The management of long term chronic conditions is a complex and challenging task. The process relies on individuals engaging in regular recording of factors that affect their health. Yet currently, the mobile tools that people carry with them are not being fully utilised to assist in this process. This Thesis reports on research that has been completed to understand the role that mobile technologies can have in supporting people with chronic conditions. An individual engaging in personal monitoring is concerned with the data they collect, not the process used to capture the data. The results of the research conducted contribute to an advancement of knowledge around how mobile technologies can assist in personal reflection on health information to provide greater understanding of chronic disease management This understanding of the role of reflection in chronic condition management can then be used as a platform to improve the mobile interventions in future implementations. These findings are arrived at by conducting an initial investigation into the usage of existing health monitoring devices and an evaluation of these devices is detailed. The results of this early work suggests there exists a gap between real practice and the role that mobile technologies can play in assisting with the process. A deeper understanding of the management practices of people with diabetes is then achieved through a set of interviews with individuals with diabetes. The findings then define a model of chronic disease management, named the 'Diabetes Management Cycle.' Following the definition of the cycle, a mobile application was implemented and deployed during a four week evaluation with individuals with type 1 diabetes. This system was designed to support existing management practices and implemented simple methods of information capture. A second application was then developed to enable increased monitoring and subsequent reflection amongst individuals with cardiovascular conditions. The application was deployed in a six week in-situ evaluation and it was discovered a personalised 'tagging' mechanism allowed for the discovery of patterns affecting health. Based on the findings of the studies, the Thesis concludes by presenting definitions of ready- to-hand in the short- and long-term contexts of mobile health management. These ready-to-hand guidelines provide a platform for future research projects to build upon.

abstract: Mobile devices are penetrating everyday life. According to a recent Cisco report [10], the number of mobile connected devices such as smartphones, tablets, laptops, eReaders, and Machine-to-Machine (M2M) modules will hit 11.6 billion by 2021, exceeding the world's projected population at that time (7.8 billion). The rapid development of mobile devices has brought a number of emerging security and privacy issues in mobile computing. This dissertation aims to address a number of challenging security and privacy issues in mobile computing. This dissertation makes fivefold contributions. The first and second parts study the security and privacy issues in Device-to-Device communications. Specifically, the first part develops a novel scheme to enable a new way of trust relationship called spatiotemporal matching in a privacy-preserving and efficient fashion. To enhance the secure communication among mobile users, the second part proposes a game-theoretical framework to stimulate the cooperative shared secret key generation among mobile users. The third and fourth parts investigate the security and privacy issues in mobile crowdsourcing. In particular, the third part presents a secure and privacy-preserving mobile crowdsourcing system which strikes a good balance among object security, user privacy, and system efficiency. The fourth part demonstrates a differentially private distributed stream monitoring system via mobile crowdsourcing. Finally, the fifth part proposes VISIBLE, a novel video-assisted keystroke inference framework that allows an attacker to infer a tablet user's typed inputs on the touchscreen by recording and analyzing the video of the tablet backside during the user's input process. Besides, some potential countermeasures to this attack are also discussed. This dissertation sheds the light on the state-of-the-art security and privacy issues in mobile computing. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Electrical Engineering 2017

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Abstract Context-awareness, a state where the device is aware of the situation in which it is used, is a technology which has gained an increasing amount of attention in recent years. A context-aware device can infer the use condition, and adapt its behavior according to the circumstances. Mobile handheld devices, which have been highly adopted by large user groups, especially in the form of mobile phones, constitute an interesting platform for context-awareness. They are used in different kinds of situations, where the preferences of users may vary, and where different features are prioritized. While the increasing complexity and growing number of features set challenges to intuitive and easy use of devices, context-awareness may offer solutions to more efficient use of mobile applications and services. This thesis investigates the interaction issues with context-aware mobile devices. The research has been exploratory including several separate case studies, where interaction and usability matters have been charted. These studies consider topics such as location-awareness, user-defined settings of context-aware applications, and information sharing and privacy. In addition to these case studies, the author has sough to draw a bigger picture on interaction and usability issues with context-aware mobile devices, and incorporated the findings to a more general framework. Through presenting the case studies it is concluded that context-awareness can improve the usability of mobile devices, but careful design in the application development phase must be emphasized. The usability risks identified through case studies relate to numerous themes, such as diminished user control, increased number of interruptions, information overflow, users' subjective understanding of context attributes and privacy threat. As context-aware technology employs greater risks, e.g. due to the uncertain nature of context recognition, the user-centric design practices and testing in the authentic environment of the context-aware applications should be stressed. The author proposes design guidelines, which have been developed based on the findings from distinct case studies. The design guidelines aim to offer tangible help to application designers, who may not be acquaint with the special characteristics of context-awareness, and intend to prevent potential usability problems identified through the individual studies. Moreover, an evaluation for the design guidelines and their iteration to the presented form is demonstrated.

The past few years have witnessed a significant evolution in mobile computing and communications, in which new trends and applications have the traditional role of computer networks into that of distributed service providers. In this thesis we explore an alternative way to form wireless ad-hoc networks whose topologies can be customized as required by the users’ software applications. In particular, we investigate the applicability of mobile codes to networks created by devices equipped with Bluetooth technology. Computer simulations results suggest that our proposed approach can achieve this task effectively, while matching the level of efficiency seen in other salient proposals in this area. This thesis also addresses the issue of service discovery in mobile ad-hoc networks. We propose the use of a directory whose network location varies in an attempt to reduce traffic overhead driven by users’ hosts looking for service information. We refer to this scheme as the Service Directory Placement Algorithm, or SDPA. We formulate the directory relocation problem as a Markov Decision Process that is solved by using Q-learning. Performance evaluations through computer simulations reveal bandwidth overhead reductions that range between 40% and 48% when compared with a basic broadcast flooding approach for networks comprising hosts moving at pedestrian speeds. We then extend our proposed approach and introduce a multi-directory service discovery system called the Service Directory Placement Protocol, or SDPP. Our findings reveal bandwidth overhead reductions typically ranging from 15% to 75% in networks comprising slow-moving hosts with restricted memory availability. In the fourth and final part of this work, we present the design foundations and architecture of a middleware system that called WISEMAN – WIreless Sensors Employing Mobile Agents. We employ WISEMAN for dispatching and processing mobile programs in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). Our proposed system enables the dynamic creation of semantic relationships between network nodes that cooperate to provide an aggregate service. We present discussions on the advantages of our proposed approach, and in particular, how WISEMAN facilitates the realization of service-oriented tasks in WSNs. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Electrical and Computer Engineering, Department of / Graduate

This project investigated how to develop a mobile intervention to support medication compliance for patients with chronic and acute diseases. Chronic diseases cannot be cured but can be controlled, usually by taking medication every-day. Therefore, it is very crucial for a patient with a chronic disease to take their medication on time to prevent complications or negative impact on their health. Due to the widespread use of mobile phones, having an automated mobile mechanism to remind patients to take medication is regarded as an effective way of supporting medication compliance. The focus of the research was on investigating how mobile health applications can be used to support patients with chronic and acute diseases in South Africa. Literature identified that medication compliance is low and that a need exists for an intervention to increase compliance. The main goal of this research was to produce a mobile health application to assist medication compliance and support patients with chronic and acute diseases in South Africa and investigate its perceived usefulness. The project made use of two field studies to substantiate its results. The first field study involved patients with chronic diseases and the second one involved patients with acute diseases. The feedback from the first field study and from a literature review was used to redesign the mobile application. The project also investigated the attitude of patients taking medication over a short period of time as well as how such patients compared with those taking chronic medication. The project identified the benefits and disadvantages of using an m-health application to support medication compliance based on the participants’ feedback and behaviour observed in using the application.

Medical practitioners are often unable to access medical and health information at the point-of-care, thus preventing them from providing quality healthcare. Family Health International 360 (FHI) provided medical practitioners with a locally relevant, reliable, and accurate comprehensive library of medical information on mobile computing devices (MCDs), at the point-of-care, as part of a project in collaboration with the Department of Health in the Eastern Cape Province. As part of the latter project, Ricks (2012:7) conducted an investigation into the impact that accessing health information at the point-of-care, via MCDs, had on the clinical decision-making practice of medical practitioners and professional nurses in public hospitals and primary healthcare settings in the Eastern Cape Province. The researcher identified a gap in the aforementioned study and was thus motivated to conduct this study to explore and describe the experiences of medical practitioners at public hospitals in further detail by conducting a qualitative study, as the previous study was quantitative. The purpose of this study was therefore to explore and describe the experiences of medical practitioners regarding the accessing of information at the point-of-care, via mobile technology, for clinical decision making at public hospitals. To achieve the purpose of the study, a qualitative, explorative, descriptive and contextual research design was used. The research population comprised medical practitioners who were using MCDs to access information at the point-of-care for clinical decision making. Purposive sampling was used to select the research sample. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect the necessary research data. Tesch’s steps were used to analyse the data. The principles for ensuring trustworthiness and ethical considerations were adhered to throughout the study. Two main themes and six sub-themes emerged in relation to the experiences of medical practitioners regarding the accessing of information at the point-of-care, for clinical decision making, via mobile technology. The main findings of the research highlighted the benefits and challenges that were experienced by the medical practitioners when using the MCDs for accessing information at the point-of-care for clinical decision making. The study concludes with recommendations pertaining to the areas of practise, education and research.

M.Ing. (Electrical And Electronic Engineering) / Patient safety in healthcare is sometimes compromised due to medical and clerical errors. These errors can increase the operational cost of healthcare if not identified and rectified speedily. They can also result in misdiagnosis, wrong treatment options being provided to patients and in the worst case may result in fatalities. Healthcare errors in medication documentation, administration, and prescription can cause incorrect medicine administration and dosage instructions for patients. Sub-Saharan Africa has the lowest percentage (adults is 59% and youth is 70%) of literacy compared to other regions of the world sitting at (adults is 84% and youth is 89%). The challenge facing illiterate patients is that they can easily make the same mistakes and may not take their medication correctly. The application of Near Field Communication (NFC) technology in healthcare has demonstrated some advantages of security, accuracy and effectiveness over other technologies. The availability of NFC in some smartphones has also encouraged the development of more applications. The main objective of this thesis is to present a solution using an Android based NFC application that enables a NFC enabled smartphone to read NFC tags placed on medication containers and be able to play the audio instructions to illiterate patients. Based on a comprehensive review of the literature on NFC applications in healthcare, this solution is the first of its kind. A set of experiments were done in an effort to understand the operation of NFC phones under different environments. The proposed application reads the NFC tag placed on the medicine container. The data read from the NFC tag is used to identify the audio file corresponding to the particular patient’s medicine instructions. If the audio instructions are not available, on the phone, it is fetched from a remote server database using an Internet connection. The application automatically plays the audio file to the patient. Three research hypotheses were tested and it was confirmed that (H1), modified NFC antenna can reduce the level of induced power in it; (H2), the NFC technology is faster and more accurate in reading tag code that Barcode technology reading the barcode; (H3), the NFC reading process of NFC tag code is not negatively affected by the amount of light in the environment it is operated in. The Barcode reading accuracy was 10% errors when operating in the environment with light brightness of 128000 lumens. When the light brightness was reduced to 8900 lumens, the Barcode accuracy errors increased to 45%.

This dissertation studies the context-aware application with its proposed algorithms at client side. The required context-aware infrastructure is discussed in depth to illustrate that such an infrastructure collects the mobile user’s context information, registers service providers, derives mobile user’s current context, distributes user context among context-aware applications, and provides tailored services. The approach proposed tries to strike a balance between the context server and mobile devices. The context acquisition is centralized at the server to ensure the usability of context information among mobile devices, while context reasoning remains at the application level. Hence, a centralized context acquisition and distributed context reasoning are viewed as a better solution overall. The context-aware search application is designed and implemented at the server side. A new algorithm is proposed to take into consideration the user context profiles. By promoting feedback on the dynamics of the system, any prior user selection is now saved for further analysis such that it may contribute to help the results of a subsequent search. On the basis of these developments at the server side, various solutions are consequently provided at the client side. A proxy software-based component is set up for the purpose of data collection. This research endorses the belief that the proxy at the client side should contain the context reasoning component. Implementation of such a component provides credence to this belief in that the context applications are able to derive the user context profiles. Furthermore, a context cache scheme is implemented to manage the cache on the client device in order to minimize processing requirements and other resources (bandwidth, CPU cycle, power). Java and MySQL platforms are used to implement the proposed architecture and to test scenarios derived from user’s daily activities. To meet the practical demands required of a testing environment without the impositions of a heavy cost for establishing such a comprehensive infrastructure, a software simulation using a free Yahoo search API is provided as a means to evaluate the effectiveness of the design approach in a most realistic way. The integration of Yahoo search engine into the context-aware architecture design proves how context aware application can meet user demands for tailored services and products in and around the user’s environment. The test results show that the overall design is highly effective,providing new features and enriching the mobile user’s experience through a broad scope of potential applications.

Studies show that smartphone thefts are a significant problem in the United States. [30] With many upcoming proposals to decrease the theft-rate of such devices, investigating new techniques for preventing smartphone theft is an important area of research. The prevalence of new biometric identification techniques for smartphones has led some researchers to propose biometric anti-theft measures for such devices, similar to the current fingerprint authentication system for iOS. Gait identification, a relatively recent field of study, seems to be a good fit for anti-theft because of the non-intrusive nature of passive pattern recognition in walking. In this paper, we reproduce and extend a modern gait recognition technique proposed in Cell Phone-Based Biometrics by testing the technique outside of the laboratory on real users under everyday conditions. We propose how this technique can be applied to create an anti-theft system, and we discuss future developments that will be necessary before such research is ready to be implemented in a release-quality product. Because previous studies have also centered around the ability to differentiate between individual users from a group, we will examine the accuracy of identifying whether or not a specific user is currently using a system. The system proposed in this paper shows results as high as 91% for cross-fold accuracy for some users; however, the predictive accuracy for a single day’s results ranged from 0.8% accuracy to 92.9% accuracy, showing an unreliability that makes such a system unlikely to be useful under the pressure of real-world conditions.