José Luis Fernández-Alemán

Empirical Studies on Usability of mHealth Apps: A Systematic Literature Review

The release of smartphones and tablets, which offer more advanced communication and computing capabilities, has led to the strong emergence of mHealth on the market. mHealth systems are being used to improve patients’ lives and their health, in addition to facilitating communication between doctors and patients. Researchers are now proposing mHealth applications for many health conditions such as dementia, autism, dysarthria, Parkinson’s disease, and so on. Usability becomes a key factor in the adoption of these applications, which are often used by people who have problems when using mobile devices and who have a limited experience of technology. The aim of this paper is to investigate the empirical usability evaluation processes described in a total of 22 selected studies related to mHealth applications by means of a Systematic Literature Review. Our results show that the empirical evaluation methods employed as regards usability could be improved by the adoption of automated mechanisms. The evaluation processes should also be revised to combine more than one method. This paper will help researchers and developers to create more usable applications. Our study demonstrates the importance of adapting health applications to users’ need.

Requirements engineering education: a systematic mapping study

Requirements engineering (RE) has attracted a great deal of attention from researchers and practitioners in recent years. Requirements engineering education (REE) is therefore an important undertaking if the field is to have professionals who are capable of successfully accomplishing software projects. This increasing interest demands that academia should provide software engineering students with a solid foundation in the subject matter. This paper aims to identify and to present the current research on REE that is available at present, and to select useful approaches and needs for future research. A systematic mapping study was therefore performed to classify the selected studies into five classification criteria: research type, empirical type, contribution type, RE activity, and curricula. A total of 79 papers were selected and classified according to these criteria. The results of this systematic mapping study are discussed, and a list of advice obtained from the REE literature for instructors is provided.

A course on algorithms and data structures using on-line judging

High dropout rates are commonly the main problem we must face in Computer Science degrees. There are two main causes of dropout: the implicit complexity of the matter, and a lack of motivation among students. The second-year programming course of our university suffered dropout rates of over 70% of the more than three hundred enrolled students. In order to overcome this problem, we have adopted a new teaching methodology based on two key ideas: replacing the traditional final exam with a series of activities in a continuous evaluation context; and making those activities more appealing to the students. In particular, most of the activities are designed as on-line programming competitions; they are carried out by using a web-based automatic evaluation system, the on-line judge. Experimental results show the high effectiveness of the proposed approach. On average, the dropout rate decreased to 45% while the pass rate doubled. Some strategies are used to ensure the authorship of the programs and to detect source code plagiarism.

Compliance of Blood Donation Apps with Mobile OS Usability Guidelines

The aim of this paper is to employ the guidelines of Android, iOS, Blackberry and Windows Phone to analyze the usability compliance of free blood donation (BD) apps. An analysis process based on a systematic review protocol is used to select free BD apps. An assessment is conducted using a questionnaire composed of 13 questions concerning the compliance of free BD apps with Android, Blackberry, iOS and Windows Phone usability guidelines. A total of 133 free BD apps have been selected from the 188 BD apps identified. Around 63 % of the free BD apps selected have a good compliance with mobile OS usability recommendations. Around 72 % of Android, 57 % of Windows Phone, 33 % of iOS and 33 % of Blackberry BD apps have a high usability score. The aspect of BD app behavior should be improved along with some style components: the use of pictures to explain ideas and the adaptation of the app to both horizontal and vertical orientations. Structure patterns should also be used to improve the structure aspect of a BD app. Usability is a quality aspect that should be improved in current BD apps. Our study provides smartphone users with a list of usable free BD apps and BD app developers with recommendations.

Free Blood Donation Mobile Applications

Blood donation (BD) is a noble act and mobile applications (apps) can help increase awareness about it. This paper analyzes and assesses the characteristics of free apps for BD as regards features and functionality. A search in Google Play, Apple Apps store, Blackberry App World and Windows Mobile App store was carried out to select 169 free BD apps from the 188 apps identified. The results presented in this paper show that the majority of the apps selected have been developed for the Android operating system. Moreover, most of the apps selected are available to help users search for donors. Few of the apps could not be installed and/or accessed. Of those that could be installed: half of them do not require any kind of authentication; a few of them are available in more than one language; half of them have a geographical restriction; around 60 % of them do not notify the user of BD events and requests; one, which is available for Android and iOS, can connect with a laboratory; around 45 % of them allow users to share information via social networks, and the majority of them do not provide BD recommendations. These results are used as a basis to provide app developers with certain recommendations. There is a need for better BD apps with more features in order to increase the number of volunteer donors.

A systematic review of gamification in e-Health

Gamification is a relatively new trend that focuses on applying game mechanics to non-game contexts in order to engage audiences and to inject a little fun into mundane activities besides generating motivational and cognitive benefits. While many fields such as Business, Marketing and e-Learning have taken advantage of the potential of gamification, the digital healthcare domain has also started to exploit this emerging trend. This paper aims to summarize the current knowledge regarding gamified e-Health applications. A systematic literature review was therefore conducted to explore the various gamification strategies employed in e-Health and to address the benefits and the pitfalls of this emerging discipline. A total of 46 studies from multiple sources were then considered and thoroughly investigated. The results show that the majority of the papers selected reported gamification and serious gaming in health and wellness contexts related specifically to chronic disease rehabilitation, physical activity and mental health. Although gamification in e-Health has attracted a great deal of attention during the last few years, there is still a dearth of valid empirical evidence in this field. Moreover, most of the e-Health applications and serious games investigated have been proven to yield solely short-term engagement through extrinsic rewards. For gamification to reach its full potential, it is therefore necessary to build e-Health solutions on well-founded theories that exploit the core experience and psychological effects of game mechanics.

Knowledge discovery in cardiology: A systematic literature review

CONTEXT Data mining (DM) provides the methodology and technology needed to transform huge amounts of data into useful information for decision making. It is a powerful process employed to extract knowledge and discover new patterns embedded in large data sets. Data mining has been increasingly used in medicine, particularly in cardiology. In fact, DM applications can greatly benefit all those involved in cardiology, such as patients, cardiologists and nurses. OBJECTIVE The purpose of this paper is to review papers concerning the application of DM techniques in cardiology so as to summarize and analyze evidence regarding: (1) the DM techniques most frequently used in cardiology; (2) the performance of DM models in cardiology; (3) comparisons of the performance of different DM models in cardiology. METHOD We performed a systematic literature review of empirical studies on the application of DM techniques in cardiology published in the period between 1 January 2000 and 31 December 2015. RESULTS A total of 149 articles published between 2000 and 2015 were selected, studied and analyzed according to the following criteria: DM techniques and performance of the approaches developed. The results obtained showed that a significant number of the studies selected used classification and prediction techniques when developing DM models. Neural networks, decision trees and support vector machines were identified as being the techniques most frequently employed when developing DM models in cardiology. Moreover, neural networks and support vector machines achieved the highest accuracy rates and were proved to be more efficient than other techniques.

Internationalization requirements for e-learning audit purposes

In an increasingly globalized world, the diversity of languages and cultures of the students requires the adaptability of the learning environment to satisfy their needs and preferences. In order to achieve this aim, current and future e-learning tools should take into account the internationalization aspects. With this purpose, and to help in the process of review and analysis of these features, we present an internationalization requirements catalog, obtained from the main related standards, together with the identification of the central elements needed to perform an effective e-learning software audit regarding these characteristics.

Learning systems development using reusable standard-based requirements catalogs

Requirements engineering (RE) is a discipline of critical importance in software development. This paper provides a process and a set of software artifacts to help in the production of e-learning systems with emphasis on reuse, standards and globalization issues.

Guía de buenas prácticas de seguridad informática en el tratamiento de datos de salud para el personal sanitario en atención primaria

Resumen Con la introducción de la historia clínica digital surge la necesidad de reforzar la seguridad de los datos personales de salud para garantizar su privacidad. A pesar de la gran cantidad de medidas de seguridad técnicas y de recomendaciones existentes para el ámbito sanitario, hay un aumento en las violaciones de la privacidad de los datos personales de los pacientes en centros sanitarios, en muchos casos como consecuencia de errores o descuidos de los profesionales sanitarios. En este trabajo se presenta una guía de buenas prácticas de seguridad informática en la manipulación de los datos personales de salud por parte del personal sanitario, elaborada a partir de recomendaciones, normativa y estándares nacionales e internacionales. El material presentado en este trabajo puede emplearse tanto en la formación como en auditorías de seguridad informática a trabajadores de los centros de atención primaria.