Sanjay Kimbahune

Mobile Water Kit (MWK): a smartphone compatible low-cost water monitoring system for rapid detection of total coliform and E. coli

In this work, we have developed and demonstrated a rapid and low-cost water monitoring sensor that can simultaneously detect total coliform and Escherichia coli (E. coli) bacteria in contaminated drinking water samples. The test method, called Mobile Water Kit (MWK), comprises a set of custom chemical reagents that would serve as colorimetric or fluorometric chemosensors, syringe filter units and a smartphone platform that would serve as the detection/analysis system. The MWK provides information about the presence/absence of total coliform and E. coli in water samples. The MWK has preliminarily been tested for its selectivity, sensitivity and accuracy, with samples of known concentrations of bacteria. The MWK has also been tested with contaminated water samples collected during the two field trials conducted in Canada and India, and the obtained results were confirmed with conventional laboratory methods. With this MWK, we were able to detect the total coliform and E. coli bacteria in water samples within 30 min or less, depending on the concentration of the bacteria. For one of the field samples, the MWK was able to detect the total coliform within 35 s, which is faster than any rapid test methods available in the market. This new technology can dramatically improve the response times for the outbreak of water-borne diseases and will help water managers and individuals to assess the quality of water sources.

GappaGoshti™: a social networking platform for information dissemination in the rural world

The poor, rural, semi-literate farmer in India is in dire need of credible information services for sustenance. Various telephony, Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS), Short Messaging Service (SMS) texts, kiosks, and mobile based approaches have attempted to cater to their information needs, but have failed to give an engaging and useful experience. We have attempted to give the rural farmer a rich and useful Internet-like experience through a mobile based multimedia social networking platform - GappaGoshti#8482;. We have created an engaging user experience which transforms into a platform used for information exchange, advice exchange, announcement board and more such services in spite of the technology and social challenges.

KLM operator values for rural mobile phone user

Keystroke-Level Model (KLM) is a simplified cognitive modelling technique. The value of KLM operators have been defined for keyboard/mouse based interaction and literate western users. We conjectured that the values of the operators, especially the mental operator, would change for semi-literate Indian users using mobile phones, given their diversity. We have conducted tests with two user groups -- highly literate and semi-literate, to derive KLM operators. We discovered that the values of all the operators remain unaffected by literacy levels. However, the mental operator still varies according to the complexity of the interface. While performing the analysis we also discovered certain qualitative aspects of mobile based interactions which we have shared in this paper. Our findings would aid the upcoming rural mobile application HCI industry in India.

A Case Study in Participatory Service Design for Rural Healthcare System in India Using a Pattern Language

Application of a Service and Touch Point design pattern language for a rural healthcare service in India with the participation of a multidisciplinary team comprising designers, IT professionals, business analysts and doctors was studied. We discuss the process followed, and the benefits of using a service design pattern language. Specifically: the participants could start with a few patterns and progressively acquire an understanding of the patterns through mutual assistance; the patterns and associated sharable artefacts facilitated communication and continuity of thought process among the team members; the team could dynamically refine a set of appropriate patterns and were guided to rich, comprehensive and innovative solutions. The real life constraints neither hindered the progress nor the quality of the solutions. The potential of embedding the pattern language in a socio-technical system to mediate the process was demonstrated. The study provides several theoretical and practical insight concerning the use of pattern languages.

mHEALTHPHC: An ICT Tool for Primary Healthcare in India

Access to timely, quality healthcare is one of the important issues concerning communities in rural India, among many others such as education, safe drinking water, transport, approach roads, and electricity. Information and Communications Technology (ICT) has made a significant impact on the functioning of enterprises and urban communities; however, the benefits of ICT are yet to reach rural communities. This article describes how an innovative ICT tool called “mHEALTHPrimary Health Care” (mHEALTH-PHC) can be used to meet the primary healthcare requirements of the community. The MHEALTH-PHC tool was developed after studying the needs and the logistic problems related to primary healthcare of the rural tribal population of villages in India.

A Survey of Virtualization on Mobiles

In this paper we cover the landscape of virtualization, with a focus on mobile phones. We present the evolution of virtualization from the 70’s to date. We draw parallels between virtualization systems on mainframes, on commodity systems and mobile phones. One clear pattern that emerges is the business need of virtualization and the adoption of virtualization software eventually culminating in hardware support by the processor for virtualization. This last event also plays a key role in standardization and mass adoption of the virtualization software. The mobile virtualization area is quite dynamic and nascent today. However, given the rate of innovation, we expect standardization of mobile virtualization in the coming few years with novel applications not seen before. Some of the research prototypes which we deliberate upon are game changers for the computing industry. In this survey, we also draw attention to key challenges and research areas in mobile virtualization. This paper is an attempt to weave together a holistic picture of mobile virtualization research and industry, and summarize it.

Hyperspectral sensing based analysis for determining milk adulteration

This research work was designed to evaluate the suitability and applicability of hyperspectral radiometry technology for robustly detecting adulterants in diary milk. The most common milk adulterants are (a) soda, (b) urea, (c) water and (d) detergents. The main contribution of this paper is to build a mathematical model to enable quantifying the degree of common adulterants present in milk. Data was collected using a portable spectroradiometer (Eko MS-720) which measures the spectral irradiance in the range from visible to near-infrared irradiance (350 nm 1050 nm) using samples of milk contaminated with four different adulterants (soda, urea, water and detergent) with known degree of contamination deliberately added in milk. In this study, we used the data in the range of 350 - 1050 nm to identify spectral signatures of different adulterants with different degree of concentration. Data cleansing, in the form of pre-processing was followed by machine learning techniques to create a model to capture the adulterants and also the degree of adulteration. Linear regression along with wrapper subset eval as attribute evaluator and best first search as search option was found to create the best model. Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) and Correlation Coefficient (CC) metrics were used to select the best model. The best model for detecting the degree of adulteration due to soda, urea, water and detergent in milk was found to have an RMSE of 0.027, 0.0069, 0.0382 and 0.0281 respectively while CC was 0.9919, 0.9997, 0.9887 and 0.9938 respectively. The preliminary experimental results demonstrate the effective use of spectroradiometer and machine learning technique in reliably detecting adulterants in milk.

Distributed processing and internet technology to solve challenges of primary healthcare in india

National Reproductive and Child Health program, focused on Mother and Child Health, part of Millennium Developmental Goals, is being implemented through Primary Health Centers of the Public Healthcare System. The health record generated through community health interventions are manual, leading to undue delay in diagnosis and emergency care. In this paper, we show how Distributed Processing and Internet Technology can be applied through innovative platform called mHEALTH-PHC, to provide timely, quality healthcare to remote population using existing infrastructure. mHEALTH-PHC combines client server, cellular, mobile phone technologies and medical test equipment to establish two way connection between patient in a village and Public Healthcare System. Our field study shows that mHEALTH-PHC can be effective in health surveillance, thereby leading to prompt, efficient, quality healthcare. We take the consortium approach involving IT and Public Health experts, Directorate of Health Services, pharmaceutical and health insurance industries, to make quality healthcare affordable and sustainable.

Multidisciplinary Team Dynamics in Service Design- The Facilitating Role of Pattern Language

Service design is an evolving discipline. Service value is co-created by service providers and their customer. The complex nature of services requires collaboration in a multidisciplinary team at the design stage itself to create service systems that lead to a delightful customer experience. While working in a multidisciplinary team for service design there is a need to effectively capture the knowledge of participants from different disciplines and integrate it in the design process. Team dynamics play an important role in this context as it is an unconscious, psychological force that influences the direction of a teams behavior and performance. Therefore, there needs to be a language that serves as lingua franca to improve the communication and a medium to ensure effective collaboration within a team. It this paper we share our study of the team dynamics in a multidisciplinary team while designing for services, and highlight the role of pattern language as an effective mediating entity.

Cache Enabled MVC for Latency Reduction for Data Display on Mobile

Data display on a mobile device is not the same as on a desktop system. There are constraints of memory and screen size, which make it difficult to display large a amount of data. We have proposed a simple but novel caching and data replenishment mechanism through which a large amount of data can be displayed efficiently on a mobile device without slowing down the mobile.