Thesis (MTech (Information Technology))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2016. / Access to healthcare is regarded as a basic and essential human right. It is widely known that ICT solutions have potential to improve access to healthcare, reduce healthcare cost, reduce medical errors, and bridge the digital divide between rural and urban healthcare centres. The access to personal healthcare records is, however, an astounding challenge for both patients and healthcare professionals alike, particularly within resource-restricted environments (such as rural communities). Most rural healthcare institutions have limited or non-existent access to electronic patient healthcare records. This study explored the accessibility of personal healthcare records by patients and healthcare professionals within a rural community hospital in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. The case study was conducted at the St. Barnabas Hospital with the support and permission from the Faculty of Informatics and Design, Cape Peninsula University of Technology and the Eastern Cape Department of Health. Semi-structured interviews, observations, and interactive co-design sessions and focus groups served as the main data collection methods used to determine the accessibility of personal healthcare records by the relevant stakeholders. The data was qualitatively interpreted using thematic analysis. The study highlighted the various challenges experienced by healthcare professionals and patients, including time-consuming manual processes, lack of infrastructure, illegible hand-written records, missing records and illiteracy. A number of recommendations for improved access to personal healthcare records are discussed. The significance of the study articulates the imperative need for seamless and secure access to personal healthcare records, not only within rural areas but within all communities.

Abstract Purpose This thesis aims to focus on how master students administer scholarly articles after they have found them. The purpose of the study is to detect how and to what extent people administer their articles from a personal information management-perspective (PIM). Method To answer the research questions, a web-based questionnaire survey was distributed which was announced to around 2,000 master students from different universities in Sweden. Most of the items in the survey focused on individual storage methods. The respondents were asked to rate the frequency of their different information administration behaviors on a seven level Likert-type-scale. Subsequently, items concerning specific information administration behaviors were posed, followed by questions on the respondent's sociodemographic status. The results were based on overall 316 answers. Analysis The quantitative data was analyzed using non-parametric tests such as Friedmans-test, Kruskal-Wallis-analysis, Wilcoxon-Signed Rank-test, Mann-Whitney-U-test and Chi-square-test with the statistical computer program SPSS. Findings The findings generally confirm that the majority of the surveyed graduate students are using scholarly articles. Regarding their information management, it is as usual to store the whole article as it is to store the reference. Further it is more common to choose electronic storage methods for articles and references than to use physical methods. The results highlight that most of the students use several method types and use them to varying extent. Neither age, computer skills, duration of study or satisfaction with their way of information storage influenced the quantity of used methods. Regarding specific handling, the storing of article copies on the computer’s hard drive were most frequently used. The respondents preferred furthermore to read the articles on a screen rather than printed paper versions. The influencing factors of gender, age, computer skills, subject discipline were affecting the choice of methods. General conclusions about these influencing factors are, however, complicated by possible occurring confounders. Moreover, the method types were used to different extents depending of subject discipline. Originality/value Most previous PIM research is concentrating on how people store information in general. The dealing and administrating with specific types of information are, however, rarely discussed. In the context of scholarly articles did research predominantly focus on seeking structures and reading patterns. The step between finding and reading an article has so far not directly been addressed in academic research. The study therefore is unique in addressing information storage systems of scholarly articles on such a large scale. Knowledge about storage patterns will help journal publishers and librarians to design more targeted solutions for journal systems and improve services like courses in information seeking. Paper type Two years master’s thesis

This dissertation explores personal digital archiving practices, particularly in relation to the construction of self. Personal digital archiving is an everyday practice through which people manage and preserve digital documents that have particular meanings to them. This process involves a constant value assignment that is intertwined with the recollection of life events. In-depth case studies were used to gain a holistic understanding as close to research participants’ perspectives as possible. Semi-structured narrative interviews were conducted with 23 individuals from various backgrounds.The results are discussed in relation to emotions and self-evaluation. Personal digital archiving as a process, directly or indirectly, involves a self-enhancement and self-verification which is an integral part of self-confirmation. This study contributes to the in-depth observation of everyday record-keeping in a digital environment, particularly providing interpretive accounts of individual differences and why people do things in a certain way. / text

Thesis (MTech (Information Technology))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2016. / Health information policies are constantly becoming a key feature in directing information usage in healthcare. After the passing of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act in 2009 and the Affordable Care Act (ACA) passed in 2010, in the United States, there has been an increase in health systems innovations. Coupling this health systems hype is the current buzz concept in Information Technology, „Big data‟. The prospects of big data are full of potential, even more so in the healthcare field where the accuracy of data is life critical. How big health data can be used to achieve improved health is now the goal of the current health informatics practitioner. Even more exciting is the amount of health data being generated by patients via personal handheld devices and other forms of technology that exclude the healthcare practitioner. This patient-generated data is also known as Personal Health Records, PHR. To achieve meaningful use of PHRs and healthcare data in general through big data, a couple of hurdles have to be overcome. First and foremost is the issue of privacy and confidentiality of the patients whose data is in concern. Secondly is the perceived trustworthiness of PHRs by healthcare practitioners. Other issues to take into context are data rights and ownership, data suppression, IP protection, data anonymisation and reidentification, information flow and regulations as well as consent biases. This study sought to understand the role of data policies in the process of data utilisation in the healthcare sector with added interest on PHRs utilisation as part of big health data.

The project is a web e-mail application to provide a web page interface for all CSCI faculty, staff and students to handle their e-mails. The application is written by JSP, Java Servlets, JavaScript and custom JSP tag libraries. Regular e-mail capabilities have been enhanced by the feature of allowing users to store and manage messages by day (store to daily folders, view in daily folders, append notes for that day).

The aim of this study was to better understand how academics manage their personal information and therefore to have a basis for planning for appropriate support by librarians. There did not appear to be any current relevant research but from a review of previous studies, in which the predominant management strategy included a card personal index, a model was drawn up and validated by a number of academics would be using electronic personal indexes to manage their personal collections. The research methods selected for this study were in-depth interviews and a questionnaire survey. The main findings were that academics do not use a personal index (card or electronic) to manage their personal collections and they also use a language different from that of librarians to describe their activities of personal information management. Academics manage their information by organising their personal collection according to their working subject framework. to expand their collections they work outwards from items of known quality or follow the advice of colleagues to locate such items. To become aware of the new material in the library (or elsewhere), academics prefer to browse new journals and books, rather than use a subject index. Databases are used for confirmation of reference details and citation indexes are used to work outwards from documents of known quality. The output of references is by the use of word processing software with a few academics using bibliographic software just for this function. The conclusion of the study were that academics manage their personal information in a dissimilar way to that expected by librarians. Academics are managing ideas not documents and their methods of personal information management reflect the need to manage these ideas and the associated connective thought process. Librarians can better assist academics by designing library services that facilitate academics' ideas management. Suggestions for improved support include the development of services that enable browsing, the linking of ideas between research publications in different disciplines and the provision of a service to confirm reference details.

Orientador: Paulo Lício de Geus / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Computação / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-19T00:13:49Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 FigueiraFilho_FernandoMarques_D.pdf: 2794727 bytes, checksum: a731af5c0a52a8d8ee1e3dcb39119b01 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011 / Resumo: A Internet parece estar realizando o sonho de muitos visionários ao angariar parcela crescente do conhecimento humano e tornar seu acesso mais fácil. Entretanto, o modelo de interação para busca e exploração desse conhecimento é ainda similar àquele utilizado, por exemplo, por bibliotecários para consultar acervos de livros e publicações. Usuários entram com uma consulta constituída por palavras-chave e recebem como resposta uma lista de resultados que contém os termos utilizados na consulta. A exploração do conhecimento disponível através desse modelo apresenta dois problemas. Primeiro, os sistemas de busca são implementados sob o pressuposto que o conjunto de palavras-chave capaz de filtrar documentos relevantes é familiar ao usuário. No entanto, a heterogeneidade dos usuários da Internet frente ao imenso volume de informação disponível implica em diferentes níveis de familiaridade dos usuários com o conhecimento disponível. Segundo, a interpretação dos resultados retornados pelo sistema, de acordo com esse modelo, é delegada ao indivíduo, de modo que o usuário torna-se responsável por analisar e sintetizar o conteúdo filtrado para cumprir com os seus objetos de busca. Isto torna-se um problema em atividades de busca de longo prazo, que visam explorar o conhecimento para fins de aprendizado, revisão bibliográfica, dentre outras. A presente tese baseia-se em arcabouços teóricos das ciências sociais e em estudos empíricos para caracterizar e propor soluções para esses problemas. Os resultados mostram que a exploração do conhecimento na Internet depende de um conjunto de artefatos externos aos sistemas de busca atuais. Também mostram que a interação dos usuários com esses artefatos e com agentes humanos é parte integrante das atividades cognitivas desempenhadas para exploração do conteúdo disponível na Internet. Diferentes níveis de familiaridade demandam alternativas ao modelo de interação consulta-resposta e sugerem a integração de tecnologias da web social no desenvolvimento de sistemas de informação que visam suportar tarefas de busca exploratórias / Abstract: The Internet seems to be accomplishing the dream of visionaries by collecting part of the growing human knowledge and making its access easier. However, the interaction model for search and exploration of this knowledge is still similar to the one used, for example, by librarians to query over collections of books and publications. Users formulate queries that are constituted by keywords and receive a list of results in return, which contains the terms used in the entered query. The exploration of the available knowledge through this model presents two main problems. First, search systems are implemented under the assumption that the set of keywords to filter relevant documents is familiar to the user. But the heterogeneity of Internet users when faced to the huge amount of available information implies in different levels of familiarity of these same users regarding the available knowledge. Second, the interpretation of results returned by the system, according to this model, is delegated to the individual, and the user becomes responsible for analyzing and synthesizing the filtered content in order to meet his/her search goals. This becomes a problem in the case of long term search activities, that aims at exploring knowledge for purposes of learning, bibliography review and so on. This thesis is based on theoretical frameworks of the social sciences and on empirical studies to characterize and come up with solutions to those problems. The findings show that knowledge exploration on the Internet depends on a set of artifacts that are external to the search systems currently available. They also show that the user interaction with these artifacts and also with human agents is a fundamental part of the cognitive activities performed for knowledge exploration on the Internet. Different levels of familiarity demand alternatives to the query-response model and suggest the integration with social web technologies to develop information systems that support exploratory search tasks / Doutorado / Ciência da Computação / Doutor em Ciência da Computação

Les employés d’un organisme utilisent souvent un schéma de classification personnel pour organiser les documents électroniques qui sont sous leur contrôle direct, ce qui suggère la difficulté pour d’autres employés de repérer ces documents et la perte possible de documentation pour l’organisme. Aucune étude empirique n’a été menée à ce jour afin de vérifier dans quelle mesure les schémas de classification personnels permettent, ou même facilitent, le repérage des documents électroniques par des tiers, dans le cadre d’un travail collaboratif par exemple, ou lorsqu’il s’agit de reconstituer un dossier. Le premier objectif de notre recherche était de décrire les caractéristiques de schémas de classification personnels utilisés pour organiser et classer des documents administratifs électroniques. Le deuxième objectif consistait à vérifier, dans un environnement contrôlé, les différences sur le plan de l’efficacité du repérage de documents électroniques qui sont fonction du schéma de classification utilisé. Nous voulions vérifier s’il était possible de repérer un document avec la même efficacité, quel que soit le schéma de classification utilisé pour ce faire. Une collecte de données en deux étapes fut réalisée pour atteindre ces objectifs. Nous avons d’abord identifié les caractéristiques structurelles, logiques et sémantiques de 21 schémas de classification utilisés par des employés de l’Université de Montréal pour organiser et classer les documents électroniques qui sont sous leur contrôle direct. Par la suite, nous avons comparé, à partir d'une expérimentation contrôlée, la capacité d’un groupe de 70 répondants à repérer des documents électroniques à l’aide de cinq schémas de classification ayant des caractéristiques structurelles, logiques et sémantiques variées. Trois variables ont été utilisées pour mesurer l’efficacité du repérage : la proportion de documents repérés, le temps moyen requis (en secondes) pour repérer les documents et la proportion de documents repérés dès le premier essai. Les résultats révèlent plusieurs caractéristiques structurelles, logiques et sémantiques communes à une majorité de schémas de classification personnels : macro-structure étendue, structure peu profonde, complexe et déséquilibrée, regroupement par thème, ordre alphabétique des classes, etc. Les résultats des tests d’analyse de la variance révèlent des différences significatives sur le plan de l’efficacité du repérage de documents électroniques qui sont fonction des caractéristiques structurelles, logiques et sémantiques du schéma de classification utilisé. Un schéma de classification caractérisé par une macro-structure peu étendue et une logique basée partiellement sur une division par classes d’activités augmente la probabilité de repérer plus rapidement les documents. Au plan sémantique, une dénomination explicite des classes (par exemple, par utilisation de définitions ou en évitant acronymes et abréviations) augmente la probabilité de succès au repérage. Enfin, un schéma de classification caractérisé par une macro-structure peu étendue, une logique basée partiellement sur une division par classes d’activités et une sémantique qui utilise peu d’abréviations augmente la probabilité de repérer les documents dès le premier essai. / The employees of an organization often use a personal classification scheme to organize electronic documents residing on their own workstations. As this may make it hard for other employees to retrieve these documents, there is a risk for the organization of losing track of needed documentation. To this day, no empirical study has been conducted to verify whether personal classification schemes allow, or even facilitate the retrieval of documents created and classed by someone else, in collaborative work, for example, or when it becomes necessary to reconstruct a “dossier”. The first objective of our research was to describe the characteristics of personal classification schemes used to organize and classify administrative electronic documents. Our second objective was to verify, in a controlled environment, differences as to retrieval effectiveness which would be linked to the characteristics of classification schemes. More precisely, we wanted to verify if it was possible to find a document with the same effectiveness, whatever the classification scheme used. Two types of data collection were necessary to reach those objectives. We first identified the structural, logical and semantic characteristics of 21 classification schemes used by Université de Montréal employees to organize and classify electronic documents residing on their own workstations. We then compared, in a controlled experimentation, the capacity of 70 participants to find electronic documents with the help of five classification schemes exhibiting variations in their structural, logical and semantic characteristics. Three variables were used to measure retrieval effectiveness : the number of documents found, the average time needed (in seconds) to locate the documents and the number of documents found on the first try. Results revealed many structural, logical and semantic characteristics common to a majority of personal classification schemes : extended macro-structures, shallow, complex and unbalanced structures, thematic grouping, alphabetical order of classes, etc. An analysis of variance revealed significant differences as to retrieval effectiveness that are related to the structural, logical and semantic characteristics of the classification scheme. A classification scheme characterized by a narrow macro-structure and a logic based on classes of activities increases the probability of finding documents more rapidly. On the semantic level, more explicit denominations of classes (for example, by using definitions or avoiding acronyms and abbreviations) increases the probability of success in finding documents. Finally, a classification scheme characterized by a narrow macro-structure, a logic based on classes of activities, and a semantic that uses few abbreviations minimizes the risk of error and failure in retrieval.

Aujourd'hui, la plupart des internautes ont leurs données dispersées dans plusieurs appareils, applications et services. La gestion et le contrôle de ses données sont de plus en plus difficiles. Dans cette thèse, nous adoptons le point de vue selon lequel l'utilisateur devrait se voir donner les moyens de récupérer et d'intégrer ses données, sous son contrôle total. À ce titre, nous avons conçu un système logiciel qui intègre et enrichit les données d'un utilisateur à partir de plusieurs sources hétérogènes de données personnelles dans une base de connaissances RDF. Le logiciel est libre, et son architecture innovante facilite l'intégration de nouvelles sources de données et le développement de nouveaux modules pour inférer de nouvelles connaissances. Nous montrons tout d'abord comment l'activité de l'utilisateur peut être déduite des données des capteurs de son téléphone intelligent. Nous présentons un algorithme pour retrouver les points de séjour d'un utilisateur à partir de son historique de localisation. À l'aide de ces données et de données provenant d'autres capteurs de son téléphone, d'informations géographiques provenant d'OpenStreetMap, et des horaires de transports en commun, nous présentons un algorithme de reconnaissance du mode de transport capable de retrouver les différents modes et lignes empruntés par un utilisateur lors de ses déplacements. L'algorithme reconnaît l'itinéraire pris par l'utilisateur en retrouvant la séquence la plus probable dans un champ aléatoire conditionnel dont les probabilités se basent sur la sortie d'un réseau de neurones artificiels. Nous montrons également comment le système peut intégrer les données du courrier électronique, des calendriers, des carnets d'adresses, des réseaux sociaux et de l'historique de localisation de l'utilisateur dans un ensemble cohérent. Pour ce faire, le système utilise un algorithme de résolution d'entité pour retrouver l'ensemble des différents comptes utilisés par chaque contact de l'utilisateur, et effectue un alignement spatio-temporel pour relier chaque point de séjour à l'événement auquel il correspond dans le calendrier de l'utilisateur. Enfin, nous montrons qu'un tel système peut également être employé pour faire de la synchronisation multi-système/multi-appareil et pour pousser de nouvelles connaissances vers les sources. Les résultats d'expériences approfondies sont présentés. / Typical Internet users today have their data scattered over several devices, applications, and services. Managing and controlling one's data is increasingly difficult. In this thesis, we adopt the viewpoint that the user should be given the means to gather and integrate her data, under her full control. In that direction, we designed a system that integrates and enriches the data of a user from multiple heterogeneous sources of personal information into an RDF knowledge base. The system is open-source and implements a novel, extensible framework that facilitates the integration of new data sources and the development of new modules for deriving knowledge. We first show how user activity can be inferred from smartphone sensor data. We introduce a time-based clustering algorithm to extract stay points from location history data. Using data from additional mobile phone sensors, geographic information from OpenStreetMap, and public transportation schedules, we introduce a transportation mode recognition algorithm to derive the different modes and routes taken by the user when traveling. The algorithm derives the itinerary followed by the user by finding the most likely sequence in a linear-chain conditional random field whose feature functions are based on the output of a neural network. We also show how the system can integrate information from the user's email messages, calendars, address books, social network services, and location history into a coherent whole. To do so, it uses entity resolution to find the set of avatars used by each real-world contact and performs spatiotemporal alignment to connect each stay point with the event it corresponds to in the user's calendar. Finally, we show that such a system can also be used for multi-device and multi-system synchronization and allow knowledge to be pushed to the sources. We present extensive experiments.

The general aim of this research is to develop a conceptual privacy governance framework (CPGF) that can be used to develop a valid and reliable information privacy governance questionnaire (IPGQ) to assess the perception of employees of how effective the organisation governs privacy. The CPGF was developed to incorporate a comprehensive set of privacy components that could assist management in governing privacy across an organisation. IPGQ statements were derived from the theory of the sub-components of CPGF, evaluated by an expert panel and pre-tested by a pilot group. A quantitative mono method research was followed using a survey questionnaire to collect data in a financial institution in South Africa. Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was used to determine the underlying factorial structure and the Cronbach Alpha was used to establish the internal reliability of the factors. From the initial item reduction of the constructs, four factors were derived to test the privacy perception of employees. The IPGQ consisted of 49 valid and reliable questions. One-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was used, and three significant differences were discovered among the demographical groups for the age groups and two for the employment status groups (organisational commitment and privacy controls). The CPGF and IPGQ can aid organisations to determine if organisations are effectively governing the privacy in the organisations in order to assist them in meeting the accountability condition of the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA). / Computing / M. Sc. (Information Systems)