Kyushu University [Ashir Ahmed (Associate Professor) Faculty of Information Science and Electrical Engineering, Department of Advanced Information Technology]

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Ashir Ahmed
Associate Professor
Advanced Information and Communication Technology
Department of Advanced Information Technology
Faculty of Information Science and Electrical Engineering
Last modified date：2024.04.30

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Graduate School of Information Science and Electrical Engineering

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1.	Japan Kahini, Part 9.
2.	Naoki Nakashima, Yuandong Hu, Rafiqul Islam Maruf, Ashir Ahmed, Mobile Technologies for Developing in Remote, Rural and Developing Regions Book Chapter: Personal health record in Japan, China, and Bangladesh, IET (The Institute of Engineering and Technology), ISBN-13: 978-1-83953-048-7, 2020.08, [URL], The personal health record (PHR) is known not only as a self-healthcare/disease management tool by the citizens/patients but also as a communication tool between patients and the medical staff. Moreover, recently the PHR has been considered as an indispensable tool for patient engagement in the area of noncommunicable diseases (NCD) and has gained importance. In this chapter, we aim to introduce Asian PHR especially focusing on those in Japan, China, and Bangladesh, in three different situations..
3.	Ashir Ahmed, Mehdi Hasan, Masuda Begum Sampa, Kazi Mozaher Hossein, Yasunobu Nohara and Naoki Nakashima, Mobile Technologies for Developing in Remote, Rural and Developing Regions Book Chapter: Portable health clinic: concept, design and implementation, technical, and social challenges, IET (The Institute of Engineering and Technology), ISBN-13: 978-1-83953-047-0, 2020.07, [URL], Portable health clinic (PHC) is a remote healthcare system, jointly developed by Grameen Communications in Bangladesh and Kyushu University in Japan with the aim to providing affordable primary healthcare services to people who do not have regular access to healthcare facilities including the low-income population living in rural unreached communities. This chapter introduces the basic concept and architecture of PHC; status of different pilot projects, findings, and observations; the technical and social challenges the projects faced during the implementation..
4.	Pradeep Kumar Ray, Naoki Nakashima, Ashir Ahmed, Soong-Chul Ro, Yasuhiro Soshino, Mobile Technologies for Developing in Remote, Rural and Developing Regions, IET (The Institute of Engineering and Technology), ISBN-13: 978-1-83953-047-0, 2020.07, [URL], 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..
5.	Nazmul Hossain, Hiroshi Okajima, Hironobu Kitaoka, Fumihiko Yokota, Ashir Ahmed, Behavior Engineering and Applications, Book Chapter: eHealth Consumer Behavior, Springer, ISBN 978-3-319-76430-6, 2018.07, [URL], This study discussed the significance of understanding consumer behavior of eHealth systems especially from the perspective of a developing country like Bangladesh. It explored the current level of knowledge and awareness of eHealth among rural consumers. We found approximately 40% of the rural respondents have knowledge about using ICT in obtaining healthcare services while 32% have their own experience of receiving eHealth care services from PHC. The study has also identified the major reasons for using PHC which include affordable price (30.3%), faster service (29.7%), and opportunity of virtual consultation with specialist doctors (18.8%). On the other hand, the major reasons for not using PHC include lack of consumer’s readiness to switch from conventional healthcare platform to e-Health (38.2%), the irregular presence of PHC (16.6%), and lack of knowledge on eHealth (13.5%)..
6.	Ashir Ahmed, REBEIRO-HARGRAVE ANDREW, Nohara Yasunobu, Rafiqul Islam Maruf, Partha Pratim Ghosh, Naoki Nakashima, Hiroto Yasuura, Smart Sensors and Systems Chapter: Portable Health Clinic: A Telehealthcare System for UnReached Communities, Springer, 2015.03, [URL], 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..

1.	Mehdi Hasan, Ashir Ahmed, Fumihiko Yokota, Rafiqul Islam, Kenji Hisazumi, Akira Fukuda, A predictive model for height tracking in an adult male population in bangladesh to reduce input errors, International journal of environmental research and public health, 10.3390/ijerph17051806, 17, 5, 2020.03, [URL], 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..
2.	Masuda Begum Sampa, Nazmul Hossain, Rakib Hoque, Rafiqul Islam, Fumihiko Yokota, Akira Fukuda and Ashir Ahmed, Influence of Factors on the Adoption and Use of ICT-Based eHealth Technology by Urban Corporate People, Journal of Service Science and Management, 10.4236/jssm.2020.131001., 13, 1-19, 2020.02, [URL], The aim of this study is to investigate the influence of the factors that affect the use of a PHC system (portable health clinic, an eHealth technology) by urban corporate people in Bangladesh. This study uses the first and second versions of the technology acceptance model and the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology model as the foundation. Additionally, health awareness factors are incorporated to develop the research model. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze a sample size of 264 urban corporate people in Bangladesh. Based on the total effects, the key to promoting the future use of a PHC system lies in the three most important factors: perceived usefulness (0.659), intention to use (0.454), and health awareness (0.447). These factors have a positive and direct influence on use. The findings offer proactively important and practical guidelines to service providers, implementers, and policymakers to promote the use of eHealth technology for regular health checkups..
3.	K. Habibul Kabir, Ahmed Jaudat Nahian, Ashir Ahmed, AsthaNet Healthcare-as-a-Service (HaaS): A Social Business Model, The 3rd International Conference on Healthcare, SDGs and Social Business, 49-54, 2019.11, [URL], We propose the AsthaNet Healthcare-as-a-Service (HaaS), to connect the disconnected communities with local and global healthcare resources. A portable digital health clinic equipped with wireless connectivity, a bundle of network technolo- gies and a smart application package provides an autonomous solution to collect and serve information demand of healthcare to the disconnected rural communities. We adopt the concept of social business of Nobel laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus, to re-invest the earned profits into social mission and show that AsthaNet HaaS is a profitable and sustainable platform for any social business entrepreneur or investor. In this paper, we develop a social business model canvas for AsthaNet HaaS so that any entrepreneur can use the canvas to start a social business using technology and co-create solutions for the communities’ surrounding healthcare problems..
4.	K. Habibul Kabir, Ahmed Jaudat Nahian, Ashir Ahmed, Comparison of Routing Protocols to Minimize the Mean Data Delivery Delay using Portable Health-clinic in AsthaNet Healthcare Network, The 3rd International Conference on Healthcare, SDGs and Social Business, 55-59, 2019.11, [URL], To improve the living style, it is an essential human right to obtain proper healthcare service. Modern medical equip- ment is continuously improving. However, some developing and underdeveloped countries have some regions where people are not able to get proper healthcare due to the lack of infrastructure and expert people. Thus, for those regions, sophisticated healthcare network solution is required as a cost-effective and sustain- able option. From this motivation, we propose a combination of DTNs and portable health-clinic having wireless-equipped diagnostic testing equipment. An intelligent software package connects these disconnected rural community seamlessly to the doctor/hospital/health expert in the urban area using traditional transport vehicles. We refer to this combination as AsthaNet Healthcare Network. In this paper, different routing protocols are compared to minimize the mean data delivery delay and data delivery probability using portable health-clinic in this AsthaNet Healthcare Network..
5.	Nuren Abedin, Kenji Hisazumi, and Ashir Ahmed, Affordable Rideshare Service for Female Urban Corporates in Developing Countries A Case Study in Dhaka, Bangladesh, 21st International Conference on Human Computer Interaction, HCII 2019 HCI International 2019 – Late Breaking Posters - 21st HCI International Conference, HCII 2019, Proceedings, 10.1007/978-3-030-30712-7_36, 283-289, 2019.07, 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..
6.	Rakibul Hoque, Golam Sorwar, Ashir Ahmed, Rafiqul Islam, Development of mobile based in-home patient monitoring system for the management of chronic disease of indigenous communities in a developing country, 7th International Conference on Distributed, Ambient and Pervasive Interactions, DAPI 2019, held as part of the 21st International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCI International 2019 Distributed, Ambient and Pervasive Interactions - 7th International Conference, DAPI 2019, Held as Part of the 21st HCI International Conference, HCII 2019, Proceedings, 10.1007/978-3-030-21935-2_27, 359-367, 2019.07, 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..
7.	Nazmul Hossain, Masuda Begum Sampa, Fumihiko Yokota, Akira Fukuda, and Ashir Ahmed, Factors Affecting Rural Patients' Primary Compliance with e-Prescription A Developing Country Perspective, Telemedicine and e-Health, 10.1089/tmj.2018.0081, 25, 5, 391-398, 2019.05, [URL], 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
8.	Mehdi Hasan, Mariko Nishikitani, Fumuhiko Yokota, Akira Fukuda, Rafiqul Islam, and Ashir Ahmed, Growth characteristics of age-based anthropometric data from human assisted remote healthcare systems, International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, 10.14569/IJACSA.2019.0100379, 10, 3, 615-619, 2019.03, 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..
9.	F. Yokota, Manish Biyani, Rafiqul Islam, Ashir Ahmed, Mariko Nishikitani, Kimiyo Kikuchi, Yasunobu Nohara, and Naoki Nakashima, Lessons Learned from Co-Design and Co-Production in a Portable Health Clinic Research Project in Jaipur District, India, Sustainability, https://doi.org/10.3390/su10114148, 10, 11, 4148, 2018.10, [URL], 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.
10.	N. Hossain, F. Yokota, A. Fukuda, and A. Ahmed, Factors affecting rural patients’ primary compliance with e-prescription: a developing country perspective, Telemedicine and e-Health, 2018, https://doi.org/10.1089/tmj.2018.008 1, 25, 5, 2018.06, [URL], 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
11.	N. Hossain, F. Yokota, N. Sultana and A. Ahmed, Factors Influencing Rural End-Users’ Acceptance of e-Health in Developing Countries: A study on Portable Health Clinic in Bangladesh, Telemedicine and e-Health, 2018, 10.1089/tmj.2018.0039, 25, 3, 221-229, 2018.04, [URL], 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 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..
12.	M. N. Hossain, H. Okajima, H. Kitaoka, and A. Ahmed, Consumer Acceptance of eHealth among Rural Inhabitants in Developing Countries (A Study on Portable Health Clinic in Bangladesh), Procedia Comput. Sci.,, 111, 2015, 471-478, 2017.04, [URL], 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..
13.	Takuzo Osugi, REBEIRO-HARGRAVE ANDREW, Jecinta Kamau, Abdullah Emran, Ashir Ahmed, Healthcare Service on Wheels for Unreached Communities, International Journal of Social Science and Humanity, 6 (5), pp. 594-599, 2016., 6, 5, 594-599, 2016.04, 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..
14.	Mehdi Hasan, Mamoru Ito, Ashir Ahmed, Dissemination of Personalized Agricultural Knowledge for Farmers in Bangladesh, International Journal of Innovative Research and Development (IJIRD), 5, 3, 65-69, 2016.02, [URL], 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..
15.	Ashir Ahmed, Kazi Mozaher Hossein, Md. Asifur Rahman, Takuzo Osugi, Akira Fukuda, Hiroto Yasuura, Expansion of e-Commerce Coverage to Unreached Community by using Micro-Finance Infrastructure , International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications (ijacsa), 10.14569/IJACSA.2015.060904, 6, 9, 2015.09, 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. .
16.	Takuzo Osugi, REBEIRO-HARGRAVE ANDREW, Jecinta Kamau, Abdullah Emran, Ashir Ahmed, Healthcare Service on Wheels for Unreached Communities , Proceedings of the International Conference on Social Sciences and Humanities, 2015.04, 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..
17.	Nohara Yasunobu, Eiko Kai, Partha Pratim Ghosh, Rafiqul Islam Maruf, Ashir Ahmed, Masahiro Kuroda, Sozo Inoue, Tatsuo Hiramatsu, Michio Kimura, Naoki Nakashima, Health Checkup and Telemedical Intervention Program for Preventive Medicine in Developing Countries: Verification Study, Journal of Medical Internet Research , 10.2196/jmir.3705, 17, 1, 2015.01, 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 machine learning technique forest the medical interview subject profiles and checkup as predictor to avoid costly measurements of blood sugar ensure sustainability 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..
18.	REBEIRO-HARGRAVE ANDREW, Hiroshi Nakajima, Ashir Ahmed, Keiichi Obayashi, Naoki Nakashima, Mitsuo Kuwabara, Islam Rafiqul, Toshikazu Shiga, Investigation into Blood Pressure Variability in Japan and Bangladesh by ICT based Healthcare Systems, The 2014 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics (SMC2014), 2014.10, 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..
19.	Ashir Ahmed, REBEIRO-HARGRAVE ANDREW, Rafiqul Islam Maruf, Sozo Inoue, Naoki Nakashima, Applicability of Portable Health Clinic for ageing Society, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI International), Springer LNCS, LNCS 8530, 533-544, 2014.08, [URL], 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 (
20.	Ashir Ahmed, Andrew REBEIRO-HARGRAVE, Raiqul Islam, Sozo Inoue, Naoki Nakashima, Applicability of Portable Health Clinic for ageing Society, International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (HCI International), LNCS, 8530, 533-544, 2014.06, 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 (
21.	Jecinta Kamau, Andrew REBEIRO-HARGRAVE, Hiroaki Saito, Emran Abdullah, Hiroshi Okajima, Ashir Ahmed, Social Services on Wheels: A sustainable model to improve access in unreached communities, Proceedings of the IEEE IST-Africa, 2014.05, 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)..
22.	Eiko Kai, Andrew REBEIRO-HARGRAVE, Sozo Inoue, Nohara Yasunobu, Naoki Nakashima, Rafiqul Islam, Ashir Ahmed, Empowering the healthcare worker using the Portable Health Clinic, Proceedings of 28th IEEE-AINA, 2014.05, 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..
23.	Ashir Ahmed, REBEIRO-HARGRAVE ANDREW, Nohara Yasunobu, Eiko Kai, Zahidul Hussein Ripon, Naoki Nakashima, Targeting morbidity in unreached communities using Portable Health Clinic System, IEICE Trans. Special Issue on Information and Communication Technology for Medical and Healthcare Applications, 540-545, 2014.03, 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..
24.	Ashir Ahmed, Andrew REBEIRO-HARGRAVE, Nohara Yasunobu, Eiko Kai, Zahidul Hossein Ripon, Naoki Nakashima, Targeting morbidity in unreached communities using Portable Health Clinic System, IEICE Transaction on Communications, 10.1587/transcom.E97.B.540, E97-B, 3, 540-545, 2014.03, 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. .
25.	Ashir Ahmed, Lutfe Kabir, Eiko Kai, Sozo Inoue, GramHeath: A bottom-up approach to provide preventive healthcare services for unreached community, Proceedings of EMBC 2013, 2013.07.
26.	Ashir Ahmed, Sozo Inoue, Eiko Kai, Naoki Nakashima, Nohara Yasunobu, Portable Health Clinic: A Pervasive Way to Serve the Unreached Community for Preventive Healthcare, Proceedings of HCI International 2013, Published by Springer, LNCS 8028, 265-274, 2013.07.
27.	Ashir Ahmed, Takuzo Osugi, Rafiqul Islam Maruf, Naoki Nakashima, Evolution of remote health-consultancy over mobile phone, Proceedings of the 2013 IEICE, 2013.03.
28.	Ashir Ahmed Akinori Ozaki Kazuo Ogata Ikuo Miyajima Takuzou Osugi, Income Generation Project for rural female Farmers using ICT (IGPF), Proceedings of e-Asia 2011, 2011.08, 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. .
29.	Ashir Ahmed, Asifur Rahman, Takuzo Osugi, eCommerce for the unreached community, Proceedings of ICT 2011, 2011.07.

1.	.
2.	Tool for Healthcare Data Analysis and Visualization.
3.	Globalization of Portable Health Clinic System.
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15.	A software and a hardware for micro-finance institution to collect, store and display loan statements. [URL].
16.	A gyant chart that displays the summary of patients history for the busy doctors. A doctor can view a patient's history in a short period of time. [URL].
17.	[URL].
18.	A software application that can collect, store and display millions of village information [URL].

1.	Shaira Tabassum, Masuda Begum Sampa, Rafiqul Islam, Fumihiko Yokota, Naoki Nakashima, Ashir Ahmed, An Analysis on Remote Healthcare Data for Future Health Risk Prediction to Reduce Health Management Cost, The 11th Biennial Conference of the Asia-Pacific Association for Medical Informatics (APAMI), 2020.11, [URL].
2.	Kaze Shindo, Ryo Takashi and Ashir Ahmed, Recognition of Doctors’ Handwriting by Efficient Machine Learning Algorithm to Reduce Medical Errors, The 3rd International Conference on Healthcare, SDGs and Social Business, 2019.11, [URL], We propose an online handwritten medical characters recognition method using a recursive neural network. Machine learning process needs to obtain a large amount of data, but it takes a lot of labor and time. We propose a Stroke Rotation and Parallel-shift (SRP) method that increases the amount of data samples by rotating and translating strokes..
3.	Masuda Begum Sampa, Md Nazmul Hossain, Rakibul Hoque, Rafiqul Islam, Fumihiko Yokota, Mariko Nishikitani, Akira Fukuda, and Ashir Ahmed, A framework of longitudinal study to understand determinants of actual use of the portable health clinic system, 7th International Conference on Distributed, Ambient and Pervasive Interactions, DAPI 2019, held as part of the 21st International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCI International 2019, 2019.07, [URL], 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..
4.	Nuren Abedin, Kenji Hisazumi, Ashir Ahmed, Affordable Rideshare Service for Female Urban Corporates in Developing Countries A Case Study in Dhaka, Bangladesh, 21st International Conference on Human Computer Interaction, HCII 2019, 2019.07, [URL], 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..
5.	Fumihiko Yokota, and Ashir Ahmed, Differences in Relationships and Risk Factors Associated with Hypertension, Diabetes, and Proteinuria Among Urban and Rural Adults in Bangladesh -Findings from Portable Health Clinic Research Project 2013–2018-, 21st International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, HCII 2019, 2019.07, 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..
6.	Ashir Ahmed, Kai Eiko, Healthcare and Social Business, Institute of Decision Science for Sustainable Society, 2014.04, 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..
7.	Ashir Ahmed, Technologies to achieve social goals, Second International Japan-Egypt Conference on Electronics, Communications and Computers, 2013.12, [URL], 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..
8.	Ashir Ahmed, Partha P. Ghosh, Energy for small scale rural ICT centers , IMPRES2013: International Symposium on Innovative Materials for Processes in Energy Systems 2013, 2013.09, [URL], 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..
9.	Ashir Ahmed, Sozo Inoue, Kai Eiko, Naoki Nakashima, Nohara Yasunobu, Portable Health Clinic: A pervasive way to serve the unreached community for preventive healthcare, IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, 2013.07, [URL], 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..
10.	Ashir Ahmed, Lutfe Kabir, Kai Eiko, Sozo Inoue, GramHealth: A bottom-up approach to provide preventive healthcare services for unreached community, IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society, 2013.07, [URL], 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..
11.	Ashir Ahmed, takuzou ohsugi, Rafiqul Islam Maruf, Naoki Nakashima, Evolution of remote health-consultancy over mobile phone, IEICE General Conference, 2013.03, 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..
12.	Ashir Ahmed, GramHealth: An affordable and usable healthcare system for unreached community , ITU Workshop on "E-health services in low-resource settings: Requirements and ITU role” , 2012.02.
13.	Ashir Ahmed, Reaching the Unreached by ICT and Social Business, IEEE GlobeCom , 2011.12, 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..
14.	Ashir Ahmed, takuzou ohsugi, eCommerce for the unreached community, Proc. IADIS International Conference ICT, Society and Human Beings (ICT 2011), 2011.07, 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..