Aart van Halteren

BANip: Enabling Remote Healthcare Monitoring with Body Area Networks

This paper presents a Java service platform for mobile healthcare that enables remote health monitoring using 2.5/3G public wireless networks. The platform complies with todayrsquos healthcare delivery models, in particular it incorporates some functionality of a healthcare call center, a healthportal for patients that aggregates healthcare services from collaborative care centers. Our service platform simplifies the development of mobile healthcare applications, because application developers are shielded from the complexity of communicating with mobile devices over 2.5/3G networks. In this paper we focus on the (BAN) interconnect protocol (BANip) which is our solution to extend the local services offered by a Body Area Network (BAN) to remote healthcare center.

Toward a persuasive mobile application to reduce sedentary behavior

Prolonged sitting is a potential health risk, not only for people with an inactive lifestyle but also for those who meet the daily physical activity recommendations. Mobile applications that trigger people to take regular breaks from sitting seem promising. In this paper, we present the results of our quest to create effective persuasive mobile applications aimed at reducing sedentary behavior. First, we developed SitCoach, a mobile application to nudge office workers from their seats. SitCoach monitors physical activity and sedentary behavior and provides timely persuasive messages suggesting active breaks. A user test showed that users had little awareness of the risks of prolonged sitting and considered their ability to take active breaks to be highly dependent on external factors. The results from this study formed the basis for a second experiment, which was more extensive in duration and number of participants. In this 6-week experiment, office workers received timely persuasive messages on their smart phones, advising them to take an active break whenever they were sitting behind their computer for too long. Compared to a Control group who did not receive these messages, a significant decrease in computer activity was achieved. The studies show the potential and limitations of using a smart phone as a platform for reducing sedentary behavior. We conclude with recommendations to create effective mobile applications that motivate people to take regular breaks from sitting.

Context-aware middleware architecture for vertical handover support to multi-homed nomadic mobile services

To accommodate the requirements such as high usability and personalization of 4G (mobile) networks, conventional handheld single network-interface mobile devices are evolving into multi-homed devices. Moreover, owing to the recent advances in the mobile middleware technologies, hardware technologies and association with the human user, handheld mobile devices are evolving into data producers and in turn acting as Nomadic Mobile Service (NMS) providers. For these devices, a vertical handover support is essential for the improved and reliable NMS delivery. Also, the fulfillment of the required QoS by the NMS is bounded by the end-to-end QoS (e2eQoS) provided by the underlying heterogeneous networks. To deal with these aspects, we propose a context-aware middleware architecture supporting vertical handover for the NMSs hosted on the handheld mobile devices. We emphasize the following features of the proposed middleware: 1) Context-aware computing based approach which uses an extensive set of context information collected from the mobile device and a fixed network; 2) Provisioning of and interaction with the end-to-end QoS (e2eQoS) predictions context source in the fixed network to obtain near-accurate estimation of the e2eQoS at a certain geographic location and to reduce unnecessary power usage in searching for available networks.

Food practices as situated action: exploring and designing for everyday food practices with households

Household food practices are complex. Many people are unable to effectively respond to challenges in their food environment to maintain diets considered to be in line with national and international standards for healthy eating. We argue that recognizing food practices as situated action affords opportunities to identify and design for practiced, local and achievable solutions to such food problems. Interviews and shop-a-longs were carried as part of a contextual inquiry with ten households. From this, we identify food practices, such as fitting food, stocking up, food value transitions, and having fun with others and how these practices are enacted in different ways with varied outcomes. We explore how HCI might respond to these practices through issues of social fooding, the presence of others, conceptions about food practices and food routines.

A QoS-Control Architecture for Object Middleware

This paper presents an architecture for QoS-aware middleware platforms. We present a general framework for control, and specialise this framework for QoS provisioning in the middleware context. We identify different alternatives for control, and we elaborate the technical issues related to controlling the internal characteristics of object middleware. We illustrate our QoS control approach by means of a scenario based on CORBA.

Crowd textures as proximity graphs

We are only starting to understand how people behave when they are part of a crowd. This article presents a novel approach to the study and management of crowds. The approach comprises a device to be worn by individuals, an infrastructure to collect the information from the devices, a set of algorithms for recognizing crowd dynamics, and a set of feedback strategies to intervene in the crowd. A fundamental element of our approach is to consider crowds in terms of their texture. The crowd texture is represented through the proximity graph, a data structure that captures the spatial closeness relationship between individuals over time. We address its properties and limitations, a system architecture to measure and process it, and a few examples of insights that can be obtained from analyzing it.

Context-aware QoS provisioning in an m-health service platform

Inevitably, healthcare goes mobile. Recently developed mobile healthcare (i.e., m-health) services allow healthcare professionals to monitor mobile patients vital signs and provide feedback to this patient anywhere at any time. Due to the nature of current supporting mobile service platforms, m-health services are delivered with a best-effort, i.e., there are no guarantees on the delivered Quality of Service (QoS). In this paper, we argue that the use of context information in an m-health service platform improves the delivered QoS. We give a first attempt to merge context information with a QoS-aware mobile service platform in the m-health services domain. We illustrate this with an epilepsy tele-monitoring scenario.

Let's stay in touch: sharing photos for restoring social connectedness between rehabilitants, friends and family

A case study on the use of an existing photo sharing application in a spinal cord lesion rehabilitation centre is presented. The study focuses on enhancing social connectedness through sharing photos between rehabilitants and their families and friends. Four rehabilitants participated in this study for 6-7 weeks. Most photos sent related to sharing things in everyday life and keeping the rehabilitant informed about regular events. The combination of interviews and content analysis reveals that only a minority of the photos lead to follow-up communication about the contents of the photos. Rehabilitants were positively surprised how spontaneous photo sharing simplified the way they could reconnect to their friends and family, without the immediate need or obligation to engage in a (phone) conversation.

Measurements Based Performance Evaluation of 3G Wireless Networks Supporting m-health Services

The emergence of 3G networks gives rise to new mobile services in many different areas of our daily life. Examples of demanding mobile services are mobile-healthcare (i.e. m-health) services allowing the continuous monitoring of a patient’s vital signs. However, a prerequisite for the successful deployment of m-health services are appropriate performance characteristics of transport services offered by an underlying wireless network (e.g. 3G). In this direction, the EU MobiHealth project targeted the evaluation of 3G networks and their ability to support demanding m-health services. The project developed and trialled a patient monitoring system, evaluating at the same time the networks performance. This paper presents measurements based performance evaluation methodology developed and applied to assess network performance from an end-user perspective. In addition, it presents the (selected) speed-related evaluation (best-case scenario) results collected during the project. Our measurements show the dynamicity in the performance of 3G networks and phenomena negatively influencing this performance. Based on the evaluation results, we conclude that in-spite of certain shortcomings of existing 3G networks, they are suitable to support a significant set of m-health services. A set of recommendations provide a road map for both operators and service developers for design and deployment of m-health services.

From proximity sensing to spatio-temporal social graphs

Understanding the social dynamics of a group of people can give new insights into social behavior. Physical proximity between individuals results from the interactions between them. Hence, measuring physical proximity is an important step towards a better understanding of social behavior. We discuss a novel approach to sense proximity from within the social dynamics. Our primary objective is to construct a spatio-temporal social graph from noisy proximity data. We address the technical and algorithmic challenges of measuring proximity reliably and accurately. Simulations and real world experiments demonstrate the feasibility and scalability of our approach. Our algorithms doubles the sensitivity of proximity detections at the cost of a slight reduction in specificity.