No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

Abstract-The provisioning of wireless data services in the railway environment will become increasingly important for train operators and train constructors in the upcoming years. A wellfounded choice of the technology to be used for the outdoor network connection is investigated in this paper. Several wireless technologies -including HSPA, E-UTRA and WiMAX -are compared by calculating their wireless ranges for reception outside and inside trains, based on the location of the transceiver. These wireless ranges determine the number of base stations needed to cover a pre-defined area along a railway track. Results show that generally 3G (UMTS-HSPA) and 4G (E-UTRA/LTE) technologies offer the best coverage over a range of data rates, from 2 Mbps to 8 Mbps. These data rates relate to a wide variety of services, from network control data, surveillance, crew services to passenger Internet traffic.

The increasing elderly population and the shift from acute to chronic illness, makes it difficult to care for people in hospitals and rest homes. Moreover, elderly people, if given a choice, want to stay at home as long as possible. In this paper, the methodologies to develop a cloud--based semantic system, offering valuable information and knowledge--based services are presented. The information and services are related to the different personal living hemispheres of the patient, namely the daily care related needs, the social needs and the daily life assistance. Ontologies are used to facilitate the integration, analysis, aggregation and efficient use of all the available data in the cloud. By using an interdisciplinary research approach, where user researchers, (ontology) engineers, researchers and domain stakeholders are at the forefront, a platform can be developed of great added value for the patients that want to grow old in their own home and for their caregivers.

No abstract

Municipalities can form a driving force behind the deployment of new telecom infrastructure. While a telecom operator focuses on direct (financial) profits, a municipality is mainly interested in the social benefits for its inhabitants. In this paper, we evaluate a wireless municipality network from both a technical and an economic point of view. WiFi and WiMAX are considered as the most suited technologies for this purpose. A detailed 123 392 J. Van Ooteghem et al.techno-economic study has been performed including forecasting of the user adoption, dimensioning of the wireless network and modelling the related costs and revenues. The trade-off between installing a high number of relatively cheap WiFi access points, and a smaller number of more expensive WiMAX base stations for delivering full coverage is investigated in several scenarios.

BackgroundIn response to the increasing pressure of the societal challenge because of a graying society, a gulf of new Information and Communication Technology (ICT) supported care services (eCare) can now be noticed. Their common goal is to increase the quality of care while decreasing its costs. Smart Care Platforms (SCPs), installed in the homes of care-dependent people, foster the interoperability of these services and offer a set of eCare services that are complementary on one platform. These eCare services could not only result in more quality care for care receivers, but they also offer opportunities to care providers to optimize their processes.ObjectiveThe objective of the study was to identify and describe the expected added values and impacts of integrating SCPs in current home care delivery processes for all actors. In addition, the potential economic impact of SCP deployment is quantified from the perspective of home care organizations.MethodsSemistructured and informal interviews and focus groups and cocreation workshops with service providers, managers of home care organizations, and formal and informal care providers led to the identification of added values of SCP integration. In a second step, process breakdown analyses of home care provisioning allowed defining the operational impact for home care organization. Impacts on 2 different process steps of providing home care were quantified. After modeling the investment, an economic evaluation compared the business as usual (BAU) scenario versus the integrated SCP scenario.ResultsThe added value of SCP integration for all actors involved in home care was identified. Most impacts were qualitative such as increase in peace of mind, better quality of care, strengthened involvement in care provisioning, and more transparent care communication. For home care organizations, integrating SCPs could lead to a decrease of 38% of the current annual expenses for two administrative process steps namely, care rescheduling and the billing for care provisioning.ConclusionsAlthough integrating SCP in home care processes could affect both the quality of life of the care receiver and informal care giver, only scarce and weak evidence was found that supports this assumption. In contrast, there exists evidence that indicates the lack of the impact on quality of life of the care receiver while it increases the cost of care provisioning. However, our cost-benefit quantification model shows that integrating SCPs in home care provisioning could lead to a considerable decrease of costs for care administrative tasks. Because of this cost decreasing impact, we believe that the integration of SCPs will be driven by home care organizations instead of the care receivers themselves.