Mobile phones and Gadget Technology

Posts Tagged ‘Technologies’

Introduction

The numbers are both heartening…and alarming. Through improved nutrition, new pharmacological interventions and amazing new medical technologies, greater and greater numbers of us are living into our sixties, seventies, eighties, nineties…even past the century mark. However, one of the very real consequences of our capability to extend our lifespans is that as we age, there are more and more individuals – and their family members acting as caregivers – who will have to deal with the diseases and syndromes associated with old age. Certainly, Alzheimer’s disease and dementia are at the forefront of these concerns today.

According to the Alzheimer’s Association, an estimated 5.2 million Americans of all ages presently have Alzheimer’s disease.  The Alzheimer’s Association estimates that there are approximately half a million Americans under age 65 who have Alzheimer’s or another dementia, and about 40 percent of them have Alzheimer’s disease. In all, one in eight persons age 65 and over has Alzheimer’s disease at present. Over the course of our lifetimes, one in six women and one in ten men who live past the age of 55 will someday develop Alzheimer’s disease. Over time, the numbers only grow worse, for unless there are medical breakthroughs in the prevention of the disease, estimates are that there will be between 11 and 16 million Americans living with Alzheimer’s by 2050.     

All of us have an occasional “senior moment,” forgetting a lunch meeting or misplacing our automobile keys, but more and more seniors are experiencing far more serious problems with their memory and cognitive functioning. Alzheimer’s is the most common cause of dementia, bookkeeping for fully 70% of all cases in older adults. Unfortunately, dementia is common amongst the elderly – even those who do not have Alzheimer’s. Today, research has shown that over 40% of those aged 85 and older have some form of dementia.  

Dementia is a severely debilitating condition that can occur in persons of any age, but this day is largely a condition affecting older people – whether or not they have Alzeheimer’s as an underlying condition. People suffering from dementia experience a global decline in their capability to cognitively function. This leads to problems with perception, reasoning, memory, and temporal/spatial awareness.  In addition to experiencing these cognitive impairments, persons with dementia often exhibit potentially hazardous behaviors. These include becoming less inhibited, displaying verbal and/or physically aggressive behavior towards others, or what is known as “wandering” – where the patient moves for no apparent reason.

When a dementia sufferer wanders, he or she might simply restlessly achievement about their home or their assisted living artefact in an endless manner – often for hours at a time. However, for hospital and assisted living center administrators, a dementia patient who wanders might simply wander out the doors of the artefact – creating a quite concerning situation for their facility. Furthermore, patients with dementia who do not have a history of displaying wandering behavior might be at risk of accidentally leaving the artefact simply through becoming disoriented or forgetful of their surroundings.  Such wandering – even once – becomes a “life or death” decision area for health care administrators. As Patti Harris, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Brookfield, Wisconsin-based RF Technologies, recently remarked: “Although it’s not front page news, there are people who wander outside of nursing homes and freeze to death right outside the building because no one accounted for them.”

People suffering with dementia are therefore in great need of constant assistance and supervision. This places great stress on the individualized and professional lives of their caregivers, who are often their adult kids and/or spouses. Thus, most eventually need to be cared for in an assisted living facility. And thus, while the direct and indirect costs of caring for patients with dementia and Alzheimer’s is compute to be in the tens of billions of dollars this day in the United Says and far more on a global basis, this number will go higher and higher with the continuing trend toward a longer-living population with a greater incidence of both Alzheimer’s and dementia.

RFID AND DEMENTIA CARE/DIAGNOSIS  

Over the past decade, we have seen increasing levels of utilization of automatic finding technologies in health care facilities, in areas ranging from employee finding and access control to specific applications with RFID (Radio Frequency Identification), ranging from equipment monitoring to blood banking and pharmaceutical dispensing. We have also seen long-standing use of RFID for patient finding and control in the pediatric area to match babies with their parents.

Now today, we are seeing increased interest in using RFID to help protect the country of patients suffering from dementia from wandering outside designated areas of the artefact or even outside the doors of their care center. In the process, auto-ID endorsement helps assist and mitigates the very serious operational and liability concerns health care administrators have over having vulnerable patients in their care venture outside the bounds of the facility. Also, for technologically progressive hospitals and health care facilities that have already undertaken RFID investments in say, equipment tagging and pediatric wing security, such new projects can dovetail with their existing investments in RFID-related hardware, software and integration efforts to expand the benefits of both their legacy projects and a new effort to wage increased security for their dementia patients and their family members.  

We have seen several current trials and implementations of RFID technology in this area, including installations specifically geared for monitoring of dementia-affected patients in the United States, Canada and Europe. While door alarms and staff vigilance can help prevent patients from wandering outside a designated area or outside the perimeter of the facility, RFID-based monitoring can certainly wage a much more comprehensive security solution for the care of dementia-affected patients. Salim Devji, Deputy Administrator at the Delta View Habilitation Centre in British Columbia, Canada, which implemented an RFID-based monitoring systems for both patients and equipment last year – the first known installation geared specifically at dementia care in the country, recently commented on the importance of locating wandering patients quickly, stating that with physical counts in any elder care artefact when you have “so many care staff keeping track of so many residents who are moving.” RFID tags – in the form of wristbands or badges – can enable tracking within the four walls of a designated area, with the level of surveillance determined by the positioning of readers at doorways, stairwells, exit doors and other “choke points.”

Active RFID will be preferable in most instances – due to the need to assure continuous patient monitoring, and there must be special attention to having power backups for the monitoring systems. As Robert Heppenheimer, executive director and owner of the Nesconset Center for Nursing & Rehabilitation, located in Nesconset, New York, which has implemented a comprehensive ultra-wide band RFID-based system for tracking staff, equipment and patients, pinpointed the importance of such a comprehensive and reliable approach when he said – quite bluntly – “Oh, well, we had a power outage and the system didn’t reset, so Mother got outside and got hypothermia, or worse.” As has been found with the monitoring of infants in pediatric units, readers should be positioned in a manner so as to minimize the number of false alarms from patients coming near to – but not actually passing through – designated doorways. 

In Luxembourg, for instance, the country’s largest health care artefact – the Hospital St. Louis – has implemented an active attach system from Redwood City, California-based AeroScout, Inc. (http://www.aeroscout.com)  to track both durable medical equipment and high-risk dementia patients.  The Luxembourg project makes use of Cisco’s Unified Wireless Network to wage visibility on both hard and human assets throughout the facility. The value of such projects, in the view of Richard Roberts, Cisco’s Director of Wireless Business Development, is that: “Location-based services, such as the system deployed by Hospital St. Louis, can help improve patient care and help reduce costs with a real-time view of where their patients and assets are located.”

The special needs of the elderly who suffer from dementia has led to several innovative projects for improving both their country and calibre of life while residing in assisted living centers and health care facilities. For instance, for health care administrators, one of the very practical concerns is in the area of laundry management. Getting the right clothes back to the right patient can be a complex matter, prefabricated even more so when patients with dementia in many instances might not be healthy to refer whether or not the clothes they are wearing are their own. This can distract a great amount of staff time and attention away from direct patient care to simply getting the right socks, underwear, and shirts to the right room and the right person. To an outsider, a patient wearing the wrong clothes might seem rather harmless. However, for the patient, this might cause a demand of dignity, and for their families, it might raise their suspicions over the level and calibre of care that their loved one is being provided at that artefact (bringing to mind the famous analogy from American airline entrepreneur Donald Burr that “coffee stains on the flip-down trays mean that we do our engine maintenance wrong”).  From a health perspective, wearing other residents’ clothing could expose patients to potential skin allergies and also raise the likelihood that various skin-related conditions could be spread amongst patients. And today, there are rising concerns world-wide over more serious conditions such as MRSA (Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus Aureus), a type of staph infection that is resistant to conventional anti-biotic treatment. MRSA can often be fatal, and it can spread rapidly amongst patients in hospitals and nursing homes, where the elderly and people with weakened immune systems are particularly susceptible to MRSA infection.

In Nottingham, England, the City Council has recently embarked on a one-of-a-kind initiative to assist persons living with dementia, providing a reassuring service for they and their family members that also helps ensure resident safety. The Nottingham City Council has implemented a program to promote more accurate clothing finding crossways five “Care Homes for Older People” in the community. At these care centers, clothing for approximately 150 dementia patients are now tagged with RFID-enabled buttons, provided by UK-based Tunstall (http://www.tunstall.co.uk/).  The tags are designed both to be hardy for repeated washings and to be hard for anyone to intentionally remove. They are thus far more reliable than sewn-in nametags or permanent markings (which some older patients find demeaning) and the readers can enable laundry to be easily sorted, as the buttons refer apiece tagged article by the patient’s name, room number, and unit or wing location. The buttons can also be swiftly reprogrammed as circumstances change. The program has received positive responses from the patients and their families, as well as kudos from the administrators and staff members of the Care Homes.

Finally, RFID has demonstrated potential to no just protect individuals suffering from dementia, but to help physicians diagnose the condition as well – and at primeval stages in the disease’s progression where more treatment options and interventions are available. A team of researchers from the University of South Florida, working in conjunction with RFID-start-up Silent Partner Technologies (http://www.silentpartnertech.com/), based in nearby Tarpon Springs, Florida, have successfully field-tested an RFID-based diagnostic system. Fourteen residents at an assisted-living artefact in Tampa wore active RFID-tagged wristbands. The ante-room – through which residents had to pass to enter the facility’s dining room for their meal service – was equipped with RFID readers. Each participant’s movements were tracked as they repeatedly passed through the room for their breakfast, lunch and dinner meals. The goal was to precisely monitor the resident’s travel patterns, as wandering is a significant sign of the on-set of dementia. The HERMES – Health Research Management and Evaluation System, making use of sophisticated mathematical modeling and data mining the resident’s many movements over time, seeks to refer a person’s tendency to achievement in a way other than in a straight-line when crossing the monitored walkway.

According to Silent Partner’s President, William Kearns, the system’s value is based on research showing that “variations in patterns of movement are indicative to pathological changes in the mind.” In the Tampa test, apiece participant was given a short mental fitness exam. The South Florida researchers found that participants whose mental exam results showed mild levels of cognitive impairment also were found to exhibit patterns of wandering in their movements through the monitored area, both consistent with the primeval stages of dementia.  Thus, this patent-pending technology could enable hospitals and assisted living centers to not simply employ RFID to prevent those affected by dementia and Alzheimer’s from unauthorized movements or leaving the facility, but to aid health professionals in diagnosing the conditions at an primeval stage.

ANALYSIS

There are areas of concern among both members of the general public and health care professionals regarding the use of RFID in such assisted care and hospital settings that must be acknowledged. First, there is the issue of patient privacy.  Indeed, academic commentators on the subject have notice that due to the proven capability of RFID to accurately track people in a wide variety of settings, the principal challenge in this case in not technological. Rather, the challenge is to be healthy to develop and implement systems that are sound and acceptable from both an ethical and legal perspective. Writing in the journal Surveillance & Society, Alison Marie Kenner of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute commented that: “Monitoring systems for dementia care call to mind similar products used for kids or prisoners on home arrest. Like these groups, elderly citizens, and those with dementia in particular, are often in a position that makes them vulnerable.” Dr. Richard Nicholson, who serves as Editor of the Bulletin of Medical Ethics, recently commented that such tracking could be misused, stating: “The problem with this is that you could see second-class care – using it as a way of making life easier for carers (caregivers) rather than as a way of making life safer or more pleasant for the mortal with Alzheimer’s.” There are proposals in the United Kingdom and Australia for using RFID to refer dementia-affected persons outside of care facilities – ideas that have raised the level of concerns of privacy activists.  Certainly, wearable RFID identifiers (such as patient wristbands or buttons) are far less invasive and permanent than any instance of implanting RFID devices in patients, which has only been done on a limited trial basis to date. Also, there are legal and ethical concerns over the inability to obtain informed consent from patients suffering from dementia for such an invasive procedure.

Finally, there has also been much discussion over the country of RFID usage in health care amongst both health professionals and members of the wider research community since the publication of a study in the June 2008 issue of the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).  In their JAMA article, researchers from The Netherlands pinpointed concerns over potential electromagnetic interference between RFID and critical medical devices, such as pacemakers and ventilators. While their research showed interference in only a quarter of all tests they conducted an that disruptions were considerably more common with passive than active tags, the study spotlighted the importance of taking such concerns into statement when designing in-hospital applications of auto-ID technology and potentially shielding medical devices, even though much more study will be needed regarding the technological issues involved.     

It is clear that RFID-based security systems for dementia patients will pay benefits to patients, to family members, to health care providers and artefact administrators. As we have seen, RFID also makes doable new and innovate care and diagnostic tools for use in health care facilties. We are also seeing very interesting research and primeval investments in efforts to RFID-enable homes to make them more conducive for the needs of those with diminishing cognitive functioning. Thus, with the aging population and the rising number of cases of both Alzheimer’s and dementia, this will certainly be an area that will see a great deal of experimentation and activity by RFID solutions providers. 

Biography

David C. Wyld (dwyld.kwu@gmail.com) is the Robert Maurin Professor of Management at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, Louisiana. He is a management consultant, researcher/writer, and executive educator. His blog, Wyld About Business, can be viewed at http://wyld-business.blogspot.com/. He also serves as the Director of the Reverse Auction Research Center (http://reverseauctionresearch.blogspot.com/), a hub of research and news in the expanding world of competitive bidding. Dr. Wyld also maintains compilations of works he has helped his students to turn into editorially-reviewed publications at the following sites:

Management Concepts (http://toptenmanagement.blogspot.com/)

Book Reviews (http://wyld-about-books.blogspot.com/) and

Travel and International Foods (http://wyld-about-food.blogspot.com/).                

With the rapid evolution of technology and communication, fields such as the outsourcing industry have had to adapt to changing technologies. Outsourcing companies  have had to innovate as well as invest in newer and superior solutions, in order to keep up with our changing world. But one of outsourcing’s sectors most influenced by the evolution of technology, and perhaps one that has also been most challenged by it, is contact center outsourcing. Given that the way people communicate has rapidly evolved from snail mail, to email to texting to tweets, it is unsurprising that companies are having a hard time to adapt, especially considering that give or take forty years ago, there was no email, twenty years ago, there was no texting and five years ago, there was no Twitter.

In an attempt to keep up with changing technologies, communication solutions providers and contact center outsourcing companies alike, are starting to refocus on this key area once again, with the global recovery.

A current study by Frost & Sullivan released on the 8th of December highlighted the impact that the global economic slowdown had on the contact center applications market. The study noted that the slowdown had adversely affected spending by companies for the advancement of technologies. But while this is also so, it further highlighted as well that with the lessons learned from the slowdown, technologies will now be refocusing on cost-saving and production-boosting technologies among the outsourcing sector.

Meanwhile a report by Pelorus Associates, estimates that the contact center recording systems market will grow by 55% by 2015, with the total worldwide market hitting .24 billion. In 2009, the contact center recording systems market was at 0 million, up from the 5 million in 2007.

Companies such as the Hawaiian Electric Company are continuing efforts to integrate newer technologies into their processes. The company announced on the 15th of November that it has partnered with HCL Technologies (NSE:HCLTECH) division, HCL Axon, for the installation and integration of a SAP Utilities Customer Information System (CIS), which would help the company manage customer accounts, as well as service, call center and billing processes. Call center outsourcing company Stellar on the other hand, is investing on newer technologies for its clients. Stellar signed on with Panviva Inc on the 29th of November to avail of guidance systems which would streamline their call center agents’ processes.

Other companies such as the Italian call center outsourcing services provider, Call & Call are looking towards the cloud. The company announced on the 19th of November that it is expanding its cloud computing initiative with software giant and fellow outsourcing services provider, IBM (NYSE:IBM). According to Fabio Mattaboni, Call & Call’s CIO, “The reduction in energy costs and additional savings due to the longer life of apiece end device and reduced support costs will make us even more competitive in our customer-focused industry.”

Outsourcing company Sykes (NASDAQ:SYKE), on the other hand, won an honor as a Recognized Innovator on the 29th of November for its innovative approach in technical support by utilizing traditional forums to enhance the customer experience. According to Dan Hernandez, EVP of Global Strategy for Sykes, “Blending SYKES’ Online Support Communities with traditional support channels grants us to broaden the reach for customer interactions while also capitalizing on community knowledge and meeting consumers’ needs for readily acquirable and easily understood answers to their questions.”

More and more companies are realizing the benefit of, and are looking for more solutions to, the rapid changes in technology and communication that we are experiencing today. With contact centers starting to catch up with the technology, let’s hope that improved customer service will follow as well.

3G TECHNOLOGY IN MOBILE PHONES

3G technology is otherwise called as 3rd generation standards for mobile phones. The International Telecommunication Union formed the specifications for 3G technology in mobile phones. 3G technology in mobile phones comprises some specific features. They are listed below.

Wireless network should be acquirable on Mobile phones

World wide web connections should be acquirable in Mobile phones

Voice calls with video conferencing artefact should be available

Mobile TV feature should be available

Data transfer should be atleast 200 Kbps

Government mainly insist the release of 3G because of important and useful applications to public like Mobile television, video conferencing, e-medicine artefact to remote mobile users, location based information to users etc.

2G TECHNOLOGY AND ITS DRAWBACKS

Earlier before the release of 3G technology specifications, there are a set of standards acquirable for 2G. 2G is otherwise called as the second generation mobile phone technology. It includes the basic specifications like Digital encryption of voice and data, GSM and CDMA standards etc. The power emission i.e the irradiation from mobile phones is controlled in 2G technology which takes care of health of the mobile phone users.

Still there are lots of drawbacks in 2G technology. The signal will be weaker in remote areas. This is mainly a problem for 2G services with higher frequencies. Also the digital signals have to be handled properly otherwise it will lead to poor transmission of voice or data. This is also a drawback in 2G technology.

There are two layers between 2G and 3G. They are 2.5G and 2.75G.

2.5G refers to GPRS technology application and 2.75G refers to EDGE application.

Now the most awaited technology in India is 3G and government is preparing for full implementation of the same.

by See-ming Lee 李思明 SML

VitalSpring Technologies Co – VitalSpring
Iris color can wage a massive amount of information about an individual, and a classification of various colors might be useful in documenting pathological changes or determining how a mortal might respond to various ocular pharmaceuticals.

VitalSpring Company : The American Optometric Association (AOA) represents optometrists nationally in the USA. Prior to admittance into optometry school, optometrists typically complete four years of undergraduate study, culminating in a bachelor’s degree. Required undergraduate coursework for pre-optometry students covers a variety of health, science and mathematics courses. These courses include: 4 semesters of chemistry to include organic and biochemistry, 2 semesters of physics, biology, 1 semester of calculus, and 1 semester of statistics. Additional stipulations might be imposed by specific institutions.

VitalSpring Technologies Company
Galen remedied some mistakes including the curvature of the cornea and lens, the nature of the optic nerve, and the existence of a posterior chamber. Though this model was roughly a correct but simplistic modern model of the eye, it contained errors. Yet it was not advanced upon again until after Vesalius.

Sreedhar Potarazu : Also ophthalmoscopy and gonioscopy examinations can also be performed through the slit lamp when combined with special lenses. These lenses include the Goldmann 3-mirror lens, gonioscopy single-mirror/ Zeiss 4-mirror lens for (ocular) anterior chamber angle structures and +90D lens, +78D lens, +66D lens & Hruby (-56D) lens, the examination of retinal structures is accomplished.

Dr Sreedhar Potarazu In German language-speaking countries, the word Doktor always refers to a research doctorate awardee, and is distinct from Arzt, a medical practitioner. An Arzt who holds the Dr. med. degree is addressed as Herr Doktor; an Arzt who does not would simply be Herr. This rule has been weakened recently, and people (e.g. in Austria) refer to medical practitioners as Doktor too.

VitalSpring The next development in optical theory came in 1899 when Max Planck correctly modeled blackbody irradiation by assuming that the exchange of energy between light and matter only occurred in discrete amounts he called quanta.

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