Frederic Vannieuwenborg

The OCareCloudS project: Toward organizing care through trusted cloud services

The increasing elderly population and the shift from acute to chronic illness makes it difficult to care for people in hospitals and rest homes. Moreover, elderly people, if given a choice, want to stay at home as long as possible. In this article, the methodologies to develop a cloud-based semantic system, offering valuable information and knowledge-based services, are presented. The information and services are related to the different personal living hemispheres of the patient, namely the daily care-related needs, the social needs and the daily life assistance. Ontologies are used to facilitate the integration, analysis, aggregation and efficient use of all the available data in the cloud. By using an interdisciplinary research approach, where user researchers, (ontology) engineers, researchers and domain stakeholders are at the forefront, a platform can be developed of great added value for the patients that want to grow old in their own home and for their caregivers.

Business models for the mobile application market from a developer's viewpoint

Attracted by impressive cash flows and success stories, mobile application developers are trying to penetrate the mobile application market more than ever. Despite this increasing interest, the market configuration is certainly not always clear, let alone how to formulate an optimal business and revenue model from a developers or providers viewpoint. Based on case study research, we identified business model characteristics and several revenue models for a mobile application provider. In addition to existing literature on business models, this paper describes two main value network configurations for offering mobile applications: 1) All-in-one mobile application provider, and 2) Outsourcing mobile application provider. Further, we focus on the business model elements of an application developer which can be subdivided in recurrent elements (e.g.: cost structure, key partners, resources, key activities, promotion channels, customer relationships and revenue streams) or unique elements (value proposition and customer segments). This actor specific research allows us to 1) develop a decision chart and 2) to extend existing guidelines in order to determine the most optimal revenue model for a mobile application. The tool and the insights can help new developers to set up their business model or existing mobile application providers to evaluate their current one.

Implications of mhealth service deployments: a comparison between dissimilar european countries

Despite several successful pilot studies, a general implementation and adoption of mobile health services is not often the case. The deployment of eHealth and in particular mHealth services is discussed for three non similar European countries: Cyprus, Georgia, and Belgium. Each country uses the same kind of mobile health services with a different emphasis. By comparing results of a reference case, tele-monitoring heart patients, major implications are identified for a general rollout of services and respective recommendations.

A methodology for multi-actor evaluation of the impact of eCare services

The healthcare sector is an incredibly complex system with many public and private actors and a wide diversity of services. Because of the aging society and the growing evolution of health expenditures, pressure on available resources (time, people, budget, etc.) is increasing. Innovative ICT supported eCare and eCure services are expected to increase efficiency, coordination and organization of care. Currently many initiatives already introduced ICT-supported eCare services into the current healthcare ecosystem. However, its quite a challenge to estimate the impact and expected uptake of these new eCare services. Its no surprise that only few services commercially succeeded. This paper presents a methodology that identifies and evaluates the PEST factors (political, economical, social and technological aspects) that impact the involved care actors when introducing eCare services. The model takes into account the overall socio-economic aspects of the service, but also the subjective importance that an individual actor can ascribe to a particular eCare service. Combining the impact of these PEST factors leads to an expected adoption rate. Both new services and existing initiatives can be compared to one another and the impact of economies of scale can be investigated. In case a negative impact on some actors is observed, the model proposes cost allocation or service offer alternatives to ameliorate the business case for a particular service. Finally, a sensitivity analysis helps to indicate the most significant parameters that drive the business case.

Multi-sided Platforms for the Internet of Things

This paper combines the concept of multi-sided platforms and the emerging market of the Internet of Things (IoT). At present, the IoT market is in an early stage, with an abundance of fragmented solutions targeting specific domains and/or specific types of applications. In this paper, we defend our position that software back-end IoT platforms offer considerable potential to become leading multi-sided platforms as the core of the complex IoT ecosystem and hence, a race for domination of the IoT platform market will appoint these platform leaders. Furthermore, some important trade-offs are discussed for platform providing companies that aspire to become leading multi-sided platforms in the Internet of Things industry.

Bringing eCare platforms to the market

ABSTRACT Due to changes in the demographic situation of most Western European countries, interest in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)-supported care services is growing fast. eCare services that foster better care information exchange, social involvement, lifestyle monitoring services, etc., offered via ICT platforms, integrated in the homes of the elderly are believed to be cost-effective. Additionally, they could lead to an increased quality of life of both care receiver and (in)formal caregiver. Currently, adoption and integration of these eCare platforms (eCPs) is slowed down by several barriers such as unclear added value, a lack of regulations, or lack of sustainable financial models. In this work, the added value of eCPs is identified for the several involved key actors such as the care receiver, the (in)formal care providers, and the home care organizations. In a second step, several go-to-market strategies are formulated. Because the gap between the current way of providing home care and providing home care supported by a fully integrated eCP seems too big to bridge in one effort, a migration path is provided for stepwise integration and adoption of eCPs in the current way of home care provisioning.