• Industrial Engineering and Management Systems
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.92-102
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• 2017

In this paper, we consider a typical health care system via the help of Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) for wireless patient tracking. The wireless patient tracking module of this system performs localization out of samples of Received Signal Strength (RSS) variations and tracking through a Particle Filter (PF) for WSN assisted by multiple transmit-power information. We propose a modified PF, Kullback-Leibler Distance (KLD)-resampling PF, to ameliorate the effect of RSS variations by generating a sample set near the high-likelihood region for improving the wireless patient tracking. The key idea of this method is to approximate a discrete distribution with an upper bound error on the KLD for reducing both location error and the number of particles used. To determine this bound error, an optimal algorithm is proposed based on the maximum gap error between the proposal and Sampling Important Resampling (SIR) algorithms. By setting up these values, a number of simulations using the health care system's data sets which contains the real RSSI measurements to evaluate the location error in term of various power levels and density nodes for all methods. Finally, we point out the effect of different power levels vs. different density nodes for the wireless patient tracking.

• Industrial Engineering and Management Systems
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.171-181
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• 2008

Home care, known also as domiciliary care, is part of the community care service that is a responsibility of the local government authorities in the UK as well as many other countries around the world. The aim is to provide the care and support needed to assist people, particularly older people, people with physical or learning disabilities and people who need assistance due to illness to live as independently as possible in their own homes. It is performed primarily by care workers visiting clients' homes where they provide help with daily activities. This paper is concerned with the dispatching of care workers to clients in an efficient manner. The optimized routine for each care worker determines a schedule to achieve the minimum total cost (in terms of distance traveled) without violating the capacity and time window constraints. A collaborative population-based meta-heuristic called Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) is applied to solve the problem. A particle is defined as a multi-dimensional point in space which represents the corresponding schedule for care workers and their clients. Each dimension of a particle represents a care activity and the corresponding, allocated care worker. The continuous position value of each dimension determines the care worker to be assigned and also the assignment priority. A heuristic assignment scheme is specially designed to transform the continuous position value to the discrete job schedule. This job schedule represents the potential feasible solution to the problem. The Earliest Start Time Priority with Minimum Distance Assignment (ESTPMDA) technique is developed for generating an initial solution which guides the search direction of the particle. Local improvement procedures (LIP), insertion and swap, are embedded in the PSO algorithm in order to further improve the quality of the solution. The proposed methodology is implemented, tested, and compared with existing solutions for some 'real' problem instances.

• Korean Journal of Childcare and Education
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.51-79
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• 2013

This study was done to find out how women acquire their work citizenship through work-family reconciliation policies from the point of view of labour right and care right. This study investigated how labour right and care right, established by work-family reconciliation policies, are organized on a national level through the methods of socialization of the care such as the strategies of familization, de-familization, commodication and decommodication because paid labour and unpaid care work can be concretely embodied by such strategies. Actually in the care systems in the UK and Sweden, gender roles related to the responsibility for care was assumed differently. For that reason, the socialization of the care in these countries have been developed in a different way. And different results have been created from the two different countries in labour rights and care righst of man and women. The matter whether a society regards a woman as a laborer or caregiver especially has been an important starting point for the way in which social sharing of care develops. Work-family reconciliation policies stated in this study are very important factors. We can understand that care is not simply a duty of a man or a woman but an important human desire, which has to be granted to both a man and a woman as one of their own individual rights.

• Journal of Nutrition and Health
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• v.29 no.7
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• pp.830-838
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• 1996

The purpose of this study were to : a) examine the current foodservice management practices by different types of elder-care sites, b)evaluate the attitudes of recipients of meal service programs, and c) provide feedback for the efficient and effective foodservice management of elder-care sites in Korea. A total of 91 elderly congregate sites was analyzed in Survey 1 and opinons of 190 recipients were surveyed in Survey 2. According to the result of meal cost analysis, the meal cost per a day was ranged from ￦728 to ￦5,500. Only 16.5% elder-care sites had one dietitian due to the lack of budges and the isolated geographical location of sites. These results suggested that financial and dystematical supports by the government would be very necessary to meet the goal of nutritional-balanced meal services at congregate sites. The survey results of recipients at sites, the mean of meal satisfaction score was rated 3.63 at the five-point scales. Significante differences were found between dependent variables(food, convenience, atmospere, menu, facility, and service) and independent variables(site type, gender, living years at sites, and health status). Thus, foodservice managers must consider characteristics of participants for menu planning, service, and distribution.

• Journal of Korean Academy of Nursing Administration
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.345-351
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• 2007

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to identify the relationship between patient characteristics and patient satisfaction. Methods: A cross-sectional questionnaire survey was conducted in an acute care hospital. The subjects were 317 patients discharged from general medical and surgical nursing care units during September, 2005. Patient satisfaction was measured using the short-form satisfaction scale of Hwang and Park(2001). Additional information about patient characteristics, including general demographics and health care utilization variables, was collected from the hospital information systems. Multiple regression analysis was performed to determine patient characteristics influencing patient satisfaction. Results: Patients were satisfied with hospital care with an average of 4.10 on a five-point Likert scale. Patient characteristics explained 13.5% of the variance of patient satisfaction. The significant factors influencing patient satisfaction were patients' age and perceived health status. There was no significant relationship between structural variables and patient satisfaction. Conclusion: This study showed that patients' characteristics were significant factors explaining patient satisfaction. Therefore, these characteristics should be adjusted in reporting patient satisfaction as an indicator for hospital-level or department-level rating.

• IE interfaces
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• v.23 no.3
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• pp.246-256
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• 2010

As wireless and mobile technologies have advanced significantly, lots of large sized healthcare organizations have implemented so called mobile hospital (m-Hospital) which provides a location independent and point of care (POC) clinical environment. Implementation of m-Hospital enhances quality of care because health professionals such as physicians and nurses can use hospital information systems at the very place where patients are located without any delay. This paper presents a real-time patient monitoring system based on wireless network technologies. A general framework for the patient monitoring process is introduced and the architecture and components of the proposed monitoring system is described. The system collects and analyzes biometric signals of in-patients who suffer from cancer. Specifically, it continuously monitors oxygen saturation of patients in bed and alarms health professionals instantly when an abnormal status of the patient is detected. The monitoring system has been used and clinically verified in a university hospital.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.312-320
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• 2011

The goal of this paper is to examine the effects of a CDSS(Clinical Decision Support System) for drug prescription on organizational performance in medical institutions using POC(Point Of Care) systems. For achieving this goal, evaluation factors for influencing performance of information system were identified by using the performance evaluation model for CDSS. In the results, there was significant causality between each evaluation domain except system quality domain. In addition, the system quality of CDSS for optimal drug prescription has no influence on user satisfaction. But information quality has positive influence on user satisfaction which has also a positive influence on organizational performance.

• Transactions of Materials Processing
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.108-113
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• 2002

The application fields of medicine and biology are spotlighted because of the increasing concentration of health and the abundance of life. MEMS is very good solution in this fields for the concept of point of care which makes systems more useful and spread wide. This paper shows the major fabrication schemes and application fields of microelectromechanical system specially in medicine and biology fields.

• The Magazine of the IEIE
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• v.31 no.1
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• pp.58-72
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• 2004

Smart sensors and biochip technologies have received a great deal of attention in recent years not only because of the enormous potential markets in the healthcare expenditures but more importantly because of its great impact on the quality of human life in the future. Collaborative research among BT (Bio Technologies), IT (Information Technologies) and NT (Nano Technologies) will bring us a new paradigm of the healthcare services. Examples include disease prediction based on the genetic tests, personal medicines, point-of-care analysis, rapid and sensitive infectious disease diagnostics, environmental monitoring for chemical or biological warfares, intelligent drug delivery systems etc. In this report, recent accomplishment in the research area on biosensors, DNA chips, Protein Chips and Lab-on-a-chips are reviewed.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.766-771
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• 2015

Robust motion estimation for human-computer interactions played an important role in a novel method of interaction with electronic devices. Existing pose estimation using a monocular camera employs either ego-motion or exo-motion, both of which are not sufficiently accurate for estimating fine motion due to the motion ambiguity of rotation and translation. This paper presents a hybrid vision-based pose estimation method for fine-motion estimation that is specifically capable of extracting human body motion accurately. The method uses an ego-camera attached to a point of interest and exo-cameras located in the immediate surroundings of the point of interest. The exo-cameras can easily track the exact position of the point of interest by triangulation. Once the position is given, the ego-camera can accurately obtain the point of interest's orientation. In this way, any ambiguity between rotation and translation is eliminated and the exact motion of a target point (that is, ego-camera) can then be obtained. The proposed method is expected to provide a practical solution for robustly estimating fine motion in a non-contact manner, such as in interactive games that are designed for special purposes (for example, remote rehabilitation care systems).