The rise of Bluetooth-equipped devices in personal consumer electronics and in in-car systems has revealed the potential to develop Bluetooth sensor systems for applications in intelligent transportation systems. These applications may include measurements of traffic presence, density, and flow, as well as longitudinal and comparative traffic analysis. A basic Bluetooth sensor system for traffic monitoring consists of a Bluetooth probe device (s) that scans for other Bluetooth-enabled device (s) within its radio proximity, and then stores the data for future analysis and use. The scanned devices are typically on-board vehicular electronics and consumer devices carried by the driver and/or passengers which use Bluetooth communications, and which then reasonably proxy for the vehicle itself. This paper surveys the scope and evolution of these systems, with system attributes and design decisions illustrated via a reference design. The work provides motivation for continued development of non-invasive systems that leverage the existing communication infrastructure and consumer devices that incorporate short range communication technology like Bluetooth.

This paper reports on the findings of a user trial of a mHealth application for pressure ulcer (bedsore) documentation. Pressure ulcers are a leading iatrogenic cause of death in developed countries and significantly impact quality of life for those affected. Pressure ulcers will be an increasing public health concern as the population ages. Electronic information systems are being explored to improve consistency and accuracy of documentation, improve patient and caregiver experience and ultimately improve patient outcomes. A software application was developed for Android Smartphones and tablets and was trialed in a personal care home in Western Canada. The software application provides an electronic medical record for chronic wounds, replacing nurses’ paper-based charting and is positioned for integration with facility’s larger eHealth framework. The mHealth application offers three intended benefits over paper-based charting of chronic wounds, including: (1) the capacity for remote consultation (telehealth between facilities, practitioners, and/or remote communities), (2) data organization and analysis, including built-in alerts, automatically-generated text-based and graph-based wound histories including wound images, and (3) tutorial support for non-specialized caregivers. The user trial yielded insights regarding the software application’s design and functionality in the clinical setting, and highlighted the key role of wound photographs in enhancing patient and caregiver experiences, enhancing communication between multiple healthcare professionals, and leveraging the software’s telehealth capacities.

Primary care health professionals, especially family physicians, see a variety of wounds, and yet-despite the frequency of providing wound care-many family physicians do not feel confident in wound care management. This is partly due to a lack of formal wound education in Family Medicine programs. While there are numerous electronic wound care resources available in the UK and North America, none were identified that address the specific need in supporting clinical decision-making in wound dressing selection. At the same time, healthcare providers are increasingly using technology in personal and professional contexts, and a logical extension is to use technology for knowledge translation strategies. This work developed a prototype mobile health software application named WounDS, designed to support clinical decision-making in selecting wound dressings. This article presents the development and evaluation plan for the WounDS app. WounDS has been developed on the iOS platform. The primary specification included ease of use, in that one of the primary influences in user adoption would be the ability to receive a wound dressing recommendation in under 30 seconds and under 5 taps on the screen. The WounDS app guides users through a series of binary decisions for assessing the wound and provides a wound dressing recommendation. The selection algorithm is based in best practices using the Wound Bed Preparation Paradigm. Current work is underway to examine the implementation needs for WounDS to be most effectively utilized and to pilot test its feasibility and use in clinical care. Data will be collected through user trials, focus groups, and user metadata will be collected within the app. Optimizing these preconditions will enable a subsequent phase of study to determine effects on clinical decision-making and clinical outcomes. WounDS is designed for knowledge translation, use of technology in clinical decision-making, and continuity of care. The benefits of WounDS include the potential to improve healthcare providers' competency in wound management and to improve wound healing through better alignment with evidence-based best practices in wound dressing selection, consistency in care from primary to community care, and subsequent downstream impacts in quality of life for patients.

OA Text is an independent open-access scientific publisher showcases innovative research and ideas aimed at improving health by linking research and practice to the benefit of society.

In this exploratory study, we studied and qualitatively evaluated a prototype video data collection system to capture and analyze fish behavior in a small-scale indoor aquaculture operation. The research objective was to design and develop a hardware / software system that would have the potential to capture meaningful data from which to extract fish size, swim trajectory, and swim velocity, ultimately as information toward an assessment of fish health. The initial work presented in this paper discusses the development choices of the prototype system, including various combinations of lighting and camera positions both inside and outside of the aquaculture tanks, and several post-processing techniques to isolate fish in video, calibrate the distance from camera to fish through water, and infer fish trajectories and swim velocities. Preliminary results provided a qualitative assessment of such a system. Specific results on the system's ability to detect fishes' positions, trajectories, and velocities are presently limited to observational outcomes and descriptive statistics rather than large-scale quantitative analysis. The present work lays a foundation for a future commercially hardened system that would be required for the collection of larger datasets, which would in turn facilitate the future development of machine learning (ML) algorithms to begin to statistically correlate data to fish conditions and behaviors in near-real time.

This work examines the qualifications recognition and career development experiences of internationally educated engineers (immigrants to Canada) through the interaction of boundary crossing and liberal fairness ideals embedded in the qualifications recognition process. The work explored how immigrant engineers experienced boundary crossing, evidence for learning at the boundary, and the dynamic tension between immigrant engineers’ personal transitions within structural commitments to standardization and regulation. Data were collected from 18 voluntary participants who had immigrated to Canada and completed a qualifications recognition process to become registered as professional engineers in Canada and who were in active professional engineering practice. The data provided evidence of changes to immigrant engineers’ personal identity and professional practice, where these changes were forms of learning that facilitated the boundary crossing from newcomer to legitimate participant in the Canadian engineering profession. However, the data did not provide evidence of learning as collaborative co-development of new processes for all actors – newcomers and long-time Canadians alike. Instead, the resilience of the Canadian profession to true integration in favour of an expectation of assimilation of newcomer practices into the Canadian mainstream was illuminated, due to the dominance of foundational commitments in the Canadian qualifications recognition processes to liberal fairness ideals as political mechanisms of risk reduction and access to the profession.