Telepresence Robots for Healthcare Management: COVID-19 Experience (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pradeep MHealth For Belt And Road Region (mHBR) ◽  
Mingzhong Wang ◽  
Chongdan Pan
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Emotional Health ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Aged Care ◽  
Healthcare Management ◽  
Healthcare Operations ◽  
Telepresence Robot ◽  
The World ◽  
Telepresence Robots

BACKGROUND Researchers have been investigating the use of robots in the world for elderly in various types of applications, such as communication with relatives and friends at a distance, transportation of medical supplies and equipment across healthcare/aged care facilities, surgical procedures etc. In China, ground zero of the COVID-19 outbreak, robots are being used in hospitals to deliver food and medication and take patients' temperatures. Drones are deployed to transport supplies, spray disinfectants and do thermal imaging. This paper will focus on telepresence robots that have become critically important to perform remote healthcare operations, complying with social distancing measures.UNSW and University of Sunshine Coast have been partners in the European Union VictoryaHome (VH) project (2014-2016) that involved Australia and EU countries Norway, Sweden, Netherlands and Portugal. The project was aimed at better emotional health of the elderly and the project identified some major problems, such as the high cost of robot and its high complexity, making their adoption difficult. This led to the project “Robots for Elderly” as part of the new “Robots for Elderly” project (involving Australia, China, Bangladesh and EU) in mHealth for Belt and Road (mHBR) Initiative led by the UM-SJTU Joint Institute in China from 2018. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study is to design, implement and test a low-cost telepresence robot for healthcare. The focus has been on implementing a low-cost telepresence robot for healthcare management for the elderly during pandemics like COVID-19. METHODS This project uses an innovative, multi-disciplinary collaboration across disciplines (software, electronics engineering, mechatronics and public health) involving young university talents from these fields. RESULTS According to preliminary customer feedback, the main functions have already been realized by our robot. The cost is approx. $500, about 20 times less expensive than the Giraff robot used in the VH project. CONCLUSIONS Many groups all over the world have been trying to develop low-cost robots for various applications. We addressed the needs for the healthcare of elderly, most affected by the Coronavirus and came up with a simple low-cost design of telepresence robot that can be deployed widely in hospitals and aged care establishments. The system is currently in a prototype level and will require an entrepreneur to commercialize it in large scale.

scholarly journals Abnormal Gait Behavior Detection for Elderly Based on Enhanced Wigner-Ville Analysis and Cloud Incremental SVM Learning

2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Jian Luo ◽  
Jin Tang ◽  
Xiaoming Xiao
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Aged Care ◽  
Abnormal Behavior ◽  
Svm Classifier ◽  
Learning Method ◽  
Time Frequency ◽  
Behavior Detection ◽  
Abnormal Gait ◽  
Incremental Svm

A cloud based health care system is proposed in this paper for the elderly by providing abnormal gait behavior detection, classification, online diagnosis, and remote aid service. Intelligent mobile terminals with triaxial acceleration sensor embedded are used to capture the movement and ambulation information of elderly. The collected signals are first enhanced by a Kalman filter. And the magnitude of signal vector features is then extracted and decomposed into a linear combination of enhanced Gabor atoms. The Wigner-Ville analysis method is introduced and the problem is studied by joint time-frequency analysis. In order to solve the large-scale abnormal behavior data lacking problem in training process, a cloud based incremental SVM (CI-SVM) learning method is proposed. The original abnormal behavior data are first used to get the initial SVM classifier. And the larger abnormal behavior data of elderly collected by mobile devices are then gathered in cloud platform to conduct incremental training and get the new SVM classifier. By the CI-SVM learning method, the knowledge of SVM classifier could be accumulated due to the dynamic incremental learning. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method is feasible and can be applied to aged care, emergency aid, and related fields.

scholarly journals HUBUNGAN DUKUNGAN KELUARGA DENGAN TINGKAT KEKAMBUHAN HIPERTENSI PADA LANSIA DI DESA GONDORUSO KECAMATAN PASIRIAN KABUPATEN LUMAJANG

2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-34
Author(s):  
Eka Suryaningtyas ◽  
ISHANA BALAPUTRA ◽  
ALI MASHUDA
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Function ◽  
Emotional Health ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Health Problems ◽  
Research Use ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
World Today ◽  
The World ◽  
The Relationship

Latar belakang: Health problems and economic is the main problems the elderly, because relating to a setback physical man occurring in natural and related to meeting the needs of life.Throughout the world today, the number of elderly it is estimated that more than 629 million people, and in the end of 2025 projected the number of elderly will reach 1.2 billion.Research objectives know relations family encouragement on the level of a recurrence hypertension in elderly. Metode: The kind of research use is deskritip correlative using design cross sectional. The number of respondents is 40 respondents meet the criteria inclusion by using the method proposive sampling Hasil: Having undergone a data using spearment rank got that sig value. By 0,000 & it; 0,05 because the value of sig (2-tailed) of 0,000 smaller than 0,05 so it can be concluded that the significant (p) the relationship between a family with a recurrence hypertension on elderly. Kesimpulan: It is expected to the more vulnerable to elderly who live with them that elderly experienced diseases such as hypertension.Support will be koping strategy that is essential for by the while he was stress.The existence of support adekuat proved associated with declining mortalitas, easier convalescents, and among the old, cognitive function, physical and emotional health.

scholarly journals Large-scale Social Restrictions: What's Next?

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-214
Author(s):  
Namira Ivanka
Keyword(s):  
Mortality Rate ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Social Distancing ◽  
Corona Virus ◽  
Rapid Spread ◽  
The World ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Way

In the middle of the COvid-19 Pandemic, in addition to social distancing, the government is intensively preventing the spread of the corona virus, as we know that the corona virus is a very scary virus for many people. The virus has spread more and more every day and the way it is spread is very easy and can attack anyone and does not thicken the ages ranging from toddlers to the elderly can be exposed to this Covid-19 virus. Although this virus has a relatively low mortality rate. But who would have thought the spread was faster than other viruses. Until now the world is still racing to find a cure for this corona virus. Therefore, the government issued a policy so that it could immediately break the chain of the spread of the virus by means of large-scale social restrictions. And when large-scale social restrictions are implemented in an area to stop the spread of the corona virus (Covid-19), all activities are restricted. The enactment of large-scale social restrictions aims to fulfill the criteria for disease situations in the form of a significant increase in the number of cases and / or deaths from disease, rapid spread of cases to several regions, and there are epidemiological links with similar events in other regions or countries. 

scholarly journals The properties of hot household hygroscopic materials and their potential use for non-medical facemask decontamination

PLoS ONE ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (9) ◽  
pp. e0255148
Author(s):  
Marie-Line Andreola ◽  
Fréderic Becquart ◽  
Wahbi Jomaa ◽  
Paul O. Verhoeven ◽  
Gérard Baldacchino ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Viral Load ◽  
General Public ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Public Acceptance ◽  
Potential Hazard ◽  
Facial Mask ◽  
The World ◽  
Transmit Disease ◽  
Potential Use

The widespread use of facemasks throughout the population is recommended by the WHO to reduce transmission of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. As some regions of the world are facing mask shortages, reuse may be necessary. However, used masks are considered as a potential hazard that may spread and transmit disease if they are not decontaminated correctly and systematically before reuse. As a result, the inappropriate decontamination practices that are commonly witnessed in the general public are challenging management of the epidemic at a large scale. To achieve public acceptance and implementation, decontamination procedures need to be low-cost and simple. We propose the use of hot hygroscopic materials to decontaminate non-medical facemasks in household settings. We report on the inactivation of a viral load on a facial mask exposed to hot hygroscopic materials for 15 minutes. As opposed to recent academic studies whereby decontamination is achieved by maintaining heat and humidity above a given value, a more flexible procedure is proposed here using a slow decaying pattern, which is both effective and easier to implement, suggesting straightforward public deployment and hence reliable implementation by the population.

Development of Telepresence Teaching Robots With Social Capabilities

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mingshao Zhang ◽  
Pengji Duan ◽  
Zhou Zhang ◽  
Sven Esche
Keyword(s):  
Learning Outcomes ◽  
Independent Living ◽  
Learning Experience ◽  
Computer Mediated Communication ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Social Robots ◽  
Telepresence Robot ◽  
Telepresence Robots ◽  
Instructor Credibility

A telepresence robot is a device that allows people to participate in video conferences on a moveable platform from a remote location. The users can remotely control the robot’s motion and interact with each other through a video screen. Such systems, which were originally designed to promote social interaction between people, have become popular in various application areas such as office environments, health care, independent living for the elderly, and distance learning. Although there is ample published empirical work surrounding the use of telepresence and computer-mediated communication in education, few studies have examined telepresence robots in the classroom. Although some studies have indicated positive learning experiences and outcomes in education facilitated by telepresence robots, further research is needed to better identify the possible effects such approaches have on student learning and perceptions of instructor credibility. In order to maximize the students’ learning outcomes, it is very important to improve the usability of the telepresence robot platform for both the instructors and the students. In addition, the instructor credibility is also crucial to the overall learning experience. In the research presented here, an innovative remote teaching platform, which includes features of telepresence robots and social robots (which are autonomous robots that interact and communicate with humans by following social behaviors and rules associated with their roles), is developed. It is believed that telepresence robots equipped with the capabilities provided by social robots can improve the credibility of the instructor and the usability of the education platform, both of which contribute to the students’ overall learning outcomes.

TO THE QUESTION OF RESPONSIBILITY FOR TORTURE IN THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 103-106
Author(s):  
ASTEMIR ZHURTOV ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Russian Federation ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Human Life ◽  
International Standards ◽  
World Community ◽  
The World ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Protection Of Human Rights ◽  
The Russian Federation

Cruel and inhumane acts that harm human life and health, as well as humiliate the dignity, are prohibited in most countries of the world, and Russia is no exception in this issue. The article presents an analysis of the institution of responsibility for torture in the Russian Federation. The author comes to the conclusion that the current criminal law of Russia superficially and fragmentally regulates liability for torture, in connection with which the author formulated the proposals to define such act as an independent crime. In the frame of modern globalization, the world community pays special attention to the protection of human rights, in connection with which large-scale international standards have been created a long time ago. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights and other international acts enshrine prohibitions of cruel and inhumane acts that harm human life and health, as well as degrade the dignity.Considering the historical experience of the past, these standards focus on the prohibition of any kind of torture, regardless of the purpose of their implementation.

An Assessment of a Low-Cost Wastewater Disposal System after Twenty-Five Years of Operation

1987 ◽  
Vol 19 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 701-710 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. L. Reidy ◽  
G. W. Samson
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Wastewater Disposal ◽  
Industrial Base ◽  
Industrial Wastewaters ◽  
The Past ◽  
Gasification Process ◽  
Appropriate Treatment ◽  
Environmentally Safe ◽  
Coal Resource

A low-cost wastewater disposal system was commissioned in 1959 to treat domestic and industrial wastewaters generated in the Latrobe River valley in the province of Gippsland, within the State of Victoria, Australia (Figure 1). The Latrobe Valley is the centre for large-scale generation of electricity and for the production of pulp and paper. In addition other industries have utilized the brown coal resource of the region e.g. gasification process and char production. Consequently, industrial wastewaters have been dominant in the disposal system for the past twenty-five years. The mixed industrial-domestic wastewaters were to be transported some eighty kilometres to be treated and disposed of by irrigation to land. Several important lessons have been learnt during twenty-five years of operating this system. Firstly the composition of the mixed waste stream has varied significantly with the passage of time and the development of the industrial base in the Valley, so that what was appropriate treatment in 1959 is not necessarily acceptable in 1985. Secondly the magnitude of adverse environmental impacts engendered by this low-cost disposal procedure was not imagined when the proposal was implemented. As a consequence, clean-up procedures which could remedy the adverse effects of twenty-five years of impact are likely to be costly. The question then may be asked - when the total costs including rehabilitation are considered, is there really a low-cost solution for environmentally safe disposal of complex wastewater streams?

scholarly journals Rapid, large-scale species discovery in hyperdiverse taxa using 1D MinION sequencing

BMC Biology ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Amrita Srivathsan ◽  
Emily Hartop ◽  
Jayanthi Puniamoorthy ◽  
Wan Ting Lee ◽  
Sujatha Narayanan Kutty ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Dna Sequences ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Low Cost ◽  
Small Body ◽  
Small Subset ◽  
Similar Species ◽  
Large Species ◽  
Morphological Examination ◽  
Species Discovery ◽  
Short Period

Abstract Background More than 80% of all animal species remain unknown to science. Most of these species live in the tropics and belong to animal taxa that combine small body size with high specimen abundance and large species richness. For such clades, using morphology for species discovery is slow because large numbers of specimens must be sorted based on detailed microscopic investigations. Fortunately, species discovery could be greatly accelerated if DNA sequences could be used for sorting specimens to species. Morphological verification of such “molecular operational taxonomic units” (mOTUs) could then be based on dissection of a small subset of specimens. However, this approach requires cost-effective and low-tech DNA barcoding techniques because well-equipped, well-funded molecular laboratories are not readily available in many biodiverse countries. Results We here document how MinION sequencing can be used for large-scale species discovery in a specimen- and species-rich taxon like the hyperdiverse fly family Phoridae (Diptera). We sequenced 7059 specimens collected in a single Malaise trap in Kibale National Park, Uganda, over the short period of 8 weeks. We discovered > 650 species which exceeds the number of phorid species currently described for the entire Afrotropical region. The barcodes were obtained using an improved low-cost MinION pipeline that increased the barcoding capacity sevenfold from 500 to 3500 barcodes per flowcell. This was achieved by adopting 1D sequencing, resequencing weak amplicons on a used flowcell, and improving demultiplexing. Comparison with Illumina data revealed that the MinION barcodes were very accurate (99.99% accuracy, 0.46% Ns) and thus yielded very similar species units (match ratio 0.991). Morphological examination of 100 mOTUs also confirmed good congruence with morphology (93% of mOTUs; > 99% of specimens) and revealed that 90% of the putative species belong to the neglected, megadiverse genus Megaselia. We demonstrate for one Megaselia species how the molecular data can guide the description of a new species (Megaselia sepsioides sp. nov.). Conclusions We document that one field site in Africa can be home to an estimated 1000 species of phorids and speculate that the Afrotropical diversity could exceed 200,000 species. We furthermore conclude that low-cost MinION sequencers are very suitable for reliable, rapid, and large-scale species discovery in hyperdiverse taxa. MinION sequencing could quickly reveal the extent of the unknown diversity and is especially suitable for biodiverse countries with limited access to capital-intensive sequencing facilities.

scholarly journals System models for resilience in gerontology: application to the COVID-19 pandemic

2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Katarzyna Klasa ◽  
Stephanie Galaitsi ◽  
Andrew Wister ◽  
Igor Linkov
Keyword(s):  
The Elderly ◽  
System Level ◽  
Improve Quality ◽  
Care Needs ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Chronic Stressors ◽  
The World ◽  
Aging Adults ◽  
The Individual

AbstractThe care needs for aging adults are increasing burdens on health systems around the world. Efforts minimizing risk to improve quality of life and aging have proven moderately successful, but acute shocks and chronic stressors to an individual’s systemic physical and cognitive functions may accelerate their inevitable degradations. A framework for resilience to the challenges associated with aging is required to complement on-going risk reduction policies, programs and interventions. Studies measuring resilience among the elderly at the individual level have not produced a standard methodology. Moreover, resilience measurements need to incorporate external structural and system-level factors that determine the resources that adults can access while recovering from aging-related adversities. We use the National Academies of Science conceptualization of resilience for natural disasters to frame resilience for aging adults. This enables development of a generalized theory of resilience for different individual and structural contexts and populations, including a specific application to the COVID-19 pandemic.

scholarly journals Cross-Sectional Association between Hypercholesterolemia and Knee Pain in the Elderly with Radiographic Knee Osteoarthritis: Data from the Korean National Health and Nutritional Examination Survey

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 933
Author(s):  
Byung Woo Cho ◽  
Du Seong Kim ◽  
Hyuck Min Kwon ◽  
Ick Hwan Yang ◽  
Woo-Suk Lee ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Logistic Regression ◽  
Regression Analysis ◽  
Knee Pain ◽  
Logistic Regression Analysis ◽  
National Health ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Metabolic Diseases ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Ordinal Logistic Regression Analysis

Few studies have reported the relationship between knee pain and hypercholesterolemia in the elderly population with osteoarthritis (OA), independent of other variables. The aim of this study was to reveal the association between knee pain and metabolic diseases including hypercholesterolemia using a large-scale cohort. A cross-sectional study was conducted using data from the Korea National Health and the Nutrition Examination Survey (KNHANES-V, VI-1; 2010–2013). Among the subjects aged ≥60 years, 7438 subjects (weighted number estimate = 35,524,307) who replied knee pain item and performed the simple radiographs of knee were enrolled. Using multivariable ordinal logistic regression analysis, variables affecting knee pain were identified, and the odds ratio (OR) was calculated. Of the 35,524,307 subjects, 10,630,836 (29.9%) subjects experienced knee pain. Overall, 20,290,421 subjects (56.3%) had radiographic OA, and 8,119,372 (40.0%) of them complained of knee pain. Multivariable ordinal logistic regression analysis showed that among the metabolic diseases, only hypercholesterolemia was positively correlated with knee pain in the OA group (OR 1.24; 95% Confidence Interval 1.02–1.52, p = 0.033). There were no metabolic diseases correlated with knee pain in the non-OA group. This large-scale study revealed that in the elderly, hypercholesterolemia was positively associated with knee pain independent of body mass index and other metabolic diseases in the OA group, but not in the non-OA group. These results will help in understanding the nature of arthritic pain, and may support the need for exploring the longitudinal associations.

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