Mohammad Adibuzzaman

e-ESAS: improving quality of life for breast cancer patients in developing countries

In this paper, we present e-ESAS, a mobile phone based remote monitoring tool for patients with palliative care need, carefully designed for developing countries. Most of the current remote monitoring systems are complex, obtrusive and expensive resulting in a system unsuitable to deploy in low-income countries. We here describe evolution and performance of e-ESAS within the contexts of breast cancer patients as these patients require management of pain and other symptoms. Edmonton Symptom Assessment Scale (ESAS) was developed to capture the important parameters where patients themselves report their level of ten symptoms. Our e-ESAS improves the current system by reducing visits by patients to clinics, providing more flexibility to both doctors and patients, improving the quality of data, accommodating doctors to fine tune interventions, and providing a convenient representation of data to doctors. User interface was designed according to feedbacks from users resulting in a UI with better performance. The system is intended to provide a platform for future research as large amount of real data is being accumulated from the deployment. The system demonstrates the feasibility of accessing quality health care through cell phones by rural, poor patients in developing countries. The system enables doctors to serve more patients as it saves time for doctors, requiring less time to view patient information.

e-ESAS: Evolution of a participatory design-based solution for breast cancer (BC) patients in rural Bangladesh

Abstract Healthcare facility is scarce for rural women in the developing world. The situation is worse for patients who are suffering from diseases that require long-term feedback-oriented monitoring such as breast cancer. Lack of motivation to go to the health centers on patients’ side due to sociocultural barriers, financial restrictions and transportation hazards results in inadequate data for proper assessment. Fortunately, mobile phones have penetrated the masses even in rural communities of the developing countries. In this scenario, a mobile phone-based remote symptom monitoring system (RSMS) with inspirational videos can serve the purpose of both patients and doctors. Here, we present the findings of our field study conducted on 39 breast cancer patients in rural Bangladesh. Based on the results of extensive field studies, we have categorized the challenges faced by patients in different phases of the treatment process. As a solution, we have designed, developed and deployed e-ESAS—the first mobile-based RSMS in rural context. Along with the detail need assessment of such a system, we describe the evolution of e-ESAS and the deployment results. We have included the unique and useful design lessons that we learned as e-ESAS evolved through participatory design process. The findings show how e-ESAS addresses several challenges faced by patients and doctors and positively impact their lives.

Symptom Levels in Care-Seeking Bangladeshi and Nepalese Adults With Advanced Cancer

Purpose Three-fourths of patients with advanced cancer are reported to suffer from pain. A primary barrier to provision of adequate symptom treatment is failure to appreciate the intensity of the symptoms patients are experiencing. Because data on Bangladeshi and Nepalese patients’ perceptions of their symptomatic status are limited, we sought such information using a cell phone questionnaire. Methods At tertiary care centers in Dhaka and Kathmandu, we recruited 640 and 383 adult patients, respectively, with incurable malignancy presenting for outpatient visits and instructed them for that single visit on one-time completion of a cell phone platform 15-item survey of questions about common cancer-associated symptoms and their magnitudes using Likert scales of 0 to 10. The questions were taken from the Edmonton Symptom Assessment System and the Brief Pain Inventory instruments. Results All but two Bangladeshi patients recruited agreed to study participation. Two-thirds of Bangladeshi patients reported usual pain levels ≥ 5, and 50% of Nepalese patients reported usual pain levels ≥ 4 (population differences significant at P < .001). Conclusion Bangladeshi and Nepalese adults with advanced cancer are comfortable with cell phone questionnaires about their symptoms and report high levels of pain. Greater attention to the suffering of these patients is warranted.

A personalized model for monitoring vital signs using camera of the smart phone

Smart phones with optical sensors have created new opportunities for low cost and remote monitoring of vital signs. In this paper, we present a novel approach to find heart rate, perfusion index and oxygen saturation using the video images captured by the camera of the smart phones with mathematical models. We use a technique called principal component analysis (PCA) to find the band that contain most plethysmographic information. Also, we showed a personalized regression model works best for accurately detecting perfusion index and oxygen saturation. Our model has high accuracy of the physiological parameters compared to the traditional pulse oxymeter. Also, an important relationship between frame rate for image capture, minimum peak to peak distance in the pulse wave form and accuracy has been established. We showed that there is an optimal value for minimum peak to peak distance for detecting heart rate accurately. Moreover, we present the evaluation of our personalized models.

IRENE: Context aware mood sharing for social network

Social networking sites like Facebook, twitter, and myspace are becoming overwhelmingly powerful media in todays world. Facebook has 500 million active users and twitter has 190 million visitors per month and increasing each second. On the other hand number of smart phone users has crossed 45 millions. Now we are focusing on building an application that will connect these two revolutionary spheres of modern science that has huge potential in different sectors. IRENE a facial expression based mood detection model has been developed by capturing images while the users use webcam supported laptops or mobile phones. This image will be analyzed to classify one of several moods. This mood information will be shared in the user profile of Facebook according to privacy settings of the user. Several activities and events will also be generated based on the identified mood.

Message from the Doctoral Symposium Co-Chairs

This year, we are pleased to run a doctoral symposium in which Ph.D. students present their work on foundations, techniques, methods and tools in the area of Global Software Engineering (GSE). The doctoral symposium provides participants with an opportunity to present and discuss their research with senior researchers of the Global Software Engineering community in a constructive atmosphere. Experts in GSE provide students with feedback on their research, allowing students to ask questions about how they can overcome obstacles, enhance their current research proposals, or prepare for their thesis defense.

PryGuard: a secure distributed authentication protocol for pervasive computing environment

Handheld devices have become so commonplace nowadays that they are an integral part of our everyday life. Proliferation of these mobile handheld devices equipped with wide range of capabilities has bolstered widespread popularity of pervasive computing applications. In such applications many devices interact with each other by forming ad hoc wireless networks. The necessity of such unavoidable inter-device dependency along with volatile nature of connectivity and the lack of a fixed infrastructure for authentication and authorization, devices are susceptible and vulnerable to malicious active and passive snoopers. If a device registers a malicious device as its valid neighbor, the security and privacy of entire system might be jeopardized. Such sensitivity to malevolent activity necessitates the need for a robust mechanism to maintain a list of valid devices that will help to prevent malicious devices from authenticating successfully. In this paper, we present the feasibility of using a decentralized protocol in order to prevent malicious devices from participating illicitly into the ad hoc networks.