Silvia Jiménez-Fernández

A new grouping genetic algorithm for clustering problems

Highlights? A hybrid grouping-encoding algorithm for clustering problems is presented. ? Details on the encoding, operators and parallelization are given. ? Results in synthetic and real clustering problems are provided. In this paper we present a novel grouping genetic algorithm for clustering problems. Though there have been different approaches that have analyzed the performance of several genetic and evolutionary algorithms in clustering, the grouping-based approach has not been, to our knowledge, tested in this problem yet. In this paper we fully describe the grouping genetic algorithm for clustering, starting with the proposed encoding, different modifications of crossover and mutation operators, and also the description of a local search and an island model included in the algorithm, to improve the algorithms performance in the problem. We test the proposed grouping genetic algorithm in several experiments in synthetic and real data from public repositories, and compare its results with that of classical clustering approaches, such as K-means and DBSCAN algorithms, obtaining excellent results that confirm the goodness of the proposed grouping-based methodology.

Team formation based on group technology

This publication contains reprint articles for which IEEE does not hold copyright. Full text is not available on IEEE Xplore for these articles.

Implementation of an end-to-end standard-based patient monitoring solution

A proof-of-concept design of a patient monitoring solution for intensive care unit environments has been presented. It is end-to-end standard-based, using ISO/IEEE 11073 (X73) in the bedside environment and EN13606 to communicate the information to an electronic healthcare record (EHR) server. At the bedside end, the system is a plug-and-play sensor network communicating with a gateway that collects medical information and sends the data to a monitoring server. The monitoring server transforms this information into an EN13606 extract to be stored on the EHR server. The system has been implemented to comply with the last X73 and EN13606 available versions and tested in a laboratory environment to demonstrate the feasibility of an end-to-end standard-based solution.

Usability and Interoperability in Wireless Sensor Networks for Patient Telemonitoring in Chronic Disease Management

This paper addresses two key technological barriers to the wider adoption of patient telemonitoring systems for chronic disease management, namely, usability and sensor device interoperability. As a great percentage of chronic patients are elderly patients as well, usability of the system has to be adapted to their needs. This paper identifies (from previous research) a set of design criteria to address these challenges, and describes the resulting system based on a wireless sensor network, and including a node as a custom-made interface that follows usability design criteria stated. This system has been tested with 22 users (mean age 65) and evaluated with a validated usability questionnaire. Results are good and improve those of other systems based on TV or smartphone. Our results suggest that user interfaces alternative to TVs and smartphones could play an important role on the usability of sensor networks for patient monitoring. Regarding interoperability, only very recently a standard has been published (2010, the ISO IEEE 11073 Personal health devices) that can support the needs of limited computational power environments typical of patient monitoring sensor networks.

Interoperability of a Mobile Health Care Solution with Electronic Healthcare Record Systems

Mobile health care solutions involving patient monitoring are an increasingly accepted element in chronic disease management strategies. When used in healthcare systems with different providers, it is essential that the information gathered from the patient is available at each of these providers information repositories. This paper describes the design of a connectivity interface based on the HL7 standard that allows the MOTOHEALTH mobile health care solution to communicate with external electronic healthcare record systems supporting HL7

Proposal of an ISO/IEEE11073 Platform for Healthcare Telemonitoring: Plug-and-Play Solution with new Use Cases

Remote patient monitoring in e-Health is everyday closer to be a mature technology/service. However, there is still a lack of development in areas such as standardization of the sensors communication interface, integration into electronic healthcare record systems or incorporation in ambient-intelligent scenarios. This work identifies a set of use cases involved in the personal monitoring scenario and highlights the related features and functionalities, as well as the integration and implementation difficulties found when these are to be implemented in a system based on the ISO/IEEE11073 (X73) standard. It is part of a cooperative research effort devoted to the development of an end-to-end standards-based telemonitoring solution. Standardization committees are working towards adapting the X73 standard to this emerging personal health devices market and use case identification is essential to direct these revisions.

An evolutionary-based hyper-heuristic approach for the Jawbreaker puzzle

In this paper a hyper-heuristic algorithm is designed and developed for its application to the Jawbreaker puzzle. Jawbreaker is an addictive game consisting in a matrix of colored balls, that must be cleared by popping sets of balls of the same color. This puzzle is perfect to be solved by applying hyper-heuristics algorithms, since many different low-level heuristics are available, and they can be applied in a sequential fashion to solve the puzzle. We detail a set of low-level heuristics and a global search procedure (evolutionary algorithm) that conforms to a robust hyper-heuristic, able to solve very difficult instances of the Jawbreaker puzzle. We test the proposed hyper-heuristic approach in Jawbreaker puzzles of different size and difficulty, with excellent results.

Implementation Experience of a Patient Monitoring Solution based on End-to-End Standards

This paper presents a proof-of-concept design of a patient monitoring solution for Intensive Care Unit (ICU). It is end-to-end standards-based, using ISO/IEEE 11073 (X73) in the bedside environment and EN13606 to communicate the information to an Electronic Healthcare Record (EHR) server. At the bedside end a plug-and-play sensor network is implemented, which communicates with a gateway that collects the medical information and sends it to a monitoring server. At this point the server transforms the data frame into an EN13606 extract, to be stored on the EHR server. The presented system has been tested in a laboratory environment to demonstrate the feasibility of this end-to-end standards- based solution.

Solving terminal assignment problems with groups encoding: The wedding banquet problem

Abstract This paper presents an extension of the terminal assignment problem (TA) in the case that groups of terminals must be assigned together. We analyze this situation by means of an equivalent problem: the wedding banquet problem (WBP). We provide a description of the problem and its mathematical definition. We also describe an application of the WBP to mobile communications network design. Two hybrid metaheuristics algorithms for the WBP are presented in the paper. We test their performance in several computational experiments, including synthetic instances of the WBP, and a mobile network design application.

2G/3G connect: An educational software for teaching 2G/3G mobile communications to engineering students

Mobile communications have become one of the key points in the development of Information Society. Therefore the market demands to qualify engineers with a good formation on this topic, and more specifically related with good knowledge about the design and deployment of mobile and wireless networks and services of different technologies. For this reason most of the graduate and post‐graduate programs in Electrical and Electronic engineering studies consider at least one specific subject focused on mobile communications. However, the large number of concepts and the different existing technologies could make this subject very difficult for the student. This article presents a software tool for the design of second and third generation radio access networks, which makes easier the understanding and application of theoretical concepts, giving the student a more practical and realistic view of the subject. Furthermore as this tool has been applied for the regulation on mobile communications in different countries, the students can get some practical knowledge about the work in mobile communications in real world applications.