protocols records the data in the database. The agents associated to gateway are able to collect, analyse, interpret and store the data in the repository. This gateway is composed by a fault tolerant system that ensures a data store in the database even if the agents are disconnected. The gateway is pervasive, universal, and interoperable and it is able to adapt to any service using streaming data.

Healthcare organizations often benefit from information technologies as well as embedded decision support systems, which improve the quality of services and help preventing complications and adverse events. In Centro Materno Infantil do Norte (CMIN), the maternal and perinatal care unit of Centro Hospitalar of Oporto (CHP), an intelligent pre-triage system is implemented, aiming to prioritize patients in need of gynaecology and obstetrics care in two classes: urgent and consultation. The system is designed to evade emergency problems such as incorrect triage outcomes and extensive triage waiting times. The current study intends to improve the triage system, and therefore, optimize the patient workflow through the emergency room, by predicting the triage waiting time comprised between the patient triage and their medical admission. For this purpose, data mining (DM) techniques are induced in selected information provided by the information technologies implemented in CMIN. The DM models achieved accuracy values of approximately 94 % with a five range target distribution, which not only allow obtaining confident prediction models, but also identify the variables that stand as direct inducers to the triage waiting times.

Mechanical Ventilation is an artificial way to help a Patient to breathe. This procedure is used to support patients with respiratory diseases however in many cases it can provoke lung damages, Acute Respiratory Diseases or organ failure. With the goal to early detect possible patient breath problems a set of limit values was defined to some variables monitored by the ventilator (Average Ventilation Pressure, Compliance Dynamic, Flow, Peak, Plateau and Support Pressure, Positive end-expiratory pressure, Respiratory Rate) in order to create critical events. A critical event is verified when a patient has a value higher or lower than the normal range defined for a certain period of time. The values were defined after elaborate a literature review and meeting with physicians specialized in the area. This work uses data streaming and intelligent agents to process the values collected in real-time and classify them as critical or not. Real data provided by an Intensive Care Unit were used to design and test the solution. In this study it was possible to understand the importance of introduce critical events for Mechanically Ventilated Patients. In some cases a value is considered critical (can trigger an alarm) however it is a single event (instantaneous) and it has not a clinical significance for the patient. The introduction of critical events which crosses a range of values and a pre-defined duration contributes to improve the decision-making process by decreasing the number of false positives and having a better comprehension of the patient condition.

The decision support models in intensive care units are developed to support medical staff in their decision making process. However, the optimization of these models is particularly difficult to apply due to dynamic, complex and multidisciplinary nature. Thus, there is a constant research and development of new algorithms capable of extracting knowledge from large volumes of data, in order to obtain better predictive results than the current algorithms. To test the optimization techniques a case study with real data provided by INTCare project was explored. This data is concerning to extubation cases. In this dataset, several models like Evolutionary Fuzzy Rule Learning, Lazy Learning, Decision Trees and many others were analysed in order to detect early extubation. The hybrids Decision Trees Genetic Algorithm, Supervised Classifier System and KNNAdaptive obtained the most accurate rate 93.2, 93.1, 92.97 % respectively, thus showing their feasibility to work in a real environment.

Comorbidities are related to an increase in hospital costs, hospital mortality and length-of-stay. The analysis of inpatient comorbidities is therefore important for hospital management, for epidemiological studies, and for health services research and planning. In this paper we study the annual evolution of coded comorbidities in administrative databases. We used data from Portuguese hospitals over a period of eleven years (2000–2010). We identified comorbidities in 7,034,213 inpatient episodes using both the Elixhauser and the Charslon/Deyo comorbidity methods. Our results clearly evidenced a positive association between the number of secondary diagnosis and coded comorbidities. We argue that the increased number of comorbidities over time is mostly related to an increase in the quality of coded data. Data analysts, researchers and decision makers should always be aware of possible data quality bias, such as completeness, when using administrative databases.

This paper focuses on an approach to dynamic planning, for an emergency ambient such as team rescue in indoors fire. First a graph is generated as the simulation runs, creating an effect similar to means-end analysis as each fire trying to reach the firefighter. This graph is updated in real time, improving the solution performance and reacting to new fires. The firefighter creates a plan based on this graph, using shortest weighed paths algorithms, these weights are updated dynamically, they do not only contain the distance but they also contain the importance to reach that node, so a important node to reach costs less for a firefighter to get there. All this together allows real time solutions to be generated, and self improving solutions to be made in the plan. This algorithm is to be integrated on a framework that simulates physics and collisions, and using a navigation mesh and agent perceptions to aid in calculation of a 3D shortest path.

In the past years, data has become increasingly fast and volatile, making the ability to track its evolution an highly significant part of the value extraction process. In this work we present a framework to monitor evolution of clusters and present its use on real world data. We develop a framework over a previous one by Oliveira and Gama from 2013. Its biggest contribution is the addition of the concept of control area. This area will create a region around the cluster where it is still possible to establish associations with clusters from other time points. It aims to expand the search scope for cluster associations while diminishing the number of false positives. Changes to the transition definitions and detection algorithm are also introduced to accommodate the existence of this area. We demonstrate this framework at work in a real world scenario testing it with a telecom industry dataset and make a detailed analysis of the obtained results.

HIV/AIDS epidemic is an important public health problem. The burden of the epidemic is estimated from surveillance systems data. The collected information is incomplete, making the estimation a challenging task and the reported trends often biased. The most common incomplete-data problems, in this kind of data, are due to under-diagnosis and reporting delays, mainly in the most recent years. This is a classical problem for imputation methodologies. In this paper we study the distribution of AIDS reporting delays through a mix approach, combining longitudinal K-means with the generalized least squares method. While the former identifies homogeneous delay patterns, the latter estimated longitudinal regression curves. We found that a 2-cluster structure is appropriated to accommodate the heterogeneity in reporting delay on HIV/AIDS data and that the corresponding estimated delay curves are almost stationary over time.

This paper is concerned with the creation of a specific ontology for the knowledge repository of the Museum of the Person (Museu da Pessoa). The Museum of the Person assets are composed of several interviews (collected previously for a large cultural project) involving common people, to perpetuate their life stories. The museum holds an heterogeneous collection of XML documents. In such format, the collection items are many times not recognizable and understandable by the visitors who wish to explore it. Therefore, we intend to use an ontology that allows a conceptual navigation over the available information, enabling the visitors to extract knowledge during the visit to these life stories. So, this paper aims at presenting the ontology we have developed using CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (CIDOC-CRM) [1] to enable visitors to lookup individual life stories, read them, and also intercross information among a cluster of life stories to build up the story of a company/institution or to study social behaviors and customs.

A business process model defines how an organization perform its activities. Since the incorrect definition of business processes behavior may increase costs and development time, it is required the verification of process behavior. Verification methods based on anti-patterns are a promising approach to deal with this issue, but their informal definition may lead to ambiguities and different interpretations of what problem a given anti-pattern represents, and how it should be applied or implemented to detect behavioral errors in process models. The aim of this paper is to assess the feasibility of business process behavior verification by means of the ontological specification of behavioral anti-patterns. The study is based on the detection of anti-patterns in a BPMN process model by exploiting a set of standard ontological reasoning services.

There is little knowledge regarding how the relationship between supervisors and subordinates is built. This study focuses on that process, according to the subordinates’ perspective—cognitions, behaviours and emotions. We conducted a qualitative study, gathering data from 12 subordinates using the Critical Incident Technique. Results show there are four types of supervisors’ behaviours that influence the process of building a relationship with the subordinate, including caregiving and fight (the two most stressed). The supervisors’ caregiving behaviour is associated with the subordinates’ positive emotion and careseeking behaviour. On the other hand, supervisor’s fight behaviours are associated with negative emotions and the activation of the subordinate’s self defence system. Consistently, we see that the first event that impacted the relationship were events where the supervisor had a caregiving or fight behaviour. It’s important that supervisors understand the impact of their dominant behaviours particularly at the early stages of the relationship.

The paper presents the present state-of-the-art of a component importance analysis for complex technical systems. We used a sea vessel as an example of the complex technical system. We showed selected statistics of ship operation losses. We highlighted a necessity of further development of importance analysis methods for machinery operation. We presented a description and diagrams of qualitative and quantitative importance analysis. We pointed out the most significant problems of complex technical systems modelling. We introduced a multi-criteria system component importance analysis. Basic criteria for a system component quality evaluation have been presented. We described some factors influencing importance of the technical system components.

The paper presents selected issues in the area of modelling a complex technical system structure. We presented the main types of a real technical system reservation. We showed selected proposals of a component redundancy description. We presented a black-box model of the system and described our own concept of qualitative-quantitative analysis of the complex technical system component importance. We also showed a possibility of applying the AHP method to a multi-criteria importance analysis. Some research achievements in this area and propositions for further development of a multi-criteria component analysis have been shown.

The objective of the paper is to design an advanced Humane Machine Interface implemented in remote-controlled robot for demolition works. The paper includes the use of Design Thinking methodology in the conceptual design process for determined user-machine problems. The experimental testing with high-speed camera and vibrometer were performed to obtain the input data for numerical analysis. Then the finite element method simulations were carried out to provide the assumptions for HMI solution. Finally, a novel arm-mounted HMI status/caution/warning lighting was designed and executed in the robot controller. The system notifies the operator about the load capacity and warns the operator about leading the arm in resonant frequency, which is a main cause of the reported robot’s arm fatigue failure.

In this paper authors would like to introduce a new controllable structure, in some aspects similar to MR fluids, which is composed on the basis of granular material. Loose material is initially placed in a deformable hermetic encapsulation (basically made of soft polymer), equipped in a special valve. In the next step, an internal pressure is pumped out of the structure and so called “underpressure” is generated.

In this paper the authors would like to introduce a new air-bag’s prototype suitable for protecting valuable objects mounted on the drones. The experimental research results are presented for typical air-bag’s textile material. Laboratory tests were a base for the material’s model calibration process. The numerical simulations for proposed air-bag’s prototype were carried out in the LS-Dyna environment. Proposed solution seems to be a reasonable device for prevent the drone’s equipment from unexpected accidents.

Comparing with existing market solutions the low budget solution for milling robots is presented in this work. For robot milling purposes the milling adapter was designed, modelled and manufactured. Some exemplary low cost conceptions of fixing adapter for milling ends were shown. Milling robots can be used for obtaining specific demanded structure by means of carving away material from any type of pattern. Unquestionable advantage of milling robots is easy integration with any type of manufacturing process and strong possibility of automation. Using a different robot made or a manufacturer’s brand it is possible to obtain solutions providing high speeds, high level of automation, easy operation and maximum reliability together with increased performance and productivity.

In this paper, the model of the beam with a variable geometry is considered. Thanks to a more accurate model and a better control of systems with variable geometry, one can get a significant reduction in maintenance costs and increase the durability and reliability of the entire system. This article presents a method for modeling the telescope beam of variable length and orientation. Changing the length of the extension element influences a change of the cross-sectional area of the external element and the total change in the stiffness of the system. During rotation, the slender structure vibrations occur, which may cause small relative movements. These local vibrations can change the direction of the resultant force. Because such small movements are not reflected in the geometry, this effect can be considered by changing the stiffness matrix. This effect is called spin softening. The global motion of a flexible beam is a composition of rotations and unwanted vibrations, which can be critical if the stiffness of the structure is not high enough, compared with the external dynamic load. The mathematical model of the considered beam is shown. In the model, damping, nonlinearly variable cross section of the component elements, and interactions between principal and relative motions are considered.

In this digital era, the efforts of the organizations to design a symmetrical and bidirectional model of relation and interest management with the public require the projection of a certain image and prestige as a result of the strategic planning of communication. However, this systemic perspective, where communication becomes a key cross-cutting theme along the organizational process, and which assigns the communication professional an executive role—Dircom—, is not a fixed element on the reality of Ecuadorian companies. This work is the result of research carried out by the Observatorio de la Comunicación Estratégica del Ecuador of the Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja, set up in 2013 to explore the professional profile of business communicators (Dircom).