Healthcare professionals’ use of mobile phones and the internet in clinical practice

Background: Over the last few years mobile phone applications have been designed for healthcare professionals. However, little is known in regards to healthcare professionals’ use of and attitudes towards using smartphones (and applications) within clinical practice. Thus the aims of the present study were to enumerate the number of healthcare professionals that use mobile phones within clinical practice and their attitudes towards using them. Furthermore, given that the internet preceded smartphones, we also established healthcare professionals’ attitudes towards internet use in clinical practice as a comparison.

Method: Forty-three healthcare professionals from a range of disciplines and specialities who were predominantly working in Australia completed an anonymous online survey. 

The development of a mobile decision support system

The emergence of mobile computing environments brings out various changes in the requirements and applications involving distributed data and has made the traditional Intelligent Decision Support System (IDSS) architectures based on the client/server model ineffective in mobile computing environments. This paper discusses the deficiencies of the current IDSS architectures based on data warehouse, on-line analysis processing (OLAP), model base (MB) and knowledge based (KB) technologies. By adopting the agent technology, the paper extends the IDSS system architecture to the Mobile Decision Support System (MDSS) architecture. The logical structure and the application architecture of the MDSS and the mechanisms and implementation strategies of the User Access Agent System, a major component of the MDSS, are described in this paper.

Efficient algorithm for mobile multicast using anycast group

The authors present a novel and efficient multicast algorithm that aims to reduce delay and communication cost for the registration between mobile nodes and mobility agents and solicitation for foreign agent services based on the mobile IP. The protocol applies anycast group technology to support multicast transmissions for both mobile nodes and home/foreign agents. Mobile hosts use anycast tunnelling to connect to the nearest available home/foreign agent where an agent is able to forward the multicast messages by selecting an anycast route to a multicast router so as to reduce the end-to-end delay. The performance analysis and experiments demonstrated that the proposed algorithm is able to enhance the performance over existing remote subscription and bidirectional tunnelling approaches regardless of the locations of mobile nodes/hosts

Transaction management in a replicated and mobile environment

Reports the design of three-level transaction processing model which provides efficient transaction management in a replicated and mobile environment. The model uses a promary/non-primary replication control protocol to enable transaction processing with fast user response time at any distributed site including mobile hosts. A Web-based design with an implementation of a prototype application system shows a concrete example of how to adopt the transaction model over distributed databases.

Conceptualizing social influence in the ubiquitous computing era : technology adoption and use in multiple use contexts

Ubiquitous and mobile computing has increased the level of social connectedness. In an era where technology has permeated into spaces of work, play and socializing, social influence has become an important consideration. The operationalization of the social influence construct in the technology adoption and use literature often assumes singular technology use contexts and purposes. We question whether social influence, as operationalized in IS, is reflective of the utilitarian, hedonic and social environment that many individuals operate in. We propose a framework to consider social influence more inclusively, drawing on differences in referent power and levels of expertise. We outline our research approach within the demographic segment of young working professionals. Research in this area is necessary to improve theoretical explanations of adoptive behavior of these technologies. We hope to contribute by suggesting a richer, more encompassing operationalization of the social influence construct for future IS research.

Mobile solutions for front-line health workers in developing countries

We introduce an architecture for low-cost mobile Health (mHealth) applications that run on health-workers’ existing devices. Moreover, we envision extending the phone’s capabilities with an external to attach “sensor” modules, such as pulse oximeter, ECG and phonocardiogram. Our design principles are frugality and simplicity. We propose a comprehensive solution to aid health-workers in their daily tasks, at a low-cost and high penetration rate.

Security framework for mobile agents-based applications

Mobile agents have been proposed for key applications such as forensics analysis, intrusion detection, e-commerce, and resource management. Yet, they are vulnerable to various security threats by malicious hosts or intruders. Conversely, genuine platforms may run malicious agents. It is essential to establish a truly secure framework for mobile agents to gain trust of clients in the system. Failure to accomplish a trustworthy secured framework for Mobile Agent System (MAS) will limit their deployment into the key applications. This chapter presents a comprehensive taxonomy of various security threats to Mobile Agent System and the existing implemented security mechanisms. Different mechanisms are discussed, and the related security deficiencies are highlighted. The various security properties of the agent and the agent platform are described. The chapter also introduces the properties, advantages, and roles of agents in various applications. It describes the infrastructure of the system and discusses several mobile agent frameworks and the accomplished security level.

The ipad global embrace! Are we branding mobile learning?

 Mobile computing is taking the educational institutions into a new era of instruction. Educational institutions globally are opting for new mobile devices to integrate, and it seems that the vast majority are integrating the iPad without even looking at other options, they are unintentionally branding mobile learning. We believe that mobile learning should not be branded, should not be restricted and should not be made device specific, operating system specific, controlled and brand specific. This paper is based on a global panel discussion entitled: Is this an iPad Revolution or Mobile Learning Revolution. Also this paper presents an argument as to why is the iPad dominating in education with a focus on the current iPad initiatives in the UAE, few possible assumptions on why educational institutions are opting for the iPad are discussed, and some suggested recommendations on what educational institutions should know before making the decision about this integration.

A survey of cloud-based service computing solutions for mammalian genomics

Cloud-based service computing has started to change the way how research in science, in particular biology, medicine, and engineering, is being carried out. Researchers in the area of mammalian genomics have taken advantage of cloud computing technology to cost-effectively process large amounts of data and speed up discovery. Mammalian genomics is limited by the cost and complexity of analysis, which require large amounts of computational resources to analyse huge amount of data and biology specialists to interpret results. On the other hand the application of this technology requires computing knowledge, in particular programming and operations management skills to develop high performance computing (HPC) applications and deploy them on HPC clouds. We carried out a survey of cloud-based service computing solutions, as the most recent and promising instantiations of distributed computing systems, in the context their use in research of mammalian genomic analysis. We describe our most recent research and development effort which focuses on building Software as a Service (SaaS) clouds to simplify the use of HPC clouds for carrying out mammalian genomic analysis.

Comparative mobile platforms security solutions

 Mobile platform security solution has become especially important for mobile computing paradigms, due to the fact that increasing amounts of private and sensitive information are being stored on the smartphones' on-device memory or MicroSD/SD cards. This paper aims to consider a comparative approach to the security aspects of the current smartphone systems, including: iOS, Android, BlackBerry (QNX), and Windows Phone.

Engineering searchable encryption of mobile cloud networks : when QoE meets QoP

Mobile cloud computing can effectively address the resource limitations of mobile devices, and is therefore essential to enable extensive resource consuming mobile computing and communication applications. Of all the mobile cloud computing applications, data outsourcing, such as iCloud, is fundamental, which outsources a mobile user's data to external cloud servers and accordingly provides a scalable and always on approach for public data access. With the security and privacy issues related to outsourced data becoming a rising concern, encryption on outsourced data is often necessary. Although encryption increases the quality of protection (QoP) of data outsourcing, it significantly reduces data usability and thus harms the mobile user's quality of experience (QoE). How to strike a balance between QoP and QoE is therefore an important yet challenging task. In this article we focus on the fundamental problem of QoP and QoE provisioning in searchable encryption of data outsourcing. We develop a fine-grained data search scheme and discuss its implementation on encrypted mobile cloud data, which is an effective balance between QoE and QoP in mobile cloud data outsourcing.

A multi-view framework for generating mobile apps

This paper demonstrates a multi-view framework for Rapid APPlication Tool (RAPPT). RAPPT enables rapid development of mobile applications. It employs a multilevel approach to mobile application development: a Domain Specific Visual Language to define the high level structure of mobile apps, a Domain Specific Textual Language to define behavioural concepts, and concrete source code for fine grained improvements.

Taxonomy and survey of location management systems

In wireless mobile computing, location management is introduced whenever users move from one place to another. In order to track a mobile user, the system must store information about their current location and report new locations to a home base station. Numerous techniques have been proposed to optimally manage the location of mobile hosts in mobile networks. This paper attempts to present a more structured and comprehensive analysis of the current location management techniques architectures and their technology enablers. We discuss some of the principal issues involved in location management and present a taxonomy and survey of location management strategies that have been proposed in the literature over the years for mobile computing systems.

The nature of data: illusions of reality

The nature of data has changed as human technology has evolved. ‘Natural’ analogue data stimulate our senses, whilst machine produced data provides an intermediary for natural or artificial data to our senses. In the age of the cyborg (a machine with human attributes) and the bionic person (a human with machine attributes), it is possible for data totally alien from ‘natural reality’ to be fed directly to the brain so by-passing the senses. This is a new form of reality, which lends itself to manipulation of a kind never experienced before. The dreams of deceivers may yet be realised on a mass scale.