This edited book explores the use of mobile technologies such as phones, drones, robots, apps, and wearable monitoring devices for improving access to healthcare for socially disadvantaged populations in remote, rural or developing regions. This book brings together examples of large scale, international projects from developing regions of China and Belt and Road countries from researchers in Australia, Bangladesh, Denmark, Norway, Japan, Spain, Thailand and China. The chapters discuss the challenges presented to those seeking to deploy emerging mobile technologies (e.g., smartphones, IoT, drones, robots etc.) for healthcare (mHealth) in developing countries and discuss the solutions undertaken in these case study projects. This book brings together joint work in mHealth projects across multiple disciplines (software, healthcare, mobile communications, entrepreneurship and business and social development). Bringing together research from different institutions and disciplines, the editors illustrate the technical and entrepreneurial aspects of using mobile technologies for healthcare development in remote regions. Chapters are grouped into five key themes: the global challenge, portable health clinics, sustainable and resilient mHealth services, mHealth for the elderly, and mHealth for chronic illnesses. The book will be of particular interest to engineers, entrepreneurs, NGOs and researchers working in healthcare in sustainable development settings.
Inspec keywords: sustainable development; social networking (online); human factors; innovation management; electronic health records; medical computing; mobile robots
Other keywords: eHealth; social media and health information; drones; portable health clinic; personal health records; medical health innovation; mobile health applications; telemedical education; sustainable development; social drones; remote healthcare; elderly care
Subjects: Medical administration; Biology and medical computing; Information networks; General and management topics; Mobile robots; Social and behavioural sciences computing
UN sustainable development goal (SDG) regards universal health coverage as integral to achieving SDG 3 'good health and well-being' and ending poverty and reducing inequalities. Yet, in responding this global challenge, UN also reports, 'the world is off-track': progress has been uneven between countries; and even within countries that have made gains, there is a significant number of people being left behind [1]. It is in this respect that mobile health (mHealth) intervention is being looked upon as a way of extending health coverage to those left behind. Applied for this purpose, mHealth intervention combines technological innovation with entrepreneurial ventures for sustainable development. As all sustainable development applications, this requires the engagement of multiple stakeholders as partners on a global scale. The world is more interconnected than ever and the mobile technology increases both the width and depth of the interconnection, making it both necessary and possible to create a multi stakeholder partnership to move the world into the sustainable future. As the Goal 17 of the SDG stipulates, sustainability is only possible when various institutions of the world work together in partnership and the same is true for the successful application of mHealth for low resource countries and regions. University, of course, has a very important role to play in the application of mHealth for sustainable development. It is as a leading institution of the world deeply involved in technological innovation and in the education of future talents and leaders. These two aspects, research and education, can be said to be the traditional roles of the university. From the 1990s, however, there has been rising discussions regarding an additional role of the university, coinciding with the rising interest in sustainability at the international level. These discussions are embedded in two different but overlapping issues of entrepreneurship and sustainable development and both issues point towards more active participation by universities to reach out to the broader society. This, in turn, calls for changes in the nature of research, education, and administration of the higher education institutions.
In this chapter, we will briefly describe the pyramid model for the evolution of complex systems to clarify the stage of human social development firstly. Then we will analyze the opportunities and future development trends of the healthcare industry at the current stage. We will also explain how to promote global cooperation in the field of the healthcare industry through the construction of an innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem.
This study argues that the proposed mobile health (mHealth) application and its features will allow the Chinese and Bangladeshis in each other's country to circumvent many possible health problems. The resultant effect of the proposed mobile application will help us to understand and fulfil the demands of cross-country health services, and then to serve for the successful materialization and growth of the BRI.
In this study, we combined the cancer control continuum with PMT model to answer questions as follows: 1. How does the OCP generation appraise the cancer risk of their aging parents? 2. What kind of coping strategies did they adopt to manage the cancer risk of their aging parents? 3. Are there differences between only -children and children with siblings on cancer risk appraisal and risk control of their aging parents? 4. What caused the differences (if any) between only -children and children with siblings on cancer risk appraisal and risk control of their aging parents?
The main objective of this research was to understand which factors motivate the HPs in health -information sharing on the social media. In this process, a theory based conceptual framework is proposed based on Social Penetration Theory and Social Exchange Theory after analysis a case study in Bangladesh. The framework can be useful to identify and understand the nature of influences that the sociopsychological factors have on the motivation for health -related information sharing by HPs on social media platforms. The understanding of socio-psychological factors that motivate the HPs for health -information sharing on the social media would ultimately increase the following benefits such as: (1) dissemination of quality health information, (2) the reduction of misinformation on health issues on social media, (3) widen the access to health information, (4) access to more tailored information, (5) more social and emotional supports from the HPs, (6) contribute in more public health surveillance, (7) meeting the socio-psychological needs of the HPs and (8) improved health outcomes using social media platforms.
This paper discusses the use of the Portable Health Clinic as a practical answer to the high burden of health in underdeveloped and developing member nations of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), comprising Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, and The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), formed by Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. It examines data on the current state of health services availability for rural populations in the aforementioned nations.
Portable health clinic (PHC) is a remote healthcare system, jointly developed by Grameen Communications in Bangladesh and Kyushu University in Japan with the aim to providing affordable primary healthcare services to people who do not have regular access to healthcare facilities including the low-income population living in rural unreached communities. This chapter introduces the basic concept and architecture of PHC; status of different pilot projects, findings, and observations; the technical and social challenges the projects faced during the implementation.
Portable health clinic (PHC) has been designed for providing primary healthcare service to the rural communities by telemedicine with the support of remote doctor [1,2]. However, when the health workers visit rural areas with PHC for primary care, they face many patients who needs secondary or tertiary level of treatment for various diseases. That leads for the modular expansion with various specialized features of the basic PHC system. Besides, adding new healthcare features for specific diseases, PHC also aims to add new service approaches for better treatment in PHC. Thus, the concept of self-reported health outcomes is to be added in PHC and this chapter gives a light on it. Also, the living environment as well as the working habit highly influences the health status. Thus, the occupational and environmental health becomes so important these days, and this will be covered in the last part of this chapter.
This chapter introduces the case studies of remote healthcare services in Cambodia, China, India, and Pakistan, aimed at preventing noncommunicable diseases (NCDs). In Cambodia, India, and Pakistan, the portable health clinic (PHC) has been customized or modified to fit specific needs of the various targeted populations; whereas in China, it relies on government -initiated systems. Case studies from each country describe processes at different stages of designing, planning, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating remote healthcare services, and outline challenges and future courses
The personal health record (PHR) is known not only as a self-healthcare/disease management tool by the citizens/patients but also as a communication tool between patients and the medical staff. Moreover, recently the PHR has been considered as an indispensable tool for patient engagement in the area of noncommunicable diseases (NCD) and has gained importance. In this chapter, we aim to introduce Asian PHR especially focusing on those in Japan, China, and Bangladesh, in three different situations.
Telemedicine can be classified into two major categories, namely telemedicine that includes doctors and patients and telemedicine that includes only doctors. The former includes remote consultation with patients, which is becoming increasingly popular worldwide. It also includes remote surgery, where the patient is operated on by a remote surgeon. The latter includes remote consultation by a doctor with a specialist in fields such as radiology and pathology. It also includes remote medical education, where medical students remotely attend classes, and joint case discussions between doctors at multiple locations. This chapter focuses on remote medical education.
Massive amounts of data during disaster situations require timely collection and analysis for the emergency team to mitigate the impact of the disaster under challenging social-technical conditions. The absence of the Internet or its intermittent and bandwidth-constraint connection in disaster areas may exacerbate and disrupt the data-collection process during the emergency response, and may cause delays for vital information to reach the control room in time. Instead of solving the problem at a network level, the chapter provides an alternative solution at the software design level. Our solution is called the priority over cloudlet terminal (POCkET) Framework, which consists of two components. The first one, called GIMo, is a generic disaster information model that defines dataset attributes and how each attribute is structured and customized. The second one, called AMMo, adapts GIMo structure and customization into a cloudlet implementation by assigning priority value for each dataset attribute and aggregates the attribute values into new priority level of a dataset. This mechanism ensures that a dataset with a higher priority value receives special treatment over a limited network situation. In this chapter, we will only focus our discussion on how we create GIMo as a part of POCkET Framework solution. Later, GIMo and AMMo are evaluated by observing the accuracy of the assigned priority compared to predefined scenarios using a distance measure technique. A scenario from bushfire case study was created and tested using different contexts. Eventually, the experiments have shown a better result in the customized context. For that reason, POCkET Framework has provided a potential alternative solution to the network problem in disaster environments by modifying the emergency response system requirements.
Unmanned aerial vehicles or drones are all set to transform the healthcare supply chain, to enable last-mile deliveries, not only in remote inaccessible regions but also for the urban communities. From blood packets, vaccines, sputum samples, and to emergency medical supplies, drones are being looked at as an option that can complement existing methodologies for reducing the accessibility gap in healthcare. This chapter shares the work done in healthcare drones across the world. As more demonstrations and experiments are being conducted, national-level policies are being drafted and funds have been directed toward this futuristic technology.
This chapter discussed the localisation and the practical applications of drone technologies by the Nepal Flying Labs after the 2015 Nepal earthquake. As a Build Back Better approach, stated in Sendai Framework [20], building a drone ecosystem in post -disaster settings is expected to be applied to the future recovery programme in other developing countries. In addition, such an ecosystem in developing countries could act as use cases of new technologies to be later implemented as innovative solutions in developed countries, with the concept of 'reverse innovation'.
This chapter discusses the design and development of the drone operating platform and its application in rural communities in Japan. This chapter also introduces the collaboration between a non-profit organisation, a private company and local rural community in Japan towards the sustainable solution for social challenges by advanced technology. Following the introduction, Section 15.2 explains the development of the advanced drone-operating platform by a non-profit organisation and a private company. Section 15.3 presents the field application of the drone-operating platform for a disaster drill in rural coastal community. Section 15.4 introduces the case study on the practical applications of the drone operating platform for solving the various social problems in both the daily life and emergencies. The discussion will be shown in Section 15.5 and Section 15.6 concludes this study.
In this book chapter, we explore how social robot's emotional care could mitigate experiences of isolation and loneliness in remote areas. We first map loneliness in different European regions, which are characterized by having vast geographical distances between cities, public services, and people's homes. We then introduce the concept of welfare technology and explain how technology is currently used to bridge the gap technology poses. As a possible solution, we propose the use and development of social robots equipped with emotional care. We review different European projects directed toward developing robots to assist older adults and persons with disabilities socially and explain their characteristics
This study objectively reviews the non-technical aspects of the robotic solutions, use cases, and barriers in elderly care to provide a contemporary understanding of these. This review informs us that although since the last decade scientists and researchers are continuously integrating newer and innovative technologies (e.g. IoT, smart home, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, and machine learning) with the assistive robots used for elderly care, the results are mostly concluded with conspicuous barriers of various types in adoption and lack of clinical evidence. The review indicates that the assistive robot industry for elderly care will need a long time yet to meet user demand efficiently. Also, from the review, it is a significantly noticeable fact that hardly any assistive robot project was initiated in any developing country.
The chapter is organised as follows. A literature review on the application of robot and wearable technologies for the elderly is provided first. Then, a cost effective and scalable mHealth platform, which integrate robots and wearables, for the elderly is introduced. Two key measurements, multi-user maturity model and personalised information maturity model, are proposed to guide the integration progress of robots and wearables in the context of aged care.
This research demonstrated that seniors found the smart speaker as a standalone device usable and were interested in extending how they were using the device. The next stage of this research would be if the seniors would be prepared to use the smart speakers as a controller for home automation such as smart lighting systems and as a voice -activated communication device to send and receive voice calls and text messages. This research had the limitation of a small group of users who had an interest in new technology and in most cases were proficient users. The use of smart speakers by seniors in the belt and road region will depend on the development of smart speaker skills or activities that provide a compelling reason for learning how to interact with the device. Another limitation is the availability of Internet connectivity and the cost of that connection for the user. However, a smart speaker does provide another way of interacting with seniors beyond a smartphone or tablet for functions such as telehealth or to reduce feelings of social isolation.
The multi -disciplinary search on healthcare services has uncovered several interesting facts about healthcare services, provided a framework to understand the antecedents for a quality healthcare service and proposed that HoQ can be utilised in the process of healthcare services design. The discussion highlighted the lack of comparative evaluation of healthcare service alternatives and how such an evaluation can contribute to the design of efficient healthcare service alternatives to address the healthcare challenges of the developing nations.
The use of online health communities (OHCs) for informational and emotional social support seeking is on the rise. However, still little is known about type of exchanges in these communities. In this chapter, we draw on and contribute to the digital health literature by critically studying online support exchanges in a major Australia OHC for cancer patients. We examine about 2,500 messages from 2009 to 2018 and develop a novel annotation scheme of support topics that comprise of five overarching themes: informational support provision, emotional support provision, request for help, self-reflection and disclosures, and conversational cues. Findings revealed that members of OHCs overwhelmingly disclose personal reflections to bond with the community and many members actively post to the community solely to provide informational and emotional support to others. We present implications of our finding to the practice as well as to the theory and discuss potentials for future studies.
Innovations in Information Technology has paved the way for easier and more efficient online health data sharing and transfer. However, this has also led to data oriented challenges around privacy, authentication and authorisation. While transfer of sensitive health as well as personal data between organizations and countries requires high level of protection and privacy, most people involved in business processes in the service industry, especially one as complex as healthcare, are generally oblivious of the legal responsibilities and implications of data privacy regulations. This chapter presents the legal and business analysis based on a use case that deals with exchange of mHealth data of an aged care facility across countries. A conceptual framework is developed for legal and business analysis that can be applied to analyse similar use cases. The conceptual framework involves three elements: actors, activities and impact of activities on factors such as risk, cost, quality and productivity. Actors can be classified as subjects, controllers, processors, third party or third country. They can be individuals or organisations. Activities can be categorised as goals, touch -points and resources. This framework is applied to legal and business analysis as summarised in the next two paragraphs.
Parkinson's disease (PD) is the second most common neurodegenerative disorder, after Alzheimer's disease, affecting approximately 1% of the population aged 55 or older. Major symptoms of PD include tremor, bradykinesia and freezing of gait. The precise diagnosis of PD, at its early stages, remains a challenge for modern clinicians. The difficulty to differentiate PD from other neurodegenerative disorders is high due to the similarity of symptoms with other disorders. Although clinical diagnosis primarily rests on the presence of typical clinical manifestations such as bradykinesia, tremor and other cardinal motor features, PD is associated with a plethora of non-motor symptoms adding to its overall disability. Recent research into early diagnosis of PD has taken advantage of technological advancements in machine learning. In the stream of applying machine learning for data analysis, several studies have been shown to accurately diagnose PD patients using striatal binding ratio (SBR) values. Furthermore, with deep learning techniques, several neuroimaging modalities, such as single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) and positron emission tomography (PET), have aided early and differential diagnosis of PD. In this chapter, we will shed some light upon relevant machine learning algorithms, their limitations and advantages, and provide new insights on how machine learning techniques can be potentially and clinically utilised in contributing to the ongoing PD diagnostic research and practice.
The main contribution of geographical information systems to disaster management is that the integrated system can help conduct accurate (spatial) decision making particularly for areas where they are critical. With the ability of simulating different natural disaster scenarios, ArcGIS application may also enable researchers to create evacuation routes, particularly for areas with higher level of medical and social vulnerabilities. For the first stage of this research, we would like to argue that the current set of integrated social vulnerability measures are not well -tuned enough to take into account other factors such as more complex health -related factors which increase overall population vulnerability. Therefore, the objective of this research is to investigate the connection between the medical and social vulnerability indices in Victoria, Australia.
The book has discussed examples of the use of mobile technologies for healthcare development to help socially disadvantaged populations (e.g. poor, disabled, elderly, etc.) in remote, rural or developing regions. This book brings together examples of large scale, international projects from developing regions of China and countries in the Belt and Road region (Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Cambodia, Nepal, etc.) from researchers in Australia, Bangladesh, Denmark, India, Norway, Japan, Portugal, Thailand and China. Many of the projects involve collaboration between neighbouring governments, NGOs and/or private enterprises and are discussed from the multi-disciplinary perspective of software development, mobile communications, public health, social welfare and cost effectiveness. The chapters have discussed the challenges presented to those seeking to deploy mobile technologies on a large scale and solutions undertaken in these projects. The book should be of interest to engineers and researchers working in healthcare in sustainable development settings. While healthcare is mainly controlled by governments in developed countries, in developing countries private enterprises have become increasingly involved due to the scarcity of resources (funds, skills and management abilities) in these areas. As well as sections on the use of drones, robots and mHealth applications, the book has also included case studies related to the development of public-private partnerships and the cooperation required to overcome the obstacles associated with deploying technological solutions in developing regions.