Emergency medical technicians (EMTs) usually participate in disaster response in rural African communities. Disasters in African communities are often characterized by huge fatalities, which are associated with a slow pace of response. The use of information and communication technology in disaster response is recognized as an effective conduit for enhancing response. Previous research indicates the efficacy of the use of mobile telephones in disaster response in advance countries. However, there remains a critical gap in the available literature on the experiences of EMTs with the use of mobile telephones in disaster response in rural African communities. The purpose of this generic qualitative study was to explore the experiences of EMTs with the use of mobile telephones in disaster response in rural African communities. The innovation diffusion theory served as the theoretical framework of the study. Data were collected through face to face, semi-structured interviews with 10 EMTs from 2 institutions in Sierra Leone. Data were analyzed with the use of Nvivo. The findings of this research include (a) The key areas in emergency response where mobile telephones are most useful; (b) The benefits of the use of mobile telephones in disaster response, including the enhancement of communication and search and rescue efforts; (c) Challenges to the use of mobile telephones; and (d) Ways to improve the use of mobile telephones. The results of this study may enhance positive social change through contribution to the reduction of fatalities usually associated with slow disaster response. It is recommended that future research be conducted on the experiences of other categories of first responders, and to explore alternative funding sources for disaster response in rural African communities.

The purpose of this study was to examine opportunities to teach about the mobile phone system for primary school pupils. This was explored by seeing if and how the students' understanding, perception and knowledge changed by taking part in an educational activity about the mobile phone system. Data were collected with the help of audio recording of the lesson itself, but also with the help of worksheets where the students first filled in their prerequisites and then what they had learned about the mobile phone system after the educational activity. The study was performed at three different schools and in three different classes in year 2–3 in the countryside, in an urban area and in a larger city. The last two schools are also multicultural with many second language students in the classes. The fact that three quite different schools were chosen was to increase the reliability of the results and see how well the educational activity works despite the students' differ-ent circumstances.The result show a major improvement in the students' knowledge of the mobile phone system as none of the students had any direct knowledge of how the mobile phone system works, for example, how to make a call or send a text message. The result also shows that the knowledge between the different schools did not differ much, but the difference that was seen was the students' different ways of describing the mobile phone system. / Syftet med denna studie var att ta reda på möjligheter att undervisa om mobiltelefonsystemet för lågstadieelever. Detta undersöktes genom att se om och hur elevernas förståelse, uppfattning och kunskap förändrades av en pedagogisk aktivitet om mobiltelefonsystemet. Data om denna aktivitet samlades in med hjälp av ljudinspelning av själva lektionen men också med hjälp av arbetsblad där eleverna först fyllde i sina förkunskaper och sedan vad det lärt sig om mobiltelefonsystemet efter den pedagogiska aktiviteten. Studien utfördes på tre olika skolor och i tre olika klasser i årskurs 2–3 på landsbygden, en tätort och i en större stad. De två sistnämnda skolorna är även mångkulturella, de vill säga med mestadels andraspråkselever i klasserna. Resultateten visade på stora förbättringar av elevernas kunskap om mobiltelefonsystemet då ingen av eleverna hade något direkt förkunskap om hur det fungerar att exempelvis ringa ett samtal eller skicka ett sms. Resultatet visar även att kunskapen mellan de olika skolorna inte skiljde sig åt särskilt mycket men den skillnad som gick att se var elevernas olika sätt att beskriva mobiltelefonsystemet.

Aims: The study of cognitive functioning in large epidemiological settings is hampered by a lack of instruments for the remote assessment of cognitive performance, especially when targeting variability across the full range of adult functioning. The present study examined the practicability of such investigations using a recently developed telephone interview (Cognitive Telephone Screening Instrument, COGTEL). Methods: A subcohort of an ongoing epidemiological study in the elderly German population (ESTHER) was interviewed via telephone by trained personnel. These data were combined with sociodemographic information obtained by standardized self-administered questionnaires, and analysed by tabulation, histograms and regression models. Results: A total of 1,697 interviews could be analysed. The eligible participants had a mean age ± standard deviation of 74.0 ± 2.8 years. The COGTEL total scores closely followed a normal distribution with no evidence of a ceiling effect. In adjusted regression models, COGTEL total and subcomponent scores were negatively associated with age and strongly positively with higher education, whereas the association with sex was less consistent. Conclusions: The results suggest that the COGTEL can readily be administered to large study populations and produces plausible and informative results. Education should be considered in all investigations using this instrument and requires further in-depth analyses. Future studies will need to elucidate its associations with risk factors and its prognostic potential for cognitive decline and dementia. / Dieser Beitrag ist mit Zustimmung des Rechteinhabers aufgrund einer (DFG-geförderten) Allianz- bzw. Nationallizenz frei zugänglich.

(in English) The aim of this work is to perform an in-depth analysis of the workplace of the children's crisis line - Linka bezpečí, focusing on the work of consultants with repeat callers of this line. The chosen subject was processed by a quantitative method (finding the number of calls with long-term clients on the crisis line during the six-month period, the duration of these calls, the topics that repeat callers bring to the calls on the line, etc.) and the qualitative method - organization a focus group with Linka bezpečí line's staff to find out their potential to work with long-term clients. The main result of the thesis is a summary of the findings, which make the work with the long-term calling clients easy for the workers and which, on the contrary, make it difficult, along with practical tips for practice.

Development and research on Artificial Intelligence have increased during recent years, and the field of medicine is not excluded as a target audience for this top modern technology. Despite new research and tools in favor of medical care, the staff is still under heavy workloads. The goal of this thesis is to analyze and propose the possibility of a chatbot that aims to ease the pressure on the medical staff. To provide a guarantee that patients are being monitored. With Artificial Intelligence, VOIP, Natural Language Processing, and web development, this chatbot can communicate with a patient, which will act as an assistant tool that conducts preparatory work for the medical staff. The system of the chatbot is integrated through a web application where the administrator can initiate call and store clients onto the database. To ascertain that the system operates in real-time, several tests have been carried out to tests concerning the latency between subsystems and the quality of service. / I utvecklingen av intelligenta system har sjukvården etablerat sig som en stor målgrupp. Trots avancerade tekniker så är sjukvården fortfarande under tung belastning. Målet för detta examensarbete är att undersöka möjligheten av en chatbot vars syfte är att lätta på arbetsbelastningen hos sjukvårdspersonalen och samtidigt erbjuda en garanti för att patienter får den tillsyn och återkoppling de behöver. Med hjälp av Artificiell Intelligens, VOIP, Natural Language Processing och webbutveckling kan denna chatbot kommunicera med patienten. Chatboten agerar som ett assisterande verktyg som står för ett förarbete i beslutstagandet för sjukvårdspersonal. Ett systemsom inte bara ger praktisk nytta utan också ett främjande av den utveckling som Artificiell Intelligens gör inom sjukvården. Systemet administreras genom en hemsida som kopplar samman de flera olika komponenterna. Här kan en administratör initiera samtal och spara klienter som ska ringas till databasen. För att kunna fastställa att systemet opererar i realtid har görs flertalet prestandatester avseende både tidsfördröjningar och samtalskvalité.

På webbplatsen arbetsliv.org finns webbsidorna branschkunskap och ämneskunskap innehållandes länkar till andra webbsidor, med fakta kring arbetsmiljö. Webbsidorna riktar sig främst till arbetsmiljöingenjörer och medlemmarna inom organisationerna FTF (Föreningen Teknisk Företagshälsovård) Arbetsmiljö och EHSS, Ergonomi och Human Factors Sällskapet Sverige. Arbetsmiljöingenjörer arbetar med frågor relaterade till branscher inom många olika områden. Därför anses det underlätta deras arbete genom att ha en samlad plats för branschspecifik information. Syftet med uppsatsen är att utveckla webbsidor till en egen domän, arbetsmiljowiki.se, och att utifrån organisationsmedlemmarnas åsikter skapa en wiki med bransch- och ämneskunskap inom arbetsmiljö. För att ta reda på användarnas åsikter genomfördes åtta stycken kvalitativa telefonintervjuer med intervjupersoner från olika åldersgrupper. Litteraturstudier skedde kring val och utveckling av teknisk lösning för att få en bild av de möjligheter som finns. Jämförelsen av tekniska lösningar, analysen av telefonintervjuerna och de uppställda kraven utgör tillsammans ett delresultat. Delresultatet ledde fram till en integration av Facebookinloggning, YouTubelänkar, kommentarsfält och att resultatet arbetsmiljowiki.se utformades enligt organisationsmedlemmarnas åsikter. / Located on the website arbetsliv.org is the webpages branschkunskap and ämneskunskap, containing links to other websites with facts about occupational health and safety. The webpages mainly target themselves towards occupational health engineers and members of the two organization’s FTF (Föreningen Teknisk Företagshälsovård) Arbetsmiljö and EHSS, Ergonomi och Human Factors Sällskapet Sverige. Occupational health engineers work with questions related to industries of many different fields. Therefore, it is considered to facilitate their work by providing a collaborative collection of industry-specific information. The purpose of this thesis is to develop the webpages into an independent domain, arbetsmiljowiki.se, and based on the organization members’ opinions create a wiki about industry and subject knowledge related to occupational health and safety. To collect the users’ opinions, eight qualitative telephone interviews were carried out with interviewees from different age-groups. Literature studies regarding choice of and development of technical solutions were performed in order to obtain a greater picture of the available possibilities. The comparison of technical solutions, analysis of the telephone interviews and the specified requirements together make up a part of the result. One part of the result resulted in an integration of Facebook login, embedded YouTube videos, comment fields and that the final result arbetsmiljowiki.se was shaped as per the organization members’ requests.

This Master’s Thesis in Electrical Engineering concerns the introduction of a Parlay gateway in Skanova’s public circuit switched telephone network, what network integrity problems this brings, and how to preserve the integrity of the network. There is a rising demand from the market on Skanova to be able to offer integrated and useful services via their network. Examples of such services are Web Controlled Call Forwarding and Virtual Call Centres. Until now, these services have been implemented with the Intelligent Network concept which is a technology for concentrating the service logic in the telephone network to centralised service platforms within the network operator’s domain. Developing new services in this environment is expensive and therefore, Skanova wants to open the network for third party service providers. The opening of the network is enabled by the introduction of a gateway implementing the open service interface Parlay. The crucial point when opening the network for third party service providers is to maintain the integrity of the network. Parlay is an object oriented Application Programming Interface that enables a third party service access to core network resources in a controlled manner. The authors’ definition of network integrity is: “the ability of a network to steadily remain in a safe state, while performing according to the expectations and specifications of its owner, i.e. delivering the expected functionality and providing means to charge for utilised network resources”. The thesis describes a few services implemented via the Parlay interface and points out examples of activities in these services that may jeopardise the integrity of the network. The described activities belong to one of the two categories: Call Control Functionality or Lack of Charging Instruments. The thesis also describes two important methods for addressing encountered integrity problems. The methods are: Parlay Service Level Agreement and Policy Management.</p> Finally, the solutions are compared and the conclusion is that Policy Management is a conformable and flexible method for addressing lots of integrity problems and that these are important qualities, since new integrity problems will arise all the time.

The diploma thesis: "Impacts of supervision on resilience of helpline workers" presents the results of case study focused on particular helpline, the case of which is the impact of supervision on workers feeling themselves comfortable with their professional roles on helpline. The theoretical part of the thesis deals with the key concepts of resilience and supervision, and presents the general characteristic of helplines, the method of telephone crisis intervention and the social service of telephone crisis assistance. The empirical part of the thesis explains the context of the particular helpline which was the subject of case study. The main topic of the research is: mastering of helpline workers of their professional roles and the influence of supervision on its changes in time. The research captures the changes of perception of supervision and of its effect on helpline workers dealing with their professional roles.

Depression förekommer under 10% av alla graviditeter och medför risker för både den gravida och barnet. Syfte: Studien IKBT för gravida med depression syftar till att bekräfta tidigare studiers resultat av IKBT-behandling samt utvärdera olika besöksmodaliteter, telefonsamtal, videosamtal eller fysiskt besök, för bedömningssamtalet.  Metod: 26 gravida (graviditetsvecka 8–30 vid antagning) med samtidig egentlig depression randomiserades till antingen eget val av besöksmodalitet eller randomiserades till en viss besöksmodalitet för sitt bedömningssamtal. Efteråt tillfrågades deltagarna om sina upplevelser av bedömningssamtalet avseende innehåll, modalitet samt hur Covid-19 pandemin påverkade deras inställning. Resultat: Det förelåg ingen statistisk signifikant skillnad mellan hur de tre besöksmodalitetsgrupperna eller mellan de som fick välja gentemot de som blev tilldelade en besöksmodalitet upplevde bedömningssamtalet. Kvalitativa data pekar mot att deltagarna hade föredragit fysiskt besök men uppskattade andra möjligheter med anledning av Covid-19 pandemin. Slutsats: Deltagarna var generellt lika nöjda med sitt bedömningssamtal oavsett besöksmodalitet och om de själva hade fått välja besöksmodalitet eller ej. Att erbjuda olika besöksmodaliteter ökar tillgängligheten och möjliggör behandling med IKBT för gravida med depression från hela landet. För att validera resultatet krävs vidare forskning med större antal deltagare. / Depression is present during 10% of all pregnancies and leads to risk for both the pregnant and the baby. Objective: The study ICBT towards pregnant with depression aims to confirm earlier studies results of ICBT-treatment and to evaluate different visiting modalities, telephone call, video call or face to face meeting, of the assessment interview.  Method: 26 pregnant women (gestational week 8–30 at intake) currently suffering from major depressive disorder randomized to either free choice of visiting modality or randomized to a certain visiting modality of the assessment interview. Afterwards the participants were asked about their experience of the assessment interview regarding content, modality and how the Covid-19 pandemic affected their attitude. Results: There was no statistically significant difference between how the three visiting modality groups or between the ones who got to choose opposite the ones who was assigned a visiting modality regarding the experience of the assessment interview. Qualitative data indicates that the participants would have preferred a face to face meeting but appreciated other possibilities due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Conclusion: The participants was in general equally satisfied with their assessment interview regardless visiting modality or if they got to choose their visiting modality or not. To offer different visiting modalities increases the availability and enables treatment with ICBT towards pregnant with depression throughout the country. These results need to be replicated in larger trials to validate.

Åldringsbedrägerier ökar markant i Sverige i och med att kriminella aktörer använder sig av olika taktiker och strategier för att på illegala sätt anskaffa sig pengar. Mot denna bakgrund har Polisen tagit initiativ för att bekämpa bedrägeribrottsligheten med en brottsförebyggande kampanj riktad till äldre och deras anhöriga. Detta genom ett vykortsutskick och kompletterande annonsering med information om hur de kan känna igen och stå emot telefonbedrägeriförsök. Studien utvärderar effekten av Polisens kampanj genom att undersöka huruvida två av fyra målsättningar har uppnåtts, dessa är; “Kampanjen ska bidra till att öka kunskapen och ge äldre verktyg att kunna avvärja telefon bedrägeriförsök" och “Kommunikativt stärka polisens brottsförebyggande arbete kring bedrägerier hos allmänheten”. Samt undersöka eventuella likheter och skillnader mellan telefonintervjuer och en webbenkät. Tidigare forskning visar att kampanjer har en positiv effekt och bidrar till förändring, men också att sårbarhetsfaktorer såsom kognitiv förmåga, social isolering, godtrogenhet och brist på kunskap är riskfaktorer för äldres utsatthet för telefonbedrägeri. Metodtriangulering samt effektanalys implementeras i utvärderingsprocessen för att kunna besvara studiens frågeställningar samt uppfylla syftet med studien. Analys sker genom en tematisk och statistisk analys. Resultaten visar att respondenterna var positivt inställda till kampanjen vilket visar att två av fyra uppsatta mål uppnåtts. Ett behov visas av återkommande och konkret information, samt att fortsatt forskning för mer effektiva brottsförebyggande kampanjer som kan adressera oklarheter och kunskapsluckor. / Fraud targeting elderly citizens is increasing significantly in Sweden as criminal actors use different tactics and strategies to illegally acquire money. With this knowledge, the Police has taken the initiative to fight fraud crime with a crime prevention campaign aimed at the elderly and their relatives. This through a postcard and supplementary advertising with information on how they can recognize and resist attempts at telephone fraud. The study evaluates the effect of the Police's campaign by examining whether two of four objectives have been achieved, these are; "The campaign will contribute to increasing knowledge and give older people tools to be able to ward off telephone fraud attempts" and "Communicatively strengthen the police's crime prevention work around fraud on the public". As well as examine any similarities and differences between telephone interviews and a web survey. Previous research shows that campaigns have a positive effect and contribute to change, but also that vulnerability factors such as cognitive ability, social isolation, gullibility and lack of knowledge are risk factors for the elderly´s vulnerability to telephone fraud. Method triangulation and impact analysis are implemented in the evaluation process to be able to answer the study's questions and fulfill the purpose of the study. Analysis takes place through thematic analysis and statistical analysis.The results show that the respondents were positively disposed to the campaign, which shows that two out of four set goals were achieved. A need is shown for recurring and concrete information, as well as continued research for more effective crime prevention campaigns that can address uncertainties and knowledge gaps.