Description:
Blockchains have been widely used in Internet of Things(IoT) applications including smart cities, smart home and smart governance to provide high levels of security and privacy. In this article, we advance a Blockchain based decentralized architecture for the storage of IoT data produced from smart home/cities. The architecture includes a secure communication protocol using a sign-encryption technique between power constrained IoT devices and a Gateway. The sign encryption also preserves privacy. We propose that a Software Agent executing on the Gateway selects a Miner node using performance parameters of Miners. Simulations demonstrate that the recommended Miner selection outperforms Proof of Works selection used in Bitcoin and Random Miner Selection.
Description:
Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Industrial Technology
Description:
Blockchains have been widely used in Internet of Things(IoT) applications including smart cities, smart home and smart governance to provide high levels of security and privacy. In this article, we advance a Blockchain based decentralized architecture for the storage of IoT data produced from smart home/cities. The architecture includes a secure communication protocol using a sign-encryption technique between power constrained IoT devices and a Gateway. The sign encryption also preserves privacy. We propose that a Software Agent executing on the Gateway selects a Miner node using performance parameters of Miners. Simulations demonstrate that the recommended Miner selection outperforms Proof of Works selection used in Bitcoin and Random Miner Selection.
Description:
Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Industrial Technology
Description:
The advent and diffusion of modern technologies have triggered the widespread adoption of social media by hospitals and medical clinics. Despite the increasing use of social media, its use cases in health care settings and the value proposition of each use case are yet to be explicated. To address this issue, this qualitative study explores the value of social media in health care. Relevant data were collected through semi-structured interviews with participants at 11 Australian hospitals and medical clinics. Common themes expressed by participants were identified through a thematic analysis of the transcripts. The findings revealed nine use cases of social media in health care: engaging in professional networking, harnessing patient feedback, promoting public health, educating professionals, educating patients, engaging with the public, crowdsourcing, conducting research, and patient collaboration. Furthermore, this study found that hospitals and medical clinics are not passive users of social media; rather, they make conscious decisions regarding whether, when, and how to use social media. Although social media can likely support various activities in health care settings, its value proposition for hospitals and medical clinics varies depending on the use case. Understanding such use cases and the value proposition in each use case will help more hospitals and medical clinics to incorporate social media strategically.
Description:
Cardiac health screening standards require increasingly more clinical tests consisting of blood, urine and anthropometric measures as well as an extensive clinical and medication history. To ensure optimal screening referrals, diagnostic determinants need to be highly accurate to reduce false positives and ensuing stress to individual patients. However, the data from individual patients partaking in population screening is often incomplete. The current study provides an imputation algorithm that has been applied to patientcentered cardiac health screening. Missing values are iteratively imputed in conjunction with combinations of values on subsets of selected features. The approach was evaluated on the DiabHealth dataset containing 2800 records with over 180 attributes. The results for predicting CVD after data completion showed sensitivity and specificity of 94% and 99% respectively. Removing variables that define cardiac events and associated conditions directly, left ‘age’ followed by ‘use’ of antihypertensive and anti-cholesterol medication, especially statins among the best predictors.
Description:
Recent trends in the increasing use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) as "holistic medicine" by patients in technologically advanced nations have prompted the need to integrate their CAM information into their Electronic health records (EHR). Studies indicate that over 70% of the public in Australia used at least one form of CAM that includes nutritional products such as vitamins, supplements, and herbal medicines, and alternate medicines such as homoeopathic, Ayurvedic and Chinese medicines. There is also a growing acceptance of CAM among healthcare providers, and patients are increasingly visiting CAM practitioners. In this paper, we argue that by unifying patients' information about their CAM history along with their EHR, the healthcare quality and accuracy of measurements could be improved, and we identify six key benefits for healthcare and CAM practitioners as well as consumers. On the other hand we also foresee certain issues, such as availability of electronic data and standardised practice of different forms of CAM, and we have unearthed six main issues that require prime attention. We discuss these issues and provide recommendations for the way to go forward in integrating automated CAM software components into EHR systems.
Description:
Recent trends in the increasing use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) as "holistic medicine" by patients in technologically advanced nations have prompted the need to integrate their CAM information into their Electronic health records (EHR). Studies indicate that over 70% of the public in Australia used at least one form of CAM that includes nutritional products such as vitamins, supplements, and herbal medicines, and alternate medicines such as homoeopathic, Ayurvedic and Chinese medicines. There is also a growing acceptance of CAM among healthcare providers, and patients are increasingly visiting CAM practitioners. In this paper, we argue that by unifying patients' information about their CAM history along with their EHR, the healthcare quality and accuracy of measurements could be improved, and we identify six key benefits for healthcare and CAM practitioners as well as consumers. On the other hand we also foresee certain issues, such as availability of electronic data and standardised practice of different forms of CAM, and we have unearthed six main issues that require prime attention. We discuss these issues and provide recommendations for the way to go forward in integrating automated CAM software components into EHR systems.
Description:
A useful patient admission prediction model that helps the emergency department of a hospital admit patients efficiently is of great importance. It not only improves the care quality provided by the emergency department but also reduces waiting time of patients. This paper proposes an automatic prediction method for patient admission based on a fuzzy min–max neural network (FMM) with rules extraction. The FMM neural network forms a set of hyperboxes by learning through data samples, and the learned knowledge is used for prediction. In addition to providing predictions, decision rules are extracted from the FMM hyperboxes to provide an explanation for each prediction. In order to simplify the structure of FMM and the decision rules, an optimization method that simultaneously maximizes prediction accuracy and minimizes the number of FMM hyperboxes is proposed. Specifically, a genetic algorithm is formulated to find the optimal configuration of the decision rules. The experimental results using a large data set consisting of 450740 real patient records reveal that the proposed method achieves comparable or even better prediction accuracy than state-of-the-art classifiers with the additional ability to extract a set of explanatory rules to justify its predictions.
Description:
This article describes an argumentation shell to support the formulation, representation and drafting of legal arguments. The shell can be used to capture generic arguments in many legal domains as well as to assist decision-makers in constructing their own actual arguments . The shell demonstrates that knowledge represented using the generic/actual argument model (GAAM) (a variant of Toulmin's argument structure) can be used to: (a) support the development of complex arguments, (b) add context and increase specificity for the retrieval of relevant documents, (c) incorporate background knowledge, (d) assist in the drafting of documents that represent arguments made, and (e) provide a structure for complex inferences requiring a range of mechanisms. The shell can be used to support decision making in a range of legal domains, including discretionary domains.
Description:
Narrative or story telling has long been used to structure and organise human experience. In contrast to logical models of reasoning, narrative models enable complex situations to be understood and recalled by humans readily. In this work a narrative model is integrated into a logical reasoning model for the purpose of advancing a learning environment that promises to be engaging and effective. The narrative model includes a representation of the point of a story and a simple story grammar. The logical reasoning model is based on an argumentation model. The learning environment is designed to enable the automated generation of plausible scenarios that involves an intensive care unit nurse responding to a low oxygen level alarm.
Description:
In this paper we propose a framework based on argumentation that can be used to support deliberative discourse on line. Online communities have several distinct advantages as very open forums but they also have some deep disadvantages. We argue that the proposed framework and web application GAAMtalk permits and encourages the positive elements of online deliberation that will enhance discussions.
Description:
In this paper we propose a framework based on argumentation that can be used to support deliberative discourse on line. Online communities have several distinct advantages as very open forums but they also have some deep disadvantages. We argue that the proposed framework and web application GAAMtalk permits and encourages the positive elements of online deliberation that will enhance discussions.