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Effective aeromedical evacuation of casualties is one of the most important problems in military medical systems because high-priority casualties will not survive without timely medical care. The decision making process for aeromedical evacuation consists of the following components: (1) identifying which aeromedical evacuation asset (see figure 1) to dispatch to the casualty, (2) locating aeromedical evacuation assets strategically in anticipation of incoming demand, and (3) deciding which medical treatment facility to transport the casualty. These decisions are further complicated because prioritization of casualties is based on severity of injury while aeromedical evacuation assets and medical treatment facilities operate with varying capabilities. In this dissertation, discrete optimization models are developed to examine dispatch, delivery, and location logistics for the effective aeromedical evacuation of casualties in military medical systems.

This thesis is a descriptive study of health care in the Inuit settlement of Gjoa Haven, N.W.T. The purpose of the research was primarily to describe and analyse the interactional networks of health and illness related behaviour that are associated with the Nursing Station. The cultural and organizational background of the administrators and nurses who provide medical services to Inuit are described, as are the attitudes and beliefs held by Inuit about illness and about the health care delivery system.<p>The thesis examines the acculturation of Inuit beliefs and practices related to illness throughout the contact period and focuses particularly on the changing role of the Inuit healer, the anqatquq or shaman. Various influences such as epidemic diseases, missionary activity, and changing economic orientations that have contributed to Inuit dependency patterns and changed beliefs about illness, its causes and cures, are detailed.<p>Theoretically, the thesis is partly a study of the replacement of a traditional medical system by the cosmopolitan medical system and the gradual attenuation of the traditional curer's role. It is also an examination of the manner in which the conflict resulting from differences in attitudes between administrators, nurses and Inuit, affects the delivery and utilization of health services in Gjoa Haven. It demonstrates that where problems occur they are as much a result of conflict between administrators and nurses, as they are due to conflict between nurses and Inuit.<p>The substantive portion of the thesis examines specific domains of interaction such. as health education, agency coordination and native participation and points out areas where failure occurs in each of these arenas. Recommendations are included that suggest strategies for improving the effectiveness of health care delivery and ultimately the health levels of the Inuit population.

This thesis is a descriptive study of health care in the Inuit settlement of Gjoa Haven, N.W.T. The purpose of the research was primarily to describe and analyse the interactional networks of health and illness related behaviour that are associated with the Nursing Station. The cultural and organizational background of the administrators and nurses who provide medical services to Inuit are described, as are the attitudes and beliefs held by Inuit about illness and about the health care delivery system.<p>The thesis examines the acculturation of Inuit beliefs and practices related to illness throughout the contact period and focuses particularly on the changing role of the Inuit healer, the anqatquq or shaman. Various influences such as epidemic diseases, missionary activity, and changing economic orientations that have contributed to Inuit dependency patterns and changed beliefs about illness, its causes and cures, are detailed.<p>Theoretically, the thesis is partly a study of the replacement of a traditional medical system by the cosmopolitan medical system and the gradual attenuation of the traditional curer's role. It is also an examination of the manner in which the conflict resulting from differences in attitudes between administrators, nurses and Inuit, affects the delivery and utilization of health services in Gjoa Haven. It demonstrates that where problems occur they are as much a result of conflict between administrators and nurses, as they are due to conflict between nurses and Inuit.<p>The substantive portion of the thesis examines specific domains of interaction such. as health education, agency coordination and native participation and points out areas where failure occurs in each of these arenas. Recommendations are included that suggest strategies for improving the effectiveness of health care delivery and ultimately the health levels of the Inuit population.

abstract: Mobile apps have improved human lifestyle in various aspects ranging from instant messaging to tele-health. In the current app development paradigm, apps are being developed individually and agnostic of each other. The goal of this thesis is to allow a new world where multiple apps communicate with each other to achieve synergistic benefits. To enable integration between apps, manual communication between developers is needed, which can be problematic on many levels. In order to promote app integration, a systematic approach towards data sharing between multiple apps is essential. However, current approaches to app integration require large code modifications to reap the benefits of shared data such as requiring developers to provide APIs or use large, invasive middlewares. In this thesis, a data sharing framework was developed providing a non-invasive interface between mobile apps for data sharing and integration. A separate app acts as a registry to allow apps to register database tables to be shared and query this information. Two health monitoring apps were developed to evaluate the sharing framework and different methods of data integration between apps to promote synergistic feedback. The health monitoring apps have shown non-invasive solutions can provide data sharing functionality without large code modifications and manual communication between developers. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Computer Science 2014

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Submitted by Emanuel Varela Cardoso (emanuel.varela@ufcg.edu.br) on 2018-08-31T22:34:35Z No. of bitstreams: 1 RONY MARCOLINO DE ANDRADE – DISSERTAÇÃO (PPGCC) 2016.pdf: 3165388 bytes, checksum: e26452f5e3e73c3c717d633f0d6743b7 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-31T22:34:35Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 RONY MARCOLINO DE ANDRADE – DISSERTAÇÃO (PPGCC) 2016.pdf: 3165388 bytes, checksum: e26452f5e3e73c3c717d633f0d6743b7 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-03-02 / Os Sistemas Físico-Cibernéticos (SFC) são sistemas que surgiram da confluência da conectividade das redes, dos dispositivos embarcados e do controle computacional sobre processos físicos. Dessa forma os SFC se caracterizam como sistemas de controle, monitoramento e supervisão com componentes físicos e virtuais, que dependem de agentes humanos no processo. Nesse sentido, a combinação dos SFC à física dinâmica e complexa dos pacientes clínicos faz surgir uma classe distintas de sistemas médicos denominada de Sistemas Médicos Físico-Cibernéticos (SMFC). No domínio industrial há plantas que possuem sensores e atuadores que muitas vezes dependem de agentes humanos para manutenção e controle. Diferentemente, no domínio da saúde, o ser humano é o próprio processo a ser controlado, onde sensores e atuadores são os dispositivos médicos, e os agentes humanos são os cuidadores. Esse trabalho propõe uma abordagem para a construção de modelos de dispositivos médicos, como parte de um conjunto de artefatos para apoiar os testes de SMFC. Esta abordagem se baseia em modelos de referência que simulam o funcionamento de dispositivos médicos. Especificações técnicas fornecidas pelos fabricantes desses dispositivos, juntamente com diretrizes disponibilizadas por agências reguladoras, foram utilizadas para a definição da abordagem proposta. Além disso, um estudo de caso com três dispositivos médicos foi desenvolvido com o fim de validar a abordagem, criando artefatos e modelos de referência. / Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) are systems that have emerged from the confluence of the connectivity of networks, embedded devices and computer control of physical processes. Thus, SFC are characterized as control, monitoring and supervision systems with physical and virtual components, which depend on human agents in the process. In this sense, the combination of SFC dynamic and complex physics of medical patients enable a distinct class of medical systems called Medical Cyber Physical Systems (MCPS). In the industrial area, there are plants with sensors and actuators that often rely on human agents for maintenance and control. On the other hand, in the field of health, human being is the process itself to be controlled, where sensors and actuators are medical devices and human agents are caregivers. MCPS perform monitoring and control of human health with high levels of security. This paper proposes an approach to build models of medical devices, as part of a set of artifacts to support MCPS testing. This approach is based on reference models which simulate the operation of medical devices. Technical specifications provide by manufacturers of these devices, along with guidelines provided by regulatory agencies, were used for the definition of the proposed approach. Moreover, a case study with three medical device was designed to validate the approach, creating some artifacts and reference models.

This dissertation is primarily concerned with dynamic HIV/AIDS parameter estimation, set against the background of engineering, biology and medical science. The marriage of these seemingly divergent fields creates a dynamic research environment that is the source of many novel results and practical applications for people living with HIV/AIDS. A method is presented to extract model parameters for the three-dimensional HIV/AIDS model in situations where an orthodox LSQ method would fail. This method allows information from outside the dataset to be added to the cost functional so that parameters can be estimated even from sparse data. Estimates in literature were for at most two parameters per dataset, whereas the procedures described herein can estimate all six parameters. A standard table for data acquisition in hospitals and clinics is analyzed to show that the table would contain enough information to extract a suitable parameter estimate for the model. Comparison with a published experiment validates the method, and shows that it becomes increasingly hard to coordinate assumptions and implicit information when analyzing real data. Parameter variations during the course of HIV/AIDS are not well understood. The results show that parameters vary over time. The analysis of parameter variation is augmented with a novel two-stage approach of model identification for the six-dimensional model. In this context, the higher-dimensional models allow an explanation for the onset of AIDS from HIV without any variation in the model parameters. The developed estimation procedure was successfully used to analyze the data from forty four patients of Southern Africa in the HIVNET 28 vaccine readiness trial. The results are important to form a benchmark for the study of vaccination. The results show that after approximately 17 months from seroconversion, oscillations in viremia flattened to a log10 based median set point of 4:08, appearing no different from reported studies in subtype B HIV-1 infected male cohorts. Together with these main outcomes, an analysis of confidence intervals for set point, days to set point and the individual parameters is presented. When estimates for the HIVNET 28 cohort are combined, the data allows a meaningful first estimate of parameters of the three-dimensional HIV/AIDS model for patients from southern Africa. The theoretical basis is used to develop an application that allows medical practitioners to estimate the three-dimensional model parameters for HIV/AIDS patients. The program demands little background knowledge from the user, but for practitioners with experience in mathematical modeling, there is ample opportunity to fine-tune the procedures for special needs. / Dissertation (MEng)--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering / Unrestricted

Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-02T19:50:24Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 TeseAPI.pdf: 1231033 bytes, checksum: 51120574caaa9608efc8725f12321b14 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2005-03-11 / Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos / The purpose of this study is to develop effective methods to analyze the configuration and operation of the emergency medical systems (EMS) on highways. Due to the stochastic nature of these systems, especially in the arrival and assistance processes of the emergency calls, we apply the Hypercube Queuing Model to evaluate the performance measures of the system. This is a well-known model in the location literature, which is based on spatially distributed queuing theory. The EMS on highways operate within a particular dispatching policy which considers that only some ambulances in the system can travel to certain regions (partial backup) and multiple dispatch of ambulances to respond to certain calls. In this study we extend the Hypercube model to deal with these situations. Since the Hypercube model is a descriptive model, we also develop a Hypercube embedded genetic algorithm to create a prescriptive approach to optimize the configuration and operation of EMS on highways. This approach can support decisions at the strategic level, for example, the location of ambulances along the highway and the primary response area to each ambulance, as well as, decisions on the operational level, for example, the optimal dispatch policy of ambulances to respond to the emergency calls and the coverage area to each ambulance (if the system configuration can be modified according to the operational conditions of the week or the day). In order to evaluate the performance of the proposed approach, we conducted experiments using the data of two realsystems: the EMS Anjos do Asfalto (Presidente Dutra highway) and EMS Centrovias (portions of the highways Washington Luis, Eng. Paulo Nilo Romano e Comandante João Ribeiro de Barros) in São Paulo State. The results show that the approach is effective to support planning and operation decisions in such systems. / O objetivo deste trabalho é desenvolver métodos efetivos para analisar a configuração e operação de sistemas de atendimento emergencial (SAEs) em rodovias. Devido às características estocásticas de tais sistemas, principalmente nos processos de chegada e atendimento dos chamados de emergência, aplicamos o modelo Hipercubo para analisar as medidas de desempenho do sistema. Este modelo, conhecido na literatura de localização de sistemas de emergência, é baseado em teoria de filas espacialmente distribuídas. Os SAEs em rodovia operam com uma política de despacho particular, a qual admite que apenas algumas ambulâncias do sistema possam viajar a determinadas regiões (backup parcial) e utiliza múltiplo despacho de ambulâncias para atender a certas chamadas. Neste trabalho estendemos o modelo Hipercubo para analisar tais situações. Como o modelo Hipercubo é descritivo, combinamos estas extensões do modelo Hipercubo com um algoritmo genético para obter uma abordagem prescritiva capaz de otimizar a configuração e operação de SAEs em rodovias. Tal abordagem pode ser útil para apoiar decisões no plano estratégico, por exemplo, a localização das bases das ambulâncias ao longo da rodovia e o dimensionamento das regiões de cobertura de cada base. Assim como apoiar decisões no plano operacional, por exemplo, a escolha da política de despacho das ambulâncias para atender chamados de urgência e a determinação das áreas de cobertura de cada servidor (quando a configuração do sistema puder ser alterada de acordo com as condições operacionais de uma semana ou de um dia). Para analisar o desempenho desta abordagem, realizamos estudos de casos com dados reais do sistema Anjos do Asfalto (rodovia Presidente Dutra) e da concessionária Centrovias (trechos das rodovias Washington Luis, Eng. Paulo Nilo Romano e Comandante João Ribeiro de Barros), no interior de São Paulo. Os resultados mostram que a abordagem é efetiva para apoiar decisões relacionadas ao planejamento e operação destes sistemas.