Angelo Martins

CAALYX: a new generation of location-based services in healthcare

Recent advances in mobile positioning systems and telecommunications are providing the technology needed for the development of location-aware tele-care applications. This paper introduces CAALYX – Complete Ambient Assisted Living Experiment, an EU-funded project that aims at increasing older peoples autonomy and self-confidence by developing a wearable light device capable of measuring specific vital signs of the elderly, detecting falls and location, and communicating automatically in real-time with his/her care provider in case of an emergency, wherever the older person happens to be, at home or outside.

Ubiquitous ambient assisted living solution to promote safer independent living in older adults suffering from co-morbidity

This paper describes the development, deployment and trial results from 9 volunteers using the eCAALYX system. The eCAALYX system is an ambient assisted living telemonitoring system aimed at older adults suffering with co-morbidity. Described is a raw account of the challenges that exist and results in bringing a Telemedicine system from laboratory to real-world implementation and results for usability, functionality and reliability.

Quality management and certification in the virtual enterprise

In the global market, Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) face increasing competition from large corporations for the control of the more profitable business areas. These corporations compensate for their lower agility and flexibility with easier access to information, resources and economies of scale. The virtual enterprise model of a business organization is thus often seen as one of the best strategic moves for SMEs to achieve a global reach without compromising their independence. This emerging business paradigm certainly brings new challenges to many areas of the enterprise, one of which is the quality assurance of external processes and contracted products and services. This paper introduces and discusses the issue of quality assurance within the scope of virtual and networked enterprises, and presents a novel methodology for the integration of quality management into enterprise modelling and for quality certification of the virtual enterprise. This is especially important because quality certification is becoming mandatory in nearly all markets and the well-established certification methods do not cover all the aspects of the virtual enterprise. ISO 9001:2000, the most widely used quality management system standard in the world, is presented as an interesting starting point for virtual enterprise quality management system implementation and certification. Further requirements include broadening the scope of the quality management system to include the whole enterprise life cycle, i.e. from its creation to decommission. Current auditing procedures will have to be adapted to this new business environment and, to meet such a requirement, a continuous real-time third-party auditing mechanism—fully integrated into the virtual enterprise—model is proposed. A pilot/simulator, implemented in a small virtual enterprise, in the occupational safety and health-care business, is used to illustrate the new environment as well as the novel requirements that quality systems will have to meet in the future.

Application prototype development, test and integration of shop-floor management applications

This paper describes a integrated set of tools supporting Prototype Development, Test and Integration of Shop-Floor Management Applications, as well as an illustrative case study. IncreasingRequirements advise that rapid prototyping of shop-floor software applications is fostered by the use of powerful modelling tools. The authors describe the use of a combined agent oriented/structured analysis approach to build the software system agent hierarchy and behaviour, which are further modelled as SDL process classes through a powerful Modelling Workbench. The result of this approach was the integration of two off-the-shelf tools, the Teamwork CASE Tool and the Modelling Workbench. This integration allows the SDL executable models to be used as emulated shop-floor applications. These application models, interacting with the prototypes of their user interfaces, as well as with the actual shop-floor simulation and production control models, may then be fully tested by the end-user in close-toreal conditions.

Scalable Integration of Multiple Health Sensor Data for Observing Medical Patterns

With an aging global population, Ambient Assisted Living (aal) attempts to improve life expectancy and quality of life through the remote monitoring of various health signals using personal and home-based sensors. Possible medical conditions can be early ascertained by observable patterns over the patients’ health data. However, aggregating multiple raw signals and matching against medical protocols can be computational and bandwidth intensive. Moreover, adding new protocols requires non-trivial expertise to define necessary rules. This paper describes a lightweight, scalable, and composable mechanism that captures, processes and infers possible health problems from raw data obtained from multiple sensors.

Two separate effects contribute to regulatory T cell defect in systemic lupus erythematosus patients and their unaffected relatives: Two effects contribute to SLE Treg defect

Forkhead box P3 (FoxP3)+ regulatory T cells (Tregs) are functionally deficient in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), characterized by reduced surface CD25 [the interleukin (IL)‐2 receptor alpha chain]. Low‐dose IL‐2 therapy is a promising current approach to correct this defect. To elucidate the origins of the SLE Treg phenotype, we studied its role through developmentally defined regulatory T cell (Treg) subsets in 45 SLE patients, 103 SLE‐unaffected first‐degree relatives and 61 unrelated healthy control subjects, and genetic association with the CD25‐encoding IL2RA locus. We identified two separate, uncorrelated effects contributing to Treg CD25. (1) SLE patients and unaffected relatives remarkably shared CD25 reduction versus controls, particularly in the developmentally earliest CD4+FoxP3+CD45RO–CD31+ recent thymic emigrant Tregs. This first component effect influenced the proportions of circulating CD4+FoxP3highCD45RO+ activated Tregs. (2) In contrast, patients and unaffected relatives differed sharply in their activated Treg CD25 state: while relatives as control subjects up‐regulated CD25 strongly in these cells during differentiation from naive Tregs, SLE patients specifically failed to do so. This CD25 up‐regulation depended upon IL2RA genetic variation and was related functionally to the proliferation of activated Tregs, but not to their circulating numbers. Both effects were found related to T cell IL‐2 production. Our results point to (1) a heritable, intrathymic mechanism responsible for reduced CD25 on early Tregs and decreased activation capacity in an extended risk population, which can be compensated by (2) functionally independent CD25 up‐regulation upon peripheral Treg activation that is selectively deficient in patients. We expect that Treg‐directed therapies can be monitored more effectively when taking this distinction into account.

Building the Extended Enterprise on Telework, a Case Study

The COBIP UR4003 Project is running under the EC Telematics Application Programme and aims at demonstrating the usage of workflow tools in the management of telework decentralized activities. This paper presents an overview of the COBIP system, and its pilot implementation at TECNOTRON head offices in Lisbon.

A3.6 Two components contributing to reduced treg surface CD25 in sle patients and their unaffected relatives

Background FOXP3+ regulatory T-cells (Tregs) in Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) are in a functionally deficient state with a characteristic reduction or absence of surface CD25 (the IL-2 receptor alpha chain). Genetic variation in the CD25-encoding IL2RA locus is associated with other autoimmune disorders. Methods We have studied Treg and Treg subset CD25 by flow cytometry and typed 24 SNPs in the IL2RA locus in 47 SLE patients, 108 SLE-unaffected first-degree relatives of SLE patients, and 61 unrelated control subjects. Results In both SLE patients and unaffected relatives, surface CD25 was found strongly reduced not only in activated, but already in circulating CD4+ FOXP3+ CD45RO-CD31 + recent thymic emigrant (RTE) Tregs. In contrast, unaffected relatives clearly differed from SLE patients in properties of activated CD4+ FOXP3highCD45RO + Tregs, which showed a CD25 upregulation versus non-activated CD45RO- Tregs in these relatives similar to control subjects, while not in SLE patients. The distinction of these two components contributing to the previously described SLE-characteristic Treg CD25 reduction was corroborated by our finding that the two components were influenced by polymorphisms in different regions of the IL2RA locus. Furthermore, we found that only RTE Treg CD25, as well as the genetic variants influencing it, were significantly related to numbers and relative frequencies of circulating activated Tregs, whereas CD25 upregulation upon Treg activation was not. Conclusions Our results point to (a) an intrathymic effect present in an extended population carrying SLE susceptibility factors that is responsible for reduced surface CD25 in early Tregs and a subsequently decreased activation capacity. This effect might be compensated in unaffected relatives by (b) CD25 upregulation upon Treg activation, which seemed functionally independent and was selectively deficient in SLE patients. This second component appears of particular interest for therapeutic targeting.

Monitor, Control and Process --- An Adaptive Platform for Ubiquitous Computing

Monitor, control and process data on top of distributed networks has been a trending topic in the past few years, with ubiquity being adjective to computing and, gradually, the Internet of Things becoming a reality in home and factory automation or Ambient Assisted Living aal. Still, there is a general lack of knowledge and best practices on how to build systems that integrate devices and services from third-parties which connect dynamically with each other. Recurring problems such as security, clustering, message passing, deployment and other orchestration details also lack a standardized solution. The authors describe a platform that simplifies the bootstrap and maintenance of such complex systems, presenting its application in an aal scenario. Such platform could orchestrate most distributed systems, possibly setting a pattern for distributed ubiquitous computing.

A Knowledge / Capabilities / Competencies Descriptor Based Graduate Grading System for CDIO compliant Programs

This paper discusses the problem of graduate program grading and proposes a descriptor based graduate grading system that is more suited to CDIO compliant engineering programs. It identifies the weaknesses of Cumulative Grade Point Average techniques as a means to quantify the “quality” of graduates and describes a grading system for individually characterizing proficiency in terms of Knowledge, Capabilities and Competencies. This alternative grading system, derived with feedback from capstone project supervisors and other external stakeholders, aims to improve the social recognition of graduates and to facilitate the profiling of these graduates by employers.