Lesion selection by melanoma high-risk consumers during skin self-examination using mobile teledermoscopy

Mobile teledermatoscopy (MTD) for the early detection of skin cancer uses smartphones with dermatoscope attachments to magnify, capture, and transfer images remotely.1 Using the asymmetry–color variation (AC) rule, consumers achieve dermoscopy sensitivity of 92.9% to 94.0% and specificity of 62.0% to 64.2% for melanoma.2 This pilot randomized trial assessed lesions of concern selected by consumers at high risk of melanoma using MTD plus the AC rule (intervention, n = 10) or the AC rule alone (control, n = 12) during skin self-examination (SSE). Also measured were lesion location patterns, lesions overlooked by participants, provisional clinical diagnoses, likelihood of malignant tumor, and participant pressure to excise lesions.

Embedded digital creative workers and creative services in banking

This chapter explores the roles and functions of both digital creative workers and creative services firms in an industry beyond the core creative industries: banking. The chapter focuses on the design and development of apps and mobile websites for smartphones and tablet computers, with examples drawn principally from the Australian banking sector. While it might be assumed that utility and practicality are more critical and more highly valued in apps development for financial services institutions than innovation and aesthetic design, this chapter illustrates the growing importance placed on creative work in this sector.

Creative services, apps and banks in Australia

This paper is divided in to three parts. The first part discusses recent CCI research on employment in creative services, with particular focus on the 'creative trident' model, and the distinction between cultural production and creative services occupations. The second part discusses the growth of the app economy and related employment details. The third part discusses mobile banking use, financial services and mobile devices, and apps created by or for banks.

Geo-locked photo sharing on mobile devices

We introduce the idea of geo-locking through a mobile phone based photo sharing application called Picalilly (figure 1). Using its geo-locking feature, Picalilly allows its users to manually define geographical boundaries for sharing photos -- limiting sharing within user-defined boundaries as well as facilitating open sharing between strangers within such boundaries. To explore the potential of geo-locking, we carried out a small scale field trial of Picalilly involving two groups of students, who were part of a two-week long introduction program at a university. Our preliminary results show that Picalilly facilitated 1) sharing of 'places' and 2) localized explorations.

A taxonomy of computation offloading in mobile cloud computing

The ability of cloud computing to provide almost unlimited storage, backup and recovery, and quick deployment contributes to its widespread attention and implementation. Cloud computing has also become an attractive choice for mobile users as well. Due to limited features of mobile devices such as power scarcity and inability to cater computationintensive tasks, selected computation needs to be outsourced to the resourceful cloud servers. However, there are many challenges which need to be addressed in computation offloading for mobile cloud computing such as communication cost, connectivity maintenance and incurred latency. This paper presents taxonomy of the computation offloading approaches which aim to address the challenges. The taxonomy provides guidelines to identify research scopes in computation offloading for mobile cloud computing. We also outline directions and anticipated trends for future research.

Acceptability-based QoE management for user-centric mobile video delivery : a field study evaluation

Effective Quality of Experience (QoE) management for mobile video delivery – to optimize overall user experience while adapting to heterogeneous use contexts – is still a big challenge to date. This paper proposes a mobile video delivery system to emphasize the use of acceptability as the main indicator of QoE to manage the end-to-end factors in delivering mobile video services. The first contribution is a novel framework for user-centric mobile video system that is based on acceptability-based QoE (A-QoE) prediction models, which were derived from comprehensive subjective studies. The second contribution is results from a field study that evaluates the user experience of the proposed system during realistic usage circumstances, addressing the impacts of perceived video quality, loading speed, interest in content, viewing locations, network bandwidth, display devices, and different video coding approaches, including region-of-interest (ROI) enhancement and center zooming

A pilot trial of mobile, patient-performed teledermoscopy

BACKGROUND Early detection by skin self-examination (SSE) could improve outcomes from melanoma. Mobile teledermoscopy may aid this process. OBJECTIVES To establish clinical accuracy of SSE plus mobile teledermoscopy compared to clinical skin examination (CSE) and test whether providing people with detailed SSE instructions improves accuracy. METHODS Men and women 50-64 years (n=58) performed SSE plus mobile teledermoscopy in their homes between May and November 2013 and were given technical instructions plus detailed SSE instructions (intervention) or technical instructions only (control). Within three months, they underwent a CSE. Outcome measures included: a) body sites examined, lesions photographed, and missed; b) sensitivityof SSE plus mobile teledermoscopy compared to in-person CSE using either patients or lesions as denominator, and; c) concordance of telediagnosis with CSE. RESULTS: 49 of 58 randomised participants completed the study, and submitted 309 lesions to the teledermatologist (156 intervention; 153 control group). Intervention group participants were more likely to submit lesions from their legs compared to control (p=0.03), no other differences between groups in number or site of missed lesions.11 participants (22%) did not photograph 14 pigmented lesions the dermatologist considered worthwhile photographing or requiring clinical monitoring. Sensitivity of SSE plus mobile teledermoscopy was 81.8% (95% confidence interval 64.5-93.0) using the patient as the denominator and 41.9 (27.6-56.2) using the lesion as denominator.-There was substantial agreement between telediagnosis and CSE (Kappa =0.90) accounting for differential diagnoses. CONCLUSIONS SSE plus mobile teledermoscopy is promising for surveillance of particular lesions even without provision of detailed SSE instructions, but in the format tested in this study, consumers may overlook lesions and send many non-pigmented lesions. This investigation demonstrates that high quality dermoscopic images can be taken by patients at home and for those sent, telediagnosis is highly accurate.

Can skin cancer prevention and early detection be improved via mobile phone text messaging? a randomised, attention-control trial.

Objective. To test the impact of a theory-based, SMS (text message)-delivered behavioural intervention (Healthy Text) targeting sun protection or skin self-examination behaviours compared to attention-control. Method. Overall, 546 participants aged 18–42 years were randomised using a computer-generated number list to the skin self-examination (N = 176), sun protection (N = 187), or attention-control (N = 183) text messages group. Each group received 21 text messages about their assigned topic over 12 months (12 weekly messages for three months, then monthly messages for the next nine months). Data was collected via telephone survey at baseline, three-, and 12-months across Queensland from January 2012 to August 2013. Results. One year after baseline, the sun protection (mean change 0.12; P = 0.030) and skin self-examination groups (mean change 0.12; P = 0.035) had significantly greater improvement in their sun protection habits (SPH) index compared to the attention-control group (reference mean change 0.02). The increase in the proportion of participants who reported any skin self-examination from baseline to 12 months was significantly greater in the skin self-examination intervention group (103/163; 63%; P < 0.001) than the sun protection (83/173; 48%), or attention-control (65/165; 36%) groups. There was no significant effect of the intervention for participants who self-reported whole-body skin self-examination, sun tanning behaviour, or sunburn behaviours. Conclusion. The Healthy Text intervention was effective in inducing significant improvements in sun protection and any type of skin self-examination behaviours.

Addressing barriers to help-seeking behaviour through M-mental health services : a social marketing perspective

Although seeking help for mental ill-health is beneficial, the majority of persons afflicted do not access available help services. Young adults (16-24 years old) in particular have the highest prevalence of mental health problems and the lowest rate of help-seeking behaviour. Key barriers to help-seeking for young adults, including cost, privacy concerns, inconvenience, access to health professionals and interpersonal interaction, appear to derive from the face-to-face method of service delivery traditionally used to distribute mental health services. Social marketing employs the principle of value exchange, whereby consumers will choose a behaviour in exchange for receiving valued benefits and/or a reduction in key barriers, to achieve behavioural goals for social good. The appropriation of mobile digital technology to deliver self-help mental health services may reduce the current barriers to help seeking, however, extant literature offers no empirical support for this proposition. Our research addresses this gap by examining the perceptions of young adults regarding M-mental health services. Depth interviews were undertaken with 15 young adults (18-24 years old), who had self-reported mild-moderate stress, anxiety or depression. The data were thematically analysed with the assistance of Nvivo. The findings reveal M-mental health services reduce the barriers to accessing face-to-face help services to a large extent. However, they also present their own barriers to help-seeking that must be considered by social marketers, including negligible cost expectations and service efficacy concerns. Overall, this study highlights the potential of M-mental health services to encourage early intervention and help-seeking behaviour as part of a social marketing strategy to address mental illness in young adults.

Designing a mobile social tool that moderates drinking

A novel mobile social networking tool uses peer support to facilitate responsible drinking among young women. Focus group reports indicate that the tool’s design is easy to use and its functionalities would help peers reduce risk during drinking sessions.

QoE modelling for VP9 and H.265 videos on mobile devices

Current mobile devices and streaming video services support high definition (HD) video, increasing expectation for more contents. HD video streaming generally requires large bandwidth, exerting pressures on existing networks. New generation of video compression codecs, such as VP9 and H.265/HEVC, are expected to be more effective for reducing bandwidth. Existing studies to measure the impact of its compression on users’ perceived quality have not been focused on mobile devices. Here we propose new Quality of Experience (QoE) models that consider both subjective and objective assessments of mobile video quality. We introduce novel predictors, such as the correlations between video resolution and size of coding unit, and achieve a high goodness-of-fit to the collected subjective assessment data (adjusted R-square >83%). The performance analysis shows that H.265 can potentially achieve 44% to 59% bit rate saving compared to H.264/AVC, slightly better than VP9 at 33% to 53%, depending on video content and resolution.

Understanding consumer loyalty to technology-based self-services with credence qualities

Purpose This paper aims to use the Model of Goal-Directed Behavior (MGB) to examine the factors affecting consumers’ continued use of emerging technology-based self-services (TBSSs) with credence qualities. Professional services, which traditionally require specialized knowledge and high levels of interpersonal interaction to produce owing to their credence qualities, are increasingly delivered via self-service technologies. Health services delivered via mobile devices, for example, facilitate self-care without direct involvement from health professionals. Design/methodology/approach A mental health service delivered via the Internet and mobile phone, myCompass, was selected as the research context. Twenty interviews were conducted with users of myCompass and the data were thematically analyzed. Findings The findings of the study showcase the unique determinants of consumers’ continued use of TBSSs with credence qualities relative to the more routine services which have been the focus of extant research. The findings further provide support for the utility of the MGB in explaining service continuance, although the importance of distinguishing between extrinsic and intrinsic motivational components of behavioral desire and capturing the impact of social influence beyond subjective norms is also highlighted. Originality/value This study contributes to recent research examining differences in consumer responses across TBSSs and behavioral loyalty to these services. It also provides empirical evidence for broadening and deepening the MGB within this behavioral domain.

Community Pharmacies and the Needs of Mobile EU Citizens - A study on Finns living in Spain

Migration within the European Union (EU) has increased since the Union was established. Community pharmacies provide open access to health care services and can be the first, most frequently used or even the only contact with a nation s health care system among mobile community residents. In some of the mass-migration areas in Southern Europe, most of the customers may represent mobile citizens of foreign background. This has not always been taken into consideration in the development of community pharmacy services. Mobile patients have been on the EU's health policy agenda, but they have seldom been mentioned in the context of community pharmacies. In most of the EU member states, governments control the specific legislation concerning community pharmacies and there is no harmonised pharmaceutical policy or consistent minimal standards for community pharmacy services in the EU. The aim of this study was to understand medication use, the role of community pharmacies and the symptom mitigation process of mobile community residents. Finns living in Spain were used as an example to examine how community pharmacies in a EU member state meet the needs of mobile community residents. The data were collected by a survey in 2002 (response rate 53%, n= 533) and by five focus group discussions in 2006 (n=30). A large number (70%) of the respondents had moved to Spain for health reasons and suffered from chronic morbidity. Community pharmacies had an important role in the healthcare of mobile community residents and the respondents were mostly satisfied with these services. However, several medication safety risks related to community pharmacy practices were identified: 1) Availability of prescription medicines without prescription (e.g., antibiotics, sleeping pills, Viagra®, asthma medications, cardiovascular medicines, psoriasis medicines and analgesics); 2) Irrational use of medicines (e.g., 41% of antibiotic users had bought their antibiotics without a prescription, and the most common reasons for antibiotic self-medication were symptomatic common colds and sore throats); 3) Language barriers between patients and pharmacy professionals; 4) Lack of medication counselling; 5) Unqualified pharmacy personnel providing pharmacotherapy. A fifth of the respondents reported experiencing problems during pharmacy visits in Spain, and the lack of a common language was the source of most of these problems. The findings of this study indicate that regulations and their enforcement can play a crucial role in actually assuring the rational and safe use of medicines. These results can be used in the development of pharmaceutical and healthcare policies in the EU. It is important to define consistent minimum standards for community pharmacy services in the EU. Then, the increasing number of mobile community residents could access safe and high quality health care services, including community pharmacy services, in every member state within the EU.