Wanderley Lopes de Souza

Using ontologies and Web services for content adaptation in Ubiquitous Computing

The diversity of small mobile devices and networks enabling users to access the Internet expands every day. In this highly dynamic environment of Ubiquitous Computing, current programming paradigms do not offer the flexibility needed for software reuse. To improve this flexibility, this paper proposes the use of ontologies and Web services, within a framework of components for the content adaptation domain, to facilitate the development of software based on reuse. A case study illustrates the use of the proposed solution.

A content classification and filtering server for the internet

The amazing growth of the Web in recent years, which includes content inappropriate for some classes of users, has gone hand in hand with increasingly sophisticated mobile access devices (e.g., cell phones). In this context, a major challenge is the dynamic adaptation of content, which allows these devices to access any given content independently of its original format, allied to a number of added value services such as virus scanning, language translation and content filtering. This article proposes and implements a content classification and filtering server inserted into a content adaptation architecture based on the Internet Content Adaptation Protocol (ICAP). The proposed solution does not depend on hardware or software characteristics of access devices, for the service is done externally through edge devices (e.g., proxies).

Model driven RichUbi: a model driven process for building rich interfaces of context-sensitive ubiquitous applications

The demand for software in Ubiquitous Computing, in which access to applications occurs anywhere, anytime and from different devices, has raised new challenges for Software Engineering. One of these challenges is related to the adaptation of the contents of an application to the numerous devices that can access it in distinct contexts. Another challenge is related to the building of rich interfaces with multimedia content, asynchronous communication and other features that characterize Rich Internet Applications (RIAs). Searching for solutions focused on these challenges, a model-driven process for building rich interfaces of context-sensitive ubiquitous applications has been developed. The process, which is based on the conceptions of Domain-Specific Modeling (DSM), emphasizes the modeling reuse from a rich interface components metamodel. This metamodel provides a generic infrastructure for developing rich interfaces of applications, focusing on model-level reuse and on code generation for different Ubiquitous Computing platforms. In addition, the metamodel allows that the interface models are built by using the terms of rich interface domain, which facilitates the communication between users and developers.

Context-aware information retrieval on a ubiquitous medical learning environment

This paper proposes an information retrieval process that employs a relevance feedback approach based on implicit evidences provided by contextual information and explicit evidences provided by the user behavior during interaction. This process takes advantage of semantic information processing enabled by the use of ontologies to build semantic indexes, to represent context and domain knowledge and to aid interactions mediated by mobile devices.

A methodology based on openEHR archetypes and software agents for developing e-health applications reusing legacy systems

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE In Pervasive Healthcare, novel information and communication technologies are applied to support the provision of health services anywhere, at anytime and to anyone. Since health systems may offer their health records in different electronic formats, the openEHR Foundation prescribes the use of archetypes for describing clinical knowledge in order to achieve semantic interoperability between these systems. Software agents have been applied to simulate human skills in some healthcare procedures. This paper presents a methodology, based on the use of openEHR archetypes and agent technology, which aims to overcome the weaknesses typically found in legacy healthcare systems, thereby adding value to the systems. METHODS This methodology was applied in the design of an agent-based system, which was used in a realistic healthcare scenario in which a medical staff meeting to prepare a cardiac surgery has been supported. We conducted experiments with this system in a distributed environment composed by three cardiology clinics and a center of cardiac surgery, all located in the city of Marília (São Paulo, Brazil). We evaluated this system according to the Technology Acceptance Model. RESULTS The case study confirmed the acceptance of our agent-based system by healthcare professionals and patients, who reacted positively with respect to the usefulness of this system in particular, and with respect to task delegation to software agents in general. The case study also showed that a software agent-based interface and a tools-based alternative must be provided to the end users, which should allow them to perform the tasks themselves or to delegate these tasks to other people. CONCLUSIONS A Pervasive Healthcare model requires efficient and secure information exchange between healthcare providers. The proposed methodology allows designers to build communication systems for the message exchange among heterogeneous healthcare systems, and to shift from systems that rely on informal communication of actors to a more automated and less error-prone agent-based system. Our methodology preserves significant investment of many years in the legacy systems and allows developers to extend them adding new features to these systems, by providing proactive assistance to the end-users and increasing the user mobility with an appropriate support.

A ubiquitous computing environment for medical education

This paper proposes a Ubiquitous Computing Environment for Medical Education, whose kernel is a Web-based system with collaborative tools, to support the interactions and computational tasks among different actors involved in the Medical Education process. In order to allow this environment to be ubiquitous, the Web pages of this system are adapted, through a Content Adaptation Architecture, so they can be accessed by a huge variety of small mobile devices (e.g., cell phones, smart phones, tablets, Personal Digital Assistants).

An approach to the decomposition of business processes for execution in the Cloud

Although Business Process Management has emerged as a means to manage and improve business processes, it may require high costs due to the need for software, hardware and technical support. Cloud Computing can help achieve efficient business processes with lower costs, since it provides a fast and cheap way to acquire computing resources in a pay-peruse manner. However, due to safety requirements, certain data or activities of a business process should be kept within the user premises, while others can be allocated to a cloud. This paper presents an approach to decomposition of business processes, which preserves the data constraints, and demonstrates its use through a case study in the healthcare domain.

Using archetypes and Domain Specific Languages on development of ubiquitous applications to pervasive healthcare

Pervasive healthcare focuses on the use of new technologies, tools, and services, in order to help patients to play a more active role in the treatment of their diseases. Since pervasive healthcare environments demand a huge amount of information exchange, the use of technologies like Health Level Seven (HL7) and archetypes has been proposed to provide interoperability between applications for these environments. However, the complexity of such technologies difficults their full adoption as well as the migration from centralized healthcare environments into pervasive ones. Aiming at collaborating to bridge this gap, this paper proposes an approach to integrate archetypes into HL7 v3 messages for the development of pervasive healthcare applications. The approach suggests the use of Domain Specific Languages (DSLs), which simplify the HL7 messages modeling and allow to automate most of the messages schema codification.

A novel architecture for message exchange in Pervasive Healthcare based on the use of Intelligent Agents

In Pervasive Healthcare, novel information and communication technologies are applied to support the provision of health services anywhere, at anytime, and to anyone. Ubiquitous Computing technologies allow efficient and safe information exchange amongst caregivers and their patients in communities, homes and hospitals. Since health systems may offer their health records in various electronic formats, the openEHR foundation has proposed a dual model to achieve semantic interoperability between such systems. Intelligent Agents is a technology that has been applied to simulate human skills in healthcare procedures. In this paper, we propose an architecture for the exchange of context-aware messages in Pervasive Healthcare environments. This architecture is based on technologies from Ubiquitous Computing and Intelligent Agents, and complies with the openEHR dual model.

Wireless Body Sensor Network for Monitoring and Evaluating Physical Activity

Since the physical inactivity is one of the four main risk factors for the incidence of Non-Communicable Diseases, the World Health Organization has stimulated the creation of actions to promote regular physical activity practices. The Brazilian Ministry of Health established a physical activity program, where people perform physical activities under the supervision of health professionals. In order to real-time monitoring individuals during their physical activity practices we developed an ubiquitous computing environment. This environment is composed of three modules that automatically collect physiological data, and provide indicators which will support public policies for promoting physical activity. This paper presents this environment focusing on the Wireless Body Sensor Network module, and its simulation that was performed using the OMNet++ 5 tool. The simulation results showed a packet loss due to the simultaneous delivery of packets to the coordinator node, which caused a network bottleneck. In order to deal with this problem, we designed a communication protocol to be run at the application layer that allows the host nodes to send packets in turns, avoiding this way the packet loss.