E-health and the Universitas 21 organization: 2. Telemedicine and underserved populations

Telemedicine activities in underserved communities were reviewed as part of the Universitas 21 (U21) e-health project. A SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) was conducted on 12 articles identified in a literature review, supplemented by expertise from U21 members. The analysis showed that threats include the reluctance of populations to use telemedicine services, and a general absence of infrastructure and resources to sustain them. Opportunities centre around potential research, including cost-effectiveness analyses and quantitative assessments of existing telemedicine services. The great strength of telemedicine is that it can improve access to health services among those most in need. However, its greatest weakness is the lack of evidence supporting its clinical and cost advantages relative to traditional services. This represents an important opportunity for research on telemedicine initiatives among underserved populations.

Integration of sulphate reduction, autotrophic denitrification and nitrification to achieve low-cost excess sludge minimisation for Hong Kong sewage

An integrated anaerobic-aerobic treatment system of sulphate-laden wastewater was proposed here to achieve low sludge production, low energy consumption and effective sulphide control. Before integrating the whole system, the feasibility of autotrophic denitrification utilising dissolved sulphide produced during anaerobic treatment of sulphate rich wastewater was studied here. An upflow anaerobic sludge blanket reactor was operated to treat sulphate-rich synthetic wastewater (TOC = 100 mg/L and sulphate = 500 mg/L) and its effluent with dissolved sulphide and external nitrate solution were fed into an anoxic biofilter. The anaerobic reactor was able to remove 77-85% of TOC at HRT of 3 h and produce 70-90 mg S/L sulphide in dissolved form for the subsequent denitrification. The performance of anoxic reactor was stable, and the anoxic reactor could remove 30 mg N/L nitrate at HRT of 2 h through autotrophic denitrification. Furthermore, sulphur balance for the anoxic filter showed that more than 90% of the removed sulphide was actually oxidised into sulphate, thereby there was no accumulation of sulphur particles in the filter bed. The net sludge productions were approximately 0.15 to 0.18 g VSS/g COD in the anaerobic reactor and 0.22 to 0.31 g VSS/g NO3--N in the anoxic reactor. The findings in this study will be helpful in developing the integrated treatment system to achieve low-cost excess sludge minimisation.

A low-cost, easy-to-use, real-time power system simulator

We present the design rationale and basic workings of a low-cost, easy-to-use power system simulator developed to support investigations into human interface design for a hydropower plant. The power system simulator is based on three important components: models of power system components, a data repository, and human interface elements. Dynamic Data Exchange (DDE) allows simulator components to communicate with each other within the simulator. To construct the modules of the simulator we have combined the advantages of commercial software such as Matlab/Simulink, ActiveX Control, Visual Basic and Excel and integrated them in the simulator. An important advantage of our approach is that further components of the simulator now can be developed independently. An initial assessment of the simulator indicates it is fit for intended purpose.

Low-cost real-time gesture recognition

A major impediment to developing real-time computer vision systems has been the computational power and level of skill required to process video streams in real-time. This has meant that many researchers have either analysed video streams off-line or used expensive dedicated hardware acceleration techniques. Recent software and hardware developments have greatly eased the development burden of realtime image analysis leading to the development of portable systems using cheap PC hardware and software exploiting the Multimedia Extension (MMX) instruction set of the Intel Pentium chip. This paper describes the implementation of a computationally efficient computer vision system for recognizing hand gestures using efficient coding and MMX-acceleration to achieve real-time performance on low cost hardware.

Helicopter automation using a low-cost sensing system

This paper details the design of an autonomous helicopter control system using a low cost sensor suite. Control is maintained using simple nested PID loops. Aircraft attitude, velocity, and height is estimated using an in-house designed IMU and vision system. Information is combined using complimentary filtering. The aircraft is shown to be stabilised and responding to high level demands on all axes, including heading, height, lateral velocity and longitudinal velocity.

Low-cost in-fiber WDM devices using tilted FBGs

We report the realization of low-cost in-fiber WDM device function utilizing efficient side-detection of strong radiation mode out-coupling from tilted FBGs. The spatial-to-spectral conversion efficiency as high as 0.32 mm/nm is demonstrated.

Low-cost interrogation of optical fibre Bragg grating sensors

Through the application of novel signal processing techniques we are able to measure physical measurands with both high accuracy and low noise susceptibility. The first interrogation scheme is based upon a CCD spectrometer. We compare different algorithms for resolving the Bragg wavelength from a low resolution discrete representation of the reflected spectrum, and present optimal processing methods for providing a high integrity measurement from the reflection image. Our second sensing scheme uses a novel network of sensors to measure the distributive strain response of a mechanical system. Using neural network processing methods we demonstrate the measurement capabilities of a scalable low-cost fibre Bragg grating sensor network. This network has been shown to be comparable with the performance of existing fibre Bragg grating sensing techniques, at a greatly reduced implementation cost.

A low-cost remote sensing system for agricultural applications

This research develops a low cost remote sensing system for use in agricultural applications. The important features of the system are that it monitors the near infrared and it incorporates position and attitude measuring equipment allowing for geo-rectified images to be produced without the use of ground control points. The equipment is designed to be hand held and hence requires no structural modification to the aircraft. The portable remote sensing system consists of an inertia measurement unit (IMU), which is accelerometer based, a low-cost GPS device and a small format false colour composite digital camera. The total cost of producing such a system is below GBP 3000, which is far cheaper than equivalent existing systems. The design of the portable remote sensing device has eliminated bore sight misalignment errors from the direct geo-referencing process. A new processing technique has been introduced for the data obtained from these low-cost devices, and it is found that using this technique the image can be matched (overlaid) onto Ordnance Survey Master Maps at an accuracy compatible with precision agriculture requirements. The direct geo-referencing has also been improved by introducing an algorithm capable of correcting oblique images directly. This algorithm alters the pixels value, hence it is advised that image analysis is performed before image georectification. The drawback of this research is that the low-cost GPS device experienced bad checksum errors, which resulted in missing data. The Wide Area Augmented System (WAAS) correction could not be employed because the satellites could not be locked onto whilst flying. The best GPS data were obtained from the Garmin eTrex (15 m kinematic and 2 m static) instruments which have a highsensitivity receiver with good lock on capability. The limitation of this GPS device is the inability to effectively receive the P-Code wavelength, which is needed to gain the best accuracy when undertaking differential GPS processing. Pairing the carrier phase L1 with the pseudorange C/A-Code received, in order to determine the image coordinates by the differential technique, is still under investigation. To improve the position accuracy, it is recommended that a GPS base station should be established near the survey area, instead of using a permanent GPS base station established by the Ordnance Survey.