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    A feasible and effective remote diagnosis system for healthcare : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters in Engineering, School of Engineering and Advanced Technology, Massey University
    (Massey University, 2018) Rowe, Daniel
    This master thesis documents the research and developmental process in creating a feasible and effective remote diagnosis system for healthcare. The research is within the sector of the rapidly expanding practice that is Telemedicine. Telemedicine is defined as “the remote diagnosis and treatment of patients by means of telecommunications technology” [1]. It has become a reality for delivering high quality healthcare to patients not only in remote locations but also to monitor elderly patients as well as patients living with chronic diseases. In the past decade, advancements in technologies have been fuelling the growth of telemedicine. Numerous healthcare products have appeared on the market and are moving towards smartphone applications (apps), some of which include remote consultation using video calling software. The majority of these products are stand-alone applications with limited monitoring of patient’s vital signs. A number of systems are novel, low cost and specifically designed for monitoring the patients’ vital signs, but few offer a fully integrated system for remote diagnosis. Remote healthcare diagnosis systems, especially affordable small devices that provide reliable data in real-time, still challenge researchers. This research studied the currently available telemedicine systems, cloud database and the features of smartphone apps. The research confirmed the possibility to develop a hand-held system that could obtain remote patient vital signs and transmit the data, effectively in real-time to healthcare professionals for diagnosis via a cloud database and smartphones. A proposed system was designed, and a physical prototype developed. Tests made on the prototype proved the system can capture remote patient’s vital signs and transmit them to a doctor through a cloud database and a smartphone app. The system consists of three major units: • A hand-held device that measures patient vital signs. • A smartphone application with a simple user interface to communicate with health professionals via internet and to the device via Bluetooth. • A cloud database for data transfer and the communication with the smartphone application through an internet connection. The outcome of this research confirms it is feasible to develop small, economic and portable systems for health diagnosis. Such systems could be very useful for remote patients, especially those living with chronic diseases and requiring regular medical checks, without traveling to access health services to obtain professional treatment.
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    The future of health : integrating medical health information systems and home health monitoring data into predictive health systems : [submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Engineering]
    (Massey University, 2008) Rehman, Faiz
    Health management systems have been around for a decade but none have offered the scalability such as the Internet. Personal patient health management has been the key issue behind deteriorating health. It has been realized that the patient can manage their condition at home while always staying in touch with a medical professional. Research shows that hypertension, if regularly monitored at home, can be improved. Users who have access to modern technology can utilize this to manage their blood pressure. This thesis discusses the development of an application that inputs user blood pressure data at home and makes intelligent and predictive decisions for the patient. A statistical model is discussed, which can predict future trends in the user's blood pressure measurements and adjust acceptable threshold based on the patient's long term health. By having the application running on a user's home PC, but with the data stored in a central location, telemedicine is made possible, as the patient's doctor or even the local health board has access to all patient data. If the system picks up any anomalies in the patient's data, a warning can be automatically issued to the patient or doctor so that intelligent decisions can be made to correct the situation. The overall goal of this research was to develop a windows based / web based software application to capture patient data in a centralized environment for the health professionals to diagnose using up-to-date blood pressure readings. The concept has been tested on a group of hypertensive users who had access to the software and their results were compared with a group who recorded their data using a conventional method. The collected data was analyzed and it was concluded that use of modern technology does help people manage their blood pressure among people with high blood pressure. The success of this research will enable patients to manage their blood pressure, predict future readings based on a patient's history and give a medical professional the exact information needed in diagnosing a patient's condition.
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    Enriched property ontology for knowledge systems : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Information Systems in Information Systems, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2006) Minchin, Robert
    "It is obvious that every individual thing or event has an indefinite number of properties or attributes observable in it and might therefore be considered as belonging to an indefinite number of different classes of things" [Venn 1876]. The world in which we try to mimic in Knowledge Based (KB) Systems is essentially extremely complex especially when we attempt to develop systems that cover a domain of discourse with an almost infinite number of possible properties. Thus if we are to develop such systems how do we know what properties we wish to extract to make a decision and how do we ensure the value of our findings are the most relevant in our decision making. Equally how do we have tractable computations, considering the potential computation complexity of systems required for decision making within a very large domain. In this thesis we consider this problem in terms of medical decision making. Medical KB systems have the potential to be very useful aids for diagnosis, medical guidance and patient data monitoring. For example in a diagnostic process in certain scenarios patients may provide various potential symptoms of a disease and have defining characteristics. Although considerable information could be obtained, there may be difficulty in correlating a patient's data to known diseases in an economic and efficient manner. This would occur where a practitioner lacks a specific specialised knowledge. Considering the vastness of knowledge in the domain of medicine this could occur frequently. For example a Physician with considerable experience in a specialised domain such as breast cancer may easily be able to diagnose patients and decide on the value of appropriate symptoms given an abstraction process however an inexperienced Physician or Generalist may not have this facility.[FROM INTRODUCTION]
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    Studying documentation requirements for quality assurance in healthcare software development environments following Scrum practices : a thesis submitted for examination for the degree of MPhil in Engineering at Massey University, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2016) Wickramasinghe, Shanuka G
    Over the past decade software development has expanded into almost every sector of business and technology. Currently, Agile software development methods are much preferred over traditional software development methods which rely on heavy documentation. Agile methodologies such as Scrum (the focus of the study) rely on minimal documentation. However, software development organizations who seek accreditation against an internationally recognized quality management system (QMS) standard such as ISO 9001:2008 need to maintain a certain level of documentation to meet the requirements stipulated in the QMS standard. This study was undertaken to answer the following overall research question, in relation to healthcare software development: what would be the minimum level of documentation that would be acceptable for a Health-IT organization pursuing Scrum, if they are to maintain an internationally recognized QMS standard such as ISO 9001:2008? This overarching research question was first investigated through in-depth literature synthesis and subsequently discussed with a panel of experts. An iterative research design utilizing Delphi-like problem solving method was used to gather insights from Scrum practitioners. The study identified 23 documents to have varying levels of usefulness and importance to three categories of Scrum users, specifically Scrum Master, Product Owner, and Development Team. The study further identified the level of conciseness required in each document (to suit each category of Scrum users) and the stage in which each document should be prepared to add maximum value in using documentation. The study identified seven negative experiences Scrum practitioners come across: documents being difficult to understand by nontechnical customers; purpose of documents not being explicit; no follow-up with client’s feedback; excessive re-work on documents; deficiencies in document validation; lack of risk analysis reports and disruptions in software development. The study also identified seven problems practitioners face in creating important documents: lack of skilled document writers; last minute/hasty document preparation; misunderstanding the purpose/intent of Agile; lack of a common documentation standard; perceiving document creation as a burden; poor tooling for documentation and lack of right staff. It is expected that the study would benefit both the academia and the practitioner in gaining greater insights on the issue of documentation in Scrum.
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    Studies of EHR implementation and operation in different countries with particular reference to Saudi Arabia : a thesis presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements of degree of Master in Information Science at Massey University, Albany campus, Auckland, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2012) Alsahafi, Yaser Abdulaziz
    Electronic Health Records (EHRs) have led to a significant transformation in the healthcare sector. EHRs have improved the nature of healthcare delivery in the various healthcare organizations. While recognizing the changes in healthcare sector, this thesis studied the implementation and the use of EHRs in four developed countries, the United State (US), United Kingdom (UK), Australia and New Zealand and one developing country, Saudi Arabia. By employing primary and secondary literature, EHR’s benefits, challenges, success factors as well as lessons for developing countries were identified. The implementation of the EHRs in the ambulatory care was almost universal in the UK, Australia and New Zealand (each >90%), except the US which is lagging behind (46%). The low rate of EHR adoption in the US was attributed to factors such as lack of requirements imposing the use of computers in medical practises. Although, there is no good data for the use of EHRs in hospitals in the studied countries, EHR use remains uncommon in hospital settings. The use of EHRs in Saudi Arabia is uncommon; however several projects have been established by the government of Saudi Arabia to increase the awareness of such technologies as well as to develop strategies for implementing EHRs. Saudi Arabia and other developing countries should learn the best practices from developed countries and that it is important that they come up with initiatives and legislations to support the implementation of EHRs. Currently, all of the studied countries set the implementation of a national EHR as a priority in their healthcare system reform. Two approaches for the presentation of national EHR database were identified in the developed countries; centralised or distributed. While EHR provides various benefits to clinicians, patients and healthcare managers, its implementation poses many challenges such as confidentiality, privacy, security, lack of standards, start-up cost and content of discharge summary. To achieve successful implementation of EHRs, factors such as leadership, organization structure, goals, visions, communication, organization culture and workflow redesign should be considered.
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    Wireless data acquisition and monitoring for healthcare services systems : a thesis in the partial fulfillment of the requirement for the Masters of Engineering (Electronics and Computer Systems), Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2011) Kioumars, Amir Hoshang
    The aging population brings challenges to healthcare systems. To cope with the high demand on health professionals and services, the feasible solution is to engage modern technologies. Wireless communication, service robots and information technology have become the active research areas for future healthcare systems. In the field of human health, collecting and analysing the real-time data is vital. New facilities and advanced tools give health service providers and their patients more choices to readily access and use health information and collect and store real-time health data. Information technology (IT) has the potential to improve the quality, safety, and efficiency of healthcare. IT allows healthcare providers to collect, store, retrieve and transfer information electronically. Together with modern communication technologies and intelligent systems, patients are able to monitor their own vital health signs from home and communicate the results to their health providers wirelessly. This will increase the ability to address a problem before a patient requires acute care. The ability to remotely monitor vital signs of a patient in real-time using a simple, low-cost and compact device with a minimum training time is highly desirable in a society with an increasing aging population. This research outlines the design and development of a cost effective and reliable wireless sensing device for collecting real-time health vital signs such as human body temperature and heart rate. A software system is also developed to provide two-way communications with the remote sensor device in order to receive and store the collected data by the sensor device in a central database. The literature review led to the use of ATmega micro-controller, ZigBee technology for wireless communication and the development of highly adaptable, flexible and intelligent software written in Microsoft C-Sharp (C#). A unique communication data packet is also developed and implemented to overcome the micro-controller memory limitations, improving the reliability of the communication and increasing the security of data as well as saving power. The system is able to communicate with service robots and host computers via the network of XBees. The proposed hardware device is able to collect the human heart rate and body temperature in real-time. It is light-weight, low-cost, power efficient and maintainable. It can be wrapped around the wrist and carried with the person. It transmits the data when it is needed and stays on sleep mode to save power. The developed software system (T-HBR, stands for temperature-heart beat rate) is capable of receiving the data from the remote device and storing the data to a central database. T-HBR allows health professionals such as general practitioners (GPs), nurses and healthcare providers to be able to collect the real-time data, see the patient‟s history, issue a new prescription and send it to the patient, other GPs or nurses by e-mails or text messages. The software can be a component of an individual system or can be used within a network connected to a central database. The software system supports a high level of security by using ten different types of encryption algorithms and is also able to import data from other T-HBR software and merge them into the existing database. It is component-based software with a three-layer architecture, which allows each component of the system to be replaced separately. Such a design approach reduces the cost of maintenance and enables more functionality to be added easily.