Back Room Front Room 2

More documents

Recommendations

Info

SEAMLESS COMMUNICATION AND ACCESS TO INFORMATION FOR MOBILE USERS IN A WIRELESS ENVIRONMENT Golha Sharifi, Julita Vassileva and Ralph Deters University of Saskatchewan, Computer Science Department, 57 Campus Drive, Saskatoon, Saskatchewan S7N 5A9, Canada Phone:+1 306 966-4886,Fax:+1 306 966-4884 Email: {gos787, jiv, ralph}@cs.usask.ca Keywords: Mobile Devices, Agents Abstract: Providing mobile workers with mobile devices such as a Compaq iPaq with a CDPD card can support them in retrieving information from centralized information systems. More specifically, mobile devices can enable mobile users to make notifications for schedule changes and add new data into the information system. In addition these devices can facilitate group communication anytime and anywhere. This paper presents different ways of providing non-critical information in a timely fashion for nomadic users of mobile devices using a wireless network. A distributed application prototype to support nomadic users is proposed, and a simulated environment is used to evaluate the prototype. Since solutions for seamless access are highly domain specific, the study involves homecare workers at Saskatoon District Health (SDH). By keeping track of the users’ current context (time, location etc.) and a user task model, it is possible to predict the information needs of mobile users and to provide context dependent adaptation of both the content and the functionality. Moreover, to avoid interrupts in the user’s interaction with the main information sources, methods for mobile transactions management using agent-based smart proxies that buffer, delay or pre-fetch information/data are introduced. 1 INTRODUCTION The development of wireless technology and the commercial success of small screen appliances, especially cellular phones and Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) have advanced the development of mobile and ubiquitous computing (Weiser, 1991). Mobile and ubiquitous computing allows nomadic users to remain “connected” without depending on a wired infrastructure. Nomadic workers who use mobile and small screen devices often need access to existing information services to enable them to browse multimedia information anytime and anywhere with ease. Nomadic workers in specific domains who might require these services include healthcare, emergency services, sales, and education. However, a major problem for the nomadic user using a thin client is the varying quality of the connection. Though connections remain fairly stable and good in areas close to network stations, for instance, Cellular Digital Packet Data (CDPD) towers, it is not uncommon to have zones of low connectivity or even no connection due to physical structures, for I. Seruca et al. (eds.), Enterprise Information Systems VI, © 2006 Springer. Printed in the Netherlands. 245 245–252. example, high concrete buildings blocking the signals. We have investigated different ways of enabling seamless access of non-critical information for nomadic users. In this paper we focus on the needs of homecare workers of the Saskatoon District Health (SDH). The rest of the paper is organized as follows: in the next section the domain for this study and the current problems faced by mobile users are introduced; next, the general approach to solving these problems is described, which is explained in more detail in the third, fourth and fifth sections; the sixth section outlines an evaluation procedure; a comparison with other work is presented in the seventh section; the final section concludes the paper. 2 RESEARCH DOMAIN The SDH was chosen as a result of an ongoing collaboration between Sasktel, TR-Labs and the University of Saskatchewan. Currently, the focus of this research is on the use of resource rich devices,
246 ENTERPRISE INFORMATION SYSTEMS VI like the Compaq iPaq and the CDPD network to support homecare workers in SDH. Our research focuses on the problems of nomadic homecare workers in SDH. In SDH each patient has a team of homecare workers assigned to him or her, which consists of nurses, physiotherapists, home health aides, social workers, and dieticians responsible for looking after the patient. Each team meets on a periodic basis to discuss and coordinate necessary treatment for an individual patient. Tasks and duties are divided among the homecare workers based on skills and available time slots. The relation between patients and homecare workers can be described as M:N. Though each of the homecare team members has different tasks and responsibilities, they all have one task in common: treatment of a patient. Homecare workers visit their patients in their homes. The offices of the homecare workers are usually scattered throughout different buildings and maintain separate scheduling and information systems. To date there has been no centralized information system for their use, which limits their ability to share and exchange information regarding schedules and patients’ medical records. Homecare workers provide health care services in different district areas in SDH. The wireless network’s bandwidth they use is low (< 1 megabits per second (Mbps)) and varies significantly from one area to another. Currently, Saskatoon mobile homecare workers do not have access to patients’ information outside the office, i.e. there is no available remote access to data files, such as health records and daily schedules. A preliminary study was conducted on the usability of the electronic health records system for homecare at the SDH (Pinelle and Gutwin, 2001). The study describes the way that groups of homecare workers care for a patient and identifies the existing problems. Results from this study suggest that there are several obstacles for communication between the members of a group, which have led to difficulties in making changes in the treatment of patients, coordination among homecare workers, and the scheduling of patient visits. These difficulties are also observed in accessing information while the groups of homecare workers are mobile. In order to address these problems two approaches are proposed: increasing awareness and supporting communication. Following the recommendations given (Pinelle and Gutwin, 2001), we would like to create a system that supports the access to information and the communication between homecare workers. Because of data-security and safety reasons, we decided not to focus on core health care data but on ways to improve the availability of non-critical information, such as scheduling information and personal patient data, e.g., address and phone number. Access to the patient medical record data requires, according to the general regulation, permission from the patients, which is hard to obtain. In SDH, homecare workers work in a variety of contexts, such as in the office, on the road, and at the patient’s home. When an office scheduler or a homecare worker makes a schedule, she must have knowledge of the other team members’ schedules in order to avoid conflicts in visiting the same patient. However, since there is no access to a centralized scheduling system, it is difficult to coordinate schedule changes and take into account new data regarding the patient. For instance, if a homecare worker visits a patient and notices that the patient’s condition has worsened, ideally, s/he would immediately enter this information into the patient’s record so that the other team members of the group can access the information and perhaps revise their schedules. However, this is not possible due to absence of centralized data storage. We classify the problems encountered by the homecare workers in two categories. The first category has to do with lack of efficient communication between homecare workers, and the second is related to the inefficient system of accessing and updating information. Providing homecare personnel with mobile devices e.g. iPaq and access to the wireless network based on CDPD will allow them to retrieve information, receive and send notification of schedule changes, update the data/information system and communicate with other workers. Mobile devices come in varieties of types and capabilities. For instance, small screen computing devices differ in their features and abilities compared to desktop computers. Their most notable limitations are their smaller screen size, less powerful processors, less main memory and limited bandwidth because of the wireless network. To ensure scalability, performance, and speed, it is necessary to develop tools and techniques to compensate for these limitations. In this paper we introduce tools and techniques that enable content and presentation adaptation to improve the access of workers to information/data. In particular, we have introduced the use of proxies that create the illusion of a seamless connection. Moreover, the adaptation is based on user, task, and context models. Further, to ensure that the users have the illusion of seamless access, intelligent agent-based (Jennings et al., 1998) proxies are used, which can delay write operations, pre-fetch data and cache data, as well as use the task, context, and user models to decide when and how to cache, pre-fetch or delay.
Page 1 and 2:
www.dbeBooks.com - An Ebook Library
Page 3 and 4:
A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this
Page 5 and 6:
vi TABLE OF CONTENTS PART 1 - DATAB
Page 7 and 8:
viii TABLE OF CONTENTS A WIRELESS A
Page 9 and 10:
CONFERENCE COMMITTEE Honorary Presi
Page 11 and 12:
Hung, P. (AUSTRALIA) Jahankhani, H.
Page 13 and 14:
Invited Papers
Page 15 and 16:
2 ENTERPRISE INFORMATION SYSTEMS VI
Page 17 and 18:
Page 19 and 20:
Page 21 and 22:
Page 23 and 24:
10 ENTERPRISE INFORMATION SYSTEMS V
Page 25 and 26:
Page 27 and 28:
Page 29 and 30:
Page 31 and 32:
Page 33 and 34:
Page 35 and 36:
Page 37 and 38:
EVOLUTIONARY PROJECT MANAGEMENT: MU
Page 39 and 40:
Page 41 and 42:
Page 43 and 44:
MANAGING COMPLEXITY OF ENTERPRISE I
Page 45 and 46:
Page 47 and 48:
Page 49 and 50:
Page 51 and 52:
Page 53 and 54:
Page 55 and 56:
Page 57 and 58:
Page 59 and 60:
Page 61 and 62:
Page 63 and 64:
Page 65 and 66:
Page 67 and 68:
ASSESSING EFFORT PREDICTION MODELS
Page 69 and 70:
Page 71 and 72:
Page 73 and 74:
Page 75 and 76:
ORGANIZATIONAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL CR
Page 77 and 78:
Page 79 and 80:
ASAP Processes W Project Kickoff A
Page 81 and 82:
Page 83 and 84:
since it means changing the relevan
Page 85 and 86:
ACME-DB: AN ADAPTIVE CACHING MECHAN
Page 87 and 88:
ACME-DB: AN ADAPTIVE CACHING MECHAN
Page 89 and 90:
Hit Rate (%) ACME-DB: AN ADAPTIVE C
Page 91 and 92:
5.3.6 Effect on all Policies by Int
Page 93 and 94:
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We would like to t
Page 95 and 96:
This paper describes the data sampl
Page 97 and 98:
The major limit A of the operation
Page 99 and 100:
RELATIONAL SAMPLING FOR DATA QUALIT
Page 101 and 102:
TOWARDS DESIGN RATIONALES OF SOFTWA
Page 103 and 104:
((Brown et al., 1998), pp. 159-190,
Page 105 and 106:
sive data filtering, presentation (
Page 107 and 108:
• implementation changes in servi
Page 109 and 110:
MEMORY MANAGEMENT FOR LARGE SCALE D
Page 111 and 112:
Data Rate [bytes/sec] 1600000 14000
Page 113 and 114:
E.g., DV Camcorder Camera Packets (
Page 115 and 116:
Procedure CheckOptimal (n rs 1 ...n
Page 117 and 118:
MEMORY MANAGEMENT FOR LARGE SCALE D
Page 119 and 120:
PART 2 Artificial Intelligence and
Page 121 and 122:
110 ENTERPRISE INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Page 123 and 124:
Page 125 and 126:
Page 127 and 128:
DYNAMIC MULTI-AGENT BASED VARIETY F
Page 129 and 130:
Page 131 and 132:
Page 133 and 134:
Page 135 and 136:
Page 137 and 138:
Page 139 and 140:
Page 141 and 142:
Page 143 and 144:
Page 145 and 146:
Page 147 and 148:
Page 149 and 150:
Page 151 and 152:
Page 153 and 154:
Page 155 and 156:
Page 157 and 158:
Page 159 and 160:
Page 161 and 162:
Page 163 and 164:
Page 165 and 166:
Page 167 and 168:
Page 169 and 170:
AN EXPERIENCE IN MANAGEMENT OF IMPR
Page 171 and 172:
Page 173 and 174:
Page 175 and 176:
Page 177 and 178:
Page 179 and 180:
ANALYSIS AND RE-ENGINEERING OF WEB
Page 181 and 182:
Module p0 Customer Itinerary Send I
Page 183 and 184:
departments: the marketing dept. se
Page 185 and 186:
• An acyclic module M is usable,
Page 187 and 188:
BALANCING STAKEHOLDER’S PREFERENC
Page 189 and 190:
The scenarios will provide an abstr
Page 191 and 192:
BALANCING STAKEHOLDER'S PREFERENCES
Page 193 and 194:
BALANCING STAKEHOLDER'S PREFERENCES
Page 195 and 196:
A POLYMORPHIC CONTEXT FRAME TO SUPP
Page 197 and 198:
A POLYMORPHIC CONTE XT FRAME TO SUP
Page 199 and 200:
Page 201 and 202:
Page 203 and 204: FEATURE MATCHING IN MODEL-BASED SOF
Page 205 and 206: combination of solution domains - a
Page 207 and 208: • features for all the concepts:
Page 209 and 210: Existence In both steps it is possi
Page 211 and 212: matching strategies are maximal, mi
Page 213 and 214: TOWARDS A META MODEL FOR DESCRIBING
Page 215 and 216: elementary message (ae-message) can
Page 217 and 218: problems on a pragmatic level, whic
Page 219 and 220: TOWARDS A META MODEL FOR DESCRIBING
Page 221 and 222: INTRUSION DETECTION SYSTEMS USING A
Page 223 and 224: INTRUSION DETECTION SYSTEMS USING A
Page 225 and 226: (k� 1) (k) (k�1) (k) p � w
Page 227 and 228: Table 5: Performance Comparison of
Page 229 and 230: A USER-CENTERED METHODOLOGY TO GENE
Page 231 and 232: carries out the second phase of the
Page 233 and 234: 1 1 1 1 2 PROCESS STORE ENTITY EDGE
Page 235 and 236: constraints rules. KOGGE (Ebert et
Page 237 and 238: PART 4 Software Agents and Internet
Page 239 and 240: 230 ENTERPRISE INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Page 253: 244 ENTERPRISE INFORMATION SYSTEMS
Page 285 and 286: CABA 2 L A BLISS PREDICTIVE COMPOSI
Page 287 and 288: y disables evidencing severe mental
Page 289 and 290: Figure 4: Symbols emission in DAR-H
Page 291 and 292: they evidence a generalization erro
Page 293 and 294: A METHODOLOGY FOR INTERFACE DESIGN
Page 295 and 296: and mobility loss coupled with redu
Page 297 and 298: Tradeoff: The default input is poss
Page 299 and 300: Sessions on the VABS which are held
Page 301 and 302: A CONTACT RECOMMENDER SYSTEM FOR A
Page 303 and 304: A CONTACT RECOMMENDER SYSTEM FOR A
Page 305 and 306:
- "Going to the sources". The user
Page 307 and 308:
Here are the matrix W and P for our
Page 309 and 310:
EMOTION SYNTHESIS IN VIRTUAL ENVIRO
Page 311 and 312:
theme turns out to be surprisingly
Page 313 and 314:
6 FROM FEATURES TO SYMBOLS 6.1 Face
Page 315 and 316:
sions are described by different em
Page 317 and 318:
Electronic Imaging 2000 Conference
Page 319 and 320:
to the accessibility problem for th
Page 321 and 322:
Figure 3: Hierarchical View of the
Page 323 and 324:
4 CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE WORK On th
Page 325 and 326:
PERSONALISED RESOURCE DISCOVERY SEA
Page 327 and 328:
Page 329 and 330:
profile, the user defines his curre
Page 331 and 332:
Page 333 and 334:
Abdelkafi, N. .....................
show all

Back Room Front Room 2

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?