The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationships between absorptive capacity, innovation performance and Information Technology in Romanian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). This is the first study conducted in Romania which deals with concepts regarding knowledge absorptive capacity and information technology, based on such a large sample of 357 small and medium-sized enterprises from creative industries. The findings identify the effect of multiple dimensions of knowledge absorptive capacity on SMEs' innovation performance from an Information Technology perspective, offering new theoretical and pragmatic insights.
Nowadays, the proportion in the older ages and the average life expectancy is increasing dramatically throughout the world. The health problems associated with wealthy and aged populations has been an issue of great concern to a broad and expanding number of people. Appropriate healthcare ITC-based technologies and services have to cope with this situation. Some specific challenges related to senior-centred care as well as impediments to acceptance of health-related digital approaches by elderly persons are underlined in this paper. The assistive technologies play a major role in increasing, maintaining, or improving the functional capabilities of seniors as well as in creating the opportunities for ageing in place. This paper aims to illustrate how an ongoing eHealth solution can be further upgraded by integrating some of the latest assistive technologies devices. A brief presentation of some representative devices (such as wearable sensors, mHealth apps and inhome monitoring system) highlights their benefits for the senior healthcare delivery. The current phase of the "Conceptual Model for a Platform of Integrated Services based on Cloud for Home Monitoring of Seniors affected by Dementia (MSI-MDD)" project is put in. A proposed extended architecture of MSI-MDD platform is provided emphasizing the benefits of the integration of the most appropriate assistive technologies for an improved remote senior-centered healthcare service delivery.
Climate change is likely to define the global concern of the 21 st century. This concern is a huge educational challenge which relates to the global aim of the educational network founded by Changing with the Climate project that is discussing, learning, engaging and committing students from secondary as well as primary schools to undertake actions for limiting the change in climate. As specific aspects and impacts of climate change are discussed in various academic disciplines such as: Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Geography and Citizenship, the primary objective is to adopt a more holistic approach and link the teaching of all these issues from multidisciplinary perspectives. Thus, science may become more interesting and applicable to everyday life. This paper analyses the ICT challenges emerging from this type of approach.
The evolution of Web technologies has made e-Learning a popular common way to teach and learn both in school and non-school settings. This paper provides an education-oriented approach for building personalized e-Learning environments that focuses on putting the learners' needs in the centre of the development process. The proposed agentbased adaptive architecture extends Moodle platform in order to support instructional decisions and adaptive behaviour. The paper describes the characteristics, functions, and interactions of the agents which take part in each module of the adaptive architecture, as well as an intelligent agent for instructional decisions making. The aim of this agent is to collect information generated by the rest of agents and to provide the best personalised support for the final users, tutors and students, taking into account their attitudes towards the learning environment.
Physical therapy helps patients during their rehabilitation programme after orthopaedic post-operative interventions or in case of musculoskeletal injuries. For a full recovery and a minimisation of the risk of complications, the prescribed in-clinical therapy sessions must be supplemented by independent home training. The purpose of this paper is to present the emerging technologies used for monitoring ortophedic movements and to introduce an innovative telerehabilitation-as-aservice solution, called re.flex, which consists of two IMU (Inertial Measurement Unit) motion tracking sensors and a mobile application The therapist makes use of standardised digitised physical exercises that are carefully chosen so as to create, by selection, a custom designed training program that will meet the needs of each patient. The feedback provided by the sensors enables the therapist to a) monitor the patients' compliance with the training program in a transparent manner, b) keep track of the documentation related to the recovery progress through data-collection during in-clinical and in-home exercise-based rehabilitation c) customize the training program. The real-time 3D smartphone animations and the direct visual, audio and haptic feedback from the sensors assist patients in performing the rehabilitation exercises assigned to them. The abovementioned application allows the patients to visualise their injured limb on their smartphone or tablet in an innovative 3D-360° manner, thereby reducing their fear of making mistakes during the recovery process and offering them constant security. The study evaluates the effects of this kind of approach for a group of 30 participants and the results recorded are in favour of the patients recovering with re.flex.
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