Computer Technologies in Personalized Medicine and Healthcare

A special issue of Computers (ISSN 2073-431X).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (15 June 2019) | Viewed by 24328

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH 44115, USA
Interests: human-centered systems; machine learning; data science; distributed computing; blockchain
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

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Guest Editor
School of Engineering and Computer Science, University of Hull, Hull, HU6 7RX, UK
Interests: digital healthcare technologies; embedded systems; control theory and applications; AI; data mining
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Various computer technologies are transforming the practice of medicine and healthcare. It has been well-recognized that personalized medicine and healthcare would be much more effective than the traditional one-size-for-all model. The availability of smartphones, smartwatches, and health trackers makes it possible for collect valuable data from individuals. The collected data can then be analyzed and used to train personalized models, which could lead to early diagnosis of diseases and personized treatments. Technologies have also been used to help diagnose some diseases much faster, and potentially with higher accuracy. On the other hand, the availability of consumer-grade depth cameras makes it possible to develop systems that be deployed at residential homes to help guide patients to perform rehabilitation exercises for a speedy recovery. Furthermore, virtual reality has been used in the medical setting to reduce patient pain levels. It is foreseeable that similar technologies exemplified by Microsoft HoloLens, Mixed Reality Headsets, virtual reality headsets such as HTC Vive and Oculus, can be used to deliver personalized immersive content to reduce stress, depression, addiction, and to treat other mental illnesses. Technologies are also being developed to monitor seniors who suffer from mild cognitive impairments and dementia, and to provide the necessary intervention. In summary, there are tremendous exciting opportunities for computer scientists and medical professionals to work together to transform medicine and healthcare.  

Prof. Dr. Wenbing Zhao
Dr. Yongqiang Cheng
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • mHealth
  • sensors
  • virtual reality
  • mixed reality
  • machine learning
  • activities of daily life
  • image processing

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

24 pages, 3818 KiB  
Article
Process-Aware Enactment of Clinical Guidelines through Multimodal Interfaces
by Tiziana Catarci, Francesco Leotta, Andrea Marrella, Massimo Mecella and Mahmoud Sharf
Computers 2019, 8(3), 67; https://doi.org/10.3390/computers8030067 - 11 Sep 2019
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 6522
Abstract
Healthcare is one of the largest business segments in the world and is a critical area for future growth. In order to ensure efficient access to medical and patient-related information, hospitals have invested heavily in improving clinical mobile technologies and spreading their use [...] Read more.
Healthcare is one of the largest business segments in the world and is a critical area for future growth. In order to ensure efficient access to medical and patient-related information, hospitals have invested heavily in improving clinical mobile technologies and spreading their use among doctors towards a more efficient and personalized delivery of care procedures. However, there are also indications that their use may have a negative impact on patient-centeredness and often places many cognitive and physical demands on doctors, making them prone to make medical errors. To tackle this issue, in this paper, we present the main outcomes of the project TESTMED, which aimed at realizing a clinical system that provides operational support to doctors using mobile technologies for delivering care to patients, in a bid to minimize medical errors. The system exploits concepts from Business Process Management (BPM) on how to manage a specific class of care procedures, called clinical guidelines, and how to support their execution and mobile orchestration among doctors. To allow a non-invasive interaction of doctors with the system, we leverage the use of touch and vocal user interfaces. A robust user evaluation performed in a real clinical case study shows the usability and effectiveness of the system. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Computer Technologies in Personalized Medicine and Healthcare)
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19 pages, 18795 KiB  
Article
An Attribute-Based Access Control Model in RFID Systems Based on Blockchain Decentralized Applications for Healthcare Environments
by Santiago Figueroa, Javier Añorga and Saioa Arrizabalaga
Computers 2019, 8(3), 57; https://doi.org/10.3390/computers8030057 - 31 Jul 2019
Cited by 45 | Viewed by 10261
Abstract
The growing adoption of Radio-frequency Identification (RFID) systems, particularly in the healthcare field, demonstrates that RFID is a positive asset for healthcare institutions. RFID offers the ability to save organizations time and costs by enabling data of traceability, identification, communication, temperature and location [...] Read more.
The growing adoption of Radio-frequency Identification (RFID) systems, particularly in the healthcare field, demonstrates that RFID is a positive asset for healthcare institutions. RFID offers the ability to save organizations time and costs by enabling data of traceability, identification, communication, temperature and location in real time for both people and resources. However, the RFID systems challenges are financial, technical, organizational and above all privacy and security. For this reason, recent works focus on attribute-based access control (ABAC) schemes. Currently, ABAC are based on mostly centralized models, which in environments such as the supply chain can present problems of scalability, synchronization and trust between the parties. In this manuscript, we implement an ABAC model in RFID systems based on a decentralized model such as blockchain. Common criteria for the selection of the appropriate blockchain are detailed. Our access control policies are executed through the decentralized application (DApp), which interfaces with the blockchain through the smart contract. Smart contracts and blockchain technology, on the one hand, solve current centralized systems issues as well as being flexible infrastructures that represent the relationship of trust and support essential in the ABAC model in order to provide the security of RFID systems. Our system has been designed for a supply chain environment with an use case suitable for healthcare systems, so that assets such as surgical instruments containing an associated RFID tag can only access to specific areas. Our system is deployed in both a local and Testnet environment in order to stablish a deep comparison and determining the technical feasibility. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Computer Technologies in Personalized Medicine and Healthcare)
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14 pages, 1238 KiB  
Article
Prototypes of User Interfaces for Mobile Applications for Patients with Diabetes
by Jan Pavlas, Ondrej Krejcar, Petra Maresova and Ali Selamat
Computers 2019, 8(1), 1; https://doi.org/10.3390/computers8010001 - 23 Dec 2018
Cited by 10 | Viewed by 6643
Abstract
We live in a heavily technologized global society. It is therefore not surprising that efforts are being made to integrate current information technology into the treatment of diabetes mellitus. This paper is dedicated to improving the treatment of this disease through the use [...] Read more.
We live in a heavily technologized global society. It is therefore not surprising that efforts are being made to integrate current information technology into the treatment of diabetes mellitus. This paper is dedicated to improving the treatment of this disease through the use of well-designed mobile applications. Our analysis of relevant literature sources and existing solutions has revealed that the current state of mobile applications for diabetics is unsatisfactory. These limitations relate both to the content and the Graphical User Interface (GUI) of existing applications. Following the analysis of relevant studies, there are four key elements that a diabetes mobile application should contain. These elements are: (1) blood glucose levels monitoring; (2) effective treatment; (3) proper eating habits; and (4) physical activity. As the next step in this study, three prototypes of new mobile applications were designed. Each of the prototypes represents one group of applications according to a set of given rules. The most optimal solution based on the users’ preferences was determined by using a questionnaire survey conducted with a sample of 30 respondents participating in a questionnaire after providing their informed consent. The age of participants was from 15 until 30 years old, where gender was split to 13 males and 17 females. As a result of this study, the specifications of the proposed application were identified, which aims to respond to the findings discovered in the analytical part of the study, and to eliminate the limitations of the current solutions. All of the respondents expressed preference for an application that includes not only the key functions, but a number of additional functions, namely synchronization with one of the external devices for measuring blood glucose levels, while five-sixths of them found suggested additional functions as being sufficient. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Computer Technologies in Personalized Medicine and Healthcare)
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