Search Results (34)

Background: The increasing prevalence of dementia and mild cognitive impairment (MCI) among the elderly population is a global health issue. Information and Communication Technology (ICT)-based interventions hold promises for maintaining cognition, but their viability is affected by several challenges. Objectives: This study aimed to significantly assess the effectiveness of ICT-based cognitive and memory aid technology for individuals with MCI or dementia, identify adoption drivers, and develop an implementation model to inform practice. Methods: A PRISMA-based systematic literature review, with the protocol registered in PROSPERO (CRD420251051515), was conducted using seven electronic databases published between January 2015 and January 2025 following the PECOS framework. Random effects models were used for meta-analysis, and risk of bias was assessed using the Joanna Briggs Institute (JBI) Critical Appraisal Checklists. Results: A total of ten forms of ICT interventions that had proved effective to support older adults with MCI and dementia. Barriers to adoption included digital literacy differences, usability issues, privacy concerns, and the lack of caregiver support. Facilitators were individualized design, caregiver involvement, and culturally appropriate implementation. ICT-based interventions showed moderate improvements in cognitive outcomes (pooled Cohen’s d = 0.49, 95% CI: 0.14–1.03). A sensitivity analysis excluding high-risk studies yielded a comparable effect size (Cohen’s d = 0.50), indicating robust findings. However, trim-and-fill analysis suggested a slightly reduced corrected effect (Cohen’s d = 0.39, 95% CI: 0.28–0.49), reflecting potential small-study bias. Heterogeneity was moderate (I² = 46%) and increased to 55% after excluding high-risk studies. Subgroup analysis showed that tablet-based interventions tended to produce higher effect sizes. Conclusions: ICT-based interventions considerably enhance cognition status, autonomy, and social interaction in older adults with MCI and dementia. To ensure long-term scalability, future initiatives must prioritize user-centered design, caregiver education, equitable access to technology, accessible infrastructure and supportive policy frameworks. Full article

This study examines the impact of technological innovation, digitalization, and information and communication technologies (ICTs) on trade-related carbon emissions (TAEs) and the role of economic growth in this relationship. Using data from the 15 countries with the highest carbon emissions in the world for the period 1997–2022, analyses were conducted with Panel-Corrected Standard Errors (PCSEs), Seemingly Unrelated Regression (SUR), and Driscoll–Kraay (D-K) estimators. TAEs provide a more comprehensive environmental assessment than traditional emission calculations by taking into account the impact of international trade on carbon emissions. The findings show that technological innovation, digitalization, and ICTs use increased trade-related carbon emissions, and economic growth further strengthens this effect. These results reveal that sustainable production models and green energy policies should be emphasized more in order to minimize the environmental impacts of technological developments and economic growth. The findings of this study provide important strategic information for policymakers, environmental regulators, and international trade institutions in developing sustainable technology and trade policies to reduce carbon emissions. Full article

The use of iteration is fundamental in the field of design, as it allows for the exploration of multiple options and the development of innovative solutions. This research analyzes how iteration, combined with Information and Communications Technology (ICT), especially 3D printing, facilitates the development of creativity in higher-level students, specifically Industrial Designers. A qualitative approach was employed, using an action-research methodological strategy with a field journal to document student activities during the iterative process. The results indicate that group dynamics enhance iteration by facilitating the exchange of ideas; therefore, the incorporation of activities that adopt constant feedback is necessary to refine initial concepts and integrate new perspectives. Additionally, the use of technology, such as 3D printing, drives the creative process by encouraging students to continue developing their ideas through physical iteration, allowing them to materialize and improve their concepts. The creative process only needs to be stimulated through different methodological strategies, both analog and digital, in and outside the classroom, with the use of technologies as essential learning tools. Full article

The global significance of SMEs has traditionally been recognized as a key driver of economic growth and sustainability. The emergence of digital technologies and Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D) holds significant potential to further enhance this impact. However, SMEs in developing countries have faced challenges in adopting sustainable, resource-intensive digital systems. Factors such as limited skills, financial constraints, and the alignment of suitable solutions hinder this adoption. To address these challenges and promote sustainable digital transformation, this study proposes a two-tier approach. The first prong employs Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques, including Word2Vec, for global analysis and digital systems identification. The second prong involves a country-specific analysis of SMEs’ digital requirements. This two-tier analysis aims to uncover the actual digital needs of SMEs while shedding light on high-intensity global SME activities that, if integrated through ICT4D, could effectively address the risks and challenges SMEs face in adopting, implementing, and maintaining digital systems. In addition, the study develops systems required by SMEs to optimize their business processes and production, thereby promoting their growth and sustainability in the digital era. The results of this study demonstrate the effectiveness of these proposed methods in addressing digital challenges for SMEs and fostering sustainable development. Full article

Water is an essential service for the sustainable development and economic competitiveness of any country. The global water demand has increased substantially due to economic development, climate change, and rising population. The Internet of Things (IoT) and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) can help conserve available water resources. Smart cities apply IoT to boost the performance and efficiency of urban facilities. Smart cities are towns created to use IoT and ICT (innovative technologies) such as smart water applications. Several studies on smart water technology have been conducted, but there is a need to review current research that leverages the IoT as a communication technology to design effective smart water applications. This review paper is aimed at presenting evidence on the current design of smart water applications. The study also covers publication statistics to increase collaboration between stakeholders. Findings show that various technologies such as microcontrollers, embedded programming languages, sensors, communication modules, and protocols are used by researchers to accomplish their aim of designing IoT-based smart water solutions. None of the publications employed the 5G mobile networks as a communication module for their smart water application development. Findings further show that the integration of 3D printing and solar energy into IoT-based smart water applications is revolutionary and can increase the sustainability of the systems. Future directions required to ensure that developed smart water applications are widely adopted to help conserve and manage water resources are suggested. Full article

This research aims to explore how rural China evolves towards and how it is restructured in the digital era. Rooted in the systematically entrenched urban–rural duality, rural China was traditionally marginalised and received limited benefits from the country’s urbanisation development. Digital technologies are thus highly expected to facilitate novel opportunities towards rural reinvigorating development in China. This research first investigates the trajectories of rural China’s development via a retrospective lens, and argues that the evolution of rural China has the potential to transform from a top-down, policy-driven regime in the pre-digital era towards a bottom-up and top-down, technology and policy jointly driven regime in the digital era; and the digital era presents opportunities for rural in-situ urbanisation 2.0 in China, which is socio-economically and spatially distinct from the Township and Village Enterprise-based rural in-situ urbanisation of the reform era. This study further explores the possible restructuring of rural China in the digital era and argues that the digital force-enabled rural restructuring would be filled with dynamics and complexity and lie in multi-facets. This seminal research generates valuable references on the trajectory of rural society’s development in China, and the findings can help comprehend both opportunities and challenges that rural China embraces amidst the digital era. These references are essential for crafting evidence-based policy instruments to facilitate rural communities better leverage lucrative opportunities brought by digital transformation to catalyse leapfrog development and shake-off the image of decline. Full article

Cultural heritage (CH) plays a vital role in passing history to the present and also the future, which means it is important to build an efficient and friendly way to broadcast and inherit these past civilizations. Information communication technology (ICT) is one of the popular methods that can attract people’s attention on understanding history or joining in heritage preservation. To achieve that, governments have built a large numbers of official ICT platforms. However, most of them neglected people’s preferences on the retrieval of cultural heritage information. In terms of user experiences, the previous platforms are less than satisfactory in increasing the awareness of the cultural heritage. Thanks to the new technology, 3D models and virtual reality (VR) bring spring life to cultural heritage. This paper developed a new multimedia platform based on people’s preferences to overcome these disadvantages. UML-based web engineering (UWE) is applied to present the web application’s architecture, the database structure, and the platform’s interface. To demonstrate the multimedia platform, Strijp-S, an industry cultural heritage site in the city of Eindhoven (the Netherlands), has been used as a case area. This proposed platform provides a new idea on system architecture design of the multimedia platform and may strengthen the public’s knowledge of cultural heritage, and thereby increase the awareness of cultural heritage to keep it sustainable. Full article

Citizen science (CS) within sustainable tourism is an underutilized tool for biocultural conservation. The aims of this research integrate conceptual and applied approaches to situate post-positivist and interpretive paradigms within CS and sustainable tourism. The aims are fulfilled by the creation of the new Civic Reporting Indicators (CRIs), developed through analysis of the 174 Global Sustainable Tourism Council Destination (GSTC-D) criteria and indicators. It was determined that 114 indicators are perceivable audibly and/or visibly by untrained citizens. The rearticulation of GSTC-D criteria into the CRIs utilizes embodied perceptions and observations reportable by untrained visitors and residents. The CRIs are framed within ethical principles of research, CS, and sustainable tourism. The inclusion of interpretive paradigms within CS provides epistemological innovation that validates lived experiences and embodied knowledge, fostering agency and empowerment within sustainability narratives. The CRIs may harness end-user observations by utilizing information communication technologies (ICTs) to amass longitudinal and real-time data for smart, sustainable destination management and biocultural conservation. Engaging citizens through the CRIs has the potential to contribute valid observations that amass democratic, longitudinal, and cost-effective data. Designing accessible ICT platforms for destination management may enact civic agency and critical social reflection to democratize sustainability engagement. Full article

Digital and technological transformation has gained significant attention not only due to the exposure of the latest technologies but also due to its considerable impact on sustainable economic growth. This research determines the influence of digital and technological advancement on sustainable economic growth. Digital and technological advancement is composed of three variables; E-government Development Index (EGDI), Internet Users’ (IU) growth, and information and communications technology (ICT) exports. Besides that, the urbanization and unemployment rate have been considered as control variables. The dataset consists of the year 2004–2020 for 21 Asian region partner countries along Belt and Road (BRI) region. The conclusions of the two-step system GMM were validated through the D-K fixed effect regression technique. Findings indicate that increase in EGDI, ICT exports, and internet users’ growth has a significant and positive influence on sustainable economic growth which leads that digital and technological advancement having a positive influence on sustainable economic growth. Moreover, urbanization has a partial positive impact, while unemployment has a negative influence on sustainable economic growth as Asian regions are emerging economies and the rate of unemployment is very high, which is affecting the real GDP per capita. It is evident and suggested that improvement in the EGDI index, internet users’ growth, ICT exports, and reduction in the unemployment rate would enhance the balanced sustainable economic growth for all Asian countries of the BRI region. Full article

The recent advancements in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) as well as increasing demand for vehicular safety has led to significant progressions in Autonomous Vehicle (AV) technology. Perception and Localisation are major operations that determine the success of AV development and usage. Therefore, significant research has been carried out to provide AVs with the capabilities to not only sense and understand their surroundings efficiently, but also provide detailed information of the environment in the form of 3D maps. Visual Simultaneous Localisation and Mapping (V-SLAM) has been utilised to enable a vehicle understand its surroundings, map the environment, and identify its position within the area. This paper presents a detailed review of V-SLAM techniques implemented for AV perception and localisation. An overview of SLAM techniques is presented. In addition, an in-depth review is conducted to highlight various V-SLAM schemes, their strengths, and limitations. Challenges associated with V-SLAM deployment and future research directions are also provided in this paper. Full article

The dynamic COVID-19 pandemic has destabilized education and forced academic centers to explore non-traditional teaching modalities. A key challenge this creates is in reconciling the fact that hands-on time in lab settings has been shown to increase student understanding and peak their interests. Traditional visualization methods are already limited and topics such as 3D molecular structures remain difficult to understand. This is where advances in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT), including remote meetings, Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), Mixed Reality (MR), and Extended Reality (XR, so-called Metaverse) offer vast potential to revolutionize the education landscape. Specifically, how MR merges real and virtual life in a uniquely promising way and offers opportunities for entirely new educational applications. In this paper, we briefly overview and report our initial experience using MR to teach medical and pharmacy students. We also explore the future usefulness of MR in pharmacy education. MR mimics real-world experiences both in distance education and traditional laboratory classes. We also propose ICT-based systems designed to run on the Microsoft HoloLens2 MR goggles and can be successfully applied in medical and pharmacy coursework. The models were developed and implemented in Autodesk Maya and exported to Unity. Our findings demonstrate that MR-based solutions can be an excellent alternative to traditional classes, notably in medicine, anatomy, organic chemistry, and biochemistry (especially 3D molecular structures), in both remote and traditional in-person teaching modalities. MR therefore has the potential to become an integral part of medical education in both remote learning and in-person study. Full article

Sustainable development has become a serious challenge for the globe. Therefore, globalization and the digital economy are considered crucial factors for sustainable development (SD). The current study tries to estimate the link between trade openness and information and communication technology (ICT) with sustainable growth via a linear function in which economic growth, urbanization, and human capital are taken as independent variables. The study employs the Interactive Fixed Effect (IFE) and Dynamic Common Correlated Effect (D-CCE) to quantify the long-term association among variables in a multiplicative framework. The obtained outcomes show a significant contribution of globalization and the digital economy to sustainable growth. Likewise, economic growth and human capital cause a decline in sustainable growth. Moreover, the empirical outcomes show the discouraging role of urbanization in sustainable development. Additionally, a bi-directional association exists between sustainable development and trade openness and economic growth, trade openness and economic growth, urbanization and human capital, and economic growth and urbanization. Such findings further strengthen policymakers’ belief in other nations to promote sustainable development. Moreover, to alleviate the economic growth losses, we suggest setting up a sustainable development sharing mechanism among regions. Full article

The growing use of information and communication technology has now expanded to health professionals in practice. This study aimed to highlight the current status of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) use in health sciences as reported in journal papers between 2002 and 2021. This paper presents the annual trends, top institutes and countries, citations, h-index, keywords distribution, and top authors in this research domain. The data were extracted from the Web of Science database, and R studio and Bibexcel tools were used for analysis. The study analyzed a total of 140 documents published over a span of two decades. Health Care Sciences Services (34) and Computer Science published the most health science articles (29). The USA (19) was the most productive country, followed by England (16) and the Netherlands (15). Berg M was the most productive author, with 36 articles. The results show that institutions such as Erasmus University and Duke University have published numerous articles on the topic, encouraged by specific R&D funding schemes, and made a significant contribution to the development of health sciences research. The findings of this study offer valuable information about international initiatives and projects relevant to the advancement of ICT in health science research, which may be utilized to pinpoint potential future study topics such as artificial intelligence development. Full article

We are going through a period in which the concept of the smart village (SV) is a novelty for the management of a community, and the new smart economy of the village is based on the power of community support. Appropriately, the development of a SV is related to a family’s participation in the motivation and access to education, the increase in knowledge of information technology, information and communications technology (ICT) literacy, and also in the creation of facilities for research and development (R&D). The partnership between the public administration, the private sector, and the community heads will lead to a smart economy within the village. At the same time, the intervention of the food system to support climate change can be supported by intelligent agriculture. The SV has a strong social significance; research in the field can be multidisciplinary, including human nutrition, climate change, and community education. This paper aims to X-ray the research areas of the SV from a multidisciplinary sense, in support of the partnership with the community, and to identify the main directions of strategic development. In total, 368 pieces of research on SVs from the last ten years were analyzed through bibliometric analysis using VOSviewer software, doubled by the co-occurrence of keywords and the bibliometric combination of documents, followed by a systematic review of the literature. The research undertaken was intended to contribute to the development of research for SVs, with the analysis of identified clusters. The results obtained will have a special contribution at the SV level through strategic and research proposals and suggest that the most important strategic and research directions for SVs focus on community education, its satiety, as well as several environmental and social changes generated by SVs. Full article

This case report combined PEST, SWOT, a business model canvas, and knowledge management to develop a theoretical framework for assessing business models, and smart and sustainable management of two case study companies—Tung Sheng and Strong Basic—in Taiwan during the COVID-19 pandemic. A case study and heuristic inquiry research design was adopted. Secondary data and interviews with top managers were used to triangulate within the same cases. The results show that the case study companies owned capabilities in R&D as a foundation to further apply new smart ICT (information and communication technology) and execute green manufacturing. Strong key partnerships were useful resources to diversify business investment, although current qualified employees were not sufficient. Resilient practices included adopting new and green technology to mitigate the negative impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. This study establishes a useful framework for case study research and provides practical information about business models, and smart and sustainable management in two case studies. Full article