Nasriah Zakaria

External Factors in Hospital Information System (HIS) Adoption Model: A Case on Malaysia

Studies related to healthcare ICT integration in Malaysia are relatively little, thus this paper provide a literature review of the integration of information and communication technologies (ICT) in the healthcare sector in Malaysia through the hospital information system (HIS). Our study emphasized on secondary data to investigate the factors related to ICT integration in healthcare through HIS. Therefore this paper aimed to gather an in depth understanding of issues related to HIS adoption, and contributing in fostering HIS adoption in Malaysia and other countries. This paper provides a direction for future research to study the correlation of factors affecting HIS adoption. Finally a research model is proposed using current adoption theories and external factors from human, technology, and organization perspectives.

Application of data mining techniques in a personalized diet recommendation system for cancer patients

Cancer is one of the top fatal diseases in the world. When cancer patients undergo treatment, they need a different diet to help them withstand the side-effects of treatment, as well as to provide sufficient nutrition to boost the recovery cycle. Most of the dietician systems currently in the market are more in the advice area rather than recommending specific diet menus for users. These systems usually provide advice in a general form, for example: “Cancer patients should eat foods with high protein”. Such recommendations are insufficient to assist cancer patients with the physical preparation necessary to withstand the side effects of treatment, or with ensuring they take adequate nutrients for their body. We propose a Personalized Diet Recommendation System for Cancer Patients to help patients manage their daily food intake. The proposed system integrates the data mining techniques of Case-based Reasoning, Rule-based Reasoning and Genetic Algorithm. Case-based Reasoning is used to suggest a set of diet plans taken from the cases existing in the system, whereas Rule-based Reasoning is used to filter out irrelevant cases from the system and select the most appropriate case to be suggested to the patient. The Genetic Algorithm technique ensures that the diet menus suggested are customized according to each patients personal health conditions. The output of the diet plan system is in the form of a list of specific nutritional values to be taken daily, and a menu recommendation suggesting actual dishes for the patient.

Recommender System for Personalised Wellness Therapy

rising costs and risks in health care have shifted the preference of individuals from health treatment to disease prevention. This prevention treatment is known as wellness. In recent years, the Internet has become a popular place for wellness-conscious users to search for wellness-related information and solutions. As the user community becomes more wellness conscious, service improvement is needed to help users find relevant personalised wellness solutions. Due to rapid development in the wellness market, users value convenient access to wellness services. Most wellness websites reflect common health informatics approaches; these amount to more than 70,000 sites worldwide. Thus, the wellness industry should improve its Internet services in order to provide better and more convenient customer service. This paper discusses the development of a wellness recommender system that would help users find and adapt suitable personalised wellness therapy treatments based on their individual needs. This paper introduces new approaches that enhance the convenience and quality of wellness information delivery on the Internet. The wellness recommendation task is performed using an Artificial Intelligence technique of hybrid case-based reasoning (HCBR). HCBR solves users’ current wellness problems by applying solutions from similar cases in the past. From the evaluation results for our prototype wellness recommendation system, we conclude that wellness consultants are using consistent wellness knowledge to recommend solutions for sample wellness cases generated through an online consultation form. Thus, the proposed model can be integrated into wellness websites to enable users to search for suitable personalized wellness therapy treatment based on their health condition.

Adoption of E-Commerce Online Shopping in Malaysia

The continuous growth and development of ecommerce around the world is disproportionate to Asianconsumers’ adoption of online shopping. The average adoption rate in Asian countries is low compared to that in western countries. The purpose of this paper is to provide an understanding of the current situation regarding online shopping behavior in Asian countries, especially Malaysia. The factors that are believed to influence consumers’ adoption of ecommerce fall into three main categories: consumer attitudes towards online transaction processing systems, the security and privacy of consumer personal information within merchant systems, and trust in reliability of online vendors. This study provides a foundational understanding of how security and privacy issue in online transactions, and trust in reliability of online vendors affect consumers’ confidence in participating in e-commerce. Therefore, those organizations that are involved in e-commerce are expected to take note of the findings, especially in Malaysia context.

Wireless Positioning Techniques and Location-Based Services: A Literature Review

With advent of satellite positioning system and availability of wireless communication network, it is possible for an end user to navigate even in the scarce location where there are fewer inhabitants. With affordable cost and vast coverage, millions of users can access location co-ordinates from any part of the world due to wireless positioning techniques. In this study, we highlight different positioning methods, location-based services and vast variety of applications benefited from these methods and services. This paper covers brief mathematical models used among all the wireless positioning systems along with their comparison. In today’s fast pace information era, location-based services are not only used for hotspot navigation but, also used for marketing strategy and so on. In addition, this article includes location-based services that access mobile network, and utilized the current location of the mobile device appropriately. Finally we classify the location-based solutions that have been used in variety of models such health services, marketing, tourism, entertainment and advertisement, and so forth. The study concludes that with evolution of technological advancement, wireless positioning system will be more improved and will be used in every part of our daily life in an effective manner.

Teleconsultations in Breast Self-Examination (BSE) practice: Alternative solution for early detection of Breast Cancer.

Breast Cancer is the most common cancer among Malaysian women and the number of cases expend proportionately by each year. Teleconsultation is an alternative solution for early detection of breast cancer. Teleconsultations have been used widely in healthcare setting but none of the intervention concentrates at preventive level. This proposed system is the first attempt in introducing teleconsultation as Breast Self-Examination (BSE) education tools. BSE is known one of the methods in detecting breast cancer at early stage. Teleconsultation for early detection of breast cancer may extend care to underserved places at minimal cost. This ICT intervention provides an opportunity in assisting women to perform proper and effective BSE practices. Thus, this will maximize the probability of finding lump and detect breast cancer at early stage.

The impact of obesity related websites on decision making among students in Saudi Arabia

Background & Objectives: The present study was to investigate the use of the internet among university students accessing obesity health information and further to measure their satisfaction and in decision-making. Methods: A cross sectional study, among students at King Saud University (KSU), Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. This study received ethical clearance from Institutional Review Board, College of Medicine, KSU. Female and male of undergraduate and postgraduate, enrolled through a random sampling. The survey questionnaire was self-administered and consisted of two sections. Results: A total of 448 students (177 males and 271 females) participated in this study. The response rate was 66.86. The study showed that the prevalence of overweight and obesity was more common among male compared to female students. Majority of the students (58.7%) were of normal Body Mass Index (BMI). It also revealed that 187 (41.7%) reported always acquire obesity health information from the internet whereas 203 (45.35) sometimes use the internet. Half of the respondents reported using a search engine to seek information. Forty-five percent reported spending at least an hour per week. Nearly 52.2% of participants are taking decision related to their lifestyle and showed statistical significant (P = 0.0001). More than half of the students believed that the obesity information in the websites are very useful. Furthermore, 84.4% reported, language presented in the websites are easy to understand. With respect to quality, 46.9% rated as excellent whereas 39.5% as average. Interpretation & Conclusions: The present study findings have demonstrated that university students are using internet in higher rates for finding obesity health information and are satisfied with the decision they are making. Finally, the study concludes that the internet online health information considered as an essential tool for health promotion among student population regarding weight control or managing obesity.

Review on raindrop detection and removal in weather degraded images

Bad weather conditions lead the robustness of most surveillance and driver assistance system. Therefore this paper attempts to review the type of bad weather in a perspective of computer vision and image processing and some recent effort on raindrop detection and removal techniques which has been successfully designed and developed to enhance the image degraded by the bad weather.

Wireless Networks in Mobile Healthcare

With the advancement of telemedicine systems, health information can now be transferred as interactive video over wireless networks. The key features of a mobile wireless network based system are portability, long battery life, ease of use, full duplex support, and optional encrypted communication (Pattichis, 2002). Rapid advances in wireless and mobile communication technologies have led to new categories of services to support healthcare. Telemedicine can be used to deliver healthcare and medical information remotely using wired or wireless telecommunication technologies.

Embedding a Learning Management System Into an Undergraduate Medical Informatics Course in Saudi Arabia: Lessons Learned

Background Public universities in Saudi Arabia today are making substantial investments in e-learning as part of their educational system, especially in the implementation of learning management systems (LMS). To our knowledge, this is the first study conducted in Saudi Arabia exploring medical students’ experience with an LMS, particularly as part of a medical informatics course. Objective This study investigates students’ use of various features of the LMS embedded in a recently implemented medical informatics course. Methods A mixed methodology approach was employed. Survey questionnaires were distributed to all third year medical informatics students at the end of the course. In addition, two focus group sessions were conducted with twelve students. A thematic analysis of the focus group was performed. Results A total of 265 third year medical student surveys (167/265, 63% male and 98/265, 37% female) were completed and analyzed. Overall, 50.6% (134/265) of the students agreed that the course was well planned and up-to-date, had clearly stated objectives and clear evaluation methods, appropriate course assignment, and that the LMS offered easy navigation. Most of the students rated the course as good/fair overall. In general, females were 10.4% more likely to prefer the LMS, as revealed by higher odd ratios (odds ratio [OR] 1.104, 95% CI 0.86-1.42) compared to males. Survey results showed that students’ use of LMS tools increased after taking the course compared to before taking the course. The full model containing all items were statistically significant (χ2 25=69.52, P<.001, n=243), indicating that the model was able to distinguish between students who had positive attitudes towards LMS and those who did not. The focus group, however, revealed that the students used social networking for general use rather than learning purposes, but they were using other Internet resources and mobile devices for learning. Male students showed a higher preference for using technology in general to enhance learning activities. Overall, medical student attitudes towards the LMS were generally positive. Students also wanted a reminder and notification tool to help them stay updated with course events. Interestingly, a subset of students had been running a parallel LMS of their own that has features worth exploring and could be integrated with an official LMS in the future. Conclusions To our knowledge, this was the first time that an LMS was used in a medical informatics course. Students showed interest in adapting various LMS tools to enhance their learning and gained more knowledge through familiarity with the tool. Researching an official LMS also revealed the existence of a parallel student-created LMS. This could allow teacher-led and student-led platforms to be integrated in the future for an enhanced student-centered experience.