This paper addresses the problems associated with female employees of SMEs commute to work. Substandard vehicles, frequent accidents, long walking and waiting time on road, theft and
robbery, physical and sexual harassment on road etc. are some of the major problems associated with the existing transportation of emerging cities like Dhaka. Using taxis and other ridesharing services for daily commuting is safer but expensive. Female employees of SMEs reported to enter the workplace in an irritated and bad mental state due to the rough commute to work.

Portable Health Clinic (PHC) is an affordable and preventive healthcare delivery system for the rural poor in developing countries. It targets the communities where there is no easy access to medical doctors or clinical facilities.

We tested our concept in Bangladesh in 50 locations over 40,000 persons. Our findings show that 60% of the patients can be taken care of by the healthcare worker and technology for Non-Communicable Diseases. By regular monitoring of the patients, the morbidity rate can be reduced by 13%. Thus, the quality of life can be improved. A healthcare worker can start her business with $500, she can return the invested money by six to 12 months.



Our portable health clinic targets the following social, technological and business challenges.
[Social]
1. People in rural areas do not have adequate access to basic healthcare services. Doctors are not interested in living in rural areas. Private clinics do not find it business worthy. Government cannot afford building clinics in rural areas. Rural people remain unreached.
2. Prevalence of Non-Communicable diseases in increasing in developing countries. Annually nine million people die prematurely before the age of 60 as a result of non-communicable diseases (NCDs).People from developing countries suffer the most: 90% of people who die before the age of 60 are from middle and low-income countries.


We served in 50 different locations to more than 40,000 patients both in rural and urban areas in Bangladesh. Our pilot had limited capacity, people were queuing to know their health status, who never had their health checkup done through their life. A big number (>20%) acute patients also visited. 15% of them are follow up patients. Initially, they demanded for free of charge, however, after few trials, people were making queue with money in their hand.
We carried out an experiment to check the consumer behavior by using the Technology Acceptance Model. Our findings show that the most influential parameter to accept PHC service is the words of mouth, neither the education nor the purchase power matters. We also took a passive monitoring approach to observe whether patients purchase the prescribed medicine or not. 75% of them were fully compliant i.e. purchased all the prescribed medicine, 23% bought partial and 2% did not purchase any. This proves that they accept our technology, service model and the service. We reported our findings in different scientific journals.

This article introduces an ICT based transport system called Social Services on Wheels (SSW) that provides multiple social services especially healthcare delivery to the unreached communities. A community car brings healthcare devices, PC and team members (Village entrepreneur, healthcare worker, IT assistant) to pre-allocated service points within villages. The measuring devices and applications are supported by a back-end data operations office using Internet. The villager walks to the nearest service point and interfaces with the healthcare and information systems. Social Service on Wheels has been tested in two rural villages in Bangladesh during October 2013 to February 2014. The results showed that 4,496 long distance trips were reduced because the villager were satisfactorily served without leaving their village. The villagers tended to associate the delivery of six social services with the Toyota community car rather than the SSW teams who performed the tests or helped with IT issues. SSW empowered the community by hiring locally and training the SSW teams. The sustainability of SSW project is a challenging area and is still being investigated.

This article introduces an ICT based transport system called Social Services on Wheels (SSW) that provides multiple social services especially healthcare delivery to the unreached communities. A community car brings healthcare devices, PC and team members (Village entrepreneur, healthcare worker, IT assistant) to pre-allocated service points within villages. The measuring devices and applications are supported by a back-end data operations office using Internet. The villager walks to the nearest service point and interfaces with the healthcare and information systems. Social Service on Wheels has been tested in two rural villages in Bangladesh during October 2013 to February 2014. The results showed that 4,496 long distance trips were reduced because the villager were satisfactorily served without leaving their village. The villagers tended to associate the delivery of six social services with the Toyota community car rather than the SSW teams who performed the tests or helped with IT issues. SSW empowered the community by hiring locally and training the SSW teams. The sustainability of SSW project is a challenging area and is still being investigated.

In this article, we introduce a unique and cost effective approach of telemedicine. We focused on the preventative healthcare service for low-income unreached people living in rural/urban areas who are deprived of basic healthcare. The aim of the experiment has been to assess the telemedicine requirements for unreached people, determine the area based major diseases and improve our developed “portable clinic” system to sustainably serve the community. We introduced a new concept of “B-Logic (Bangladesh Logic)” to categorize the patients in four groups (red, orange, yellow and green) based on the emergency status of the patients. Only the orange and red marked visitors consulted with our call center doctors. Green and yellow marked patients received guidelines for their health maintenance.

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)  

Indigenous people of developing countries have serious shortage of health support including lack of health professionals and technology. It is often difficult for the indigenous people to receive consultation in the hospitals when they face any chronic disease. In Bangladesh, there are 54 groups of indigenous communities with a base of estimated 3 million in number. There are 300 government registered doctors and nurses, and 800 community health workers to provide health services to approximately 3 million people. By the invention of Information Technology, health care services have been modernized and more accessible in recent times. Information Technology has made the health services available at the door of general people. In recent years, there is large number of people in the indigenous community uses internet in their smart phones. As, there is not enough health care organizations and professional doctors in the indigenous community, for this reason, it will be useful and compatible to provide mobile phone-based services to the people. Mobile phone-based health services have great potentiality in reducing ‘digital divide’, and acts as a crucial tool for supporting indigenous community especially chronic disease affected people staying at home. This paper aims to develop, implement and evaluate a mobile based integrated framework for in-home or community care and rural health centers’ patient monitoring and health management.

DOI： 10.1007/978-3-030-21935-2_27

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

Background: The electronic prescription system has emerged to reduce the ambiguity and misunderstanding associated with handwritten prescriptions. The opportunities and challenges of e-prescription system, its impact on reducing medication error, and improving patient's safety have been widely studied. However, not enough studies were conducted to explore and quantify the factors that affect rural patients' compliance with e-prescription, especially from the perspective of Asian developing countries where most of the world's population resides. Objective: The objective of this study is to explore and assess the factors that affect rural patients' primary compliance with e-prescription in Bangladesh. Methods: Data were collected from 95 randomly selected rural patients who received e-prescription through a field survey with a structured questionnaire from Bheramara subdistrict, Bangladesh, during June and July 2016. Logistic regression analysis was performed to test the research hypotheses. Results: The study found patients' gender as the most significantly influential factor (regression coefficient [Coef.] = 2.02, odds ratio [OR] = 7.51, p < 0.05) followed by visiting frequency (Coef. = 0.99, OR = 2.70, p < 0.05); education (Coef. = 0.92, OR = 2.51, p < 0.05); and distance to healthcare facility (Coef. = 0.82, OR = 2.26, p < 0.01). However, patients' age, monthly family expenditure, and use of cell phone were found insignificant. The model explains 59.40% deviance (R = 0.5940) in the response variable with its constructs. And the "Hosmer-Lemeshow" goodness-of-fit score (0.99) is also above the standard threshold (0.05), which indicates the data fit well with the model. Conclusions: The findings of this study are expected to be helpful for e-health service providers to gain a better understanding of the factors that influence their patients to comply with e-prescriptions.

DOI： 10.1089/tmj.2018.0081

Other Link： https://doi.org/10.1089/tmj.2018.0081

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

This paper reports growth characteristics (height, weight, BMI, waist and hip) of Bangladeshi males at the age of 20 to 100, analyzed from 13,069 samples randomly collected from 54 locations in Bangladesh since the year 2010. The US CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) demonstrates growth pattern charts for boys and girls from 2 to 20 years of age. Very few literatures report growth characteristics after the age of 20. This is due to the fact that there is no significant growth after the age of 20 for height. However, weight, BMI, waist, hip size do change over time. Our Portable Health Clinic system has for many years been archiving remote health care data records from different ages and socioeconomic levels in many locations throughout Bangladesh. This research aims to explore whether there are any significant clinical growth patterns over age. We analyzed our data and demonstrated the growth patterns. For height, there is no sharp change until the age of 49, but after the age of 50, we observe a slight decline of height and a sharp decline after the age of 80. Weight grows until the age of 49 and decline after that.Waist and Hip show similar growth characteristics with weight. The plots are demonstrated in 7 different percentiles (5th, 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th, 90th and 95th) to get an idea of the range of respective growth of males in Bangladesh.

DOI： 10.14569/IJACSA.2019.0100379

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

Co-design and co-production with non-academic stakeholders has been recognized as a key approach in transdisciplinary sustainability research. The majority of transdisciplinary studies have been conducted in Europe and North America, with a marked lack of such research in the Asian context—particularly with regard to healthcare. Utilizing a case study involving mobile health check-ups performed using a portable health clinic system in Jaipur, India, from March 2016 to March 2018, this study identifies key factors in co-design and co-production that should be considered to ensure the project’s sustainability. Thoroughly reviewing all of the documents and materials related to the case study’s co-design and co-production, this study identifies the following key factors: (1) mutual stakeholder agreement on a long-term research plan, protocol, and budget; (2) harmonizing research objectives, frames, and the scale of stakeholder expectations; (3) stakeholders’ commitment and a sense of ownership derived from their needs and priorities; (4) stakeholder trust; (5) effective coordinators; (6) personality type and characteristics of stakeholder leaders; (7) capacity building and the empowerment of local research staff and participants; and (8) continuous efforts to involve stakeholders throughout the co-design and co-production processes. Facilitating effective co-design and co-production, these factors will help ensure the future sustainability of projects

DOI： https://doi.org/10.3390/su10114148

Other Link： http://dx.doi.org/10.1089/tmj.2018.0039

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

Background: The electronic prescription system has emerged to reduce the ambiguity and misunderstanding associated with handwritten prescriptions. The opportunities and challenges of e-prescription system, its impact on reducing medication error, and improving patient's safety have been widely studied. However, not enough studies were conducted to explore and quantify the factors that affect rural patients' compliance with e-prescription, especially from the perspective of Asian developing countries where most of the world's population resides. Objective: The objective of this study is to explore and assess the factors that affect rural patients' primary compliance with e-prescription in Bangladesh. Methods: Data were collected from 95 randomly selected rural patients who received e-prescription through a field survey with a structured questionnaire from Bheramara subdistrict, Bangladesh, during June and July 2016. Logistic regression analysis was performed to test the research hypotheses. Results: The study found patients' gender as the most significantly influential factor (regression coefficient [Coef.] = 2.02, odds ratio [OR] = 7.51, p < 0.05) followed by visiting frequency (Coef. = 0.99, OR = 2.70, p < 0.05); education (Coef. = 0.92, OR = 2.51, p < 0.05); and distance to healthcare facility (Coef. = 0.82, OR = 2.26, p < 0.01). However, patients' age, monthly family expenditure, and use of cell phone were found insignificant. The model explains 59.40% deviance (R2 = 0.5940) in the response variable with its constructs. And the "Hosmer-Lemeshow" goodness-of-fit score (0.99) is also above the standard threshold (0.05), which indicates the data fit well with the model. Conclusions: The findings of this study are expected to be helpful for e-health service providers to gain a better understanding of the factors that influence their patients to comply with e-prescriptions.

DOI： https://doi.org/10.1089/tmj.2018.008 1

Other Link： https://doi.org/10.1089/tmj.2018.008 1

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

BACKGROUND:
Existing studies regarding e-health are mostly focused on information technology design and implementation, system architecture and infrastructure, and its importance in public health with ancillaries and barriers to mass adoption. However, not enough studies have been conducted to assess the end-users' reaction and acceptance behavior toward e-health, especially from the perspective of rural communities in developing countries.

OBJECTIVE:
The objective of this study is to explore the factors that influence rural end users' acceptance of e-health in Bangladesh.

METHODS:
Data were collected between June and July 2016 through a field survey with structured questionnaire form 292 randomly selected rural respondents from Bheramara subdistrict, Bangladesh. Technology Acceptance Model was adopted as the research framework. Logistic regression analysis was performed to test the theoretical model.

RESULTS:
The study found social reference as the most significantly influential variable (Coef. = 2.28, odds ratio [OR] = 9.73, p < 0.01) followed by advertisement (Coef. = 1.94, OR = 6.94, p < 0.01); attitude toward the system (Coef. = 1.52, OR = 4.56, p < 0.01); access to cellphone (Coef. = 1.37, OR = 3.92, p < 0.05), and perceived system effectiveness (Coef. = 0.74, OR = 2.10, p < 0.01). Among demographic variables, age, gender, and education were found significant while we did not find any significant impact of respondents' monthly family expenditure on their e-health acceptance behavior. The model explains 54.70% deviance (R2 = 0.5470) in the response variable with its constructs. The "Hosmer-Lemeshow" goodness-of-fit score (0.539) is also above the standard threshold (0.05), which indicates that the data fit well with the model.

CONCLUSION:
The study provides guidelines for the successful adoption of e-health among rural communities in developing countries. This also creates an opportunity for e-health technology developers and service providers to have a better understanding of their end users.

DOI： 10.1089/tmj.2018.0039

Other Link： http://dx.doi.org/10.1089/tmj.2018.0039

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

This paper explores and analyzes the current level of, reasons behind and factors affecting consumer acceptance of Portable Health Clinic (PHC), an e-Health initiative in Bangladesh. Our findings revealed that, 40% of the respondents have idea of using ICT in healthcare while 21% have their own experience of using any of the existing mHealth or eHealth systems. On the other hand, PHC’s acceptance rate among our respondents is 32% i.e. they have received healthcare services from PHC at least once. This research also analyzed consumer’s demographic and socio-economic factors that affect their acceptance of eHealth. Our finding says, consumer’s age, occupation and purchasing power have very strong influence on their acceptance of eHealth services while their gender, level of education, access to cell phone and previous eHealth knowledge have very insignificant or weaker impact.

Other Link： https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2017.06.049

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

This article introduces an ICT based transport system called Social Services on Wheels (SSW) that provides multiple social services especially healthcare delivery to the unreached communities. A community car brings healthcare devices, PC and team members (Village entrepreneur, healthcare worker, IT assistant) to pre-allocated service points within villages. The measuring devices and applications are supported by a back-end data operations office using Internet. The villager walks to the nearest service point and interfaces with the healthcare and information systems. Social Service on Wheels has been tested in two rural villages in Bangladesh during October 2013 to February 2014. The results showed that 4,496 long distance trips were reduced because the villager were satisfactorily served without leaving their village. The villagers tended to associate the delivery of six social services with the Toyota community car rather than the SSW teams who performed the tests or helped with IT issues. SSW empowered the community by hiring locally and training the SSW teams. The sustainability of SSW project is a challenging area and is still being investigated.

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

Bangladesh is predominately an agricultural country. To feed her 160 million people from 8.2 million hectares of cultivable land
is a tough task. 15, 089,000 families out of total 17,600,804 families are directly or indirectly involve with the agriculture. Every
year, almost 0.20 million people are being added to the total population whereas the estimated annual shrinkage of agricultural
land is about 0.08 million hectares due to various non-agricultural activities like constructions of houses, roads, etc. In 1971,
agriculture was the first contributor to the GDP 71% which is currently 20.60%. In terms of employment, agriculture still
remains to the largest source. To continue the sustainable agricultural development, farmers need updated knowledge. Currently
they have various sources to get knowledge as like TV, mobile phone, radio, private group and so on. However, 60% farmers are
still expecting knowledge from the government agriculture extension officers. But it is quite difficult to disseminate personalize
agricultural knowledge for 12,000 extension officers to 16 million farmers around the country. This research will identify the
existing gap for getting agricultural knowledge from the most preferable sources and propose the improved service design which
can support to disseminate personalize agricultural knowledge for farmers in Bangladesh.

Other Link： http://www.ijird.com/index.php/ijird/article/view/88649/67477

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

Most people at the BOP (base of the economic pyramid, the largest but the poorest community in the world comprising 69% of world population) do not have access to e-commerce services. The way e-commerce is designed and practiced today does not enable their participation. The reasons are: their purchasing power is low, they do not have any means to make online payments, and there is no infrastructure to deliver the purchased items to their doors. To enable the participation of the people at BOP, we propose an e-commerce framework by engaging MFI resources and our recently developed ePassbook system. This paper shows how the BOP community can enjoy the benefits of the e-commerce service by using the proposed model. The advantages of making e-commerce available to the BOP are discussed, in addition to the challenges involved in implementing the model.

DOI： 10.14569/IJACSA.2015.060904

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)  

This article introduces an ICT based transport system called Social Services on Wheels (SSW) that provides multiple social services especially healthcare delivery to the unreached communities. A community car brings healthcare devices, PC and team members (Village entrepreneur, healthcare worker, IT assistant) to pre-allocated service points within villages. The measuring devices and applications are supported by a back-end data operations office using Internet. The villager walks to the nearest service point and interfaces with the healthcare and information systems. Social Service on Wheels has been tested in two rural villages in Bangladesh during October 2013 to February 2014. The results showed that 4,496 long distance trips were reduced because the villager were satisfactorily served without leaving their village. The villagers tended to associate the delivery of six social services with the Toyota community car rather than the SSW teams who performed the tests or helped with IT issues. SSW empowered the community by hiring locally and training the SSW teams. The sustainability of SSW project is a challenging area and is still being investigated.

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

Background: The prevalence of non-communicable diseases is increasing throughout the world, including developing countries.
Objective: The intent was to conduct a study of a preventive medical service in a developing country, combining eHealth checkups and teleconsultation as well as assess stratification rules and the short-term effects of intervention.
Methods: We developed an eHealth system that comprises a set of sensor devices in an attaché case, a data transmission system linked to a mobile network, and a data management application. We provided eHealth checkups for the populations of five villages and the employees of five factories/offices in Bangladesh. Individual health condition was automatically categorized into four grades based on international diagnostic standards: green (healthy), yellow (caution), orange (affected), and red (emergent). We provided teleconsultation for orange- and red-grade subjects and we provided teleprescription for these subjects as required.
Results: The first checkup was provided to 16,741 subjects. After one year, 2361 subjects participated in the second checkup and the systolic blood pressure of these subjects was significantly decreased from an average of 121 mmHg to an average of 116 mmHg (P<.001). Based on these results, we propose a cost-effective method using a machine learning technique (random forest method) using the medical interview, subject profiles, and checkup results as predictor to avoid costly measurements of blood sugar, to ensure sustainability of the program in developing countries.
Conclusions: The results of this study demonstrate the benefits of an eHealth checkup and teleconsultation program as an effective health care system in developing countries.

DOI： 10.2196/jmir.3705

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)  

Blood Pressure readings are widely accepted as a measure to determine the risk of non-communicable diseases such as hypertension and stroke. Affordable healthcare devices and sensors allow individuals to monitor blood pressure at home or at a local service point on a daily basis. ICT based healthcare systems interpret the readings and give feedback to individuals or may trigger a telemedicine call to a remote doctor. This paper introduces case studies for ICT healthcare studies undertaken in Japan and Bangladesh. Blood Pressure data collected by the Omron WellnessLink (500,000 readings) and the Kyushu University/Grameen Portable Heath Clinic (21,252 readings) are examined for similarities and differences. The results show similarities in gender and temporal influences. Males have higher blood pressure and readings appear to be rhythmic according to day and month. The differences indicate that the mean Systolic Blood Pressure (SBP) for Japanese males is higher than Bangladesh males and SBP for Bangladesh females is higher than Japanese females. The impact of climate is stronger on Japanese SBP than Bangladesh SBP. The Bangladesh data shows progressive increase in SBP in each ten year age category until 80 years; this is also reflected by BMI categories. The study reveals that affordable devices connected to basic ICT based healthcare systems reveal underlying factors in the Blood Pressure variability.

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)  

Portable Health Clinic is adapted to provide primary care to a super aged society. A super aged society occurs when, one third of the population is 65+ years and one fifth is 85+ years. The combination of aging society and incidence of non-communicable diseases increases the prevalence of elderly disability and places pressure on health care systems, health costs, and existing social norms. The goal is to reposition the Portable Health Clinic as a health information and af- fordable disability prevention system. In this paper, we show how the healthcare worker can supplement her competence on medical risk factors with sensor tech- nology and share her knowledge with elderly patients within the community. We suggest that the remote telemedicine call center should be used to support distant screening and surveillance programs and provide early intervention to diseases. We investigate 18,278 Portable Health Clinic Electronic Health Records between 2012 and 2013 to see what are the most important risk factors for ill health in Bangladesh. The field data implies that elevated blood pressure and blood sugar and protein in the urine and the most important risk factors for the elderly popula- tion (>65 years) when compared to younger population (<65 years).

Other Link： http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-3-319-07788-8_49

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)  

Portable Health Clinic is adapted to provide primary care to a super aged society. A super aged society occurs when, one third of the population is 65+ years and one fifth is 85+ years. The combination of aging society and incidence of non-communicable diseases increases the prevalence of elderly disability and places pressure on health care systems, health costs, and existing social norms. The goal is to reposition the Portable Health Clinic as a health information and affordable disability prevention system. In this paper, we show how the healthcare worker can supplement her competence on medical risk factors with sensor technology and share her knowledge with elderly patients within the community. We suggest that the remote telemedicine call center should be used to support distant screening and surveillance programs and provide early intervention to diseases. We investigate 18,278 Portable Health Clinic Electronic Health Records between 2012 and 2013 to see what are the most important risk factors for ill health in Bangladesh. The field data implies that elevated blood pressure and blood sugar and protein in the urine and the most important risk factors for the elderly population (>65 years) when compared to younger population (<65 years).

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)  

Unreached communities require access to fundamental social services such as healthcare, education, learning and purchasing opportunities to improve their economic sustainability. Unreached communities are characterized by informal and unsafe transport. Villagers have to travel long distances to urban centres to attain social services. In this article, we introduce an Information Communication Technology (ICT) concept called Social Services on Wheels (SSW) to provide quality transit and overcome access problems by bringing e-services directly to the community. SSW is based on a community vehicle that is as a college bus service and mobile ICT platform. SSW takes a healthcare worker, an ICT assistant and their equipment to a service point allowing villagers to access telemedicine and Internet services. SSW was tested on a rural community in Bangladesh in 2012 and 2013. A cost analysis shows that 52% of the total operating cost was covered using the existing business model. The research contributes to the discussion on sustainable ICT for Development (ICT4D).

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)  

We present a remote healthcare consultancy system that enables healthcare workers to identify noncommunicable diseases in unreached communities. The healthcare system combines medical sensors with mobile health and is called a Portable Health Clinic. The Portable Health Clinic fits into a briefcase and is operated by the healthcare worker. The goal of this research is to empower the healthcare worker further by allowing her to recognize spurious measurements and to make lifestyle recommendations. In this paper, we show how to process the data: combine, link and compare – captured in patient electronic health records stored in database. We applied association rule technique to find common set of rules in order to build a clinical decision support system. We also showed examples of the meaningful information from the analyzed data to build a better clinical decision support.

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

This study looks at how an e-Health System can reduce morbidity (poor health) in unreached communities. The e-Health system combines affordable sensors and Body Area Networking technology with mobile health concepts and is called a Portable Health Clinic. The health clinic is portable because all the medical devices fit inside a briefcase and are carried to unreached communities by a health assistant. Patient mor- bidity is diagnosed using software stratification algorithm and categorized according to triage color-coding scheme within the briefcase. Morbid pa- tients are connected to remote doctor in a telemedicine call center using the mobile network coverage. Electronic Health Records (EHR) are used for the medical consultancy and e-Prescription is generated. The effec- tiveness of the portable health clinic system to target morbidity was tested on 8690 patients in rural and urban areas of Bangladesh during Septem- ber 2012 to January 2013. There were two phases to the experiment: the first phase identified the intensity of morbidity and the second phase re- examined the morbid patients, two months later. The experiment results show a decrease in patients to identify as morbid among those who partici- pated in telemedicine process.

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

This study looks at how an e-Health System can reduce morbidity (poor health) in unreached communities. The e-Health system combines affordable sensors and Body Area Networking technology with mobile health concepts and is called a Portable Health Clinic. The health clinic is portable because all the medical devices fit inside a briefcase and are carried to unreached communities by a healthcare assistants. Patient morbidity is diagnosed using software stratification algorithm and categorized according to triage color-coding scheme within the briefcase. Morbid patients are connected to remote doctor in a telemedicine call center using the mobile network coverage. Electronic Health Records (EHR) are used for the medical consultancy and e-Prescription is generated. The effectiveness of the portable health clinic system to target morbidity was tested on 8690 patients in rural and urban areas of Bangladesh during September 2012 to January 2013. There were two phases to the experiment: the first phase identified the intensity of morbidity and the second phase re-examined the morbid patients, two months later. The experiment results show a decrease in patients to identify as morbid among those who participated in telemedicine process.

DOI： 10.1587/transcom.E97.B.540

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)  

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)  

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

Language：English  

Greedy market strategies of agro-chemical industries have encouraged Bangladeshi farmers to work under the motto “More fertilizer, more product”. Similar misconceptions apply to the use of pesticides and food processing chemicals. At best careful and controlled use of such chemicals is required. They do not simply improve yield, nor does their use build customer-trust. In order to address this problem, our Income Generation Project for Farmers (IGPF) targets rural female farmers to generate income through the production and marketing of organic vegetables. Farmers will be using their fallow homesteads to grow vegetables under the supervision of IGPF experts and through our developed BIGBUS system. Information Communication Technology is used to train the farmers in crop selection and maintenance, and then to market and sell the products at a price to reflect the higher quality. Presently, we are working in two locations with 36 model-farmers. The produce is sold through a third-party e-commerce site. Demand among the affluent has been confirmed. In two years, we envision that the project will be a sustainable business benefitting thousands of farmers and consumers.

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)  

Language：Others   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

DOI： 10.3390/su16062268

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

BACKGROUND: Menstruation is a normal physiological process for women during their reproductive cycle, typically beginning during adolescence. During this stage, lack of knowledge, social taboos, and shyness act as barriers to proper menstrual hygiene management, rendering adolescent girls more vulnerable. This issue is highly prevalent in low- and middle-income countries. In rural areas of Bangladesh, there is a deficiency in menstrual hygiene management due to inadequate information and knowledge among adolescent girls. Therefore, this study aims to assess the effect of mHealth education on the knowledge and practices of menstrual hygiene management among school-going adolescent girls in rural Bangladesh. METHODS: This is a quasi-experimental study conducted from early June to December 2023 at a secondary high school in Chandpur, Bangladesh. Participants' data will be collected through face-to-face interviews using a structured questionnaire covering socioeconomics, knowledge of menstrual hygiene management, and practices. Pre-test data will be collected at baseline, followed by a 6-month mHealth education intervention. Afterward, post-test data will be collected using the same questionnaire. The data will be analyzed as frequency and percentage for descriptive statistics, and a paired t-test will be used to compare the pre-and post-test data. RESULTS: In the study, 172 participants were enrolled at baseline. Among them, 69.8&#37; were aged 10-14 years. The outcome of this study will be published in a peer-reviewed journal. The findings will provide evidence-based information for the government, researchers, and policymakers on menstrual hygiene management using mobile health technology. CONCLUSION: mHealth education can be posited as a significant tool for increasing knowledge and practices related to menstrual hygiene management in rural regions of Bangladesh.

DOI： 10.7759/cureus.52157

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

Aim: Malnutrition and infectious diseases, such as helminthic infections, are widespread among primary school children, especially in low- and middle-income countries. However, there are limited studies on school health in Bangladesh, particularly in rural settings. This study aimed to explore the nutritional status and prevalence of helminthic infections in relation to associated health behavior, awareness, and knowledge regarding malnutrition and helminthic infections which were evaluated by school nurses among primary school children in Bangladesh. Methods: This was a descriptive, cross-sectional survey study with a total duration of 1 month, from September to October, 2021. This study formed part of a school nurse project as a cluster non-randomized clinical trial in Bangladesh. Selected variables from that clinical trial were analyzed and reported in the results section. The study participants were primary school children from four schools in rural Bangladesh. Results: In total, 604 children participated in the baseline survey and health checkups. Among them, 163 (27.0&#37;) children were classified as malnourished according to the World Health Organization growth reference standard 2007. The prevalence of helminthic infections was 53 (8.8&#37;). Approximately >50&#37; of the children responded that they never/rarely practiced hygiene-related behaviors and had no awareness and knowledge regarding malnutrition and helminthic infections. However, differences between the variables were not statistically significant. Conclusion: Children's nutritional status and prevalence of helminthic infections with related deprived health behaviors, and minimal awareness and knowledge, reinforce the importance of implementing educational interventions in the future.

DOI： 10.1111/jjns.12568

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

Portable medical sensors play an important role in healthcare services, especially in rural communities. Many telehealth systems use these devices for providing patients' vital information from a distance to remote doctors. Erroneous data will not only mislead the remote doctor for correct diagnosis but it will cause health threats to these unreached community people. Therefore, it is very important to identify good sensors with an acceptable level of accuracy but within the affordable price of the available sensors in the market. This study aims to identify quality portable cholesterol sensors with high accuracy with the reference of the Japanese clinical pathology laboratory as a gold standard. We have considered cholesterol sensors that measure total cholesterol for this study that are commonly used in the developing countries of Asia. We found that out of four, three of them were very much erroneous and cannot be recommended even for primary healthcare.

DOI： 10.3233/SHTI230977

Language：English  

Language：Others  

Abstract: Machine learning has become a powerful tool to assist humans in making decisions. In most cases, machine learning models act like a black box, a user can only view the outcome without knowing the decision-making process or the deciding factors. Explainable AI has shown good performance in interpreting prediction models and identifying the influential parameters behind the prediction/decision. Our previous works have been analyzing health checkup data collected by a digital healthcare system, called Portable Health Clinic (PHC), developed by us. The system uses a standard logic set based on WHO recommendations to triage the health status of a patient. The triage used in PHC is almost a static standard logic set that works for any patient at any age. We argue that the triage logic should vary from person to person. This paper attempts to use explainable AI to check whether triage could be personalized. An experiment has been carried out over a health check-up data set (N = 44,460), by applying XGBoost, a popular machine learning algorithm to predict a patient’s health status (risky or not risky). An eXplainable AI (XAI) technique called SHAP is used to explain the prediction results. The SHAP value clearly indicates that each health parameter (BMI, Blood Pressure, hemoglobin, etc.) has different cut-off points for different age groups, which suggests that the threshold to determine one’s health status is different and can be obtained. The results will be useful to improve the existing triage static logic. This paper demonstrates cut-off points for BMI and Blood Pressure (Systolic) for two age groups which is an indication of group triage. Our future work will search for the individual cut-off point for developing personalized triage. The obtained cut-off points need to be verified by health professionals.

DOI： 10.1007/978-3-031-34586-9_33

Other Link： https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-34586-9_33

Language：Others  

Poverty, Rurality and Disability are three major vulnerabilities to deliver quality healthcare services and ensure universal healthcare coverage (UHC). Disruptive technologies and a social business model can deliver healthcare services to non-UHC communities in a faster, affordable and sustainable manner. This chapter of the book investigates the status of UHC in Bangladesh, categorizing out of coverage communities. Kyushu University and Grameen Communications have developed an affordable, user-friendly, and sustainable digital healthcare delivery system, which we call Portable Health Clinic (PHC). A community-based micro healthcare entrepreneur can take the PHC to visit an elderly person, pregnant woman, or person with disability at their doorstep, and provide real-time primary health services connected to licensed healthcare professionals. Annual health checkups are a long-standing institutional practice in Japan, but not as prevalent in emerging countries including Bangladesh. Small organizations cannot afford a health center at their premises, thereby remaining out of coverage of healthcare services. Health insurance is not prevalent, which exposes not only well-being but savings or assets to risk in catastrophic situations. Regular health checkups are known to provide an early alert of any diseases, which can reduce health risks, save medical costs and increase productivity. We categorize five different rural and urban communities in which PHC pilot studies have been carried out over the last 12 years. We have designed five different delivery models and evaluated their financial sustainability, as well as social impact. This chapter describes this experience and identifies major challenges with the purpose of ensuring that UHC approaches can assimilate advanced technologies, mainstream them in national healthcare policy in the country, and train healthcare workers.

DOI： 10.1007/978-981-19-8171-5_3

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

Background

Ensuring an appropriate continuum of care in maternal, newborn, and child health, as well as providing nutrition care, is challenging in remote areas. To make care accessible for mothers and infants, we developed a telehealth care system called Portable Health Clinic for Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health.

Objective

Our study will examine the telehealth care system’s effectiveness in improving women’s and infants’ care uptake and detecting their health problems.

Methods

A quasi-experimental study will be conducted in rural Bangladesh. Villages will be allocated to the intervention and control areas. Pregnant women (≥16 gestational weeks) will participate together with their infants and will be followed up 1 year after delivery or birth. The intervention will include regular health checkups via the Portable Health Clinic telehealth care system, which is equipped with a series of sensors and an information system that can triage participants’ health levels based on the results of their checkups. Women and infants will receive care 4 times during the antenatal period, thrice during the postnatal period, and twice during the motherhood and childhood periods. The outcomes will be participants’ health checkup coverage, gestational and neonatal complication rates, complementary feeding rates, and health-seeking behaviors. We will use a multilevel logistic regression and a generalized estimating equation to evaluate the intervention’s effectiveness.

Results

Recruitment began in June 2020. As of June 2022, we have consented 295 mothers in the study. Data collection is expected to conclude in June 2024.

Conclusions

Our new trial will show the effectiveness and extent of using a telehealth care system to ensure an appropriate continuum of care in maternal, newborn, and child health (from the antenatal period to the motherhood and childhood periods) and improve women’s and infants’ health status.

Trial Registration

ISRCTN Registry ISRCTN44966621; https://www.isrctn.com/ISRCTN44966621

International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID)

DERR1-10.2196/41586

DOI： 10.2196/41586

Language：Others   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

Safe, affordable and comfortable transportation in a smart city can add significant social values. Absence of these features causes extra burden to females living in cities of emerging countries. Female corporate workers quit their jobs due to unsafe transport. Mothers of school going children need to chauffeur their kids to school by compromising their jobs. This paper studies the family mobility needs, their affordability, current mobility expenses and proposes a new family mobility oriented rideshare model to increase safety and comfort within their affordability. A case study has been carried out in Dhaka, Bangladesh to understand the mobility needs and the suitability of the proposed community ride share system. This papers reports the study results and discusses the opportunity of using family RDS as an alternative mode which ensure child safety while travelling alone and reduce the burden on their parents.

DOI： 10.1109/gcce56475.2022.10014272

Other Link： https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10014272

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

A doctor needs to know the patients’ medical history to investigate the root cause of symptoms. Traditionally it is done by a questionnaire at the clinic’s reception desk, or the doctor asks a series of questions to obtain a relevant medical history. An incomplete or wrong medical history affects the doctor’s decision. The challenge for a busy doctor is to obtain all the relevant medical history in a short period of time accurately and without missing any important history. Affordable clinics employ an assistant or junior doctor to sort out all the paper-based medical history and mark the important points. It increases doctors’ work performance by saving doctors time and making room for consulting more patients. But not all the small clinics can afford such assistants. This paper lists the technical requirements to develop a personal medical history visualization tool to increase doctors’ productivity.

DOI： 10.54941/ahfe1002772

Language：Others  

DOI： 10.1007/978-3-030-91237-6_43

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

BACKGROUND: A developing country like Bangladesh suffers very much from the sudden appearance of the COVID-19 pandemic due to the shortage of medical facilities for testing and follow-up treatment. The Portable Health Clinic (PHC) system has developed the COVID-19 module with a triage system for the detection of COVID-19 suspects and the follow-up of the home quarantined COVID-19 patients to reduce the workload of the limited medical facilities. METHODS: The PHC COVID-19 system maintains a questionnaire-based triage function using the experience of the Japanese practice of diseases management for early detection of suspected COVID-19 patients who may need a confirmation test. Then only the highly suspected patients go for testing preventing the unnecessary crowd from the confirmation PCR test centers and hospitals. Like the basic PHC system, it also has the features for patients' treatment and follow-up for the home quarantined COVID-19 positive and suspect patients using a telemedicine system. This COVID-19 system service box contains 4 self-checking medical sensors, namely, (1) thermometer, (2) pulse oximeter, (3) blood pressure machine, and (4) glucometer for patient's health monitoring including a tablet PC installed with COVID-19 system application for communication between patient and doctor for tele-consultancy. RESULTS: This study conducted a COVID-19 triage among 300 villagers and identified 220 green, 45 light-yellow, 2 yellow, 30 orange, and 3 red patients. Besides the 3 red patients, the call center doctors also referred another 13 patients out of the 30 orange patients to health facilities for PCR tests as suspect COVID-19 positive, and to go under their follow-up. Out of these (3 + 13 =) 16 patients, only 4 went for PCR test and 3 of them had been tested positive. The remaining orange, yellow and light-yellow patients were advised home quarantine under the follow-up of the PHC health workers and got cured in 1-2 weeks. CONCLUSIONS: This system can contribute to the community healthcare system by ensuring quality service to the suspected and 80&#37; or more tested COVID-19 positive patients who are usually in the moderate or mild state and do not need to be hospitalized. The PHC COVID-19 system provides services maintaining social distance for preventing infection and ensuring clinical safety for both the patients and the health workers.

DOI： 10.1016/j.cmpbup.2022.100061

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)  

Rural women in developing countries do not have any option but to visit the distant city to see the obstetricians and gynecologists in case of any maternal and child health issues. However, it becomes more difficult to travel during the COVID-19 pandemic situation. Thus, the telehealth service using the Portable Health Clinic can be very effective for maternal and child health care services. Since the PHC system provides home delivery services through the local health workers, the rural women can avail regular continuum of care services. This study found a 300&#37; increase in participation in the continuum of care. This is not because they receive the service at home but also because they can receive consultancy from urban specialist doctors without travel during the pandemic situation.

DOI： 10.3233/SHTI220700

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

CONTEXT: Telepathology is a promising tool for remote communities to receive pathology services where professional diagnosis services are inadequate. AIMS: We aimed to clarify how effective telepathology was when compared with conventional pathology service among rural communities of Bangladesh. METHODS AND MATERIALS: We conducted a cross-sectional study in suburban and rural areas of Bangladesh between June and August 2020. We enrolled 117 participants who received both telepathology services from Thakurgaon Eye Hospital and conventional pathology service experience. The participant's satisfaction with the accessibility and perceptions were statistically compared. In addition, we summarized descriptive statistics using the frequencies and percentages of participants' responses. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS USED: Wilcoxon's Signed-rank test using SPSS statistic software version 25.00. RESULTS: Among the study participants, service cost, travel cost, travel time, waiting time, and travel distance were significantly higher for conventional pathology than telepathology (P < 0.001). The majority of participants (94&#37;) were satisfied with the telepathology experience; however, one out of 117 participants was dissatisfied with this service when their travel distance was far away (≥50 km). Among the participants, 91.5&#37; thought that telepathology service was effective for their treatment, and 98.3&#37; wanted to continue this service in their community. On an average, participants saved 58&#37; (95&#37; CI, 53.4-61.5) of cost using telepathology rather than conventional pathology service. CONCLUSIONS: Remote under-resourced communities received professional pathology services with less time-consuming and significantly lower costs using the telepathology approach. Where pathology services are absent/insufficient, telepathology is efficacious for primary diagnosis, screening, and referral through professional pathologists for the satisfactory treatment of unreached communities.

DOI： 10.4103/jfmpc.jfmpc_1876_21

Language：English  

A personal health record (PHR) is not only a collection of personal health data but also a personal healthcare and disease management tool for individual patients. Recently, PHRs have been considered indispensable tools for patient engagement in the area of noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) and have gained a special importance. Unfortunately, similar to several other developing countries, Bangladesh remains far behind in establishing a standard PHR system for the country despite the fact that the growth of NCDs is extremely high and accounts for approximately 70&#37; of the total diseases experienced in the country. The Portable Health Clinic system, which has a PHR feature, was established in Bangladesh in 2010. This PHR system requires standardization for each country. The objective of this research is to standardize this PHR system with reference to the PHR system proposed by the Japanese Clinical Societies, which is a pioneer of work in this field in Asia.

DOI： 10.3233/shti220053

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

The coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic has widely spread worldwide since 2020. Several countries have imposed lockdown or stay-at-home policies to prevent the infection. Bangladesh experienced a lockdown from March 2020 to May 2020, and internal travel was restricted. Such long and strict confinement may impact women's health. Herein, we aimed to assess the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on women's health by comparing their health status before and during the pandemic. We conducted a prospective longitudinal study in two zones in the Chhaygaon union, rural district Shariatpur, Bangladesh. The study population comprised non-pregnant women aged 15-49 years. We visited the household of all eligible women and invited them for health checkups. The survey staff examined their health status at the checkup camps and conducted questionnaire interviews. In total, 121 non-pregnant women received health checkups both from June 2019 to July 2019 and in October 2020, before and during the COVID-19 pandemic, respectively. Compared with those during the 2019 health checkup, the medians of body mass index, systolic blood pressure, and diastolic blood pressure were significantly higher (22.7 kg/m2 to 23.6 kg/m2; 110.0 mmHg to 111.0 mmHg; and 73.0 mmHg to 75.0 mmHg, respectively, p<0.05) during the 2020 health checkup. In contrast, urine glucose levels were significantly lower (10.1&#37; to 3.4&#37;, p = 0.021). The lack of physical activity and other inconvenience accumulation caused by the prolonged confinement might have affected their health status. This necessitates local health workers to promote physical activity to prevent health deterioration during the pandemic.

DOI： 10.1371/journal.pone.0266141

Language：Others   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

It is essential for a doctor to know a patient's medical history to make an accurate clinical decision, preferably in a short period of time. Most of the patients' medical histories are in analog forms and it is difficult for a doctor to search and find the appropriate information quickly. A doctor-friendly healthcare data visualization tool can assist a doctor in better understanding the patient's status in an accurate and quick manner. Collection, integration, and visualization of personal health data in a standard manner became technically easier due to the rapid advancement of information technologies. The objective of this research is to investigate the state-of-the-art medical history visualization tools that can support doctors. We have reviewed 25 academic papers and found 8 tools are relevant to our objective. We summarised their key features, visualization items, and mechanisms, and listed their limitations. This paper also proposes a unique visualization tool where an individual patient's medical history will be visualized in a single health Gantt chart window and the doctor can get relevant information to ensure efficient decision-making.

DOI： 10.1109/LifeTech53646.2022.9754925

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

An online cursive handwritten medical words recognition system for busy doctors in developing countries for ensuring efficient healthcare service delivery
Abstract

Doctors in developing countries are too busy to write digital prescriptions. Ninety-seven percent of Bangladeshi doctors write handwritten prescriptions, the majority of which lack legibility. Prescriptions are harder to read as they contain multiple languages. This paper proposes a machine learning approach to recognize doctors’ handwriting to create digital prescriptions. A ‘Handwritten Medical Term Corpus’ dataset is developed containing 17,431 samples of 480 medical terms. In order to improve the recognition efficiency, this paper introduces a data augmentation technique to widen the variety and increase the sample size. A sequence of line data is extracted from the augmented images of 1,591,100 samples and fed to a Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) network. Data augmentation includes pattern Rotating, Shifting, and Stretching (RSS). Eight different combinations are applied to evaluate the strength of the proposed method. The result shows 93.0&#37; average accuracy (max: 94.5&#37;, min: 92.1&#37;) using Bidirectional LSTM and RSS data augmentation. This accuracy is 19.6&#37; higher than the recognition result with no data expansion. The proposed handwritten recognition technology can be installed in a smartpen for busy doctors which will recognize the writings and digitize them in real-time. It is expected that the smartpen will contribute to reduce medical errors, save medical costs and ensure healthy living in developing countries.

DOI： 10.1038/s41598-022-07571-z

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)  

The number of deaths of a mother and child caused by maternal and child healthcare (MCH) issues has been greatly decreased recently, but still, the number is extremely high especially in developing countries. Although the governments have been given a priority in this issue, the lack of financial and human resources brings a limit. Thus, the use of low-cost but appropriate technology is required. Portable Health Clinic (PHC), a telemedicine system developed for providing primary healthcare, is such a technology. This study aimed to address this MCH issue with the aid of a low-cost PHC service involving a continuum-of-care protocol to the rural communities of Bangladesh. Moreover, this study introduces a triage protocol to distinguish high-risk patients from the early stage of the continuum of care who need special care and refer to specialized physicians to prevent unwanted deaths.

DOI： 10.3233/SHTI210684

Language：Others   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

This study aims to investigate the best method for imputing missing values in remote healthcare data set. Missing value means an empty field in a health record. It may occur for three major reasons- (i) the parameter was not measured (ii) measured but not recorded and (iii) lost during communications. Our case study, Portable Health Clinic (PHC) data has been collected from multiple regions, by different authorities in different time. PHC data contains manual errors too. Missing and erroneous data are problematic for data analysis and for making accurate predictions. Hence, it is necessary to detect and eliminate error data and also fill the empty fields. Missing value imputation methods are widely known for processing numerical data. PHC data has both numerical and categorical data which makes it difficult to impute. We came up with a new data processing mechanism to feed into existing machine learning algorithm. To test our idea, we used a complete PHC data set (numerical only) without any missing values. Then we generated missing values by randomly erasing a part of the data set. We used several existing imputation methods and our proposed method on the same target data set to compare their performances. It is found that the Mean Imputer, kNN and MissForest are not effective. Iterative Imputer predicted best in 7 features and ours in 4 cases. Therefore, it can be concluded that the effectiveness of imputation methods may vary depending on the specific data set and features. Our future work is to include the categorical data and monitor the performance.

DOI： 10.1109/jac-ecc54461.2021.9691308

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

Background and objective: Regular health checkups are important for mothers and newborns to detect health problems at an early stage; however, this is often difficult in resource-limited settings. Therefore, the portable health clinic (PHC) for maternal and child health (MCH), a telemedicine health checkup system, was introduced as an intervention study in a rural area in Bangladesh. The aim of this research project was to report findings that we had observed at a mid-point of the intervention period. Methods: This was an intervention study conducted in Shariatpur, Bangladesh. The study population included pregnant/parturient women aged 15–49 years and their newborns. With the help of the newly created PHC for MCH, health workers, with a set of sensor devices in an attaché case, visited mothers and newborns at home to examine their health status. Their health status was triaged into four categories using a data management application, and in cases of affected or emergent health status, they were placed on remote video consultation with a doctor. Results: In total, 94 women were included in the PHC for MCH intervention. The rate of participants who received antenatal care at least four times or postnatal care at least once increased (from 29&#37; to 51&#37;, and from 27&#37; to 78&#37;, respectively) compared with before introducing PHC for MCH. Using the PHC for MCH, we detected health problems in pregnant/parturient women; a relatively high percentage had anemia (45–54&#37;) and/or abnormal pulse rate (20–40&#37;). Moreover, after introducing the PHC for MCH, more than 40&#37; of women who received multiple antenatal care or postnatal care checkups improved their health status. Conclusions: The PHC for MCH could be an effective system to improve the health of mothers and newborns by increasing the availability of care. In the future, this system is expected to be used as a primary resource for maternity healthcare, not only in rural areas but also in other social environments.

DOI： 10.1016/j.cmpb.2021.106156

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

Background and objective
Regular health checkups are important for mothers and newborns to detect health problems at an early stage; however, this is often difficult in resource-limited settings. Therefore, the portable health clinic (PHC) for maternal and child health (MCH), a telemedicine health checkup system, was introduced as an intervention study in a rural area in Bangladesh. The aim of this research project was to report findings that we had observed at a mid-point of the intervention period.

Methods
This was an intervention study conducted in Shariatpur, Bangladesh. The study population included pregnant/parturient women aged 15–49 years and their newborns. With the help of the newly created PHC for MCH, health workers, with a set of sensor devices in an attaché case, visited mothers and newborns at home to examine their health status. Their health status was triaged into four categories using a data management application, and in cases of affected or emergent health status, they were placed on remote video consultation with a doctor.

Results
In total, 94 women were included in the PHC for MCH intervention. The rate of participants who received antenatal care at least four times or postnatal care at least once increased (from 29% to 51%, and from 27% to 78%, respectively) compared with before introducing PHC for MCH. Using the PHC for MCH, we detected health problems in pregnant/parturient women; a relatively high percentage had anemia (45–54%) and/or abnormal pulse rate (20–40%). Moreover, after introducing the PHC for MCH, more than 40% of women who received multiple antenatal care or postnatal care checkups improved their health status.

Conclusions
The PHC for MCH could be an effective system to improve the health of mothers and newborns by increasing the availability of care. In the future, this system is expected to be used as a primary resource for maternity healthcare, not only in rural areas but also in other social environments.

DOI： 10.1016/j.cmpb.2021.106156

Other Link： https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0169260721002303

Language：English  

Decision Science for Future Earth: A Conceptual Framework
The purpose of this chapter is to review progress in our understanding of human behavior and decision-making relevant to future earth research agenda, and propose Decision Science as a hub of knowledge networks connecting disciplinary and interdisciplinary sciences with the practice of problem-solving. This review is composed of four sections. First, we describe the conceptual framework of “decision science for a sustainable society” and argue that evolutionary biology of the human nature is key to construct this framework. Second, we review how our group decision-making often fails due to various cognitive biases and argue that participatory approaches of co-design and co-production do not guarantee reasonable decision-making. Third, we review success stories of problem-solving in local communities and consider how we can connect those successes in local communities to successful national and global decision-making. Fourth, learning from both failures and successes, we argue that the adaptive learning of society is a process enabling us to transform our society toward a sustainable future. We review some positive global trends toward sustainability and consider the cognitive processes and behavioral mechanisms behind those trends that would provide clues for finding successful ways to transform our society.

DOI： 10.1007/978-981-15-8632-3_1

Language：Others   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

Inability to read doctors' handwritten prescriptions causes 7, 000 deaths a year in a developed country like the US. The situation should be worse in developing countries where more doctors use handwriting prescriptions. In Bangladesh, the writings become more indecipherable as they contain both English and Bangla words with Latin abbreviations of medical terms. As a result, patients and pharmacists find them difficult to read and the pharmacists provide wrong medicines. In order to ease the difficulty of reading doctors' prescriptions, this paper proposes an online handwritten recognition system to predict the doctors' handwriting and develop a digital prescription. To build this system, the 'Handwritten Medical Term Corpus' dataset is introduced which contains 17, 431 data samples of 480 words (360 English and 120 Bangla) from 39 Bangladeshi doctors and medical professionals. A bigger sample size can improve the recognition efficiency. A new data augmentation technique SRP (Stroke Rotation and Parallel shift) method is proposed to widen the variety of handwriting styles and increase the sample size. A sequence of line data is extracted from the augmented image dataset of 1, 591, 100 samples which is fed to a Bidirectional LSTM model. The proposed method has achieved 89.5&#37; accuracy which is 16.1&#37; higher than the recognition accuracy with no data expansion. This technology can reduce medical errors and save medical cost and ensure healthy living.

DOI： 10.1109/TEMSCON-EUR52034.2021.9488622

Language：Others   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

Poverty, Rurality and Disability are the three major burdens in achieving Universal Healthcare Coverage (UHC). The advent of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and remote healthcare systems play a significant role to reach the unreached communities and are addressing rurality and poverty issues. However, the persons with disability (PWDs), especially the speech and hearing impaired people find it difficult to participate in remote healthcare systems as they cannot communicate with a remote doctor. A design of a 'Sign Language Transformer (SLT)' has been introduced in this paper for the patients who know sign languages to establish a communication with a remote doctor who cannot interpret such signs. The primary function of this SLT is to recognize the signs/gestures from video images and translate them into both text and speech (SLTT), and to translate doctor's speech into sign language (STSL). Sign representation of words and sentences requires hand gesture, movement, and orientation. Several technologies such as the two-stream CNN, the two-stream 3D CNN, the LSTM, the 3DCNN+ ConvLSTM, the 3D CNN and the 3D CNN + LSTM are commonly used techniques to recognize human gestures. The proposed SLT model will evaluate the performances of these technologies to transform the Bangla Sign Language and to recommend the suitable technology for designing a sign language transformer.

DOI： 10.1109/TEMSCON-EUR52034.2021.9488605

Language：Others  

Poor healthcare infrastructure is the main barrier for providing quality healthcare services to rural communities in developing countries. Thus, these populations remain unreached, and there is a need to establish a method for ensuring the provision of appropriate and adequate healthcare services to these individuals. The portable health clinic (PHC) system has been developed as an effective telemedicine system to meet this objective. A trained village health worker can use this simple system for collecting vital information of the patient, upload the data to the online server, and connect village patients with a remote doctor to enable the provision of online consultancy using video conferencing. Although the PHC was initially developed to ensure primary healthcare service with a focus on noncommunicable diseases, a major cause of death, gradually, tele-pathology, tele-eye care, maternal and child health care, and COVID-19 care modules have been added to provide special treatment in these areas as per local needs. The modular PHC system will continue to grow with the addition of novel features that aim to address the local needs. The low-cost and easy operation of the PHC system make it ideal for ensuring global health coverage in communities where inadequate medical facilities and poor-quality healthcare resources remain major issues.

DOI： 10.3233/SHTI210028

Language：English  

DOI： 10.15017/4400024

Language：English  

DOI： 10.15017/4400022

Language：English  

DOI： 10.15017/4400016

Language：English  

DOI： 10.15017/4400023

Language：English  

DOI： 10.15017/4400025

Language：English  

DOI： 10.15017/4400020

Language：Others   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

It is reported that since 2016 there are over sixty thousand diagnosed cases of Leukemia in the United States of America alone. It also suggests that Leukemia is the most common type of cancer seen in the age of twenty. Although the study is based on a Western country, it is equally alarming for an Asian country like Bangladesh where healthcare system is not up to the standard. Researches show that the Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia has about 83% five-year long survival rates. This paper focuses on Acute Lymphocytic Leukemia (ALL) as this is the most common type of Leukemia in Bangladesh. It is common knowledge among oncologists, that cancer is much easier to treat if it is detected in the early stages. Thus the treatment needs to begin as early as possible. We propose a hands-on approach in detecting the irregular blood components (e.g., Neutrophils, Eosinophils, Basophils, Lymphocytes and Monocytes) that are typically found in a cancer patient. In this work, we first identify 14 attributes to prepare the dataset and determine 4 major attributes that play a significant role in determining a Leukemia patient. We have also collected 256 primary data from Leukemia patient. The data is then processed using microscope to obtain images and fetch into Faster-RCNN machine learning algorithm to predict the odds of cancer cells forming. Here we have applied two loss functions to both the RPN (Region Convolutional Neural Network) model and the classifier model to detect the similar blood object. After identifying the object, we have calculated the corresponding object and based on the count of the corresponding object we finally detect Leukemia. The mean average precision observed are 0.10, 0.16 and 0, where the epochs are 40, 60 and 120, respectively.

DOI： 10.1109/TENCON50793.2020.9293925

Language：Others   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

Corporate employees like to save the time they spend commuting to work. However, public transport in many emerging cities is not scheduled. Only big enterprises can afford scheduled staff buses. Rideshare services (e.g., Uber, Lyft, Pathao) can be a good alternative but are not affordable for every individual. This study aims to design a group rideshare service as a sustainable alternative for potential employees. For that purpose, it is important to know their commuting pattern. A survey was carried out on 314 employees of 20 Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) working in one office complex. This paper reports their current travel pattern in terms of distance, cost, time, and mode of transportations to measure their potentiality to use a group rideshare service uniquely designed for a work commute. This paper recommends that employees living within a distance of 2.5–15 km, currently using motorized vehicle for their work commute, who can spend &#36;40 USD a month for work commute and agree to a mutually-determined commuting schedule are the most fitting potential users for an effective and financially sustainable rideshare service for the studied community. The same methodology can be used to obtain the potential ride share users to design a ride share model for other similar communities.

DOI： 10.3390/su122410337

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

We co-create networking solutions, called AsthaNet, to connect disconnected rural communities with global resources. AsthaNet combines a bundle of modern technologies, e.g., variant of ferry-assisted-delay tolerant network (DTN) with TCP/IP, content delivery network (CDN), disconnected internet of things (IoT), etc. AsthaNet provides autonomous solutions to serve information demand, which re-invents networking among rural communities (especially technically-less sound people) to enjoy quality localised contents with different dialects/accents. For socio-economic development of these communities through humanitarian technology, AsthaNet adopts the concepts of people's empowerment of Sir Fazle Hasan Abed, and people's development as freedom of Amartya Sen. As a result of this humanitarian technology-based development, AsthaNet becomes the perfect blend of knowledge society to connect the disconnected rural communities to develop with freedom to empower.

DOI： 10.1504/IJHT.2020.112457

Other Link： https://www.inderscienceonline.com/doi/abs/10.1504/IJHT.2020.112457

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

Corporate employees like to save the time they spend commuting to work. However, public transport in many emerging cities is not scheduled. Only big enterprises can afford scheduled staff buses. Rideshare services (e.g., Uber, Lyft, Pathao) can be a good alternative but are not affordable for every individual. This study aims to design a group rideshare service as a sustainable alternative for potential employees. For that purpose, it is important to know their commuting pattern. A survey was carried out on 314 employees of 20 Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) working in one office complex. This paper reports their current travel pattern in terms of distance, cost, time, and mode of transportations to measure their potentiality to use a group rideshare service uniquely designed for a work commute. This paper recommends that employees living within a distance of 2.5–15 km, currently using motorized vehicle for their work commute, who can spend $40 USD a month for work commute and agree to a mutually-determined commuting schedule are the most fitting potential users for an effective and financially sustainable rideshare service for the studied community. The same methodology can be used to obtain the potential ride share users to design a ride share model for other similar communities.

DOI： 10.3390/su122410337

Other Link： https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/12/24/10337

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

Machine Learning (ML) is becoming tremendously important to improve the performance of remote healthcare systems. Portable health clinic (PHC), a remote healthcare system contains a triage function that classifies the patients in two major groups - (a)healthy and (b)unhealthy. Unhealthy patients require regular health checkups. This paper aims to predict the status of the registered patients to decide the follow-up date and frequency. Health management cost can be reduced by decreasing the number of follow-up frequency. We carried out an experiment on 271 corporate members and monitored their health status in every three months and collected four phases of data. The data records contain clinical data, socio-demographical data, dietary behavior data. However, most of the machine learning algorithms can not directly work with categorical data. Several encoding techniques are available which can also enhance the prediction performance. In this paper, We applied three encoding techniques and proposed a new encoding approach to handle categorical variables. The result shows that Random Forest Classifier performs the best with 95.33% accuracy. A comparison chart displaying the performance of eight different supervised learning algorithms in terms of three existing encoding mechanisms is reported.

DOI： 10.1109/ICAICT51780.2020.9333506

Other Link： https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9333506

Language：Others   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

Machine Learning (ML) is becoming tremendously important to improve the performance of remote healthcare systems. Portable health clinic (PHC), a remote healthcare system contains a triage function that classifies the patients in two major groups - (a)healthy and (b)unhealthy. Unhealthy patients require regular health checkups. This paper aims to predict the status of the registered patients to decide the follow-up date and frequency. Health management cost can be reduced by decreasing the number of follow-up frequency. We carried out an experiment on 271 corporate members and monitored their health status in every three months and collected four phases of data. The data records contain clinical data, socio-demographical data, dietary behavior data. However, most of the machine learning algorithms can not directly work with categorical data. Several encoding techniques are available which can also enhance the prediction performance. In this paper, We applied three encoding techniques and proposed a new encoding approach to handle categorical variables. The result shows that Random Forest Classifier performs the best with 95.33&#37; accuracy. A comparison chart displaying the performance of eight different supervised learning algorithms in terms of three existing encoding mechanisms is reported.

DOI： 10.1109/ICAICT51780.2020.9333506

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

Blood Uric Acid Prediction With Machine Learning: Model Development and Performance Comparison
Background: Uric acid is associated with noncommunicable diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, chronic kidney disease, coronary artery disease, stroke, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, vascular dementia, and hypertension. Therefore, uric acid is considered to be a risk factor for the development of noncommunicable diseases. Most studies on uric acid have been performed in developed countries, and the application of machine-learning approaches in uric acid prediction in developing countries is rare. Different machine-learning algorithms will work differently on different types of data in various diseases; therefore, a different investigation is needed for different types of data to identify the most accurate algorithms. Specifically, no study has yet focused on the urban corporate population in Bangladesh, despite the high risk of developing noncommunicable diseases for this population. Objective: The aim of this study was to develop a model for predicting blood uric acid values based on basic health checkup test results, dietary information, and sociodemographic characteristics using machine-learning algorithms. The prediction of health checkup test measurements can be very helpful to reduce health management costs. Methods: Various machine-learning approaches were used in this study because clinical input data are not completely independent and exhibit complex interactions. Conventional statistical models have limitations to consider these complex interactions, whereas machine learning can consider all possible interactions among input data. We used boosted decision tree regression, decision forest regression, Bayesian linear regression, and linear regression to predict personalized blood uric acid based on basic health checkup test results, dietary information, and sociodemographic characteristics. We evaluated the performance of these five widely used machine-learning models using data collected from 271 employees in the Grameen Bank complex of Dhaka, Bangladesh. Results: The mean uric acid level was 6.63 mg/dL, indicating a borderline result for the majority of the sample (normal range <7.0 mg/dL). Therefore, these individuals should be monitoring their uric acid regularly. The boosted decision tree regression model showed the best performance among the models tested based on the root mean squared error of 0.03, which is also better than that of any previously reported model. Conclusions: A uric acid prediction model was developed based on personal characteristics, dietary information, and some basic health checkup measurements. This model will be useful for improving awareness among high-risk individuals and populations, which can help to save medical costs. A future study could include additional features (eg, work stress, daily physical activity, alcohol intake, eating red meat) in improving prediction.

DOI： 10.2196/18331

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

Background:
Uric acid is associated with noncommunicable diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, chronic kidney disease, coronary artery disease, stroke, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, vascular dementia, and hypertension. Therefore, uric acid is considered to be a risk factor for the development of noncommunicable diseases. Most studies on uric acid have been performed in developed countries, and the application of machine-learning approaches in uric acid prediction in developing countries is rare. Different machine-learning algorithms will work differently on different types of data in various diseases; therefore, a different investigation is needed for different types of data to identify the most accurate algorithms. Specifically, no study has yet focused on the urban corporate population in Bangladesh, despite the high risk of developing noncommunicable diseases for this population.

Objective:
The aim of this study was to develop a model for predicting blood uric acid values based on basic health checkup test results, dietary information, and sociodemographic characteristics using machine-learning algorithms. The prediction of health checkup test measurements can be very helpful to reduce health management costs.

Methods:
Various machine-learning approaches were used in this study because clinical input data are not completely independent and exhibit complex interactions. Conventional statistical models have limitations to consider these complex interactions, whereas machine learning can consider all possible interactions among input data. We used boosted decision tree regression, decision forest regression, Bayesian linear regression, and linear regression to predict personalized blood uric acid based on basic health checkup test results, dietary information, and sociodemographic characteristics. We evaluated the performance of these five widely used machine-learning models using data collected from 271 employees in the Grameen Bank complex of Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Results:
The mean uric acid level was 6.63 mg/dL, indicating a borderline result for the majority of the sample (normal range <7.0 mg/dL). Therefore, these individuals should be monitoring their uric acid regularly. The boosted decision tree regression model showed the best performance among the models tested based on the root mean squared error of 0.03, which is also better than that of any previously reported model.

Conclusions:
A uric acid prediction model was developed based on personal characteristics, dietary information, and some basic health checkup measurements. This model will be useful for improving awareness among high-risk individuals and populations, which can help to save medical costs. A future study could include additional features (eg, work stress, daily physical activity, alcohol intake, eating red meat) in improving prediction.

DOI： 10.2196/18331

Other Link： https://medinform.jmir.org/2020/10/e18331

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

Medical staff carry an inordinate risk of infection from patients, and many doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers are affected by COVID-19 worldwide. The unreached communities with noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) such as chronic cardiovascular, respiratory, endocrine, digestive, or renal diseases became more vulnerable during this pandemic situation. In both cases, Remote Healthcare Systems (RHS) may help minimize the risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission. This study used the WHO guidelines and Design Science Research (DSR) framework to redesign the Portable Health Clinic (PHC), an RHS, for the containment of the spread of COVID-19 as well as proposed corona logic (C-Logic) for the main symptoms of COVID-19. Using the distributed service platform of PHC, a trained healthcare worker with appropriate testing kits can screen high-risk individuals and can help optimize triage to medical services. PHC with its new triage algorithm (C-Logic) classifies the patients according to whether the patient needs to move to a clinic for a PCR test. Through modified PHC service, we can help people to boost their knowledge, attitude (feelings/beliefs), and self-efficacy to execute preventing measures. Our initial examination of the suitability of the PHC and its associated technologies as a key contributor to public health responses is designed to “flatten the curve”, particularly among unreached high-risk NCD populations in developing countries. Theoretically, this study contributes to design science research by introducing a modified healthcare providing model.

DOI： 10.3390/ijerph17134709

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

Personal Health Record (PHR) is not just the collection of personal health data but also a personal healthcare and disease management tool for the individual patient as well as a communication tool with the medical staff. Moreover, recently PHR has been considered an indispensable tool for patient engagement in the area of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and has gained importance. Like many other developing countries, the growth of NCDs is very high in Bangladesh. Portable Health Clinic (PHC) system has been developed there with a focus on NCDs and PHR is there from the beginning. This study for the standardization of PHR system of PHC with the reference of the PHR proposed by Japanese Clinical Societies could be a reference work for the national PHR system development in the country.

DOI： 10.3233/SHTI200435

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)  

Personal Health Record (PHR) is not just the collection of personal health data but also a personal healthcare and disease management tool for the individual patient as well as a communication tool with the medical staff. Moreover, recently PHR has been considered an indispensable tool for patient engagement in the area of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and has gained importance. Like many other developing countries, the growth of NCDs is very high in Bangladesh. Portable Health Clinic (PHC) system has been developed there with a focus on NCDs and PHR is there from the beginning. This study for the standardization of PHR system of PHC with the reference of the PHR proposed by Japanese Clinical Societies could be a reference work for the national PHR system development in the country.

DOI： 10.3233/SHTI200435

Language：English  

Redesigning portable health clinic platform as a remote healthcare system to tackle COVID-19 pandemic situation in unreached communities
Medical staff carry an inordinate risk of infection from patients, and many doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers are affected by COVID-19 worldwide. The unreached communities with noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) such as chronic cardiovascular, respiratory, endocrine, digestive, or renal diseases became more vulnerable during this pandemic situation. In both cases, Remote Healthcare Systems (RHS) may help minimize the risk of SARS-CoV-2 transmission. This study used the WHO guidelines and Design Science Research (DSR) framework to redesign the Portable Health Clinic (PHC), an RHS, for the containment of the spread of COVID-19 as well as proposed corona logic (C-Logic) for the main symptoms of COVID-19. Using the distributed service platform of PHC, a trained healthcare worker with appropriate testing kits can screen high-risk individuals and can help optimize triage to medical services. PHC with its new triage algorithm (C-Logic) classifies the patients according to whether the patient needs to move to a clinic for a PCR test. Through modified PHC service, we can help people to boost their knowledge, attitude (feelings/beliefs), and self-efficacy to execute preventing measures. Our initial examination of the suitability of the PHC and its associated technologies as a key contributor to public health responses is designed to “flatten the curve”, particularly among unreached high-risk NCD populations in developing countries. Theoretically, this study contributes to design science research by introducing a modified healthcare providing model.

DOI： 10.3390/ijerph17134709

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

Introduction: New methods and tools in healthcare sector are growing gradually due to the continuing innovation in medicine and technologies. Health care technology system adoption varies among health care professionals (doctors, nurses), patients, and potential users. Therefore, for increasing number of technologies in the health care field, the use of technology acceptance model is needed to guide implementation process across health care contexts and user groups. Therefore, understanding and creating the conditions under which information system will be grasped by human remains a high priority research issue of information systems research and practice. Moreover, due to the scarcity of medical infrastructure including doctors and hospitals, remote healthcare services by using advanced Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is getting popular around the world. Due to potential benefits and the various eHealth initiatives in place, many recent studies have been done to enhance acceptance of eHealth services by all citizens. / Objective: Therefore, the purpose of this review is to systematically review all published studies on investigating the users' adoption of eHealth to summarize results of previous studies and to show future direction for further research. This study reviews all published research on acceptance model in e-health. / Method: This study conducted a systematic search of the web of science database and google scholar to collect studies about the adoption of eHealth technology. The author selected 19 articles to review. This literature review is conducted to identify currently available eHealth adoption framework. / Conclusion: The result showed that understanding and creating the conditions under which information system will be grasped by human is a high priority research issue of information systems research and practice. Based on the identified adoption factors in different eHealth technological context, it is suggested that the common investigated factors in the previous studies for each technological context and user group, need to be tested empirically in real settings. The confirmed factors are then recommended for apply as a basic model in each technological context and user group. / Originality: This study inform scope for future research by identifying gaps in literature in this field. To our knowledge this is the first study to systematically review to identify influencing factors, and future directions of adoption of ICT based health services.

DOI： 10.15017/4400004

Other Link： https://ci.nii.ac.jp/naid/120007032670/en

Repository Public URL： http://hdl.handle.net/2324/4485358

Language：English  

DOI： 10.15017/4400004

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

The advancement of ICT and affordability of medical sensors enable healthcare data to be obtained remotely. Remote healthcare data is erroneous in nature. Detection of errors for remote healthcare data has not been significantly studied. This research aims to design and develop a software system to detect and reduce such healthcare data errors. Enormous research efforts produced error detection algorithms, however, the detection is done at the server side after a substantial amount of data is archived. Errors can be efficiently reduced if the suspicious data can be detected at the source. We took the approach to predict acceptable range of anthropometric data of each patient. We analyzed 40,391 records to monitor the growth patterns. We plotted the anthropometric items e.g., Height, Weight, BMI, Waist and Hip size for males and females. The plots show some patterns based on different age groups. This paper reports one parameter, height of males. We found three groups that can be classified with similar growth patterns: Age group 20–49, no significant change; Age group 50–64, slightly decremented pattern; and Age group 65–100, a drastic height loss. The acceptable range can change over time. The system estimates the updated trend from new health records.

DOI： 10.3390/ijerph17051806

Language：Others   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

A Predictive Model for Height Tracking in an Adult Male Population in Bangladesh to Reduce Input Errors

DOI： 10.3390/ijerph17051806

Language：Others  

Language：Others  

Language：Others  

This edited book explores the use of mobile technologies such as phones, drones, robots, apps, and wearable monitoring devices for improving access to healthcare for socially disadvantaged populations in remote, rural or developing regions. This book brings together examples of large scale, international projects from developing regions of China and Belt and Road countries from researchers in Australia, Bangladesh, Denmark, Norway, Japan, Spain, Thailand and China. The chapters discuss the challenges presented to those seeking to deploy emerging mobile technologies (e.g., smartphones, IoT, drones, robots etc.) for healthcare (mHealth) in developing countries and discuss the solutions undertaken in these case study projects. This book brings together joint work in mHealth projects across multiple disciplines (software, healthcare, mobile communications, entrepreneurship and business and social development). Bringing together research from different institutions and disciplines, the editors illustrate the technical and entrepreneurial aspects of using mobile technologies for healthcare development in remote regions. Chapters are grouped into five key themes: the global challenge, portable health clinics, sustainable and resilient mHealth services, mHealth for the elderly, and mHealth for chronic illnesses. The book will be of particular interest to engineers, entrepreneurs, NGOs and researchers working in healthcare in sustainable development settings.

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)  

The Portable Health Clinic (PHC) system endeavors to take healthcare facilities along with remote doctors' consultancy to the doorsteps of the unreached people using an advanced telemedicine system. Thus, the necessity of having physical healthcare peripheries specially in the developing countries can be mitigated. The PHC system promotes preventive healthcare by encouraging regular health checkups so that diseases can be prevented as well as their severity can be mitigated, leading to a reduction on healthcare expenses. Thus, the number of patients along with excessive workload on existing healthcare human resources can be minimized. The current project in rural Bangladesh alone has served more than 41,000 people so far by the PHC system and a simple analysis of this data shows some significant findings on regional health status. A simple expansion of this program, covering a wider service area, can produce a big data to reflect the whole country`s health profile.

DOI： 10.3233/SHTI190296

Language：Others   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

This paper introduces a rideshare model for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and their employees for their daily commuting needs in emerging cities providing them with staff bus, SME corporate errand service, SME rental car and Holiday rental car services. The model offers a safe, more comfortable and affordable commuting service. We conducted experiment in two phases. In the first phase, we surveyed 315 employees of 20 SMEs located in Grameen Bank Complex about their traveling need and pattern. In the second phase, we designed a pilot from the gathered data and run 2 10-seat cars in two routes for 2 months with 18 participants from those SMEs. We conducted another survey end of the pilot regarding changes in travel experience while using SSW Staff bus service. We have discussed the experiment method and design and demonstrated the findings. We have also discussed affordability aspect of such ride share. SSW staff bus service is slightly expensive than local transports, but cheaper than commercial rideshare services. This service brings many benefits including adding approximately 7.7 h for work and 11.3 h for personal work s month to employees. Participants reported to enter work place with a stable mental condition when they travel by SSW Staff bus. Incidents like robbery, theft, accidents, sexual harassment could significantly be reduced.

DOI： 10.1007/978-3-030-30712-7_36

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)  

Due to the scarcity of medical infrastructure including doctors and hospitals, ICT based healthcare services is getting popular around the world including low facilities rural areas of Bangladesh. Portable Health Clinic (PHC) system is one of the ICT based healthcare systems. Speciality of this system is that the clinic box is carried and operated by a pre-trained healthcare worker. However, longitudinal study in this context wasn’t undertaken before. In order to draw strong inferences about new technology use we need to do longitudinal study. Therefore, the aim is to identify key determinants of actual use of the PHC system and to understand how their influence changes over time with increasing experience to explain detailed action sequences that might unfold over time. Face to face survey will be conducted to collect data. Structural Equation Modeling will be used to analyze data. By analyzing data using AMOS 25.0 this study will identify most important time that are key to increase actual use of the PHC system. The proposed model can make it possible to offer important practical guidelines to service providers in enhancing actual use of the PHC system. The study can suggest way of increasing health awareness to policy makers and way to build awareness to use the system. The study can also contribute to make policy to improve health care situation i.e., reduce morbidity rate in the country.

DOI： 10.1007/978-3-030-21935-2_24

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)  

Objective: The aim of this study was to compare the relationships and risk factors with hypertension, diabetes, and proteinuria between urban office workers at Dhaka city and rural community residents at Bheramara sub-district who participated in a mobile health check-up service called portable health clinic (PHC). Methods: Data were collected from 271 urban office workers at Dhaka city in 2018 and 2,890 rural community residents at Bheramara sub-district between 2013 and 2016, who agreed to participate in the PHC. Data included basic socio-demographic and health check-up information. Descriptive statistics were conducted to compare the relationships with three main outcome variables (hypertension, diabetes, and proteinuria) and independent variables (ex, age, sex, pulse rates, and body mass index (BMI)). Results: The percentage of participants who were overweight or obese was higher among urban participants (51%) than rural participants (35%), whereas in rural participants, the percentage of being underweight was higher (11%) than in urban participants (0.4%). Among participants who had proteinuria, 60% in urban and 34% in rural participants had hypertension and 10% in urban and 14% in rural and had diabetes. Among those who had diabetes, 26% in urban and 45% in rural participants had hypertension and 3% in urban and 55% in rural participants had proteinuria. Among participants who had hypertension, 9% in urban and 37% in rural participants had proteinuria 12% in both urban and rural participants had diabetes. Conclusions: Hypertension, diabetes, and proteinuria were highly co-existed particularly among rural participants. Obesity is more prevalent among urban participants. PHC services is important for screening a large number of unaware and undiagnosed diabetic, hypertensive, and proteinuria patients both in rural and urban Bangladesh.

DOI： 10.1007/978-3-030-30033-3_46

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)  

Most current telemedicine efforts focus on tertiary care, general doctors being available at the patient end. In low resource countries (LRC), qualified doctors do not want to live in villages where the majority population lives. Therefore, telemedicine is the only solution. Besides, the technology should be indigenously developed to be effective and sustained. We developed necessary technology indigenously including web based software and online diagnostic devices like stethoscope and ECG. More devices are under development. Targeting primary or secondary care we deployed the system through an entrepreneurial model, giving video conferencing and online prescription by the consulting doctor. All data are archived for future reference and analysis. We also developed a mobile phone version using which roving operators can provide a doctor’s consultation to rural patients right at their homes, which has proved very useful for women, children, elderly and the infirm. The software also provides monitoring with provision for analyses for feedback. Starting in 2013 we have so far given consultation to more than 18,500 rural patients, paying a small fee, and the acceptance is increasing. At present more than 40 rural centres are active which can choose from a panel of 15 doctors who are providing consultation from places of their own. We are also planning to organize body tissue collection for pathological investigation at the telemedicine centres through arrangements with pathological centres in the neighbourhood. We feel this system can be spread throughout the LRCs benefitting the majority of the global population who are deprived at present.

DOI： 10.1007/978-3-030-30033-3_45

Language：English  

Factors Affecting Rural Patients' Primary Compliance with e-Prescription: A Developing Country Perspective
Background: The electronic prescription system has emerged to reduce the ambiguity and misunderstanding associated with handwritten prescriptions. The opportunities and challenges of e-prescription system, its impact on reducing medication error, and improving patient's safety have been widely studied. However, not enough studies were conducted to explore and quantify the factors that affect rural patients' compliance with e-prescription, especially from the perspective of Asian developing countries where most of the world's population resides. Objective: The objective of this study is to explore and assess the factors that affect rural patients' primary compliance with e-prescription in Bangladesh. Methods: Data were collected from 95 randomly selected rural patients who received e-prescription through a field survey with a structured questionnaire from Bheramara subdistrict, Bangladesh, during June and July 2016. Logistic regression analysis was performed to test the research hypotheses. Results: The study found patients' gender as the most significantly influential factor (regression coefficient [Coef.] = 2.02, odds ratio [OR] = 7.51, p < 0.05) followed by visiting frequency (Coef. = 0.99, OR = 2.70, p < 0.05); education (Coef. = 0.92, OR = 2.51, p < 0.05); and distance to healthcare facility (Coef. = 0.82, OR = 2.26, p < 0.01). However, patients' age, monthly family expenditure, and use of cell phone were found insignificant. The model explains 59.40&#37; deviance (R = 0.5940) in the response variable with its constructs. And the "Hosmer-Lemeshow" goodness-of-fit score (0.99) is also above the standard threshold (0.05), which indicates the data fit well with the model. Conclusions: The findings of this study are expected to be helpful for e-health service providers to gain a better understanding of the factors that influence their patients to comply with e-prescriptions.

DOI： 10.1089/tmj.2018.0081, 10.3390/ijerph17051806_references_DOI_9EZrBOFDv6mcSLrE7Xx0WsRwQhj

Language：Others   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

Due to the scarcity of medical infrastructure including doctors and hospitals, ICT based healthcare services is getting popular around the world including low facilities rural areas of Bangladesh. Portable Health Clinic (PHC) system is one of the ICT based healthcare systems. Speciality of this system is that the clinic box is carried and operated by a pre-trained healthcare worker. However, longitudinal study in this context wasn’t undertaken before. In order to draw strong inferences about new technology use we need to do longitudinal study. Therefore, the aim is to identify key determinants of actual use of the PHC system and to understand how their influence changes over time with increasing experience to explain detailed action sequences that might unfold over time. Face to face survey will be conducted to collect data. Structural Equation Modeling will be used to analyze data. By analyzing data using AMOS 25.0 this study will identify most important time that are key to increase actual use of the PHC system. The proposed model can make it possible to offer important practical guidelines to service providers in enhancing actual use of the PHC system. The study can suggest way of increasing health awareness to policy makers and way to build awareness to use the system. The study can also contribute to make policy to improve health care situation i.e., reduce morbidity rate in the country.

DOI： 10.1007/978-3-030-21935-2_24

Language：English  

Low population areas and low-income people often face unreliable public transport characterized by long waiting times. Meanwhile, a private vehicle in the same area, on average, will remain inactive for long periods of time. Recent research in shared mobility systems addresses this situation. Specifically, Demand Responsive Transport, DRT, a transport alternative between a bus and taxi, and which has many specification variations, has pioneered provision of an alternative transport solution geared to reach under-served minorities. Solutions to DRT trip scheduling and costing mechanisms usually include constraints specific to the variation of DRT specifications. / We aim to maximize use of a vehicle and we propose a design of a Community shared mobility service model that provides centralized management and ICT support in in delivering multiple services in a vehicle. Our design adds time constraints of vehicle schedule to the DRT problem. We also consider cost sharing mechanism. / We focus on reducing waiting time and propose a trip scheduling and cost sharing algorithm. We base our approach on a DRT heuristic algorithm. We also consider time windows. We propose a new cost sharing mechanism, based on traditional distance costing techniques but considering, seat capacity, an approach unique to the specifications of our design.

DOI： 10.15017/2236682

Language：English  

Factors Influencing Rural End-Users' Acceptance of e-Health in Developing Countries: A study on Portable Health Clinic in Bangladesh
Background: Existing studies regarding e-health are mostly focused on information technology design and implementation, system architecture and infrastructure, and its importance in public health with ancillaries and barriers to mass adoption. However, not enough studies have been conducted to assess the end-users' reaction and acceptance behavior toward e-health, especially from the perspective of rural communities in developing countries. Objective: The objective of this study is to explore the factors that influence rural end users' acceptance of e-health in Bangladesh. Methods: Data were collected between June and July 2016 through a field survey with structured questionnaire form 292 randomly selected rural respondents from Bheramara subdistrict, Bangladesh. Technology Acceptance Model was adopted as the research framework. Logistic regression analysis was performed to test the theoretical model. Results: The study found social reference as the most significantly influential variable (Coef. = 2.28, odds ratio [OR] = 9.73, p < 0.01) followed by advertisement (Coef. = 1.94, OR = 6.94, p < 0.01); attitude toward the system (Coef. = 1.52, OR = 4.56, p < 0.01); access to cellphone (Coef. = 1.37, OR = 3.92, p < 0.05), and perceived system effectiveness (Coef. = 0.74, OR = 2.10, p < 0.01). Among demographic variables, age, gender, and education were found significant while we did not find any significant impact of respondents' monthly family expenditure on their e-health acceptance behavior. The model explains 54.70&#37; deviance (R 2 = 0.5470) in the response variable with its constructs. The "Hosmer-Lemeshow" goodness-of-fit score (0.539) is also above the standard threshold (0.05), which indicates that the data fit well with the model. Conclusion: The study provides guidelines for the successful adoption of e-health among rural communities in developing countries. This also creates an opportunity for e-health technology developers and service providers to have a better understanding of their end users.

DOI： 10.1089/tmj.2018.0039

Language：Others   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

Owing to the recent advancement in IoT devices, the popularity of wireless devices in healthcare is growing rapidly. Thus it is anticipated that the healthcare services may face challenges such as medical spectrum scarcity, electromagnetic interference to bio-medical devices, medical data transmission reliability, etc. To overcome these issues, cognitive radio can be improvised and fine-tuned the wireless healthcare service system. However, contemporary researches on cognitive radio driven healthcare system have shown limited guidelines for medical emergency concerned network model and communication protocols. Thus this paper presents intelligent dynamic priority medical traffic transmission mechanism aware three Device to Device communication protocols for cognitve radio enabled hospital management system known as CogMed. To validate the performance of these protocols, several simulations are conducted, where it is observed that the CogMed transmission scheme performs better than other well established Methods. Moreover, the latency of majority hospital devices is within the threshold level of the Federal Drug and Food Administration prescribed standards for wireless medical devices.

DOI： 10.1109/ICECE.2018.8636812

Language：English  

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

Co-design and co-production with non-academic stakeholders has been recognized as a key approach in transdisciplinary sustainability research. The majority of transdisciplinary studies have been conducted in Europe and North America, with a marked lack of such research in the Asian context-particularly with regard to healthcare. Utilizing a case study involving mobile health check-ups performed using a portable health clinic system in Jaipur, India, from March 2016 to March 2018, this study identifies key factors in co-design and co-production that should be considered to ensure the project's sustainability. Thoroughly reviewing all of the documents and materials related to the case study's co-design and co-production, this study identifies the following key factors: (1) mutual stakeholder agreement on a long-term research plan, protocol, and budget; (2) harmonizing research objectives, frames, and the scale of stakeholder expectations; (3) stakeholders' commitment and a sense of ownership derived from their needs and priorities; (4) stakeholder trust; (5) effective coordinators; (6) personality type and characteristics of stakeholder leaders; (7) capacity building and the empowerment of local research staff and participants; and (8) continuous efforts to involve stakeholders throughout the co-design and co-production processes. Facilitating effective co-design and co-production, these factors will help ensure the future sustainability of projects.

DOI： 10.3390/su10114148

Language：Others  

Lessons learned from co-design and co-production in a portable health clinic research project in Jaipur District, India (2016-2018)
Co-design and co-production with non-academic stakeholders has been recognized as a key approach in transdisciplinary sustainability research. The majority of transdisciplinary studies have been conducted in Europe and North America, with a marked lack of such research in the Asian context-particularly with regard to healthcare. Utilizing a case study involving mobile health check-ups performed using a portable health clinic system in Jaipur, India, from March 2016 to March 2018, this study identifies key factors in co-design and co-production that should be considered to ensure the project's sustainability. Thoroughly reviewing all of the documents and materials related to the case study's co-design and co-production, this study identifies the following key factors: (1) mutual stakeholder agreement on a long-term research plan, protocol, and budget; (2) harmonizing research objectives, frames, and the scale of stakeholder expectations; (3) stakeholders' commitment and a sense of ownership derived from their needs and priorities; (4) stakeholder trust; (5) effective coordinators; (6) personality type and characteristics of stakeholder leaders; (7) capacity building and the empowerment of local research staff and participants; and (8) continuous efforts to involve stakeholders throughout the co-design and co-production processes. Facilitating effective co-design and co-production, these factors will help ensure the future sustainability of projects.

DOI： 10.3390/su10114148, 10.1007/978-981-15-8632-3_1_references_DOI_Iro1lk2eTciw2frEEGwnsaml0Xo, 10.1007/978-981-15-8632-3_2_references_DOI_Iro1lk2eTciw2frEEGwnsaml0Xo

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)  

Owing to the recent advancement in IoT devices, the popularity of wireless devices in healthcare is growing rapidly. Thus it is anticipated that the healthcare services may face challenges such as medical spectrum scarcity, electromagnetic interference to bio-medical devices, medical data transmission reliability, etc. To overcome these issues, cognitive radio can be improvised and fine-tuned the wireless healthcare service system. However, contemporary researches on cognitive radio driven healthcare system have shown limited guidelines for medical emergency concerned network model and communication protocols. Thus this paper presents intelligent dynamic priority medical traffic transmission mechanism aware three Device to Device communication protocols for cognitve radio enabled hospital management system known as CogMed. To validate the performance of these protocols, several simulations are conducted, where it is observed that the CogMed transmission scheme performs better than other well established Methods. Moreover, the latency of majority hospital devices is within the threshold level of the Federal Drug and Food Administration prescribed standards for wireless medical devices.

DOI： 10.1109/ICECE.2018.8636812

Language：Others  

Language：English  

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

In South-East Asia, the maternal and child mortality rate has declined over the past decades; however, it varies among and within the countries in the region, including Cambodia. The continuum of care is an integrated series of care that women and children are required to avail continuously from pregnancy to the child/motherhood period. This study aimed to assess the completion rate of the continuum of care and examine the factors associated with the continuum of care in Ratanakiri, Cambodia. A cross-sectional study was conducted in Ratanakiri. Overall, 377 women were included, and data were collected via face-to-face interviews using a semi-structured questionnaire. Among them, 5.0% completed the continuum of care (antenatal care at least four times, delivery by skilled birth attendant, and postnatal care at least once). Meanwhile, 18.8% did not receive any care during pregnancy, delivery, and after birth. The highest discontinuation rate was at the postnatal care stage (73.6%). Not receiving any perinatal care was associated with neonatal complications at 6 weeks after birth (adjusted odds ratio [AOR]: 3.075; 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.310–7.215). Furthermore, a long distance to the health center was negatively associated with completion of the continuum of care (AOR: 0.877; 95% CI: 0.791–0.972). This study indicates the need for efforts to reduce the number of women who discontinue from the continuum of care, as well as who do not receive any care to avoid neonatal complications. Since the discontinuation rate was highest at the postnatal care, postnatal care needs to be promoted more through the antenatal care and delivery services. Furthermore, given that long distance to health facilities was a barrier for receiving the care continuously, our findings suggest the need for a village-based health care system that can provide the basic continuum of care in remote areas.

DOI： 10.1371/journal.pone.0198829

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

Postnatal care could be the key to improving the continuum of care in maternal and child health in ratanakiri, Cambodia
In South-East Asia, the maternal and child mortality rate has declined over the past decades
however, it varies among and within the countries in the region, including Cambodia. The continuum of care is an integrated series of care that women and children are required to avail continuously from pregnancy to the child/motherhood period. This study aimed to assess the completion rate of the continuum of care and examine the factors associated with the continuum of care in Ratanakiri, Cambodia. A cross-sectional study was conducted in Ratanakiri. Overall, 377 women were included, and data were collected via face-to-face interviews using a semi-structured questionnaire. Among them, 5.0&#37; completed the continuum of care (antenatal care at least four times, delivery by skilled birth attendant, and postnatal care at least once). Meanwhile, 18.8&#37; did not receive any care during pregnancy, delivery, and after birth. The highest discontinuation rate was at the postnatal care stage (73.6&#37;). Not receiving any perinatal care was associated with neonatal complications at 6 weeks after birth (adjusted odds ratio [AOR]: 3.075
95&#37; confidence interval [CI]: 1.310–7.215). Furthermore, a long distance to the health center was negatively associated with completion of the continuum of care (AOR: 0.877
95&#37; CI: 0.791–0.972). This study indicates the need for efforts to reduce the number of women who discontinue from the continuum of care, as well as who do not receive any care to avoid neonatal complications. Since the discontinuation rate was highest at the postnatal care, postnatal care needs to be promoted more through the antenatal care and delivery services. Furthermore, given that long distance to health facilities was a barrier for receiving the care continuously, our findings suggest the need for a village-based health care system that can provide the basic continuum of care in remote areas.

DOI： 10.1371/journal.pone.0198829

Language：Others   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

This research aims to develop a technique to measure healthcare data of non-communicable disease (diabetes, hypertension etc.) patients and score their health status. We introduce two different scoring mechanism and apply the methods on our Portable Health Clinic (PHC) patients to verify the effectiveness of the obtained scores. PHC has a triage to classify the patients in four colored groups (green, yellow, orange and red) depending on the severity of their status. These color codes were designed based on WHO's recommendations. On the top of the triage, we applied two mechanisms (a) a simple decimal scoring system, and (b) mathematically obtained weighted score to determine wellness score of a patient. We applied the technique on 5895 patients to see the average wellness score of each patient and displayed them against the age. The displayed graph shows the trend that the younger people have more wellness score. The obtained results match with our traditional wisdom. We want to observe health status of individual patient to verify the accuracy of the scoring system.

DOI： 10.1109/TENCON.2017.8228236

Language：Others   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

This study introduces an ICT based cost-effective car sharing model named 'GramCar Corporate' for corporates in urban areas in developing countries. GramCar is designed to offer staff bus service in the morning and evening hours and utilize the idle time in the afternoon for delivering healthcare services and healthcare goods to the urban ageing community living in apartments in cities. We carried out a case study on 132 corporates who are living in different locations in Dhaka, Bangladesh but working in the same Grameen Corporate Building complex in Dhaka, by providing them a staff bus service. The study observed the travel pattern (vehicle modes, transfers, financial cost, time cost, physical energy cost etc.) of corporates, the experiences during travel by existing transports and our concept for a car-share service for them. We found that daily average cost for a commercial transport user is 2.3 USD, while 2.5 USD for our shared GramCar Corporate service. GramCar Corporate services reduces the number of transfers and saves 20 minutes from the travel time by Traditional Transport Mode. Through quality delivery of service and well-trained staffs, corporates reported a better travel experience with GramCar and participants reported to have a better psychological condition before starting their work. The paper discusses both the tangible and intangible benefits to the corporates.

DOI： 10.1109/TENCON.2017.8228085

Language：Others   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

A medical error comes in many forms e.g. Medication error, Surgical error, Diagnostic error and System failure etc. The Prescription error is a major medication error. Computerized Provider Order Entry (CPOE) and Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS) have been developed and deployed by many hospitals to prevent medical errors. However, these tools are more applicable for hospitalized patients. In healthcare worker assisted remote healthcare systems, a healthcare worker interfaces with the patient and do medical measurement of health checkup items (for example, height, weight, Blood sugar etc.) and shares the data by using an android based application with the remote doctor. The doctor analyzes the data, consults with the patient and writes a prescription for the patient. In this overall process, each step has the room for making mistakes and eventually mistakes bring errors, either directly by a human (active error) or by the android application or hardware (latent error). This paper reports a flow chart for healthcare worker assisted remote healthcare systems, lists the point of errors and describe the potential causes of the errors.

DOI： 10.1109/TENCON.2017.8227856

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

This study introduces an ICT based cost-effective car sharing model named 'GramCar Corporate' for corporates in urban areas in developing countries. GramCar is designed to offer staff bus service in the morning and evening hours and utilize the idle time in the afternoon for delivering healthcare services and healthcare goods to the urban ageing community living in apartments in cities. We carried out a case study on 132 corporates who are living in different locations in Dhaka, Bangladesh but working in the same Grameen Corporate Building complex in Dhaka, by providing them a staff bus service. The study observed the travel pattern (vehicle modes, transfers, financial cost, time cost, physical energy cost etc.) of corporates, the experiences during travel by existing transports and our concept for a car-share service for them. We found that daily average cost for a commercial transport user is 2.3 USD, while 2.5 USD for our shared GramCar Corporate service. GramCar Corporate services reduces the number of transfers and saves 20 minutes from the travel time by Traditional Transport Mode. Through quality delivery of service and well-trained staffs, corporates reported a better travel experience with GramCar and participants reported to have a better psychological condition before starting their work. The paper discusses both the tangible and intangible benefits to the corporates.

DOI： 10.1109/TENCON.2017.8228085

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

This research aims to develop a technique to measure healthcare data of non-communicable disease (diabetes, hypertension etc.) patients and score their health status. We introduce two different scoring mechanism and apply the methods on our Portable Health Clinic (PHC) patients to verify the effectiveness of the obtained scores. PHC has a triage to classify the patients in four colored groups (green, yellow, orange and red) depending on the severity of their status. These color codes were designed based on WHO's recommendations. On the top of the triage, we applied two mechanisms (a) a simple decimal scoring system, and (b) mathematically obtained weighted score to determine wellness score of a patient. We applied the technique on 5895 patients to see the average wellness score of each patient and displayed them against the age. The displayed graph shows the trend that the younger people have more wellness score. The obtained results match with our traditional wisdom. We want to observe health status of individual patient to verify the accuracy of the scoring system.

DOI： 10.1109/TENCON.2017.8228236

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

A medical error comes in many forms e.g. Medication error, Surgical error, Diagnostic error and System failure etc. The Prescription error is a major medication error. Computerized Provider Order Entry (CPOE) and Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS) have been developed and deployed by many hospitals to prevent medical errors. However, these tools are more applicable for hospitalized patients. In healthcare worker assisted remote healthcare systems, a healthcare worker interfaces with the patient and do medical measurement of health checkup items (for example, height, weight, Blood sugar etc.) and shares the data by using an android based application with the remote doctor. The doctor analyzes the data, consults with the patient and writes a prescription for the patient. In this overall process, each step has the room for making mistakes and eventually mistakes bring errors, either directly by a human (active error) or by the android application or hardware (latent error). This paper reports a flow chart for healthcare worker assisted remote healthcare systems, lists the point of errors and describe the potential causes of the errors.

DOI： 10.1109/TENCON.2017.8227856

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

This study introduces an ICT based cost-effective car sharing model named 'GramCar Corporate' for corporates in urban areas in developing countries. GramCar is designed to offer staff bus service in the morning and evening hours and utilize the idle time in the afternoon for delivering healthcare services and healthcare goods to the urban ageing community living in apartments in cities. We carried out a case study on 132 corporates who are living in different locations in Dhaka, Bangladesh but working in the same Grameen Corporate Building complex in Dhaka, by providing them a staff bus service. The study observed the travel pattern (vehicle modes, transfers, financial cost, time cost, physical energy cost etc.) of corporates, the experiences during travel by existing transports and our concept for a car-share service for them. We found that daily average cost for a commercial transport user is 2.3 USD, while 2.5 USD for our shared GramCar Corporate service. GramCar Corporate services reduces the number of transfers and saves 20 minutes from the travel time by Traditional Transport Mode. Through quality delivery of service and well-trained staffs, corporates reported a better travel experience with GramCar and participants reported to have a better psychological condition before starting their work. The paper discusses both the tangible and intangible benefits to the corporates.

DOI： 10.1109/TENCON.2017.8228085

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

This research aims to develop a technique to measure healthcare data of non-communicable disease (diabetes, hypertension etc.) patients and score their health status. We introduce two different scoring mechanism and apply the methods on our Portable Health Clinic (PHC) patients to verify the effectiveness of the obtained scores. PHC has a triage to classify the patients in four colored groups (green, yellow, orange and red) depending on the severity of their status. These color codes were designed based on WHO's recommendations. On the top of the triage, we applied two mechanisms (a) a simple decimal scoring system, and (b) mathematically obtained weighted score to determine wellness score of a patient. We applied the technique on 5895 patients to see the average wellness score of each patient and displayed them against the age. The displayed graph shows the trend that the younger people have more wellness score. The obtained results match with our traditional wisdom. We want to observe health status of individual patient to verify the accuracy of the scoring system.

DOI： 10.1109/TENCON.2017.8228236

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

A medical error comes in many forms e.g. Medication error, Surgical error, Diagnostic error and System failure etc. The Prescription error is a major medication error. Computerized Provider Order Entry (CPOE) and Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS) have been developed and deployed by many hospitals to prevent medical errors. However, these tools are more applicable for hospitalized patients. In healthcare worker assisted remote healthcare systems, a healthcare worker interfaces with the patient and do medical measurement of health checkup items (for example, height, weight, Blood sugar etc.) and shares the data by using an android based application with the remote doctor. The doctor analyzes the data, consults with the patient and writes a prescription for the patient. In this overall process, each step has the room for making mistakes and eventually mistakes bring errors, either directly by a human (active error) or by the android application or hardware (latent error). This paper reports a flow chart for healthcare worker assisted remote healthcare systems, lists the point of errors and describe the potential causes of the errors.

DOI： 10.1109/TENCON.2017.8227856

Language：English  

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

Wireless communication technology is the prime attribute to improve mobility, flexibility and reliability for hospital information system. However, due to the growth of wireless devices in near future, healthcare services may face challenges on medical spectrum scarcity, electromagnetic interference to bio-medical devices and medical data transmission reliability. To dimi nish these issues cognitive radio (CR) can be improvised and fine-tuned the wireless healthcare service system. However, contemporary research on CR driven healthcare has shown limited guidelines for priority policy and network model for hospital. Thus, the main objective of this research is to design a CR based system for healthcare services where all of the hospital devices are CR enabled and categorized as per the activity. An intelligent dynamic priority enabled queuing management based hospital traffic transmission mechanism is then introduced in the proposed system. The proposed priority mechanism intelligently determines the critical level of medical management by computing weight of hospital traffics considering hospital location and device priority. The proposed priority mechanism intelligently determines the critical level of hospital data and decreases the rate of packet drop. Finally, simulation results show that the critical emergency medical traffic obligates very low drop rate, queuing time and network delay comparing to other hospital devices. The proposed system transmission is also shown to outperform the other well-known methods for data transmission system.

DOI： 10.1007/s11277-017-4458-y

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

Wireless communication technology is the prime attribute to improve mobility, flexibility and reliability for hospital information system. However, due to the growth of wireless devices in near future, healthcare services may face challenges on medical spectrum scarcity, electromagnetic interference to bio-medical devices and medical data transmission reliability. To dimi nish these issues cognitive radio (CR) can be improvised and fine-tuned the wireless healthcare service system. However, contemporary research on CR driven healthcare has shown limited guidelines for priority policy and network model for hospital. Thus, the main objective of this research is to design a CR based system for healthcare services where all of the hospital devices are CR enabled and categorized as per the activity. An intelligent dynamic priority enabled queuing management based hospital traffic transmission mechanism is then introduced in the proposed system. The proposed priority mechanism intelligently determines the critical level of medical management by computing weight of hospital traffics considering hospital location and device priority. The proposed priority mechanism intelligently determines the critical level of hospital data and decreases the rate of packet drop. Finally, simulation results show that the critical emergency medical traffic obligates very low drop rate, queuing time and network delay comparing to other hospital devices. The proposed system transmission is also shown to outperform the other well-known methods for data transmission system.

DOI： 10.1007/s11277-017-4458-y

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

Online shopping is getting popular even in the rural areas of developing countries. However, few research has
been conducted to identify the factors associated to online shopping by the poor villagers. Whereas people living at the bottom of the economic pyramid (BoP) has an aggregate purchase power which is a huge market and online shopping has the potentiality in reducing BoP penalty by removing unnecessary middlemen from the supply chain. In this research, we have conducted a field survey on 600 households in the western part of rural Bangladesh to find out current status of
online shopping use by the BoP people and the demographic and behavioral factors associated with online shopping. Chi-square test of association and multi variate logistic regression test have been performed to analyze data. Result shows that cell phone use, computer use, social media use, and mobile money transfer use have significant relationship in online shopping use at the BoP community.

Other Link： http://thesai.org/Downloads/Volume8No10/Paper_6-Factors_Associated_to_Online_Shopping_at_the_BoP_Community.pdf

Language：English  

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

Due to rapid growth of wireless medical devices, in near future wireless healthcare services may face some inescapable issues such as medical spectrum scarcity, electromagnetic interference (EMI) to bio-medical devices, bandwidth constrain, security and finally medical data transmission reliability, etc. To mitigate these issues, cognitive radio needs to be utilized and fine-tuned the upcoming wireless healthcare service system. Contemporary research on cognitive radio driven healthcare has shown some improvement on trimming the EMI, spectrum scarcity and bandwidth issues. However, a visible research gap and very limited guidelines are observed on medical data transmission reliability in a Cognitive Radio (CR) based healthcare. Thus this research designs an intelligent dynamic priority enabled queuing management based hospital traffic transmission mechanism for a previously proposed CR enabled hospital named CogMed. An equation is formulated to compute weight of a hospital traffic considering hospital location and priority of its device. The proposed priority mechanism intelligently determines the critical level of hospital data and decreases the rate of packet drop. Simulation results show that the critical emergency medical traffic obligates very low drop rate (1.56%), queuing time and network delay compared to other medical devices. The proposed system outperforms some the other traditional established methods for wireless data transmission system.

DOI： 10.1109/TENCON.2016.7848019

Language：English  

In Bangladesh the demand of chemical free vegetables is increasing due to health hazards of conventional vegetables. However, the awareness of the farmers and supply of such vegetables are not sufficient. In this research, therefore, we focused on why agrochemical free vegetable production including marketing has been underdeveloped in Bangladesh as a growing business compared to conventional vegetable production. In order to collect the information, which can argue these reality of chemical free vegetable production, distribution and marketing in Bangladesh, we especially focused on widely cultivated winter vegetables such as cabbage, cauliflower and tomato. Data were collected targeting the activities of SENSE (Support to establish a new society of BOP farmers by using the power of ICT) project regarding production and marketing. The results indicated that the production of chemical free cauliflower and tomato were substandard compare to the cabbage. The reasons for getting substandard production were unavailability of proper production inputs such as appropriate organic pesticides, quality compost and lack of timely execution of the farming activities. Moreover, the selling results indicated that farmers got higher income from tomato compare to cabbage and cauliflower. Additionally, revenue (per kg) of the products sold in Dhaka market was more than the local markets. The differences of revenue (per kg) between Dhaka and locally sold cabbage, cauliflower and tomato were BDT 6.02, BDT 6.63 and BDT 10.22, respectively. However, the average selling percentage of cabbage, cauliflower and tomato in Dhaka market (10.06&#37;) and local market (89.94&#37;) indicated that chemical free vegetable production had high potential by selling more products in Dhaka market for high income generation of the resource poor farmers.

DOI： 10.5109/1801791

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

We carried out an experiment to observe the role of transportation for adolescent female students in rural Bangladesh. A senior high school (in Bangladesh, they call it a college) student spends 180-230 minutes to travel only 22km (11 km, single trip) on an average to commute from home to college. Local transport (Tomtom) stops are not always close to their home. The walk 4km to get to the nearest Tomtom stop. The Tomtom does not have a regular timetable. In worst case, the students wait 30 minutes until the Tomtom driver finds sufficient number of passengers. This 11km distance is Female students find it uncomfortable to share congested space with male passengers. They cannot raise their voice when they face sexual harassment inside the car or when they walk. The parents of the female students find it safer to stop their education and arrange a marriage. We proposed a regular college bus service with an adaptive time schedule that follows the routine of the students. In order to make the service sustainable, we designed a model of multi service vehicle named SSW, so that it can earn extra income during its idle time. We concluded that the operational cost can be covered through the SSW model. We identified new requirements for multiservice vehicle to satisfy the needs of a rural community.

DOI： 10.1109/SMC.2016.7844879

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

Fundamental requirements in mobility are time, cost and comfort. Individual car ownership satisfies comfort component and to some extent, the time component as well. However, owning and maintaining a car is prohibitive for many due to cost and convenience implications. In selecting other public modes of transportation, a taxi or rental car would provide a more comfortable ride with little to none waiting time and conforms to the passengers mobility requirements. However, the cost is too high and cannot be sustained as a regular mode of transport. On the other hand, shared public transport such as bus or train is more affordable but requires the passenger to conform their schedule to a set timetable that operates no matter the changes in demand. In developing countries, however, the shared public transport alternatives do not have timetables and waiting time could be up to an hour. Recent research in shared mobility systems, specifically Demand Responsive Transport (DRT), addresses this situation. Solutions to DRT trip scheduling are constrained to the variation of DRT specifications but does not vehicle schedule and quorum specifications considerations. We aim to reduce passenger waiting time for shared mobility and propose a design of a DRT-based Demand Responsive MaaS (Mobility as a Service) model that provides centralized management and ICT support. Our design adds time constraints of vehicle schedule to the DRT problem. We propose a trip scheduling and cost sharing algorithm for our designed model and base our approach on a DRT heuristic algorithm and a quorum to enforce a minimum demand. A simulation experiment showed average waiting time reduced by 44.4% compared to other DRT time optimization solutions. We conducted a pilot study in Dhaka, Bangladesh for 4 months. Actual average waiting time reduced to 25% compared to current public transport in Dhaka.

DOI： 10.1109/SMC.2016.7844489

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

In Bangladesh the demand of chemical free vegetables is increasing due to health hazards of conventional vegetables. However, the awareness of the farmers and supply of such vegetables are not sufficient. In this research, therefore, we focused on why agrochemical free vegetable production including marketing has been underdeveloped in Bangladesh as a growing business compared to conventional vegetable production. In order to collect the information, which can argue these reality of chemical free vegetable production, distribution and marketing in Bangladesh, we especially focused on widely cultivated winter vegetables such as cabbage, cauliflower and tomato. Data were collected targeting the activities of SENSE (Support to establish a new society of BOP farmers by using the power of ICT) project regarding production and marketing. The results indicated that the production of chemical free cauliflower and tomato were substandard compare to the cabbage. The reasons for getting substandard production were unavailability of proper production inputs such as appropriate organic pesticides, quality compost and lack of timely execution of the farming activities. Moreover, the selling results indicated that farmers got higher income from tomato compare to cabbage and cauliflower. Additionally, revenue (per kg) of the products sold in Dhaka market was more than the local markets. The differences of revenue (per kg) between Dhaka and locally sold cabbage, cauliflower and tomato were BDT 6.02, BDT 6.63 and BDT 10.22, respectively. However, the average selling percentage of cabbage, cauliflower and tomato in Dhaka market (10.06%) and local market (89.94%) indicated that chemical free vegetable production had high potential by selling more products in Dhaka market for high income generation of the resource poor farmers.

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

In Bangladesh the demand of chemical free vegetables is increasing due to health hazards of conventional vegetables. However, the awareness of the farmers and supply of such vegetables are not sufficient. In this research, therefore, we focused on why agrochemical free vegetable production including marketing has been underdeveloped in Bangladesh as a growing business compared to conventional vegetable production. In order to collect the information, which can argue these reality of chemical free vegetable production, distribution and marketing in Bangladesh, we especially focused on widely cultivated winter vegetables such as cabbage, cauliflower and tomato. Data were collected targeting the activities of SENSE (Support to establish a new society of BOP farmers by using the power of ICT) project regarding production and marketing. The results indicated that the production of chemical free cauliflower and tomato were substandard compare to the cabbage. The reasons for getting substandard production were unavailability of proper production inputs such as appropriate organic pesticides, quality compost and lack of timely execution of the farming activities. Moreover, the selling results indicated that farmers got higher income from tomato compare to cabbage and cauliflower. Additionally, revenue (per kg) of the products sold in Dhaka market was more than the local markets. The differences of revenue (per kg) between Dhaka and locally sold cabbage, cauliflower and tomato were BDT 6.02, BDT 6.63 and BDT 10.22, respectively. However, the average selling percentage of cabbage, cauliflower and tomato in Dhaka market (10.06%) and local market (89.94%) indicated that chemical free vegetable production had high potential by selling more products in Dhaka market for high income generation of the resource poor farmers.

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

Due to rapid growth of wireless medical devices, in near future wireless healthcare services may face some inescapable issues such as medical spectrum scarcity, electromagnetic interference (EMI) to bio-medical devices, bandwidth constrain, security and finally medical data transmission reliability, etc. To mitigate these issues, cognitive radio needs to be utilized and fine-tuned the upcoming wireless healthcare service system. Contemporary research on cognitive radio driven healthcare has shown some improvement on trimming the EMI, spectrum scarcity and bandwidth issues. However, a visible research gap and very limited guidelines are observed on medical data transmission reliability in a Cognitive Radio (CR) based healthcare. Thus this research designs an intelligent dynamic priority enabled queuing management based hospital traffic transmission mechanism for a previously proposed CR enabled hospital named CogMed. An equation is formulated to compute weight of a hospital traffic considering hospital location and priority of its device. The proposed priority mechanism intelligently determines the critical level of hospital data and decreases the rate of packet drop. Simulation results show that the critical emergency medical traffic obligates very low drop rate (1.56%), queuing time and network delay compared to other medical devices. The proposed system outperforms some the other traditional established methods for wireless data transmission system.

DOI： 10.1109/TENCON.2016.7848019

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

We carried out an experiment to observe the role of transportation for adolescent female students in rural Bangladesh. A senior high school (in Bangladesh, they call it a college) student spends 180-230 minutes to travel only 22km (11 km, single trip) on an average to commute from home to college. Local transport (Tomtom) stops are not always close to their home. The walk 4km to get to the nearest Tomtom stop. The Tomtom does not have a regular timetable. In worst case, the students wait 30 minutes until the Tomtom driver finds sufficient number of passengers. This 11km distance is Female students find it uncomfortable to share congested space with male passengers. They cannot raise their voice when they face sexual harassment inside the car or when they walk. The parents of the female students find it safer to stop their education and arrange a marriage. We proposed a regular college bus service with an adaptive time schedule that follows the routine of the students. In order to make the service sustainable, we designed a model of multi service vehicle named SSW, so that it can earn extra income during its idle time. We concluded that the operational cost can be covered through the SSW model. We identified new requirements for multiservice vehicle to satisfy the needs of a rural community.

DOI： 10.1109/SMC.2016.7844879

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

Fundamental requirements in mobility are time, cost and comfort. Individual car ownership satisfies comfort component and to some extent, the time component as well. However, owning and maintaining a car is prohibitive for many due to cost and convenience implications. In selecting other public modes of transportation, a taxi or rental car would provide a more comfortable ride with little to none waiting time and conforms to the passengers mobility requirements. However, the cost is too high and cannot be sustained as a regular mode of transport. On the other hand, shared public transport such as bus or train is more affordable but requires the passenger to conform their schedule to a set timetable that operates no matter the changes in demand. In developing countries, however, the shared public transport alternatives do not have timetables and waiting time could be up to an hour. Recent research in shared mobility systems, specifically Demand Responsive Transport (DRT), addresses this situation. Solutions to DRT trip scheduling are constrained to the variation of DRT specifications but does not vehicle schedule and quorum specifications considerations. We aim to reduce passenger waiting time for shared mobility and propose a design of a DRT-based Demand Responsive MaaS (Mobility as a Service) model that provides centralized management and ICT support. Our design adds time constraints of vehicle schedule to the DRT problem. We propose a trip scheduling and cost sharing algorithm for our designed model and base our approach on a DRT heuristic algorithm and a quorum to enforce a minimum demand. A simulation experiment showed average waiting time reduced by 44.4% compared to other DRT time optimization solutions. We conducted a pilot study in Dhaka, Bangladesh for 4 months. Actual average waiting time reduced to 25% compared to current public transport in Dhaka.

DOI： 10.1109/SMC.2016.7844489

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

In Bangladesh the demand of chemical free vegetables is increasing due to health hazards of conventional vegetables. However, the awareness of the farmers and supply of such vegetables are not sufficient. In this research, therefore, we focused on why agrochemical free vegetable production including marketing has been underdeveloped in Bangladesh as a growing business compared to conventional vegetable production. In order to collect the information, which can argue these reality of chemical free vegetable production, distribution and marketing in Bangladesh, we especially focused on widely cultivated winter vegetables such as cabbage, cauliflower and tomato. Data were collected targeting the activities of SENSE (Support to establish a new society of BOP farmers by using the power of ICT) project regarding production and marketing. The results indicated that the production of chemical free cauliflower and tomato were substandard compare to the cabbage. The reasons for getting substandard production were unavailability of proper production inputs such as appropriate organic pesticides, quality compost and lack of timely execution of the farming activities. Moreover, the selling results indicated that farmers got higher income from tomato compare to cabbage and cauliflower. Additionally, revenue (per kg) of the products sold in Dhaka market was more than the local markets. The differences of revenue (per kg) between Dhaka and locally sold cabbage, cauliflower and tomato were BDT 6.02, BDT 6.63 and BDT 10.22, respectively. However, the average selling percentage of cabbage, cauliflower and tomato in Dhaka market (10.06%) and local market (89.94%) indicated that chemical free vegetable production had high potential by selling more products in Dhaka market for high income generation of the resource poor farmers.

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

In Bangladesh the demand of chemical free vegetables is increasing due to health hazards of conventional vegetables. However, the awareness of the farmers and supply of such vegetables are not sufficient. In this research, therefore, we focused on why agrochemical free vegetable production including marketing has been underdeveloped in Bangladesh as a growing business compared to conventional vegetable production. In order to collect the information, which can argue these reality of chemical free vegetable production, distribution and marketing in Bangladesh, we especially focused on widely cultivated winter vegetables such as cabbage, cauliflower and tomato. Data were collected targeting the activities of SENSE (Support to establish a new society of BOP farmers by using the power of ICT) project regarding production and marketing. The results indicated that the production of chemical free cauliflower and tomato were substandard compare to the cabbage. The reasons for getting substandard production were unavailability of proper production inputs such as appropriate organic pesticides, quality compost and lack of timely execution of the farming activities. Moreover, the selling results indicated that farmers got higher income from tomato compare to cabbage and cauliflower. Additionally, revenue (per kg) of the products sold in Dhaka market was more than the local markets. The differences of revenue (per kg) between Dhaka and locally sold cabbage, cauliflower and tomato were BDT 6.02, BDT 6.63 and BDT 10.22, respectively. However, the average selling percentage of cabbage, cauliflower and tomato in Dhaka market (10.06%) and local market (89.94%) indicated that chemical free vegetable production had high potential by selling more products in Dhaka market for high income generation of the resource poor farmers.

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

This paper explores and analyzes the current level of, reasons behind and factors affecting consumer acceptance of Portable Health Clinic (PHC), an e-Health initiative in Bangladesh. Our findings revealed that, 40% of the respondents have idea of using ICT in healthcare while 21% have their own experience of using any of the existing mHealth or eHealth systems. On the other hand, PHC's acceptance rate among our respondents is 32% i.e. they have received healthcare services from PHC at least once. This research also analyzed consumer's demographic and socio-economic factors that affect their acceptance of eHealth. Our finding says, consumer's age, occupation and purchasing power have very strong influence on their acceptance of eHealth services while their gender, level of education, access to cell phone and previous eHealth knowledge have very insignificant or weaker impact.

DOI： 10.1016/j.procs.2017.06.049

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

This paper explores and analyzes the current level of, reasons behind and factors affecting consumer acceptance of Portable Health Clinic (PHC), an e-Health initiative in Bangladesh. Our findings revealed that, 40% of the respondents have idea of using ICT in healthcare while 21% have their own experience of using any of the existing mHealth or eHealth systems. On the other hand, PHC's acceptance rate among our respondents is 32% i.e. they have received healthcare services from PHC at least once. This research also analyzed consumer's demographic and socio-economic factors that affect their acceptance of eHealth. Our finding says, consumer's age, occupation and purchasing power have very strong influence on their acceptance of eHealth services while their gender, level of education, access to cell phone and previous eHealth knowledge have very insignificant or weaker impact.

DOI： 10.1016/j.procs.2017.06.049

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

Due to the rapid growth of wireless medical devices in near future, wireless healthcare services may face some inescapable issue such as medical spectrum scarcity, electromagnetic interference (EMI), bandwidth constraint, security and finally medical data communication model. To mitigate these issues, cognitive radio (CR) or opportunistic radio network enabled wireless technology is suitable for the upcoming wireless healthcare system. The up-to-date research on CR based healthcare has exposed some developments on EMI and spectrum problems. However, the investigation recommendation on system design and network model for CR enabled hospital is rare. Thus, this research designs a hierarchy based hybrid network architecture and network maintenance protocols for previously proposed CR hospital system, known as CogMed. In the previous study, the detail architecture of CogMed and its maintenance protocols were not present. The proposed architecture includes clustering concepts for cognitive base stations and non-medical devices. Two cluster head (CH selector equations are formulated based on priority of location, device, mobility rate of devices and number of accessible channels. In order to maintain the integrity of the proposed network model, node joining and node leaving protocols are also proposed. Finally, the simulation results show that the proposed network maintenance time is very low for emergency medical devices (average maintenance period 9.5 ms) and the re-clustering effects for different mobility enabled non-medical devices are also balanced.

DOI： 10.1109/EMBC.2016.7592092

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

Due to the rapid growth of wireless medical devices in near future, wireless healthcare services may face some inescapable issue such as medical spectrum scarcity, electromagnetic interference (EMI), bandwidth constraint, security and finally medical data communication model. To mitigate these issues, cognitive radio (CR) or opportunistic radio network enabled wireless technology is suitable for the upcoming wireless healthcare system. The up-to-date research on CR based healthcare has exposed some developments on EMI and spectrum problems. However, the investigation recommendation on system design and network model for CR enabled hospital is rare. Thus, this research designs a hierarchy based hybrid network architecture and network maintenance protocols for previously proposed CR hospital system, known as CogMed. In the previous study, the detail architecture of CogMed and its maintenance protocols were not present. The proposed architecture includes clustering concepts for cognitive base stations and non-medical devices. Two cluster head (CH selector equations are formulated based on priority of location, device, mobility rate of devices and number of accessible channels. In order to maintain the integrity of the proposed network model, node joining and node leaving protocols are also proposed. Finally, the simulation results show that the proposed network maintenance time is very low for emergency medical devices (average maintenance period 9.5 ms) and the re-clustering effects for different mobility enabled non-medical devices are also balanced.

DOI： 10.1109/EMBC.2016.7592092

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

Language：Others   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

This paper presents the concept of a hybrid multiservice demand-responsive mobility service, to improve productivity and provide safer, reliable transportation in developing countries. The multiservice vehicle is realized by a Mobility Service Provider (MSP). The MSP manages passengers' requests by scheduling ride sharing. Service requests are also met by scheduling delivery of healthcare, internet access and goods delivery close to the customer. A user demand-responsive scheduling system ensures optimum use of a vehicle and delivery of services. A model MSP called Social Services on Wheels introduces vehicles to a community in Dhaka, Bangladesh whose operations are based on requests from the customers. We expect this pilot will provide a comfortable scheduled transit solution that minimizes vehicle idle time to maximize use of the vehicle.

DOI： 10.1109/eCHALLENGES.2015.7441090

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

This paper presents the concept of a hybrid multiservice demand-responsive mobility service, to improve productivity and provide safer, reliable transportation in developing countries. The multiservice vehicle is realized by a Mobility Service Provider (MSP). The MSP manages passengers' requests by scheduling ride sharing. Service requests are also met by scheduling delivery of healthcare, internet access and goods delivery close to the customer. A user demand-responsive scheduling system ensures optimum use of a vehicle and delivery of services. A model MSP called Social Services on Wheels introduces vehicles to a community in Dhaka, Bangladesh whose operations are based on requests from the customers. We expect this pilot will provide a comfortable scheduled transit solution that minimizes vehicle idle time to maximize use of the vehicle.

DOI： 10.1109/eCHALLENGES.2015.7441090

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

This paper presents the concept of a hybrid multiservice demand-responsive mobility service, to improve productivity and provide safer, reliable transportation in developing countries. The multiservice vehicle is realized by a Mobility Service Provider (MSP). The MSP manages passengers' requests by scheduling ride sharing. Service requests are also met by scheduling delivery of healthcare, internet access and goods delivery close to the customer. A user demand-responsive scheduling system ensures optimum use of a vehicle and delivery of services. A model MSP called Social Services on Wheels introduces vehicles to a community in Dhaka, Bangladesh whose operations are based on requests from the customers. We expect this pilot will provide a comfortable scheduled transit solution that minimizes vehicle idle time to maximize use of the vehicle.

DOI： 10.1109/eCHALLENGES.2015.7441090

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

Bangladesh is a country where people mostly depend on agriculture. The crop sub-sector of agriculture mainly depends on extensive agrochemicals to increase production and to ensure the national food security. Although, farmers have been using agrochemicals, the production was still found not to increase significantly due to the lack of knowledge about proper and modern cultivation technology. In addition, farmers are getting less income from agriculture compared to another profession, because of the inconsistent price of agricultural produces between the rural and urban area. In order to improve the situation, Kyushu University has conducted JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency) grassroots technical cooperation project which aims at income generation for BOP (Bottom of Pyramid) farmers by producing and marketing the chemical free quality vegetables using ICT (Information and Communication Technology). The project has been conducted in five rural areas in Bangladesh. Here, the farmers are producing vegetables under a quality vegetable management center (QVMC) which is well equipped with ICT tools, and a quality vegetable entrepreneur (QVE) is helping them regularly to get the desired production and also ensuring the marketing of such vegetables. The project has targeted 100 farmers for producing chemical free vegetables and already got 42 interested farmers in 1.5 years of time. It is observed that farmers get better production under this QVMC in the winter season (called "Rabi" in Bangladesh) than summer season (called "Kharif-1" in Bangladesh).

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

Bangladesh is a country where people mostly depend on agriculture. The crop sub-sector of agriculture mainly depends on extensive agrochemicals to increase production and to ensure the national food security. Although, farmers have been using agrochemicals, the production was still found not to increase significantly due to the lack of knowledge about proper and modern cultivation technology. In addition, farmers are getting less income from agriculture compared to another profession, because of the inconsistent price of agricultural produces between the rural and urban area. In order to improve the situation, Kyushu University has conducted JICA (Japan International Cooperation Agency) grassroots technical cooperation project which aims at income generation for BOP (Bottom of Pyramid) farmers by producing and marketing the chemical free quality vegetables using ICT (Information and Communication Technology). The project has been conducted in five rural areas in Bangladesh. Here, the farmers are producing vegetables under a quality vegetable management center (QVMC) which is well equipped with ICT tools, and a quality vegetable entrepreneur (QVE) is helping them regularly to get the desired production and also ensuring the marketing of such vegetables. The project has targeted 100 farmers for producing chemical free vegetables and already got 42 interested farmers in 1.5 years of time. It is observed that farmers get better production under this QVMC in the winter season (called "Rabi" in Bangladesh) than summer season (called "Kharif-1" in Bangladesh).

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

Emerging economies are expected to account for more than 90% of the global net-energy-demand growth to 2035. Intensive use of renewable energy by emerging economies is inevitable to solve the problem of global warming. In this paper, we propose a grid comprising distributed small solar energy systems without electric wires, called a «virtual grid,» where lithium-ion batteries, solar panels, and appliances are wirelessly networked and the batteries are shared between users to improve the efficiency of battery usage. The states of health (SOH) of batteries are monitored and the batteries are used beyond the SOH deterioration limit defined by the makers as far as the batteries are evaluated as safe, which results in extension of the battery lifetime to more than twice. The virtual grid is projected to reach grid parity for emerging economies around 2030, assuming continued cost reduction of lithium-ion, or other high-energy-density batteries.

DOI： 10.1109/ISGT-Asia.2015.7387117

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

Emerging economies are expected to account for more than 90% of the global net-energy-demand growth to 2035. Intensive use of renewable energy by emerging economies is inevitable to solve the problem of global warming. In this paper, we propose a grid comprising distributed small solar energy systems without electric wires, called a «virtual grid,» where lithium-ion batteries, solar panels, and appliances are wirelessly networked and the batteries are shared between users to improve the efficiency of battery usage. The states of health (SOH) of batteries are monitored and the batteries are used beyond the SOH deterioration limit defined by the makers as far as the batteries are evaluated as safe, which results in extension of the battery lifetime to more than twice. The virtual grid is projected to reach grid parity for emerging economies around 2030, assuming continued cost reduction of lithium-ion, or other high-energy-density batteries.

DOI： 10.1109/ISGT-Asia.2015.7387117

Language：English  

遠隔地にいる医師がSkypeを通じて直ちに健診を行うことができるPortable Health Clinic(PHC)について、緊急症例への対応や、医療従事者が不足している場合でも利用できるように、新たなアルゴリズムをバングラデシュで設計した。新たなアルゴリズムでは、年齢、症状、受診中か否かの初期評価が可能になった。これらの変化は、処理時間を短縮させ、患者の効率的な検出につながった。過去のデータを新たなアルゴリズムに適用して遠隔医療の成績をシミュレーションし、さらに広島県で起きた土石流災害の避難所で本システムの実施可能性と処理時間を検証した。PHCの健康評価基準や調剤リストなどを変更することで、PHCシステムを自然災害後にスムーズに緊急モードに切り替えられることが示された。

Language：English  

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are no longer just a problem for high-income countries, but they are also a problem that affects developing countries. Preventive medicine is definitely the key to combat NCDs; however, the cost of preventive programs is a critical issue affecting the popularization of these medicine programs in developing countries. In this study, we investigate predictive modeling for providing a low-cost preventive medicine program. In our two-year-long field study in Bangladesh, we collected the health checkup results of 15,075 subjects, the data of 6,607 prescriptions, and the follow-up examination results of 2,109 subjects. We address three prediction problems, namely subject risk prediction, drug recommendation, and future risk prediction, by using machine learning techniques; our multiple-classifier approach successfully reduced the costs of health checkups, a multi-task learning method provided accurate recommendation for specific types of drugs, and an active learning method achieved an efficient assignment of healthcare workers for the follow-up care of subjects.

DOI： 10.1145/2783258.2788587

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) are no longer just a problem for high-income countries, but they are also a problem that affects developing countries. Preventive medicine is definitely the key to combat NCDs; however, the cost of preventive programs is a critical issue affecting the popularization of these medicine programs in developing countries. In this study, we investigate predictive modeling for providing a low-cost preventive medicine program. In our two-year-long field study in Bangladesh, we collected the health checkup results of 15,075 subjects, the data of 6,607 prescriptions, and the follow-up examination results of 2,109 subjects. We address three prediction problems, namely subject risk prediction, drug recommendation, and future risk prediction, by using machine learning techniques; our multiple-classifier approach successfully reduced the costs of health checkups, a multi-task learning method provided accurate recommendation for specific types of drugs, and an active learning method achieved an efficient assignment of healthcare workers for the follow-up care of subjects.

DOI： 10.1145/2783258.2788587

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

This Wireless communication is a key technology to improve mobility and service flexibility for different e-health applications such as remote patient monitoring, telemedicine, mobile hospital information system, etc. However, due to the increasing number of wireless devices, in near future wireless healthcare services may face challenges on medical band and electromagnetic interferences (EMI) to biomedical devices. To mitigate these issues cognitive radio network supported healthcare service system for proper utilization of medical band and EMI-aware prioritized wireless access scheme to avoid malfunction of biomedical devices may be essential. Therefore, to support an efficient wireless healthcare services system in this paper we introduce a priority scheme for medical and non-medical devices. Based on this scheme, we then propose spectrum aware cluster-based network architecture and EMI-aware communication protocols for healthcare services. The proposed architecture enhances communication facilities in a heterogeneous healthcare system where the clustering scheme is divided into three subgroups: partial mesh topology for Cognitive Base Station (CBSs) to avoid single point failure, star topology for medical devices that are connected to cognitive base stations to enable medical devices to communicate via CBSs, and tree topology for non-medical devices that may be connected to CBSs via some other devices in an ad-hoc mode. The connected subgroups then form a communication highway to support efficient communication. Proposed EMI-aware communication protocols are: communication between Medical devices, non-medical devices, and admin center.

DOI： 10.1109/ISMICT.2015.7107522

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

This Wireless communication is a key technology to improve mobility and service flexibility for different e-health applications such as remote patient monitoring, telemedicine, mobile hospital information system, etc. However, due to the increasing number of wireless devices, in near future wireless healthcare services may face challenges on medical band and electromagnetic interferences (EMI) to biomedical devices. To mitigate these issues cognitive radio network supported healthcare service system for proper utilization of medical band and EMI-aware prioritized wireless access scheme to avoid malfunction of biomedical devices may be essential. Therefore, to support an efficient wireless healthcare services system in this paper we introduce a priority scheme for medical and non-medical devices. Based on this scheme, we then propose spectrum aware cluster-based network architecture and EMI-aware communication protocols for healthcare services. The proposed architecture enhances communication facilities in a heterogeneous healthcare system where the clustering scheme is divided into three subgroups: partial mesh topology for Cognitive Base Station (CBSs) to avoid single point failure, star topology for medical devices that are connected to cognitive base stations to enable medical devices to communicate via CBSs, and tree topology for non-medical devices that may be connected to CBSs via some other devices in an ad-hoc mode. The connected subgroups then form a communication highway to support efficient communication. Proposed EMI-aware communication protocols are: communication between Medical devices, non-medical devices, and admin center.

DOI： 10.1109/ISMICT.2015.7107522

Language：Others   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

Electronic Health Records (EHR) are digitized and stored for efficient patient management in hospitals or clinics. At the patient side, health records are not digitally stored and thus difficult to manage across different hospitals. We propose a new system, where medical sources (firms & devices) import a person's medical records into Personal Health Book (PHB). This will give the person (the owner of the records) the capability to manage, control and share his/her own Personal Health Records (PHR). However, medical sources have different structure and database design. In this paper, we propose a decomposed database design for PHB that accommodate different structured data. We test the capability of generating a meaningful report and compare it to the original EHR received from source (Hospital). We use a framework that exports the data from PHB into an Extensible Markup Language (XML) file format, then view it using predefined Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL). We observe that our database design can generate a report with same content of original EHR in a meaningful manner that the owner and authorized parties can understand it.

DOI： 10.1109/TENCON.2014.7022451

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

Electronic Health Records (EHR) are digitized and stored for efficient patient management in hospitals or clinics. At the patient side, health records are not digitally stored and thus difficult to manage across different hospitals. We propose a new system, where medical sources (firms & devices) import a person's medical records into Personal Health Book (PHB). This will give the person (the owner of the records) the capability to manage, control and share his/her own Personal Health Records (PHR). However, medical sources have different structure and database design. In this paper, we propose a decomposed database design for PHB that accommodate different structured data. We test the capability of generating a meaningful report and compare it to the original EHR received from source (Hospital). We use a framework that exports the data from PHB into an Extensible Markup Language (XML) file format, then view it using predefined Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL). We observe that our database design can generate a report with same content of original EHR in a meaningful manner that the owner and authorized parties can understand it.

DOI： 10.1109/TENCON.2014.7022451

Language：English  

One billion people (15% of the world population) are unreached in terms of access to quality healthcare services largely as a result of the paucity of healthcare facilities and medical experts in rural areas. We have prototyped “portable health clinic (PHC), a compact telehealth system with diagnostic equipment and GramHealth software for archiving and searching patients’ past health records. The back-end of the system consists of data servers and a medical call center. The front-end has the instances of portable briefcase consisting of medical sensors and measuring equipment operated by healthcare workers living in unreached communities. The front-end data transmission system and Skype telemedicine calls connect with the back-end using mobile network coverage and Internet. Doctors at the medical call center access GramHealth data cloud through the Internet or have a copy of the database in the call center server. Upon receiving a multimedia call from a patient, the doctor can find that patient’s previous EHR record and then create and send an e-Prescription. The healthcare worker’s PHC briefcase is designed to be low cost and portable. It is envisioned as costing less than US$300 (an amount an entrepreneur can borrow from micro-finance institutions such as Grameen Bank in Bangladesh) and light enough to be carried by a female health assistant. The PHC briefcase will be owned and operated by a village health assistant. This will be a sustainable business model as the health assistant can build a professional relationship with her local clientele. We carried out experiments in three remote villages and in two commercial organizations in Bangladesh by collaborating with local organizations to observe the local adoption of the technology. We are looking at the applicability of our PHC system for aging societies in developed countries.

DOI： 10.1007/978-3-319-14711-6_18

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

Portable Healthcare Clinic (PHC) is a mobile healthcare system comprising of medical sensors and health assessment criteria. It has been applied in Bangladesh for the last two years as a pilot program to identify non-communicable diseases. In this study, we adapted PHC to fit post-disaster conditions. The PHC health assessment criteria are redesigned to deal with emergency cases and healthcare worker insufficiency. A new algorithm makes an initial assessment of age, symptoms, and whether the person is seeing a doctor. These changes will make the turn-around time shorter and will enable reaching the most affected patients better. We tested the operability and turn-around time of the adapted system at the debris flow disaster shelters in Hiroshima, Japan. Changing the PHC health assessment criteria and other solutions such as a list of medicine preparation makes the PHC system switch into an emergency mode more smoothly following a natural disaster.

DOI： 10.3233/978-1-61499-564-7-79

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

The residents of several cities and villages in Bangladesh underwent e-health checkups. The distribution of Hb increased from the first hemoglobin (Hb) measurement to the second, and some women recovered from severe anemia. A strong effect was observed in subjects who were prescribed iron supplements. The mean blood pressure improved after the first health examination, and the blood sugar level increased. In countries with shortages of health practitioners and health care providers, e-health examinations and instructions may be useful interventions because they make people health conscious and improve their health status.

DOI： 10.3233/978-1-61499-564-7-975

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

Background: The prevalence of non-communicable diseases is increasing throughout the world, including developing countries. Objective: The intent was to conduct a study of a preventive medical service in a developing country, combining eHealth checkups and teleconsultation as well as assess stratification rules and the short-term effects of intervention. Methods: We developed an eHealth system that comprises a set of sensor devices in an attaché case, a data transmission system linked to a mobile network, and a data management application. We provided eHealth checkups for the populations of five villages and the employees of five factories/offices in Bangladesh. Individual health condition was automatically categorized into four grades based on international diagnostic standards: green (healthy), yellow (caution), orange (affected), and red (emergent). We provided teleconsultation for orange- and red-grade subjects and we provided teleprescription for these subjects as required. Results: The first checkup was provided to 16,741 subjects. After one year, 2361 subjects participated in the second checkup and the systolic blood pressure of these subjects was significantly decreased from an average of 121 mmHg to an average of 116 mmHg (P<.001). Based on these results, we propose a cost-effective method using a machine learning technique (random forest method) using the medical interview, subject profiles, and checkup results as predictor to avoid costly measurements of blood sugar, to ensure sustainability of the program in developing countries. Conclusions: The results of this study demonstrate the benefits of an eHealth checkup and teleconsultation program as an effective health care system in developing countries.

DOI： 10.2196/jmir.3705

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

Electronic Health Records (EHR) are digitized and stored for efficient patient management in hospitals or clinics. At the patient side, health records are not digitally stored and thus difficult to manage across different hospitals. We propose a new system, where medical sources (firms & devices) import a person's medical records into Personal Health Book (PHB). This will give the person (the owner of the records) the capability to manage, control and share his/her own Personal Health Records (PHR). However, medical sources have different structure and database design. In this paper, we propose a decomposed database design for PHB that accommodate different structured data. We test the capability of generating a meaningful report and compare it to the original EHR received from source (Hospital). We use a framework that exports the data from PHB into an Extensible Markup Language (XML) file format, then view it using predefined Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL). We observe that our database design can generate a report with same content of original EHR in a meaningful manner that the owner and authorized parties can understand it.

DOI： 10.1109/TENCON.2014.7022451

Language：English  

One billion people (15% of the world population) are unreached in terms of access to quality healthcare services largely as a result of the paucity of healthcare facilities and medical experts in rural areas. We have prototyped “portable health clinic (PHC), a compact telehealth system with diagnostic equipment and GramHealth software for archiving and searching patients’ past health records. The back-end of the system consists of data servers and a medical call center. The front-end has the instances of portable briefcase consisting of medical sensors and measuring equipment operated by healthcare workers living in unreached communities. The front-end data transmission system and Skype telemedicine calls connect with the back-end using mobile network coverage and Internet. Doctors at the medical call center access GramHealth data cloud through the Internet or have a copy of the database in the call center server. Upon receiving a multimedia call from a patient, the doctor can find that patient’s previous EHR record and then create and send an e-Prescription. The healthcare worker’s PHC briefcase is designed to be low cost and portable. It is envisioned as costing less than US$300 (an amount an entrepreneur can borrow from micro-finance institutions such as Grameen Bank in Bangladesh) and light enough to be carried by a female health assistant. The PHC briefcase will be owned and operated by a village health assistant. This will be a sustainable business model as the health assistant can build a professional relationship with her local clientele. We carried out experiments in three remote villages and in two commercial organizations in Bangladesh by collaborating with local organizations to observe the local adoption of the technology. We are looking at the applicability of our PHC system for aging societies in developed countries.

DOI： 10.1007/978-3-319-14711-6_18

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

Portable Healthcare Clinic (PHC) is a mobile healthcare system comprising of medical sensors and health assessment criteria. It has been applied in Bangladesh for the last two years as a pilot program to identify non-communicable diseases. In this study, we adapted PHC to fit post-disaster conditions. The PHC health assessment criteria are redesigned to deal with emergency cases and healthcare worker insufficiency. A new algorithm makes an initial assessment of age, symptoms, and whether the person is seeing a doctor. These changes will make the turn-around time shorter and will enable reaching the most affected patients better. We tested the operability and turn-around time of the adapted system at the debris flow disaster shelters in Hiroshima, Japan. Changing the PHC health assessment criteria and other solutions such as a list of medicine preparation makes the PHC system switch into an emergency mode more smoothly following a natural disaster.

DOI： 10.3233/978-1-61499-564-7-79

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

The residents of several cities and villages in Bangladesh underwent e-health checkups. The distribution of Hb increased from the first hemoglobin (Hb) measurement to the second, and some women recovered from severe anemia. A strong effect was observed in subjects who were prescribed iron supplements. The mean blood pressure improved after the first health examination, and the blood sugar level increased. In countries with shortages of health practitioners and health care providers, e-health examinations and instructions may be useful interventions because they make people health conscious and improve their health status.

DOI： 10.3233/978-1-61499-564-7-975

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)  

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)  

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)  

Language：Japanese  

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)  

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)  

Personal Health Records (PHR) are digitized and stored for efficient patient management in hospitals or clinics. At the patient side, the health records are not digitally stored and thus difficult to manage. In this work, we propose a new framework, we call it Personal Health Book (PHB) where a patient can own, operate, manage by herself and can also share her own data with other authorized parties. We are investigating what database design would be suitable for PHB. We considered three different database designs (wide direction, long direction and decomposed) and compared their performances. We set up a simulator and measured performance indicators to compare their performances. We observed that decomposed design has more advantage than the other two. Decompose design itself will help in managing data types along with the better results we got in a simulation we designed to compare long direction versus decomposed.

Language：Japanese  

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)  

In this paper, we present a data analysis and visualization system named "Data Explorer". The system read a data table, and produce analysis and visualization results interactively. The system include many types of table functions. There are different numbers and types of options for each table function. A problem to be tackled is the difficulty to set option values of the table functions. There will be many user mistakes in the option values. To solve the problem, we propose a rule set to decide a candidate set of the option values of the table functions. Here, the data-description data (i.e. metadata) of data table is employed to decide the candidate set. We use the metadata to decide the applicability of table functions, also. The feasibility of the idea is evaluated using two types of dataset. They are iris and the hospital dataset.

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

In this paper, we present a data analysis and visualization system named "Data Explorer". The system read a data table, and produce analysis and visualization results interactively. The system include many types of table functions. There are different numbers and types of options for each table function. A problem to be tackled is the difficulty to set option values of the table functions. There will be many user mistakes in the option values. To solve the problem, we propose a rule set to decide a candidate set of the option values of the table functions. Here, the data-description data (i.e. metadata) of data table is employed to decide the candidate set. We use the metadata to decide the applicability of table functions, also. The feasibility of the idea is evaluated using two types of dataset. They are iris and the hospital dataset.

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

This study presents an ICT based transport system called Social Services on Wheels (SSW) that reduces villager's long distance trip-frequency in unreached communities. Trip frequency is decreased using a community car to eliminate villager's need to travel to urban areas by bringing welfare services - access to healthcare, education, learning and purchasing - to the rural village. The community car brings measuring devices, PC notebooks and team members (Village entrepreneur, healthcare worker, IT assistant) to temporary service points within villages. The measuring devices and notebook applications are supported a back-end data operations office using mobile network coverage and Internet. The villager walks to the nearest service point and interfaces with the SSW operations and information systems. Social Service on Wheels has been tested in two rural villages in Bangladesh during October 2013 to February 2014. The results showed that 4,496 long distance trips were reduced because the villagers were satisfactorily served without leaving their village. The villagers tended to associate the delivery of six social services with the Toyota community car rather than the SSW teams who performed the tests or helped with IT issues. SSW empowered the community by hiring locally and training the SSW teams. The sustainability of SSW project is a challenging area and is still being investigated.

DOI： 10.1109/smc.2014.6974197

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

This study looks at how an e-Health System can reduce morbidity (poor health) in unreached communities. The e-Health system combines affordable sensors and Body Area Networking technology with mobile health concepts and is called a Portable Health Clinic. The health clinic is portable because all the medical devices fit inside a briefcase and are carried to unreached communities by a healthcare assistants. Patient morbidity is diagnosed using software stratification algorithm and categorized according to triage color-coding scheme within the briefcase. Morbid patients are connected to remote doctor in a telemedicine call center using the mobile network coverage. Electronic Health Records (EHR) are used for the medical consultancy and e-Prescription is generated. The effectiveness of the portable health clinic system to target morbidity was tested on 8690 patients in rural and urban areas of Bangladesh during September 2012 to January 2013. There were two phases to the experiment: the first phase identified the intensity of morbidity and the second phase reexamined the morbid patients, two months later. The experiment results show a decrease in patients to identify as morbid among those who participated in telemedicine process.

DOI： 10.1587/transcom.E97.B.540

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

Unreached communities require access to fundamental social services such as healthcare, education, learning and purchasing opportunities to improve their economic sustainability. Unreached communities are characterized by informal and unsafe transport. Villagers have to travel long distances to urban centres to attain social services. In this article, we introduce an Information Communication Technology (ICT) concept called Social Services on Wheels (SSW) to provide quality transit and overcome access problems by bringing e-services directly to the community. SSW is based on a community vehicle that is as a college bus service and mobile ICT platform. SSW takes a healthcare worker, an ICT assistant and their equipment to a service point allowing villagers to access telemedicine and Internet services. SSW was tested on a rural community in Bangladesh in 2012 and 2013. A cost analysis shows that 52% of the total operating cost was covered using the existing business model. The research contributes to the discussion on sustainable ICT for Development (ICT4D).

DOI： 10.1109/ISTAFRICA.2014.6880624

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

Standardization activities exist for a range of e-health services concerning personal and public health, and many standard results are available. Yet these standards sometimes cover the same use area and it is difficult to select appropriate ones. This paper discusses e-health standardization activities and an e-health ecosystem targeting public health in anticipation of its continuous evolution. We introduce a portable health clinic with body area network (BAN-PHC) technologies providing affordable healthcare and telemedicine as a candidate service for health screenings that can be useful for emerging nations, which collectively have a massive population of around 5.8 billion people. The effectiveness of such health checks is evaluated through actual mass examinations in Bangladesh, and key features to accelerating standards deployment are raised. This success leads to adoption of the standards in emerging nations and can be reversely deployed in developed nations. Machine-to-machine (M2M) technologies are also important for providing scalable solutions and accelerating global integration of back-end systems. We propose integration of two key enablers - BAN-PHC and M2M technologies - to provide evolved services for quick and broad standard acceptance from emerging nations to developed nations.

DOI： 10.1109/Kaleidoscope.2014.6858490

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

Blood Pressure readings are widely accepted as a measure to determine the risk of non-communicable diseases such as hypertension and stroke. Affordable healthcare devices and sensors allow individuals to monitor blood pressure at home or at a local service point on a daily basis. ICT based healthcare systems interpret the readings and give feedback to individuals or may trigger a telemedicine call to a remote doctor. This paper introduces case studies for ICT healthcare studies undertaken in Japan and Bangladesh. Blood Pressure data collected by the Omron WellnessLink (500,000 readings) and the Kyushu University/Grameen Portable Heath Clinic (21,252 readings) are examined for similarities and differences. The results show similarities in gender and temporal influences. Males have higher blood pressure and readings appear to be rhythmic according to day and month. The differences indicate that the mean Systolic Blood Pressure (SBP) for Japanese males is higher than Bangladesh males and SBP for Bangladesh females is higher than Japanese females. The impact of climate is stronger on Japanese SBP than Bangladesh SBP. The Bangladesh data shows progressive increase in SBP in each ten year age category until 80 years; this is also reflected by BMI categories. The study reveals that affordable devices connected to basic ICT based healthcare systems reveal underlying factors in the Blood Pressure variability.

DOI： 10.1109/SMC.2014.6974048

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

Integrating malaria data into a decision support system (DSS) using Geographic Information System (GIS) and remote sensing tool can provide timely information and decision makers get prepared to make better and faster decisions which can reduce the damage and minimize the loss caused. This paper attempted to asses and produce maps of malaria prone areas including the most important natural factors. The input data were based on the geospatial factors including climatic, social and Topographic aspects from secondary data. The objective of study is to prepare malaria hazard, Vulnerability, and element at risk map which give the final output, malaria risk map. The malaria hazard analyses were computed using multi criteria evaluation (MCE) using environmental factors such as topographic factors (elevation, slope and flow distance to stream), land use/land cover and Breeding site were developed and weighted, then weighted overlay technique were computed in ArcGIS software to generate malaria hazard map. The resulting malaria hazard map depicts that 19.2%, 30.8%, 25.1%, 16.6% and 8.3% of the District were subjected to very high, high, moderate, low and very low malaria hazard areas respectively. For vulnerability analysis, health station location and speed constant in Spatial Analyst module were used to generate factor maps. For element at risk, land use land cover map were used to generate element at risk map. Finally malaria risk map of the District was generated. Land use land cover map which is the element at risk in the District, the vulnerability map and the hazard map were overlaid. The final output based on this approach is a malaria risk map, which is classified into 5 classes which is Very High-risk area, High-risk area, Moderate risk area, Low risk area and Very low risk area. The risk map produced from the overlay analysis showed that 20.5%, 11.6%, 23.8%, 34.1% and 26.4% of the District were subjected to very high, high, moderate, low and very low malaria risk respectively. This help to plan valuable measures to be taken in early warning, monitor, control and prevent malaria epidemics.

DOI： 10.5194/isprsarchives-XL-8-155-2014

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

In this paper, we introduce the predictive way to evolve the process of the health consultancy by predictive methods with machine learning. We have tried health consultancy for over 22,000 patients with caravan health sensing in Bangladesh during 2012-2014. In health consultancy with caravan health sensing, doctors' task becomes the bottleneck of the whole process because of the cost and the huge workload, and we try to delegate some of them to health workers who are less skilled. In this paper, we propose a method to predict the advices of doctors from the inquiry, vital data, and the chief complaints of the patients, and to delegate the task to health workers, resulting in eliminating the bottleneck. We also evaluate the accuracy of the prediction of advices from the 931 patients who have taken the doctors' consultancy out of the above experiment. We got the predict accuracy 76.24% with inquiry and vital data, and 82.55% with adding chief complaints data.

DOI： 10.1145/2638728.2638816

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

Portable Health Clinic is adapted to provide primary care to a super aged society. A super aged society occurs when, one third of the population is 65+ years and one fifth is 85+ years. The combination of aging society and incidence of non-communicable diseases increases the prevalence of elderly disability and places pressure on health care systems, health costs, and existing social norms. The goal is to reposition the Portable Health Clinic as a health information and affordable disability prevention system. In this paper, we show how the healthcare worker can supplement her competence on medical risk factors with sensor technology and share her knowledge with elderly patients within the community. We suggest that the remote telemedicine call center should be used to support distant screening and surveillance programs and provide early intervention to diseases. We investigate 18,278 Portable Health Clinic Electronic Health Records between 2012 and 2013 to see what are the most important risk factors for ill health in Bangladesh. The field data implies that elevated blood pressure and blood sugar and protein in the urine and the most important risk factors for the elderly population (>65 years) when compared to younger population (<65 years).

DOI： 10.1007/978-3-319-07788-8_49

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

In this paper, we present a data analysis and visualization system named "Data Explorer". The system read a data table, and produce analysis and visualization results interactively. The system include many types of table functions. There are different numbers and types of options for each table function. A problem to be tackled is the difficulty to set option values of the table functions. There will be many user mistakes in the option values. To solve the problem, we propose a rule set to decide a candidate set of the option values of the table functions. Here, the data-description data (i.e. metadata) of data table is employed to decide the candidate set. We use the metadata to decide the applicability of table functions, also. The feasibility of the idea is evaluated using two types of dataset. They are iris and the hospital dataset.

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

This study presents an ICT based transport system called Social Services on Wheels (SSW) that reduces villager's long distance trip-frequency in unreached communities. Trip frequency is decreased using a community car to eliminate villager's need to travel to urban areas by bringing welfare services - access to healthcare, education, learning and purchasing - to the rural village. The community car brings measuring devices, PC notebooks and team members (Village entrepreneur, healthcare worker, IT assistant) to temporary service points within villages. The measuring devices and notebook applications are supported a back-end data operations office using mobile network coverage and Internet. The villager walks to the nearest service point and interfaces with the SSW operations and information systems. Social Service on Wheels has been tested in two rural villages in Bangladesh during October 2013 to February 2014. The results showed that 4,496 long distance trips were reduced because the villagers were satisfactorily served without leaving their village. The villagers tended to associate the delivery of six social services with the Toyota community car rather than the SSW teams who performed the tests or helped with IT issues. SSW empowered the community by hiring locally and training the SSW teams. The sustainability of SSW project is a challenging area and is still being investigated.

DOI： 10.1109/smc.2014.6974197

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

Unreached communities require access to fundamental social services such as healthcare, education, learning and purchasing opportunities to improve their economic sustainability. Unreached communities are characterized by informal and unsafe transport. Villagers have to travel long distances to urban centres to attain social services. In this article, we introduce an Information Communication Technology (ICT) concept called Social Services on Wheels (SSW) to provide quality transit and overcome access problems by bringing e-services directly to the community. SSW is based on a community vehicle that is as a college bus service and mobile ICT platform. SSW takes a healthcare worker, an ICT assistant and their equipment to a service point allowing villagers to access telemedicine and Internet services. SSW was tested on a rural community in Bangladesh in 2012 and 2013. A cost analysis shows that 52% of the total operating cost was covered using the existing business model. The research contributes to the discussion on sustainable ICT for Development (ICT4D).

DOI： 10.1109/ISTAFRICA.2014.6880624

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

Standardization activities exist for a range of e-health services concerning personal and public health, and many standard results are available. Yet these standards sometimes cover the same use area and it is difficult to select appropriate ones. This paper discusses e-health standardization activities and an e-health ecosystem targeting public health in anticipation of its continuous evolution. We introduce a portable health clinic with body area network (BAN-PHC) technologies providing affordable healthcare and telemedicine as a candidate service for health screenings that can be useful for emerging nations, which collectively have a massive population of around 5.8 billion people. The effectiveness of such health checks is evaluated through actual mass examinations in Bangladesh, and key features to accelerating standards deployment are raised. This success leads to adoption of the standards in emerging nations and can be reversely deployed in developed nations. Machine-to-machine (M2M) technologies are also important for providing scalable solutions and accelerating global integration of back-end systems. We propose integration of two key enablers - BAN-PHC and M2M technologies - to provide evolved services for quick and broad standard acceptance from emerging nations to developed nations.

DOI： 10.1109/Kaleidoscope.2014.6858490

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

Blood Pressure readings are widely accepted as a measure to determine the risk of non-communicable diseases such as hypertension and stroke. Affordable healthcare devices and sensors allow individuals to monitor blood pressure at home or at a local service point on a daily basis. ICT based healthcare systems interpret the readings and give feedback to individuals or may trigger a telemedicine call to a remote doctor. This paper introduces case studies for ICT healthcare studies undertaken in Japan and Bangladesh. Blood Pressure data collected by the Omron WellnessLink (500,000 readings) and the Kyushu University/Grameen Portable Heath Clinic (21,252 readings) are examined for similarities and differences. The results show similarities in gender and temporal influences. Males have higher blood pressure and readings appear to be rhythmic according to day and month. The differences indicate that the mean Systolic Blood Pressure (SBP) for Japanese males is higher than Bangladesh males and SBP for Bangladesh females is higher than Japanese females. The impact of climate is stronger on Japanese SBP than Bangladesh SBP. The Bangladesh data shows progressive increase in SBP in each ten year age category until 80 years; this is also reflected by BMI categories. The study reveals that affordable devices connected to basic ICT based healthcare systems reveal underlying factors in the Blood Pressure variability.

DOI： 10.1109/SMC.2014.6974048

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

Integrating malaria data into a decision support system (DSS) using Geographic Information System (GIS) and remote sensing tool can provide timely information and decision makers get prepared to make better and faster decisions which can reduce the damage and minimize the loss caused. This paper attempted to asses and produce maps of malaria prone areas including the most important natural factors. The input data were based on the geospatial factors including climatic, social and Topographic aspects from secondary data. The objective of study is to prepare malaria hazard, Vulnerability, and element at risk map which give the final output, malaria risk map. The malaria hazard analyses were computed using multi criteria evaluation (MCE) using environmental factors such as topographic factors (elevation, slope and flow distance to stream), land use/land cover and Breeding site were developed and weighted, then weighted overlay technique were computed in ArcGIS software to generate malaria hazard map. The resulting malaria hazard map depicts that 19.2%, 30.8%, 25.1%, 16.6% and 8.3% of the District were subjected to very high, high, moderate, low and very low malaria hazard areas respectively. For vulnerability analysis, health station location and speed constant in Spatial Analyst module were used to generate factor maps. For element at risk, land use land cover map were used to generate element at risk map. Finally malaria risk map of the District was generated. Land use land cover map which is the element at risk in the District, the vulnerability map and the hazard map were overlaid. The final output based on this approach is a malaria risk map, which is classified into 5 classes which is Very High-risk area, High-risk area, Moderate risk area, Low risk area and Very low risk area. The risk map produced from the overlay analysis showed that 20.5%, 11.6%, 23.8%, 34.1% and 26.4% of the District were subjected to very high, high, moderate, low and very low malaria risk respectively. This help to plan valuable measures to be taken in early warning, monitor, control and prevent malaria epidemics.

DOI： 10.5194/isprsarchives-XL-8-155-2014

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

In this paper, we introduce the predictive way to evolve the process of the health consultancy by predictive methods with machine learning. We have tried health consultancy for over 22,000 patients with caravan health sensing in Bangladesh during 2012-2014. In health consultancy with caravan health sensing, doctors' task becomes the bottleneck of the whole process because of the cost and the huge workload, and we try to delegate some of them to health workers who are less skilled. In this paper, we propose a method to predict the advices of doctors from the inquiry, vital data, and the chief complaints of the patients, and to delegate the task to health workers, resulting in eliminating the bottleneck. We also evaluate the accuracy of the prediction of advices from the 931 patients who have taken the doctors' consultancy out of the above experiment. We got the predict accuracy 76.24% with inquiry and vital data, and 82.55% with adding chief complaints data.

DOI： 10.1145/2638728.2638816

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

Portable Health Clinic is adapted to provide primary care to a super aged society. A super aged society occurs when, one third of the population is 65+ years and one fifth is 85+ years. The combination of aging society and incidence of non-communicable diseases increases the prevalence of elderly disability and places pressure on health care systems, health costs, and existing social norms. The goal is to reposition the Portable Health Clinic as a health information and affordable disability prevention system. In this paper, we show how the healthcare worker can supplement her competence on medical risk factors with sensor technology and share her knowledge with elderly patients within the community. We suggest that the remote telemedicine call center should be used to support distant screening and surveillance programs and provide early intervention to diseases. We investigate 18,278 Portable Health Clinic Electronic Health Records between 2012 and 2013 to see what are the most important risk factors for ill health in Bangladesh. The field data implies that elevated blood pressure and blood sugar and protein in the urine and the most important risk factors for the elderly population (>65 years) when compared to younger population (<65 years).

DOI： 10.1007/978-3-319-07788-8_49

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

We present a remote healthcare consultancy system that enables healthcare workers to identify noncommunicable diseases in unreached communities. The healthcare system combines medical sensors with mobile health and is called a Portable Health Clinic. The Portable Health Clinic fits into a briefcase and is operated by the healthcare worker. The goal of this research is to empower the healthcare worker further by allowing her to recognize spurious measurements and to make lifestyle recommendations. In this paper, we show how to process the data: combine, link and compare - captured in patient electronic health records stored in database. We applied association rule technique to find common set of rules in order to build a clinical decision support system. We also showed examples of the meaningful information from the analyzed data to build a better clinical decision support.

DOI： 10.1109/AINA.2014.108

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

We present a remote healthcare consultancy system that enables healthcare workers to identify noncommunicable diseases in unreached communities. The healthcare system combines medical sensors with mobile health and is called a Portable Health Clinic. The Portable Health Clinic fits into a briefcase and is operated by the healthcare worker. The goal of this research is to empower the healthcare worker further by allowing her to recognize spurious measurements and to make lifestyle recommendations. In this paper, we show how to process the data: combine, link and compare - captured in patient electronic health records stored in database. We applied association rule technique to find common set of rules in order to build a clinical decision support system. We also showed examples of the meaningful information from the analyzed data to build a better clinical decision support.

DOI： 10.1109/AINA.2014.108

Language：Japanese  

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (bulletin of university, research institution)  

Language：Japanese  

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)  

Personal data is information that identifies a person. Information in the personal data landscape is often unavailable or underused by the individual. This article defines personal data in terms of persistent data and transitory data. It suggests personal data store are a suitable repository for persistent records to be accessed by the individual using Personal Information Module. It recommends smart cards as a convenient medium to interface with data networks and capture high volumes of transitory data. Smart cards can lead to reduction of application forms, improve contract accuracy and allow individuals to record and manage their consumption behavior. Personal data can be modeled on lifetime scale and this allows for new hypothesis and general inferences to be made.

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

Insufficient healthcare facilities and unavailability of medical experts in rural areas are the two major reasons that kept the people unreached to healthcare services. Recent penetration of mobile phone and the demand to basic healthcare services, remote health consultancy over mobile phone became popular in developing countries. In this paper, we introduce two such representative initiatives from Bangladesh and discuss the technical challenges they face to serve a remote patient. To solve these issues, we have prototyped a box with necessary diagnostic tools, we call it a 'portable clinic' and a software tool, 'GramHealth' for managing the patient information. We carried out experiments in three villages in Bangladesh to observe the usability of the portable clinic and verify the functionality of 'GramHealth'. We display the qualitative analysis of the results obtained from the experiment. GramHealth DB has a unique combination of structured, semi-structured and un-structured data. We are currently looking at these data to see whether these can be treated as BigData and if yes, how to analyze the data and what to expect from these data to make a better clinical decision support.

DOI： 10.1109/EMBC.2013.6609838

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

Insufficient healthcare facilities and unavailability of medical experts in rural areas are the two major reasons that kept the people unreached to healthcare services. Recent penetration of mobile phone and the demand to basic healthcare services, remote health consultancy over mobile phone became popular in developing countries. In this paper, we introduce two such representative initiatives from Bangladesh and discuss the technical challenges they face to serve a remote patient. To solve these issues, we have prototyped a box with necessary diagnostic tools, we call it a 'portable clinic' and a software tool, 'GramHealth' for managing the patient information. We carried out experiments in three villages in Bangladesh to observe the usability of the portable clinic and verify the functionality of 'GramHealth'. We display the qualitative analysis of the results obtained from the experiment. GramHealth DB has a unique combination of structured, semi-structured and un-structured data. We are currently looking at these data to see whether these can be treated as BigData and if yes, how to analyze the data and what to expect from these data to make a better clinical decision support.

DOI： 10.1109/EMBC.2013.6609838

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)  

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)  

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

One billion people (15% of the world population) are unreached in terms of accessing to quality healthcare service. Insufficient healthcare facilities and unavailability of medical experts in rural areas are the two major reasons that kept the people unreached to healthcare services. Recent penetration of mobile phone and the unmet demand to basic healthcare services, remote health consultancy over mobile phone became popular in developing countries. In this paper, we introduce two such representative initiatives from Bangladesh and discuss the technical challenges they face to serve a remote patient. To solve these issues, we have prototyped a portable health clinic box with necessary diagnostic tools, we call it a portable clinic and a software tool, GramHealth for archiving and searching patients' past health records. We carried out experiments in three remote villages and in two commercial organizations in Bangladesh by collaborating with local organization to observe the local adoption of the technology. We also monitored the usability of the portable clinic and verified the functionality of GramHealth. We display the qualitative analysis of the results obtained from the experiment. GramHealth DB has a unique combination of structured, semi-structured and un-structured data which can be considered as BigData. We have partly analyzed the data manually to find common set of rules to build a better clinical decision support. The model of analyzing the GramHealth BigData is also presented.

DOI： 10.1007/978-3-642-39351-8_29

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

Insufficient healthcare facilities and unavailability of medical experts in rural areas are the two major reasons that kept the people unreached to healthcare services. Recent penetration of mobile phone and the demand to basic healthcare services, remote health consultancy over mobile phone became popular in developing countries. In this paper, we introduce two such representative initiatives from Bangladesh and discuss the technical challenges they face to serve a remote patient. To solve these issues, we have prototyped a box with necessary diagnostic tools, we call it a 'gportable clinic' and a software tool, 'Gram Health' for managing the patient information. We carried out experiments in three villages in Bangladesh to observe the usability of the portable clinic and verify the functionality of 'Gram Health'. We display the qualitative analysis of the results obtained from the experiment. Gram Health DB has a unique combination of structured, semi-structured and un-structured data. We are currently looking at these data to see whether these can be treated as Big Data and if yes, how to analyze the data and what to expect from these data to make a better clinical decision support.

DOI： 10.1109/WAINA.2013.227

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)  

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)  

Our lab has proposed and designed a social information infrastructure (SII) for BOP (Base of the Pyramid, the poorest but the largest economic group in the world). In order to make the social services of SII easily accessible by the low-literate and low-income people, an adaptation layer in SII has been proposed. We are proposing a new adaptor in the adaptation layer; we named it Labiba to be deployed in the adaptation layer of the SII model to make the access smarter. We focus on three issues- (1) data portability issue (2) service portability issue and (3) Information visualization for BOP community. In this article, we introduce Labiba, its functionality and applications and demonstrate how Labiba framework can deal with these issues.

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)  

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

Insufficient healthcare facilities and unavailability of medical experts in rural areas are the two major reasons that kept the people unreached to healthcare services. Recent penetration of mobile phone and the demand to basic healthcare services, remote health consultancy over mobile phone became popular in developing countries. In this paper, we introduce two such representative initiatives from Bangladesh and discuss the technical challenges they face to serve a remote patient. To solve these issues, we have prototyped a box with necessary diagnostic tools, we call it a "portable clinic" and a software tool, "GramHealth" for managing the patient information. We carried out experiments in three villages in Bangladesh to observe the usability of the portable clinic and verify the functionality of "GramHealth". We display the qualitative analysis of the results obtained from the experiment. GramHealth DB has a unique combination of structured, semi-structured and un-structured data. We are currently looking at these data to see whether these can be treated as BigData and if yes, how to analyze the data and what to expect from these data to make a better clinical decision support.

DOI： 10.1109/EMBC.2013.6609838

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)  

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)  

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)  

The opportunities and challenges of traditional communication technologies in the area of rural communication calls for a change in perspective and usual trends of wire line and wireless connectivity. In the quest to improve rural communication with the urban market, use of smart hand held devices and easy-to-deploy wireless connectivity is catalytic according to our findings. To eradicate digital divide, we have presented a holistic approach to overcome the challenges of language barrier and information asymmetry. This paper provides an insight of $100 tablets, an interactive hand-held communication device, which allows low-literate farmers to share their information onto the network. These smart communication devices stay connected to the global network through the easy deployment of wireless mesh network (WMN) in a rural area. QoS constraints are imposed in the WMN setup and significant observation has been made regarding spectrum resource utilization at every hop by achieving certain level of cognition at the user end.

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

The opportunities and challenges of traditional communication technologies in the area of rural communication calls for a change in perspective and usual trends of wire line and wireless connectivity. In the quest to improve rural communication with the urban market, use of smart hand-held devices and easy-to-deploy wireless connectivity is catalytic according to our findings. To eradicate digital divide, we have presented a holistic approach to overcome the challenges of language barrier and information asymmetry. This paper provides an insight of $100 tablets, an interactive hand-held communication device, which allows low-literate farmers to share their information onto the network. These smart communication devices stay connected to the global network through the easy deployment of wireless mesh network (WMN) in a rural area. QoS constraints are imposed in the WMN setup and significant observation has been made regarding spectrum resource utilization at every hop by achieving certain level of cognition at the user end.

DOI： 10.1109/GLOCOMW.2011.6162331

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

Most people at the BOP (base of the economic pyramid, the largest but the poorest community in the world comprising 69% of world population) do not have access to e-commerce services. The way e-commerce is designed and practiced today does not enable their participation. The reasons are: their purchasing power is low, they do not have any means to make online payments, and there is no infrastructure to deliver the purchased items to their doors. To include these 4 billion people, we propose an e-commerce framework by engaging MFI resources and our recently developed ePassbook system. This paper shows how the BOP community can enjoy the benefits of the e-commerce service by using the proposed model. The advantages of making e-commerce available to the BOP are discussed, in addition to the challenges involved in implementing the model.

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

The opportunities and challenges of traditional communication technologies in the area of rural communication calls for a change in perspective and usual trends of wire line and wireless connectivity. In the quest to improve rural communication with the urban market, use of smart hand-held devices and easy-to-deploy wireless connectivity is catalytic according to our findings. To eradicate digital divide, we have presented a holistic approach to overcome the challenges of language barrier and information asymmetry. This paper provides an insight of $100 tablets, an interactive hand-held communication device, which allows low-literate farmers to share their information onto the network. These smart communication devices stay connected to the global network through the easy deployment of wireless mesh network (WMN) in a rural area. QoS constraints are imposed in the WMN setup and significant observation has been made regarding spectrum resource utilization at every hop by achieving certain level of cognition at the user end.

DOI： 10.1109/GLOCOMW.2011.6162331

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

Most people at the BOP (base of the economic pyramid, the largest but the poorest community in the world comprising 69% of world population) do not have access to e-commerce services. The way e-commerce is designed and practiced today does not enable their participation. The reasons are: their purchasing power is low, they do not have any means to make online payments, and there is no infrastructure to deliver the purchased items to their doors. To include these 4 billion people, we propose an e-commerce framework by engaging MFI resources and our recently developed ePassbook system. This paper shows how the BOP community can enjoy the benefits of the e-commerce service by using the proposed model. The advantages of making e-commerce available to the BOP are discussed, in addition to the challenges involved in implementing the model.

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)  

The way that technologies have been commoditized does not serve the poor, the largest community in the world. Many problems in health, education, business, and agriculture can be solved simply if developers, managers and distributors of technologies consider the requirements of this largely unreached population. Kyushu University in Japan and Grameen Communications in Bangladesh undertook initiatives to explore the field of social-needs-based technology and product development. This article introduces some of our initiatives in the areas of healthcare, information platform and agriculture. Each of these projects has been developed with the involvement of industries, academia, government and the community which the product will serve. However, a central entity is required to effectively collaborate with all these organizations and to deploy them for the target population through social business. Our Grameen Technology Lab is a model to respond to these needs.

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (bulletin of university, research institution)  

Language：Japanese   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

新たな技術を用いて製品を開発する際，開発者は市場の要求を考慮するが，それは社会全体から見るとごく一部からの要求にすぎない．貧困層を含む社会全体の要求を開発者が完全に把握することは難しく，製品開発のプロセスにおいて社会的な問題の解決の優先順位は低い．九州大学（九大）では様々な分野において社会ニーズに基づいた技術及び製品の新しい開発プロセスの研究に取り組んでいる．開発途上国を対象とした社会情報基盤の研究開発もその一例である．本稿では，これまでの先端技術の研究や製品開発プロセスの現状を取り上げ，社会ニーズに基づいた開発プロセスとの差異を説明する．そして社会ニーズに基づいた開発とは何かを検討し，九大
が開発した幾つかのプロトタイプを紹介する．更に，新
たな技術開発の流れにおける日本への期待についても述
べる．

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)  

The way that technologies have been commoditized does not serve the poor, the largest community in the world. Many problems in health, education, business, and agriculture can be solved simply if developers, managers and distributers of technologies consider the requirements of this largely unreached population. Kyushu University in Japan and Grameen Communications in Bangladesh undertook initiatives to explore the field of social-needs-based technology and product development. This article introduces some of our innovations: ePassbook as an electronic gadget; a social information platform to bring new business opportunities to rural people; a portable clinic for the unreached patients. Each of these projects has been developed with the involvement of industries, academia, government and the community which the product will serve. However, a central entity is required to effectively collaborate with all these organizations and to deploy them for the target population through social business. Our Grameen Technology Lab is a model to respond to these needs.

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (bulletin of university, research institution)  

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

Presently, 75% of the world's population do not have access to the Internet. Most of them are people at the BOP (Base of the Pyramid, the poorest but largest economic group in the world). Many of the efforts to popularize ICT focus on increasing villagers' access to facilities and on training in ICT use to demonstrate the power of ICT to bring financial or social benefits. Users are viewed as information consumers only. We have developed an information platform where BOP can be both information producers and owners. In order to generate and upload web contents, the challenges observed are the villagers' text literacy limitations, the limited capability of the devices they use, and the available network capability. In order to overcome these limitations, we propose a BoP adaptation layer in the current social information infrastructure. This paper introduces the BOP adaptation layer concept, its architecture, and an example of how a low-literate village farmer can generate and upload his/her product information on the web.

DOI： 10.1109/AINA.2010.147

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

Presently, 75% of the world's population do not have access to the Internet. Most of them are people at the BOP (Base of the Pyramid, the poorest but largest economic group in the world). Many of the efforts to popularize ICT focus on increasing villagers' access to facilities and on training in ICT use to demonstrate the power of ICT to bring financial or social benefits. Users are viewed as information consumers only. We have developed an information platform where BOP can be both information producers and owners. In order to generate and upload web contents, the challenges observed are the villagers' text literacy limitations, the limited capability of the devices they use, and the available network capability. In order to overcome these limitations, we propose a BoP adaptation layer in the current social information infrastructure. This paper introduces the BOP adaptation layer concept, its architecture, and an example of how a low-literate village farmer can generate and upload his/her product information on the web.

DOI： 10.1109/AINA.2010.147

Language：Japanese  

Language：English  

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

In traditional conferencing systems, participants have little or no privacy, as their voices are by default shared with all others in a session. Such systems cannot offer participants the options of muting and deafening other members. The concept of narrowcasting can be applied to make these kinds of filters available in multimedia conferencing systems. Our system treats media sinks (in the simplest case, listeners) as full citizens, peers of the media sources (conversants ' voices), and we defined therefore duals of mute & select: deafen & attend, which respectively block a sink or focus on it to the exclusion of others. In this article, we describe our prototyped system, which uses existing standard Session. Initiation Protocol (SIP) methods to control fine-grained narrowcasting sessions. The. design considers the policy configured by the participants and provides a policy evaluation algorithm for media mixing and delivery. We have integrated a "virtual reality"-style interface with this SIP backend to display and control articulated narrowcasting with figurative, avatars.

DOI： 10.1109/AINA.2008.128

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

In traditional conferencing systems, participants have little or no privacy, as their voices are by default shared with all others in a session. Such systems cannot offer participants the options of muting and deafening other members. The concept of narrowcasting can be applied to make these kinds of filters available in multimedia conferencing systems. Our system treats media sinks (in the simplest case, listeners) as full citizens, peers of the media sources (conversants ' voices), and we defined therefore duals of mute & select: deafen & attend, which respectively block a sink or focus on it to the exclusion of others. In this article, we describe our prototyped system, which uses existing standard Session. Initiation Protocol (SIP) methods to control fine-grained narrowcasting sessions. The. design considers the policy configured by the participants and provides a policy evaluation algorithm for media mixing and delivery. We have integrated a "virtual reality"-style interface with this SIP backend to display and control articulated narrowcasting with figurative, avatars.

DOI： 10.1109/AINA.2008.128

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

About four billion or 69% of world population survives on an average per head daily earning of less than or equal to USD 2 or in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) terms, annual income of USD 1500 or less. Such income group is referred to as the Base or Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP). It is conceivable that people belonging to the BoP struggle for their existence with the little income that they have. Therefore, as per conventional wisdom, they are less likely to care for adopting Information and Communication Technology (ICT) which is apparently expensive and not directly related to their basic needs for survival. In this paper, we present some facts that amazingly contradict this somewhat naive perception. We argue that people at the BOP are not any less curious about ICT than the higher income groups. If a technology is properly focused to the needs of this group and is marketed with an appropriate business model, the people at BoP are willing to spend even more money for the state of the art technology. Our assertions are based on literature review and field survey that we conducted during January and February 2008 in the BOP population of our representative country Bangladesh.

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

About four billion or 69% of world population survives on an average per head daily earning of less than or equal to USD 2 or in Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) terms, annual income of USD 1500 or less. Such income group is referred to as the Base or Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP). It is conceivable that people belonging to the BoP struggle for their existence with the little income that they have. Therefore, as per conventional wisdom, they are less likely to care for adopting Information and Communication Technology (ICT) which is apparently expensive and not directly related to their basic needs for survival. In this paper, we present some facts that amazingly contradict this somewhat naive perception. We argue that people at the BOP are not any less curious about ICT than the higher income groups. If a technology is properly focused to the needs of this group and is marketed with an appropriate business model, the people at BoP are willing to spend even more money for the state of the art technology. Our assertions are based on literature review and field survey that we conducted during January and February 2008 in the BOP population of our representative country Bangladesh.

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

Media and the vectors of its transmission is private information and should be made available only to authorized participants in a conference. In a traditional conference system, users' voices might by default be shared with all others, but a participant might want to select a subset of the conference members to send his/her media to or receive streams from. We review the concept of narrowcasting, a technique for limiting such information streams in a multimedia conference, and propose manipulation of media policies in centralized conferencing systems in a SIP framework. This system allows each participant to flexibly select another participant or group of participants for media transmission using existing standard protocol (SIP) for configuring fine-grained narrowcasting sessions.

DOI： 10.1109/CCNC.2007.29

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

Media and the vectors of its transmission is private information and should be made available only to authorized participants in a conference. In a traditional conference system, users' voices might by default be shared with all others, but a participant might want to select a subset of the conference members to send his/her media to or receive streams from. We review the concept of narrowcasting, a technique for limiting such information streams in a multimedia conference, and propose manipulation of media policies in centralized conferencing systems in a SIP framework. This system allows each participant to flexibly select another participant or group of participants for media transmission using existing standard protocol (SIP) for configuring fine-grained narrowcasting sessions.

DOI： 10.1109/CCNC.2007.29

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (international conference proceedings)  

In traditional conferencing systems, participants' voices might by default be shared with all others. However a VOIP user might want to select a subset of session members to selectively exchange media streams. In this article, we describe an implementation of narrowcasting, a model for limiting such information streams in a multimedia conferences, as a class of policies, prototyping a system using existing standard Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) methods for controlling fine-grained narrowcasting sessions.

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

In traditional conferencing systems, participants' voices might by default be shared with all others. However a VOIP user might want to select a subset of session members to selectively exchange media streams. In this article, we describe an implementation of narrowcasting, a model for limiting such information streams in a multimedia conferences, as a class of policies, prototyping a system using existing standard Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) methods for controlling fine-grained narrowcasting sessions.

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

We propose a new focus of research for multimedia conferencing systems which allows each user to flexibly select another participant or a group of participants to control media transmission. In a traditional conference system, participants' voices might by default be shared with all others, but a participant might want to select a subset of the conference members to send his/her media to or receive streams from. We review the concept of narrowcasting, a technique for limiting such information streams in a multimedia conference, and propose a design to use existing standard protocols (SIP and SDP) for controlling fine-grained narrowcasting sessions.

DOI： 10.1109/ICDT.2006.32

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

Network measurement traces contain information regarding network behavior over the period of observation. Research carried out from different contexts shows predictions of network behavior can be made depending on network past history. Existing works on network performance prediction use a complicated stochastic modeling approach that extrapolates past data to yield a rough estimate of long-term future network performance. However, prediction of network performance in the immediate future is still an unresolved problem. In this paper, we address network performance prediction as an engineering problem. The main contribution of this paper is to predict network performance dynamically for the immediate future. Our proposal also considers the practical implication of prediction. Therefore, instead of following the conventional approach to predict one single value, we predict a range within which network performance may lie. This range is bounded by our two newly proposed indices, namely, Optimistic Network Performance Index (ONPI) and Robust Network Performance Index (RNPI). Experiments carried out using one-year-long traffic traces between several pairs of real-life networks validate the usefulness of our model.

DOI： 10.1002/nem.554

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

Congestion signaling is an essential issue for ensuring a high network performance. Explicit congestion notification (ECN) has been proved to provide a faster indication of congestion and thus improve the QoS of a TCP/IP network. In this paper, we present a new scheme for ECN named fair in-time marking (FIM), which employs a mechanism that as well as providing an indication of incipient congestion, assures a fair service to all the connections. To facilitate such services using FIM, we propose inclusion of some simple yet effective functionalities in the routers. This is important as the client base of the Internet is increasing rapidly and the demand for a reasonably fair service is getting stronger. Experiments show that FIM offers the best fairness, sometimes better by around 20% or more without affecting efficiency, compared with other proposed schemes for ECN.

DOI： 10.1002/nem.520

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

Recently, mobile and wireless devices are being incorporated to the Internet at a rapid pace. This initiates the need for optimizing major applications to perform satisfactorily over wireless links. TCP performance over wireless networks is affected by high link errors, low bandwidth and large delay. Existing well established solutions like the Eifel algorithm, TCP I&RW, TCP SACK and D-SACK attempt to address these issues. However, Eifel or TCP I&RW suffer from ACK losses, while TCP SACK or D-SACK introduce overhead in addition to failure in the presence of multiple packet loss. In this paper, we propose a scheme that overcomes the above problems by introducing a concept of indirect acknowledgment. We name this scheme as TCP IACK. Our proposal exploits TCP timestamp option as an additional identifier to TCP segments for the purpose. Furthermore, it deploys one padding byte following TCP timestamp option to recover from ACK loss. Our proposal is therefore, lightweight, more efficient and robust than existing approaches. We also verify these performance implications through experiments.

DOI： 10.1142/S0218126604001416

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

The self-similar bursty Internet traffic is usually characterized by the Hurst parameter (H). Such a process is also seen to possess fractal characteristics in time described by a parameter (β), with multifractals in most cases. We observe that these highly stochastic traffics have fractals in flow density too, described by a fractal dimension (D), also with the possibiliy of multifractals as in the former. This requires another parameter for the description of Internet traffic, besides the usual self-similarity parameter β or H and the different simulations or models worked out to understand the Internet traffic to reproduce the characteristics as found in the present work. We also find a notable self-similarity feature of the autocorrelations in the data and its aggregates, in all the cases studied.

DOI： 10.1002/nem.512

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) has been proved to provide a fast indication of incipient congestion and thus better the performance of a TCP/IP network. In this work, we carry out investigations on gateway or router performance in providing fairnesss when both FIM ECN-capable and non-ECN-capable connections are employed. We propose a new packet-dropping scheme called Fair In-time Dropping (FID) which drops packets from a connection upon detecting an incipient indication of congestion depending on its share of gateway or router buffer occupancy. We also show that a combination of FIM and FID offers the best fairness compared with a combination of FIM along with other dropping schemes.

DOI： 10.1002/nem.490

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

Providing fair service among TCP connections over the Internet without hampering resource utilization has recently become a major performance concern. With the rapid expansion of the Internet along with its increasingly diversified client base, the demand for a reasonably fair service is getting even stronger. To meet these requirements, congestion sensing is essential. Explicit Congestion Notification, ECN has been proved to provide a fast indication of incipient congestion and thus better the performance of a TCP/IP network. In our previous works we have proposed a strategy for ECN called Fair In-time Marking, FIM, and observed its superiority over the ECN schemes in terms of assuring a fair service. However, all TCP connections are not ECN capable. Therefore, they use packet drops for congestion signaling. In this work, we carry out investigations on gateway or router performance in providing fairness when both FIM ECN capable and non ECN capable connections are employed. We propose a new packet dropping scheme named Fair In-time Dropping, (FID) which drops packets from a connection upon detecting an incipient indication of congestion depending on its share of buffer occupancy. We also show that the combination of FIM and FID offers the best fairness compared with combining FIM with other dropping schemes.

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

Providing a fair allocation of bandwidth among different connections over the Internet without affecting link efficiency has been a challenging issue in the area of network performance improvement. Congestion signaling is essential for the purpose. Conventional TCP uses packet loss as an implicit indication of congestion. Several enhancements to TCP have been proposed for faster congestion recovery and thus to improve the network performance. However, packet loss reduces TCP good-put and adds large delay. Also the variance in the share of bandwidth obtained By each connection may become unaccepatbly high. To the contrary, Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN) indicates a congestion explicitly before it actually occurs. Therefore, ECN facilitates a faster congestion detection and contributes to the network performance improvement. In this paper, we consider the performance implications of employing different ECN strategies along with several TCP enhancement schemes. We also introduce a new ECN packet marking strategy FIM and evaluate its relative performance and suitability for deployment along with different TCP enhancements. Simulation results show the superiority of FIM over other existing marking strategies with different TCP enhancement schemes by providing the best fairness without hampering link efficiency. We also observe FIM maintains a more consistent delay bound than other strategies and as such, is more suitable for application in practical purposes.

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (other academic)  

Network application logs (squid logs, ftp logs, mail logs etc.) are a paramount source of network information. By a careful analysis of these logs, a network performance metric (throughput etc.) can be obtained. Since these records contain past information, any conventional analysis would result in network performance indices which are somehow static. On the other hand, network resources as well as the utilities are dynamic. It thus poses a difficult task to understand how the network would behave at some time in future. We present a estimation model of the network behavior dynamics exploiting its past activities. The approached model employs a sophisticated application of standard statistical estimation techniques applied in addition to a variant of genetic algorithm operators. This involves introducing new statistical operators to adapt to their genetic algorithm counterparts. We have carried out experiments using a one year long network application log archive, presented the results and displayed the evaluation of our approach.

DOI： 10.1109/ICOIN.2001.905533

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

Unlike in the traditional QoS framework, in a Flexible QoS, intelligent network applications, and hence its users, adapt themselves to the dynamics of the network, thereby allowing a greater control over QoS. A 'Flexible Network (FN) Layer' in between the existing Application and Network Layers is proposed, enabling the applications and users to get information about the network dynamics and absorb the changes occurring inside and/or outside the network with the help of intelligent multi-agents. For understanding the changes inside the network, it is necessary to collect, process, store and service network related information from the network. A Network Information Ware House (NIWH) is designed for this purpose. A knowledge of the network traffic characteristics is required for the intelligent applications to perform satisfactorily. A Network Information Configuration and Query Language (NICQL) is designed to allow applications to specify their information requirements to the NIWH and to access information from the NIWH. As a high-speed network application, we introduce the Flexible Videoconference System (FVCS) which utilizes the concept of Flexible QoS, NIWH and NICQL and the resources of the Japan Gigabit Network (JGN) backbone.

DOI： 10.1016/S0140-3664(01)00352-8

Language：English   Publishing type：Research paper (scientific journal)  

Network applications such as FTP, WWW, Mirroring etc. are presently operated with little or no knowledge about the characteristics of the underlying network. These applications could operate more efficiently if the characteristics of the network are known and/or are made available to the concerned application. But network characteristics are hard to come by. The IP Performance Metrics working group (IETP-IPPM-WG) [6] is working on developing a set of metrics that will characterize Internet data delivery services (networks). Some tools are being developed for measurements of these metrics [5]. These generally involve active measurements or require modifications in applications [16]. Both techniques have their drawbacks. In this work, we show a new and more practical approach of estimating network characteristics. This involves gathering and analyzing the network's experience. The experience is in the form of traffic statistics, information distilled from management related activities and ubiquitously available logs (squid access logs, mail logs, ftp logs etc.) of network applications. An analysis of this experience provides an estimate of the characteristics of the underlying network. To evaluate the concept we have developed and experimented with a system wherein the network characteristics are generated by analyzing the logs and traffic statistics. The network characteristics are made available to network clients and administrators by Network Performance Metric (NPM) servers. These servers are accessed using standard network management protocols. Results of the evaluation are presented and a framework for efficient operation of network operations, using the network characteristics is outlined.

Language：Japanese   Book type：General book, introductory book for general audience

ソーシャル・ビジネスは,社会課題を解決するための一つの強力な方法です。私たちが直面している社会課題のほとんどは人々が作りだしたものですが,同時にそれらの課題は人々が力を合わせることで解決できます。多くの学問領域にわたる技術と資源を擁する学界は,課題解決の道筋を開発するための理想的な場所と言えます。 この本を通じて,グラミンが金融や教育,ヘルスケア,エネルギー,通信に関する社会的な課題にどのように取り組んできたのかを,読者のみなさんは知ることができるでしょう。私は,ここに書かれた物語を読んだ人々がアクションを起こすこと,つまり学生たちが社会課題の解決を目指すキャリアを選ぶことを,また研究者が新たな研究の種を見つけることを,そして世界的に名高い技術を持つ日本の産業界がソーシャル・ビジネスへの関与を広げることを希望します。それが小さなスタートであったとしても,そこにはすべての人々にとって,よりよい世界をつくるための可能性があるのです

Language：English   Book type：General book, introductory book for general audience

One billion people (15% of the world population) are unreached in terms of access to quality healthcare services largely as a result of the paucity of healthcare facilities and medical experts in rural areas. We have prototyped “portable health clinic (PHC), a compact telehealth system with diagnostic equipment and GramHealth software for archiving and searching patients’ past health records. The back-end of the system consists of data servers and a medical call center. The front-end has the instances of portable briefcase consisting of medical sensors and measuring equipment operated by healthcare workers living in unreached communities. The front-end data transmission system and Skype telemedicine calls connect with the back-end using mobile network coverage and Internet. Doctors at the medical call center access GramHealth data cloud through the In-ternet or have a copy of the database in the call center server. Upon receiving a multimedia call from a patient, the doctor can find that patient’s previous EHR record and then create and send an e-Prescription. The healthcare worker’s PHC briefcase is designed to be low cost and portable. It is envisioned as costing less than US$300 (an amount an entrepreneur can borrow from micro-finance institu-tions such as Grameen Bank in Bangladesh) and light enough to be carried by a female health assistant. The PHC briefcase will be owned and operated by a vil-lage health assistant. This will be a sustainable business model as the health assis-tant can build a professional relationship with her local clientele. We carried out experiments in three remote villages and in two commercial organizations in Bangladesh by collaborating with local organizations to observe the local adoption of the technology. We are looking at the applicability of our PHC system for aging societies in developed countries.

Other Link： http://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319147109

Language：Japanese   Book type：General book, introductory book for general audience

ソーシャル・ビジネスは,社会課題を解決するための一つの強力な方法です。私たちが直面している社会課題のほとんどは人々が作りだしたものですが,同時にそれらの課題は人々が力を合わせることで解決できます。多くの学問領域にわたる技術と資源を擁する学界は,課題解決の道筋を開発するための理想的な場所と言えます。 この本を通じて,グラミンが金融や教育,ヘルスケア,エネルギー,通信に関する社会的な課題にどのように取り組んできたのかを,読者のみなさんは知ることができるでしょう。私は,ここに書かれた物語を読んだ人々がアクションを起こすこと,つまり学生たちが社会課題の解決を目指すキャリアを選ぶことを,また研究者が新たな研究の種を見つけることを,そして世界的に名高い技術を持つ日本の産業界がソーシャル・ビジネスへの関与を広げることを希望します。それが小さなスタートであったとしても,そこにはすべての人々にとって,よりよい世界をつくるための可能性があるのです

Language：Japanese   Book type：General book, introductory book for general audience

電気が通じていない農村で携帯電話を使う村人、電話線が整備されていない町で運営されるインターネットカフェ。開発途上国において、情報通信技術(ICT)が農村部でも人々の身近に存在する 風景は、ありふれたものになろうとしている。 本書の舞台であるバングラデシュをはじめとする開発途上国ではBOP(Base of the Pyramid:貧困層が人口の多くの割合を占める。世界で40億人以上といわれるBOPを巨大なマーケットとして再定義し、持続的なビジネスを通して貧困削減に取り組む戦略が注目を集めている。BOPマーケットでは、社会的利益を最優先させ、BOPの人々が自ら取り組む「ソーシャル・ビジネス」が重要であり、そこにICTは不可欠なツール となっている。ICTを活用することで人々は適切な情報を入手し、またコミュニケーションは人々の連帯を実現する。その結果、自らの能力に自信を持ち、単なる巨大マーケットの消費者ではなく新たな富を創造する生産者ともなりうる。 本書は九州大学とグラミン・コミュニケーションズの共同研究の成果に基づき、バングラデシュにおいてICTが導く社会経済の変革について具体的事例を綴ることで、そこに暮らすBOPの人々の姿を 明らかにする。

Repository Public URL： http://hdl.handle.net/2324/1001448759

Language：Others  

Responsible for pages：総ページ数：xii, 208 p.   Language：English  

Language：Others  

Japan Kahini, Part 8

Responsible for pages：pp. 57-67   Language：English   Book type：General book, introductory book for general audience

Poor healthcare infrastructure is the main barrier for providing quality healthcare services to rural communities in developing countries. Thus, these populations remain unreached, and there is a need to establish a method for ensuring the provision of appropriate and adequate healthcare services to these individuals. The portable health clinic (PHC) system has been developed as an effective telemedicine system to meet this objective. A trained village health worker can use this simple system for collecting vital information of the patient, upload the data to the online server, and connect village patients with a remote doctor to enable the provision of online consultancy using video conferencing. Although the PHC was initially developed to ensure primary healthcare service with a focus on non-communicable diseases, a major cause of death, gradually, tele-pathology, tele-eye care, maternal and child health care, and COVID-19 care modules have been added to provide special treatment in these areas as per local needs. The modular PHC system will continue to grow with the addition of novel features that aim to address the local needs. The low-cost and easy operation of the PHC system make it ideal for ensuring global health coverage in communities where inadequate medical facilities and poor-quality healthcare resources remain major issues. This book brings together joint work in mHealth projects across multiple disciplines (software, healthcare, mobile communications, entrepreneurship and business and social development). Bringing together research from different institutions and disciplines, the editors illustrate the technical and entrepreneurial aspects of using mobile technologies for healthcare development in remote regions. Chapters are grouped into five key themes: the global challenge, portable health clinics, sustainable and resilient mHealth services, mHealth for the elderly, and mHealth for chronic illnesses. The book will be of particular interest to engineers, entrepreneurs, NGOs and researchers working in healthcare in sustainable development settings.

DOI： 10.3233/SHTI210028

Other Link： https://ebooks.iospress.nl/volumearticle/56652

Language：Others  

Japan Kahini, Part 7

Language：English   Book type：General book, introductory book for general audience

This chapter summarizes the co-design, co-production, and co-evaluation processes of a mobile health check-up research project in Jaipur, India, from March 2016 to June 2020. It is the continuation of our previous paper which was published in November 2018 at Sustainability. The main focus of this chapter is to describe the processes of co-production, co-implementation, and co-evaluation research activities after November 2018. To accomplish this, all documents and materials related to the research processes of co-design, co-production, and co-evaluation were thoroughly reviewed, including minutes from meetings, consultations, workshops, trainings, presentation slides, pictures, and reports. After reviewing the past 4 year’s research process, the road map of a sustainable mobile health check-up project in India was proposed.

DOI： ISBN-13: 978-981-15-8631-6

Other Link： https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-15-8632-3_3

Language：English   Book type：General book, introductory book for general audience

The purpose of this chapter is to review progress in our understanding of human behavior and decision-making relevant to future earth research agenda, and propose Decision Science as a hub of knowledge networks connecting disciplinary and interdisciplinary sciences with the practice of problem-solving. This review is composed of four sections. First, we describe the conceptual framework of “decision science for a sustainable society” and argue that evolutionary biology of the human nature is key to construct this framework. Second, we review how our group decision-making often fails due to various cognitive biases and argue that participatory approaches of co-design and co-production do not guarantee reasonable decision-making. Third, we review success stories of problem-solving in local communities and consider how we can connect those successes in local communities to successful national and global decision-making. Fourth, learning from both failures and successes, we argue that the adaptive learning of society is a process enabling us to transform our society toward a sustainable future. We review some positive global trends toward sustainability and consider the cognitive processes and behavioral mechanisms behind those trends that would provide clues for finding successful ways to transform our society.

DOI： ISBN-13: 978-981-15-8631-6

Other Link： https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-15-8632-3_1

Language：Others  

Language：Others  

Japan Kahini, Part 6

Language：Others  

Japan Kahini, Part 5

Language：Others  

Japan Kahini, Part 4

Language：Others  

Japan Kahini, Part 3

Language：Others  

Japan Kahini, Part 2

Language：Others  

Japan Kahini, Part 1

Responsible for pages：総ページ数：173p   Language：Japanese  

Language：English   Book type：Scholarly book

Event date： 2014.4

Language：English   Presentation type：Oral presentation (invited, special)  

Venue：Fukuoka   Country：Japan  

Insufficient healthcare facilities and unavailability of medical experts in rural areas are the two major reasons that kept the people unreached to healthcare services. Recent penetration of mobile phone and the demand to basic healthcare services, remote health consultancy over mobile phone became popular in developing countries. In this paper, we introduce two such representative initiatives from Bangladesh and discuss the technical challenges they face to serve a remote patient. To solve these issues, we have prototyped a box with necessary diagnostic tools, we call it a “portable clinic” and a software tool, “GramHealth” for managing the patient information. We carried out experiments in three villages in Bangladesh to observe the usability of the portable clinic and verify the functionality of “GramHealth”. We display the qualitative analysis of the results obtained from the experiment. GramHealth DB has a unique combination of structured, semi-structured and un-structured data. We are currently looking at these data to see whether these can be treated as BigData and if yes, how to analyze the data and what to expect from these data to make a better clinical decision support.

Event date： 2013.12

Language：English   Presentation type：Oral presentation (invited, special)  

Venue：Cairo, Egypt   Country：Japan  

The UN has defined eight millennium development goals (MDGs) to be achieved by the year 2015. The goals relate to health, education, poverty and the environment. Many of these problems can be effectively solved if technologies could reach the masses. Kyushu University in Japan and Grameen Communications in Bangladesh undertook initiatives to explore this field of social needs based technology and product development. Towards this goal, we have focused on health; micro-finance, energy, agriculture and rural information broadcast issues and developed technical solutions. GramWeb as an information platform for villagers; ePassbook as an electronic gadget for the poor; $300 USD portable clinic as a means of providing health services to the doors of the unreached, are our major innovations. The overview of these projects, technical features, business models and their social impact will be discussed during the talk.

Other Link： http://jececc.ejust.edu.eg/index.php/79-keynote-speakers/84-prof-ashir-ahmed

Event date： 2013.9 - 2013.7

Language：English   Presentation type：Oral presentation (general)  

Venue：Fukuoka   Country：Japan  

Only 40% of the world population has regular access to grid electricity. Most of these unreached people live in rural areas in developing countries. Recent penetration of ICT devices including mobile phones is contributing to the achievement of development goals in diverse and ever-expanding ways. ICT devices are used to increase the effectiveness and reach of development interventions, to enhance good governance and to lower the delivery costs of many public and private services. When used appropriately, they facilitate the creation and strengthening of new economic and social networks with the potential to advance and even transform the development process. However, ICT devices cannot function without electricity. When grid extension is not an option, a standalone or distributed power system can be installed to generate electricity at a location where the ICT devices can be recharged. Examples of small-scale, standalone power systems include generator sets powered by diesel, solar PV systems, small wind systems, and micro-hydro systems. In this study, we report the energy requirements of a telecenter and present the status and the challenges. We also display the case study results of Grameen-Shakti, an organization in Bangladesh that successfully installed 1 million solar home systems.

Other Link： http://power.mech.kyushu-u.ac.jp/impres2013/

Event date： 2013.7

Language：English   Presentation type：Oral presentation (general)  

Venue：Mirage Hotel, Las Vegas   Country：United States  

One billion people (15% of the world population) are unreached in terms of accessing to quality healthcare service. Insufficient healthcare facilities and unavailability of medical experts in rural areas are the two major reasons that kept the people unreached to healthcare services. Recent penetration of mobile phone and the unmet demand to basic healthcare services, remote health consultancy over mobile phone became popular in developing countries. In this paper, we introduce two such representative initiatives from Bangladesh and discuss the technical challenges they face to serve a remote patient. To solve these issues, we have prototyped a portable health clinic box with necessary diagnostic tools, we call it a “portable clinic” and a software tool, “GramHealth” for archiving and searching patients’ past health records. We carried out experiments in three remote villages and in two commercial organizations in Bangladesh by collaborating with local organization to observe the local adoption of the technology. We also monitored the usability of the portable clinic and verified the functionality of “GramHealth”. We display the qualitative analysis of the results obtained from the experiment. GramHealth DB has a unique combination of structured, semi-structured and un-structured data which can be considered as BigData. We have partly analyzed the data manually to find common set of rules to build a better clinical decision support. The model of analyzing the GramHealth BigData is also presented.

Other Link： http://www.hcii2013.org/index.php?module=pagesmith&id=82

Event date： 2013.7

Language：English   Presentation type：Oral presentation (general)  

Venue：Osaka   Country：Japan  

Insufficient healthcare facilities and unavailability of medical experts in rural areas are the two major reasons that kept the people unreached to healthcare services. Recent penetration of mobile phone and the demand to basic healthcare services, remote health consultancy over mobile phone became popular in developing countries. In this paper, we introduce two such representative initiatives from Bangladesh and discuss the technical challenges they face to serve a remote patient. To solve these issues, we have prototyped a box with necessary diagnostic tools, we call it a “portable clinic” and a software tool, “GramHealth” for managing the patient information. We carried out experiments in three villages in Bangladesh to observe the usability of the portable clinic and verify the functionality of “GramHealth”. We display the qualitative analysis of the results obtained from the experiment. GramHealth DB has a unique combination of structured, semi-structured and un-structured data. We are currently looking at these data to see whether these can be treated as BigData and if yes, how to analyze the data and what to expect from these data to make a better clinical decision support.

Other Link： http://embc2013.embs.org/index.html

Event date： 2012.2

Language：English   Presentation type：Oral presentation (general)  

Venue：Tokyo   Country：Japan  

Event date： 2011.12

Language：English   Presentation type：Symposium, workshop panel (public)  

Venue：Texas   Country：United States  

The way that technologies have been commoditized does not serve the poor, the largest community in the world. Many problems in health, education, business, and agriculture can be solved simply if developers, managers and distributers of technologies consider the requirements of this largely unreached population. Kyushu University in Japan and Grameen Communications in Bangladesh undertook initiatives to explore the field of social-needs-based technology and product development. This article introduces some of our innovations: ePassbook as an electronic gadget; a social information platform to bring new business opportunities to rural people; a portable clinic for the unreached patients. Each of these projects has been developed with the involvement of industries, academia, government and the community which the product will serve. However, a central entity is required to effectively collaborate with all these organizations and to deploy them for the target population through social business. Our Grameen Technology Lab is a model to respond to these needs.

Event date： 2011.7

Language：English   Presentation type：Symposium, workshop panel (public)  

Venue：Rome, Italy   Country：Italy  

Most people at the BOP (base of the economic pyramid, the largest but the poorest community in the world comprising 69% of world population) do not have access to e-commerce services. The way e-commerce is designed and practiced today does not enable their participation. The reasons are: their purchasing power is low, they do not have any means to make online payments, and there is no infrastructure to deliver the purchased items to their doors. To include these 4 billion people, we propose an e-commerce framework by engaging MFI resources and our recently developed ePassbook system. This paper shows how the BOP community can enjoy the benefits of the e-commerce service by using the proposed model. The advantages of making e-commerce available to the BOP are discussed, in addition to the challenges involved in implementing the model.

Event date： 2010.4

Presentation type：Oral presentation (general)  

Venue：Perth   Country：Australia  

Presently, 75% of the world’s population do not have access to the Internet. Most of them are people at the BOP (Base of the Pyramid, the poorest but largest economic group in the world). Many of the efforts to popularize ICT focus on increasing villagers’ access to facilities and on training in ICT use to demonstrate the power of ICT to bring financial or social benefits. Users are viewed as information consumers only. We have developed an information platform where BOP can be both information producers and owners. In order to generate and upload web contents, the challenges observed are the villagers’ text literacy limitations, the limited capability of the devices they use, and the available network capability. In order to overcome these limitations, we propose a BoP adaptation layer in the current social information infrastructure. This paper introduces the BOP adaptation layer concept, its architecture, and an example of how a low-literate village farmer can generate and upload his/her product information on the web.

Event date： 2009.11

Venue：Delft   Country：Netherlands  

Event date： 2009.6

Country：Japan  

Language：English   Presentation type：Oral presentation (general)  

Venue：Gifu University   Country：Japan  

Access to healthcare should be as local as possible. However, due to the insufficient healthcare facilities and lack of medical experts in rural and disaster areas, more than a billion people in the world remained unreached by quality healthcare services. Mobile phone became a popular tool for remote health consultancy for the unreached community too. We have designed a portable health clinic and a software tool “GramHealth” to meet the requirements of the unreached community. This paper introduces the technical challenges of the current mobile phone based health consultancy system, describes the concept of Portable clinic and GramHealth and displays experimental results obtained from villages in Bangladesh.

Event date： 2024.2

Language：English   Presentation type：Symposium, workshop panel (public)  

Venue：Online   Country：Italy  

Collection of health information from the underserved community has been a challenge. Their health records are not digitized. The major population of the underserved community is text-illiterate but is not voice-illiterate. This article proposes a speech-based healthcare information collection system as an additional module to the traditional EHR system. Bangla is a language spoken widely across Bangladesh and Western parts of India by 210 million people, but it is still one of the LRLs when it comes to ASR resources. The existing research outcomes indicate the necessity of application-specific language resources for better performance. In addition, a system architecture for collecting speech data from doctor-patient conversations and an automated information retrieval system in the local language are put forward. The system also extends to extracting information that can provide assistance in operations like prescription prediction and creating new health records in digital medical history management systems.

Other Link： https://portal.insticc.org/SubmissionDeadlines/63e42b715652b110e22e62a2

Event date： 2024.2

Language：English   Presentation type：Oral presentation (invited, special)  

Venue：Online   Country：New Zealand  

Other Link： https://www.oen.org/2023/06/08/social-entrepreneurship-experiences-from-around-the-world/

Event date： 2023.12

Language：English   Presentation type：Symposium, workshop panel (public)  

Venue：Online   Country：India  

The global healthcare landscape is rapidly transitioning to Electronic Health Records (EHR) systems. In this digital evolution, individuals store their historical medical records in both analog and digital formats. However, as EHR technology gains traction, users often inadvertently upload unrelated documents alongside their medical records. This unintended inclusion of irrelevant data introduces noise into the EHR databases, leading to decreased accuracy when employing machine learning models. While extensive research focuses on medical data extraction and analysis, the critical task of effectively filtering non-medical documents remains relatively under-explored. This study presents a simple machine learning and deep learning approach to discriminate legitimate medical documents from user-provided uploads. Using machine learning algorithms such as Logistic Regression, Support Vector Machines (SVM), Gradient Boosting, Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost), Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT), and Clinical BERT, our study identifies BERT as the most effective tools for this task achieving an accuracy of 98%.

Other Link： https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10405342

Event date： 2023.12

Language：English   Presentation type：Symposium, workshop panel (public)  

Venue：Online   Country：Malta  

Medical history forms, often lacking standardization, pose challenges for healthcare professionals. This study employs an AI-based model to digitize and categorize these forms, enhancing accessibility. Results show the model achieved 79.65% accuracy with nine documents, rising to 88.74% with 99 documents, demonstrating the potential for improved medical history documentation.Clinical Relevance: This model serves as a tool to enhance universal medical text classification for quick understanding, reduce costs, save time, and minimize errors in patient history-taking. It can save doctors time and enhance clinical efficiency.

Other Link： https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10405342

Event date： 2023.11

Language：English   Presentation type：Symposium, workshop panel (public)  

Venue：Online   Country：China  

This article examines the current state of speech recognition technologies in Bangla, which is one of the Low Resource Languages (LRLs) spoken by a population of almost 185 million in Bangladesh and Western India. Out of the 12,338 articles on Bangla Speech Recognition Systems, 15 have been selected based on the fine-tuning approach of deep-learning algorithms, speech corpus development, gender bias mitigation, and unique acoustic modeling. However, the datasets and evaluation metrics used in these articles vary, making it difficult to compare their performance. To address this, a comparative analysis of the selected papers is provided, summarizing the technological approaches, adapted methods, and achieved performance. Additionally, a prospective application of speech-based data collection in the healthcare domain is introduced, highlighting its potential.

Other Link： http://www.cisds.net/

Event date： 2023.4 - 2023.2

Language：English   Presentation type：Symposium, workshop panel (public)  

Venue：Online   Country：Czech Republic  

Collection of health information from the underserved community has been a challenge. Their health records are not digitized. The major population of the underserved community is text-illiterate but is not voice-illiterate. This article proposes a speech-based healthcare information collection system as an additional module to the traditional EHR system. Bangla is a language spoken widely across Bangladesh and Western parts of India by 210 million people, but it is still one of the LRLs when it comes to ASR resources. The existing research outcomes indicate the necessity of application-specific language resources for better performance. In addition, a system architecture for collecting speech data from doctor-patient conversations and an automated information retrieval system in the local language are put forward. The system also extends to extracting information that can provide assistance in operations like prescription prediction and creating new health records in digital medical history management systems.

Other Link： https://ict4awe.scitevents.org/

Event date： 2023.4

Language：English   Presentation type：Oral presentation (general)  

Venue：Online   Country：Japan  

Role of ICT and AI to achieve 3ZEROs

Other Link： https://q-aos.kyushu-u.ac.jp/wp/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/BBS_pos_92nd_en.pdf

Event date： 2022.3

Language：English  

Country：Other  

Concept of Genki Campus Model for designing a digital campus health monitoring system

Event date： 2022.3 - 2023.3

Language：English  

Country：Other  

Driving Fiction to Reality

Event date： 2022.1

Language：Japanese  

Country：Other  

Study on increasing social values by designing smart mobility in developing countries

Event date： 2021.11

Language：English  

Country：Other  

How Information Technology can Assist to Control COVID-19 Pandemics

Event date： 2021.11

Language：English  

Country：Other  

Technologies and Social Business to solve Social Problems

Event date： 2021.11

Language：English  

Country：Other  

Reaching the Unreached Patients

Event date： 2021.5

Language：English  

Country：Other  

Solving a Social Problem in a Business Way

Event date： 2021.5

Language：English  

Country：Other  

Design of a Sign Language Transformer to Enable the Participation of Persons with Disabilities in Remote Healthcare Systems for Ensuring Universal Healthcare Coverage

Event date： 2021.4

Language：English  

Country：Other  

Social Technologies and Innovations for Millions of Micro Entrepreneurs

Event date： 2021.1

Language：Japanese  

Country：Other  

Digital Transformation in Emerging Countries

Event date： 2020.11

Language：English   Presentation type：Symposium, workshop panel (public)  

Venue：Virtual   Country：Bangladesh  

Machine Learning (ML) is becoming tremendously important to improve the performance of remote healthcare systems. Portable health clinic (PHC), a remote healthcare system contains a triage function that classifies the patients in two major groups - (a)healthy and (b)unhealthy. Unhealthy patients require regular health checkups. This paper aims to predict the status of the registered patients to decide the follow-up date and frequency. Health management cost can be reduced by decreasing the number of follow-up frequency. We carried out an experiment on 271 corporate members and monitored their health status in every three months and collected four phases of data. The data records contain clinical data, socio-demographical data, dietary behavior data. However, most of the machine learning algorithms can not directly work with categorical data. Several encoding techniques are available which can also enhance the prediction performance. In this paper, We applied three encoding techniques and proposed a new encoding approach to handle categorical variables. The result shows that Random Forest Classifier performs the best with 95.33% accuracy. A comparison chart displaying the performance of eight different supervised learning algorithms in terms of three existing encoding mechanisms is reported.

Other Link： https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9333506

Event date： 2020.11

Language：English   Presentation type：Symposium, workshop panel (public)  

Venue：Virtual   Country：Indonesia  

Other Link： http://theicph.com/id_ID/e-proceeding-the-7th-icph-2020/

Event date： 2019.11 - 2019.7

Language：English  

Venue：Fukuoka   Country：Japan  

This paper addresses the problems associated with female employees of SMEs commute to work. Substandard vehicles, frequent accidents, long walking and waiting time on road, theft and robbery, physical and sexual harassment on road etc. are some of the major problems associated with the existing transportation of emerging cities like Dhaka. Using taxis and other ridesharing services for daily commuting is safer but expensive. Female employees of SMEs reported to enter the
workplace in an irritated and bad mental state due to the rough commute to work.

Event date： 2019.11 - 2019.7

Language：English  

Venue：Fukuoka   Country：Japan  

Machine learning uses mathematical algorithms, implemented as computer programs to identify patterns in large datasets, and to iteratively improve in performing this identification with additional data. It is also used to analyze current and historical facts in order to make predictions about future events. Previous researches predicted only one disease such as lung cancer, breast cancer, diabetes. Some researches focused on any specific information such as socio demographic information, part of anthropometric information. However, relatively little research has focused on predicting risk levels of NCDs with combined effect of anthropometric variables and socio-demographic characteristics in developing countries like Bangladesh. Therefore, our focus is on predicting risk levels of NCDs given anthropometric and socio-demographic information of patient. We applied Multiclass Decision Jungle algorithm. Anthropometric measurements are obtained through direct diagnosis by pre-trained healthcare workers. Risk levels of NCDs are catagorized as four levels: 1=safe, 2=caution, 3=affected, and 4=emergency.

Other Link： conf.gramweb.net/2019/

Event date： 2019.11 - 2019.7

Language：English  

Venue：Fukuoka   Country：Japan  

Health status of a patient can be measured. A doctor determines the status from clinical measurements, patients’ complaints etc. In portable health clinic (PHC) system, there are more than 15 measurement items. The health status is expressed in four colors of red, orange, yellow and green for individual items. However, the overall severity of health status cannot be expressed efficiently. An unhealthy patient will need more frequent checkups than a healthy person. If we know the severity of the health status, the system can suggest an appropriate schedule for the next checkup.
We propose an SPHS (Scoring and Predicting Health Status). SPHS scores patient data and predicts missing value. The scored value determines the severity of health status and predict a potential date of health checkup for selective items. This way, we can save the healthcare management cost.

Other Link： conf.gramweb.net/2019/

Event date： 2019.11 - 2019.7

Language：English  

Venue：Fukuoka   Country：Japan  

This paper introduced a Tele- pathology system under our portable health clinic project. The tele- pathology project started in 2016 in four different rural & sub-urban hospitals. In each rural center, there is a pathology and a technologist. In our experiment set up, there is one online pathologist for 4 rural pathology centers. The laboratory technologist collects patient’s basic information for online registration and collects blood samples. From the blood samples s/he prepares slides and captures 6-10 microscopic images of a slide using a conventional microscope and digital camera and uploads the images in the GramHealth software system. The pathologist analysis the images and prepares digital report by using tele-pathology system. The patient visits physician with the digital report.

Other Link： conf.gramweb.net/2019/

Event date： 2019.8

Language：English  

Venue：Lyon   Country：France  

The Portable Health Clinic (PHC) system endeavors to take healthcare facilities along with remote doctors' consultancy to the doorsteps of the unreached people using an advanced telemedicine system. Thus, the necessity of having physical healthcare peripheries specially in the developing countries can be mitigated. The PHC system promotes preventive healthcare by encouraging regular health checkups so that diseases can be prevented as well as their severity can be mitigated, leading to a reduction on healthcare expenses. Thus, the number of patients along with excessive workload on existing healthcare human resources can be minimized. The current project in rural Bangladesh alone has served more than 41,000 people so far by the PHC system and a simple analysis of this data shows some significant findings on regional health status. A simple expansion of this program, covering a wider service area, can produce a big data to reflect the whole country`s health profile.

Other Link： https://doi.org/10.3233/SHTI190296

Event date： 2019.7

Language：English   Presentation type：Oral presentation (general)  

Venue：Orlando   Country：United States  

Indigenous people of developing countries have serious shortage of health support including lack of health professionals and technology. It is often difficult for the indigenous people to receive consultation in the hospitals when they face any chronic disease. In Bangladesh, there are 54 groups of indigenous communities with a base of estimated 3 million in number. There are 300 government registered doctors and nurses, and 800 community health workers to provide health services to approximately 3 million people. By the invention of Information Technology, health care services have been modernized and more accessible in recent times. Information Technology has made the health services available at the door of general people. In recent years, there is large number of people in the indigenous community uses internet in their smart phones. As, there is not enough health care organizations and professional doctors in the indigenous community, for this reason, it will be useful and compatible to provide mobile phone-based services to the people. Mobile phone-based health services have great potentiality in reducing ‘digital divide’, and acts as a crucial tool for supporting indigenous community especially chronic disease affected people staying at home. This paper aims to develop, implement and evaluate a mobile based integrated framework for in-home or community care and rural health centers’ patient monitoring and health management.

Other Link： https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21935-2_27

Event date： 2019.7

Language：English   Presentation type：Oral presentation (general)  

Venue：Orlando   Country：United States  

Most current telemedicine efforts focus on tertiary care, general doctors being available at the patient end. In low resource countries (LRC), qualified doctors do not want to live in villages where the majority population lives. Therefore, telemedicine is the only solution. Besides, the technology should be indigenously developed to be effective and sustained. We developed necessary technology indigenously including web based software and online diagnostic devices like stethoscope and ECG. More devices are under development. Targeting primary or secondary care we deployed the system through an entrepreneurial model, giving video conferencing and online prescription by the consulting doctor. All data are archived for future reference and analysis. We also developed a mobile phone version using which roving operators can provide a doctor’s consultation to rural patients right at their homes, which has proved very useful for women, children, elderly and the infirm. The software also provides monitoring with provision for analyses for feedback. Starting in 2013 we have so far given consultation to more than 18,500 rural patients, paying a small fee, and the acceptance is increasing. At present more than 40 rural centres are active which can choose from a panel of 15 doctors who are providing consultation from places of their own. We are also planning to organize body tissue collection for pathological investigation at the telemedicine centres through arrangements with pathological centres in the neighbourhood. We feel this system can be spread throughout the LRCs benefitting the majority of the global population who are deprived at present.

Event date： 2019.1

Language：English   Presentation type：Oral presentation (general)  

Venue：Dhaka   Country：Bangladesh  

Current AI technology offers a very good solution to assist the doctors, patients and healthcare workers. However, technology should not replace a doctor. The talk discusses the pros and cons of AI technology in healthcare areas especially in developing countries.

Other Link： http://proconf.org/conferences/icrest-2019/

Event date： 2018.12

Language：English   Presentation type：Oral presentation (general)  

Venue：Dhaka   Country：Bangladesh  

Owing to the recent advancement in IoT devices, the popularity of wireless devices in healthcare is growing rapidly. Thus it is anticipated that the healthcare services may face challenges such as medical spectrum scarcity, electromagnetic interference to bio-medical devices, medical data transmission reliability, etc. To overcome these issues, cognitive radio can be improvised and fine-tuned the wireless healthcare service system. However, contemporary researches on cognitive radio driven healthcare system have shown limited guidelines for medical emergency concerned network model and communication protocols. Thus this paper presents intelligent dynamic priority medical traffic transmission mechanism aware three Device to Device communication protocols for cognitve radio enabled hospital management system known as CogMed. To validate the performance of these protocols, several simulations are conducted, where it is observed that the CogMed transmission scheme performs better than other well established Methods. Moreover, the latency of majority hospital devices is within the threshold level of the Federal Drug and Food Administration prescribed standards for wireless medical devices.

Other Link： https://doi.org/10.1109/ICECE.2018.8636812

Event date： 2018.4

Language：English   Presentation type：Symposium, workshop panel (public)  

Venue：Fukuoka   Country：Japan  

The objective of this study is to explore the impact of advertisement and social reference on rural consumers’ use of eHealth (PHC in specific) in Bangladesh. Data was collected through field survey with a structured questionnaire from 292 randomly selected respondents. Logistic regression analysis was performed to test the theoretical model. Other statistical analyses such as descriptive statistics, and correlation analysis were also performed to analyze the data. The study found social reference as the most significantly influential variable (Coef.=1.9, OR=6.9, p<0.01) followed by advertisement (Coef.=2.1, OR=8.1, p<0.01). The model explains 22.21% deviance (R²=0.2221) in the response variable with its constructs. And the ‘Hosmer-Lemeshow’ goodness-of-fit score (0.094) is also above the standard threshold (0.05) which indicates the data fits well with the model. The findings of this study will provide a practical guideline to the eHealth service providers in successful implementation of eHealth programs among rural communities in developing countries.

Other Link： conf.gramweb.net

Event date： 2018.4

Language：English   Presentation type：Symposium, workshop panel (public)  

Venue：Fukuoka   Country：Japan  

Other Link： conf.gramweb.net

Event date： 2018.4

Language：English   Presentation type：Symposium, workshop panel (public)  

Venue：Fukuoka   Country：Japan  

Other Link： conf.gramweb.net/2018

Event date： 2017.11

Language：English   Presentation type：Symposium, workshop panel (public)  

Venue：Paris   Country：France  

Other Link： http://socialbusinesspedia.com/sbac/2017

Event date： 2017.11

Language：English   Presentation type：Symposium, workshop panel (public)  

Venue：Penang   Country：Malaysia  

Other Link： https://ieeemy.org/tencon/

Event date： 2017.11

Language：English   Presentation type：Symposium, workshop panel (public)  

Venue：Penang   Country：Malaysia  

Other Link： https://ieeemy.org/tencon/

Event date： 2017.11

Language：English   Presentation type：Symposium, workshop panel (public)  

Venue：Penang   Country：Malaysia  

Other Link： https://ieeemy.org/tencon/

Event date： 2017.2

Language：English   Presentation type：Symposium, workshop panel (public)  

Venue：Tokyo   Country：Japan  

Other Link： http://conf.gramweb.net/

Event date： 2017.2

Language：English   Presentation type：Symposium, workshop panel (public)  

Venue：Tokyo   Country：Japan  

Other Link： conf.gramweb.net

Event date： 2017.2

Language：English   Presentation type：Symposium, workshop panel (public)  

Venue：Tokyo   Country：Japan  

Other Link： http://conf.gramweb.net/

Event date： 2017.2

Language：English   Presentation type：Symposium, workshop panel (public)  

Venue：Tokyo   Country：Japan  

Other Link： http://conf.gramweb.net/

Event date： 2017.2

Language：English   Presentation type：Symposium, workshop panel (public)  

Venue：Tokyo   Country：Japan  

Other Link： http://conf.gramweb.net/

Event date： 2017.2

Language：English   Presentation type：Symposium, workshop panel (public)  

Venue：Tokyo   Country：Japan  

Other Link： http://conf.gramweb.net/

Event date： 2016.12

Language：English   Presentation type：Symposium, workshop panel (public)  

Venue：Macao   Country：China  

Other Link： http://icbe-conf.org/

Event date： 2016.10

Language：English   Presentation type：Symposium, workshop panel (public)  

Venue：Budapest   Country：Hungary  

Other Link： http://www.smc2016.org/

Event date： 2016.10

Language：English   Presentation type：Symposium, workshop panel (public)  

Venue：Budapest   Country：Hungary  

Other Link： http://www.smc2016.org/

Event date： 2016.5

Language：English   Presentation type：Symposium, workshop panel (public)  

Venue：Chittagong   Country：Bangladesh  

Event date： 2016.5

Language：English   Presentation type：Symposium, workshop panel (public)  

Venue：Chittagong   Country：Bangladesh  

Kazi Mozaher Hossein, Md. Nazmul Hossain, Rajib Chakrabarty, Fumihiko Yokota, Hironobu Kitaoka, Hiroshi Okajima, and Ashir Ahmed (2016): , International Conference on Advanced information & Communication Technology, Chittagong, Bangladesh, May 16-17, 2016

Event date： 2015.11

Language：English   Presentation type：Symposium, workshop panel (public)  

Venue：Berlin   Country：Germany  

Personal healthcare data has been managed by the hospitals. When patients visit a new hospital, they need to repeat the same clinical testing, explain the past history to the new doctor. These activities require additional cost, which can be saved if the patients can have access to their past records. Now patients have access to modern technology and have become able to manage health records at their end. In this paper, we propose the concept of Personal Health Book (PHB) which allows a patient to import, store and share his/her past health records. By using our proposed PHB, the doctor consultancy time can be reduced, the cost at the patient side can be saved and the doctor can make accurate decisions if the past data is stored properly in the system. We have carried out hypothetical simulations to verify our concept. We also have pilot project running in two locations in Bangladesh where more than 30,000 patients are registered. We have estimated the average doctor consultancy time. In our simulation, we considered the estimated time to compare the cost performance when our personal health book concept is used. The results show the cost performance of the system.

Other Link： http://www.gsbs2015.com/program/gsbs-academia-conference.html

Event date： 2015.11

Language：English   Presentation type：Symposium, workshop panel (public)  

Venue：Berlin   Country：Germany  

E-Commerce became popular among the affluent people in the world. However, a big portion of the population (>70%) of the world cannot enjoy the advantages of e-commerce service because they do not have (1) access to online catalog (2) payment system to pay for online purchase (3) home delivery infrastructure in their community. In this article, we introduce the existing e-commerce operation model and outline the barriers that limit its expansion to cover the unreached community. We propose a new e-commerce model that can include this unreached community to enjoy the benefits of e-commerce. The new e-commerce model aims to deliver social goods to the unreached communities where the social goods are designed by the social business entities to solve social problems. We have two experimental sites in Bangladesh to provide social services (healthcare, education, learning and purchase) in rural areas. We are delivering a number of social products produced as a social business from Dhaka to these experimental sites. In this work, we introduce our learning from this platform and propose a community specific online catalog that can better serve the community both from social and economic point of view. The proposed model will involve online/ mobile phone based payment mechanism and the local agents to collect villagers demand and make the catalog more villager-friendly. The new model will be tested in two experimental locations in Bangladesh from September, 2015.

Other Link： http://www.gsbs2015.com/program/gsbs-academia-conference.html

Event date： 2015.11

Language：English   Presentation type：Symposium, workshop panel (public)  

Venue：Berlin   Country：Germany  

Social Services like healthcare, education and commercial services are all mobility based. This is a challenge for low-income people faced with lack of quality transport options. The cost of a quality vehicle is prohibitive for many low-income people, but the need for transport is inherent. We present an ICT model, Mobility Service Provider (MSP) that is based on a Demand Responsive Transportation Model. The MSP manages and supports a community vehicle in bringing social services to low-income people, reducing their need and frequency of travel and saves them time and money. The model was tested in Bheramara and Kalihati, rural districts in Bangladesh since 2012. Results show that services with high social benefit had minimal revenue but they could be supported by services with lower social benefit but higher revenue. Projection of the project experiment shows the community car can be self-sustainable in 3 years and increased number of service sites.

Other Link： http://www.gsbs2015.com/program/gsbs-academia-conference.html

Event date： 2015.11

Language：English   Presentation type：Symposium, workshop panel (public)  

Venue：Berlin   Country：Germany  

Social Services like healthcare, education and commercial services are all mobility based. This is a challenge for low-income people faced with lack of quality transport options. The cost of a quality vehicle is prohibitive for many low-income people, but the need for transport is inherent. We present an ICT model, Mobility Service Provider (MSP) that is based on a Demand Responsive Transportation Model. The MSP manages and supports a community vehicle in bringing social services to low-income people, reducing their need and frequency of travel and saves them time and money. The model was tested in Bheramara and Kalihati, rural districts in Bangladesh since 2012. Results show that services with high social benefit had minimal revenue but they could be supported by services with lower social benefit but higher revenue. Projection of the project experiment shows the community car can be self-sustainable in 3 years and increased number of service sites.

Other Link： http://www.gsbs2015.com/program/gsbs-academia-conference.html

Event date： 2015.11

Language：English   Presentation type：Symposium, workshop panel (public)  

Venue：Berlin   Country：Germany  

The term ‘Social Business’ has gained huge momentum around the globe for its unique character of achieving social goals and ensuring positive financial return at the same time. Past research discussions on social business investigated the benefits, policy responses and restrictions, economic and demographic challenges, strategic and execution risks, funding models etc. However, in the area of social business research, it is essential to know the way of identifying and selecting a suitable social business investment destination and SB portfolio that can ensure the maximum social impact of investment. In this paper, we propose an information powered market and business selection mechanism. We have conducted a quantitative analysis by using demographic information available in secondary sources. At first, we have identified and listed the factors contributing social impact of investment and then scored them by assigning judgmental weight. Next, we listed the possible target markets (investment destinations) and assigned with their relative scores derived from secondary data. Finally, the total score is calculated and normalized to evaluate the performance of each market destination. We also propose an Investment Matrix for social business that will help the investors to identify which social business to invest more and from which to divest. This outcome of this research will assist the development aid agencies (e.g. USAID, DFID, JICA, and UNDP etc.), foundations and NGOs to evaluate and select the most suitable investment destination with maximum social impact.

Other Link： http://www.gsbs2015.com/program/gsbs-academia-conference.html

Event date： 2015.6

Language：English   Presentation type：Oral presentation (general)  

Venue：Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia   Country：Malaysia  

Other Link： http://ascc2015.com/

Event date： 2015.3

Language：English   Presentation type：Oral presentation (general)  

Venue：Kamakura   Country：Japan  

Other Link： http://www.ismict2015.org/

Event date： 2014.3 - 2013.3

Language：English   Presentation type：Symposium, workshop panel (public)  

Venue：TKP市ヶ谷カンファレンスセンター   Country：Japan  

Presently, 65% of the world’s population do not have access to the Internet. Most of them are people at the BOP (Base of the Pyramid, the poorest but largest economic group in the world). Many of the efforts to popularize ICT focus on increasing villagers’ access to facilities and on computer training. ICT has brought financial or social benefits. However, users are viewed as information consumers only.
We have developed an information platform, “GramWeb” where BOP can be both information producers and owners. In order to generate and upload web contents, the challenges observed are the villagers’ text literacy limitations, the limited capability of the devices they use, and the available network capability.
In this talk, we will introduce two of our projects “Portable Health Clinic” and “Portable iFarm Box” where villagers generate healthcare and agriculture information. Portable health clinic saves villagers’ time and cost and reduces morbidity. The iFarm box increases farmers’ income by sharing product information with online customers.

Event date： 2013.12

Language：English  

Venue：Kode   Country：Japan  

Event date： 2013.10

Language：English   Presentation type：Oral presentation (general)  

Venue：Kitakyushu International Conference Center   Country：Japan  

One billion people (15% of the world population) are unreached in terms of accessing to quality healthcare service. Insufficient healthcare facilities and unavailability of medical experts in rural areas are the two major reasons that kept the people unreached to healthcare services. Recent penetration of mobile phone and the unmet demand to basic healthcare services, remote health consultancy over mobile phone became popular in developing countries. In this paper, we introduce two such representative initiatives from Bangladesh and discuss the technical challenges they face to serve a remote patient. To solve these issues, we have prototyped a portable health clinic box with necessary diagnostic tools, we call it a “portable clinic” and a software tool, “GramHealth” for archiving and searching patients’ past health records. We carried out experiments in three remote villages and in two commercial organizations in Bangladesh by collaborating with local organization to observe the local adoption of the technology. We also monitored the usability of the portable clinic and verified the functionality of “GramHealth”. We display the qualitative analysis of the results obtained from the experiment. GramHealth DB has a unique combination of structured, semi-structured and un-structured data which can be considered as BigData. We have partly analyzed the data manually to find common set of rules to build a better clinical decision support. The model of analyzing the GramHealth BigData is also presented.

Other Link： http://jp.fujitsu.com/group/fri/en/topics/futurecity1019.html

Event date： 2013.7

Language：English  

Venue：Osaka   Country：Japan  

We found that remote healthcare consultancy in developing countries archives very interesting nature (multi-lingual, multi-modal, multi-media, poly-structured) of information in personal health records. These records have never been analyzed. We manually analyzed these records and discovered that very important medical information can be generated by combining, linking and comparing personal and group records.

Other Link： http://embc2013.embs.org/index.html

Event date： 2012.12

Language：English   Presentation type：Symposium, workshop panel (public)  

Venue：Texas   Country：United States  

The opportunities and challenges of traditional communication technologies in the area of rural communication calls for a change in perspective and usual trends of wire line and wireless connectivity. In the quest to improve rural communication with the urban market, use of smart hand held devices and easy-to-deploy wireless connectivity is catalytic according to our findings. To eradicate digital divide, we have presented a holistic approach to overcome the challenges of language barrier and information asymmetry. This paper provides an insight of $100 tablets, an interactive hand-held communication device, which allows low-literate farmers to share their information onto the network. These smart communication devices stay connected to the global network through the easy deployment of wireless mesh network (WMN) in a rural area. QoS constraints are imposed in the WMN setup and significant observation has been made regarding spectrum resource utilization at every hop by achieving certain level of cognition at the user end.

Event date： 2008.7

Venue：Amsterdam   Country：Netherlands  

Language：English  

Country：Other  

3ZERO CLUB

Language：English  

Country：Other  

Global Communication Gym ( Bangladesh x Japan )

Language：English  

Country：Other  

Eastern University Genki Campus Model

Language：Others  

Country：Other  

JICA Project SDGs miup ✖ Konica Minolta

Language：Others  

Country：Other  

Higher Studies in Japan

Language：English  

Country：Other  

Portable Health Clinic: An affordable Digital Healthcare System for the Unreached Community

Language：Japanese  

Country：Other  

Social Businesses in Japan

Language：English  

Country：Other  

Designing an Electronic Personal Health Book for the Elderly

Language：Japanese  

Country：Other  

九大開発の新興国デジタルヘルスケア改革

Language：Japanese  

Country：Other  

Visioning Post SDGs by the Asian Youth

Language：Others  

Country：Other  

Actions to Ensure No One Is Left Behind

Language：Japanese  

Country：Other  

Lets build a walking hospital for unreached people

Language：English  

Country：Other  

Diagnose Easy: Portable Health Clinic Software System

Language：English  

Country：Other  

Digital Transformation in Japan New avenue of opportunity for Bangladesh IT Industries

Language：Japanese  

Country：Other  

Gender Equality in Bangladesh

Language：English   Presentation type：Oral presentation (general)  

Country：Other  

Preparing for the Future Digitized Health

Language：Others  

Country：Other  

Higher Studies in Japan

Language：English  

Country：Other  

A story of changing millions of lives

Language：Others  

Country：Other  

Story of changing millions of lives

Language：Japanese  

Country：Other  

Creating Micro Health Entrepreneurs

Language：English  

Country：Other  

Global Issues: Journey from MDGs to SDGs

Language：English  

Country：Other  

Social Business in Japan

Language：English   Presentation type：Symposium, workshop panel (public)  

Country：Other  

Other Link： https://www.oen.org/2023/06/08/social-entrepreneurship-experiences-from-around-the-world/

Language：Others  

Country：Other  

Improve performance of Remote healthcare system by analyzing healthcare BigData

Language：Others  

Country：Other  

ソーシャル・ビジネス＆ ポータブル・ヘルス・クリニック

Language：Japanese  

Venue：アクロス福岡　国際会議場   Country：Japan  

Language：Japanese  

Venue：アクロス福岡   Country：Japan  

Language：Japanese  

Venue：九大箱崎キャンパス・国際部２階会議室   Country：Japan  

Language：Japanese  

Venue：九大伊都キャンパス稲盛財団記念館   Country：Japan  

Language：Japanese   Presentation type：Oral presentation (general)  

Venue：大阪大学サイエンス・テクノロジー・アントレプレナーシップ・ラボラトリー   Country：Japan  

Other Link： http://e2handai.jp/event/social-innovation/about

Language：Japanese  

Venue：九大伊都キャンパス稲盛財団記念館   Country：Japan  

Language：Japanese  

Venue：イイノホール&カンファレンスセンター   Country：Japan  

Language：Japanese   Presentation type：Oral presentation (general)  

Venue：立命館 大阪キャンパス （梅田 富国生命ビル５F）   Country：Japan  

Language：English   Presentation type：Oral presentation (general)  

Venue：Tokyo   Country：Japan  

Language：English   Presentation type：Oral presentation (general)  

Venue：Brac University, Dhaka   Country：Bangladesh  

Language：English  

Venue：Hulian, Taiwan   Country：Taiwan, Province of China  

Language：English  

Country：Other  

Design and Implementation of a Community Rideshare Model based on their Regular Travel Needs in Emerging Countries

Language：Japanese  

Country：Other  

新興国クルマに関わる社会価値の実証研究 トヨタ技術開発部・九州大学・グラミン 共同研究（2011～2017年）

Language：English  

Country：Other  

Role of Micro Entrepreneurs to achieve Universal Healthcare Coverage

Language：Japanese  

Language：Japanese  

コレクション : 国立国会図書館デジタルコレクション > デジタル化資料 > 雑誌

Language：Japanese  

Characteristics of Internet Traffic Data
The Internet traffic data have been found to possess extreme variability and bursty structures in a wide range of time-scales, so that there is no definite period of busy or silent periods. However, there is a self-similar feature which makes it possible to characterize the data. Self-similarity is expressed in terms of the different statistics varying with the time scale of observation. We give a brief description of those we have calculated to determine the self-similarity of the Interrnet traffic data obtained in our laboratory 〓. These are i)Variance, the decrease of which with the time scale of observation gives a parameter (β) to specify the degree of self-similarity, ii)Autocorrelation, with a very slow decay rate and itself showing self-similar features and iii)Hurst parameter H, another independent measure from the rescaled range of the data. The similarity of the data in a sub-period and its finer intervals leads to the possibility of the data to posses fractal characteristics also. Although extensive works have been done on the self-similar features of Internet traffic data, there has not been much on this aspect, which can exist in both the time and space scales. Here we attempt to provide a description of the fractal characteristics associated with such a self-similarity.