Design, Mobility and Mobile Computing - Essay Example

Mobile Computing Table of Contents List of Illustrations or Diagrams 2. 3. A ment of Assumptions 4. Textual Content 4 Introduction 4.2 Cost – Benefit Analysis 4.3 Technical Requirements 4.4 Design 4.5 Devices 4.6 Critical Evaluation/Conclusion 6. References 1. List of Illustrations or Diagrams Figure 1 : Central resources provided within the network Figure 2 : Architectural Overview of Wireless System Figure 3 : Backbone structure of network Figure 4 : In-house structure for a large building Figure 5 : An ER diagram for a simplified hospital application 2. Abstract This paper presents results from a research project aiming at developing an architecture supporting local mobility within hospital. The architecture is based on fieldwork and mostly on the knowledge derived from a large number of reliable sources. The fieldwork has emphasized the differences between remote mobility, where users travel over long distances, and local mobility, where users walk around within a fixed set of building. Based on an in depth study, I conclude that local mobility puts up three requirements for computer support;(i) it should integrate into the existing infrastructure (ii) it should support the use of various heterogeneous devices, and (iii) it should enable seamless application roaming between these devices. The paper describes how these requirements were realized in an architecture for local mobility, and how the architecture can be implemented in the health care domain and the costs involved in it and the various benefits gained from it. 3.A statement of Assumptions The only assumption made in the paper is during the design phase, whereby it has been assumed that a large number of hospitals are connected to a single network. 4. Textual Content 4.1 : Introduction : Mobility and mobile computing is playing an increasing role in human-computer interaction research and design as a result of the ever growing range of technology now supporting mobility. Mobile computers, laptops, tablet PCs, PDAs, cellular phones, and hybrids are all devices intended to support mobility of users, and the proliferation of wireless network access like WLAN, UMTS, GPRS, and GMS all support mobile computing. Effective resource management and reliable equipment are essential for optimum performance in any organization. Both depend upon accurate, timely management of massive amounts of data and on the effective use of maintenance resources. Implementing mobile computing would fulfill these needs. Mobile computing can provide cost effective means of managing the massive amounts of data that are generated by maintenance and other specific activities in a health care environment (Imad & Illyas, 2004). This involves computerizing clinical records of patients and providing clinical solutions at the point of requirement. Besides, it would also prove to be beneficial to the laboratory staff in tracking samples associated with patients and to the administrative staff in tracking patients, staff and resources. 4.2 : Cost Benefit Analysis : A fundamental requirement of any justification package must be a concise evaluation of the benefits that will be achieved versus the costs required to achieve those benefits. Using the information developed in the preceding evaluation, the next step is to develop a viable cost-benefit analysis. It is imperative that caution be exercised when preparing cost-benefit analysis. The costs side of the analysis must include all costs required to implement and effectively implement the task. Too often, justifications omit substantial costs that adversely affect the project budget. Costs that are usually omitted include procedure development or rewrites, database development, and a realistic assessment of training costs. This is not the time to be conservative or to under estimate the project costs. It is much better to overstate costs than to have a substantial over run in the project budget during implementation. The costs for procurement of the required software and associated hardware should be estimated. Besides, it is also essential to estimate the costs to be incurred on maintenance. Implementation of mobile computing in a large hospital complex would prove to be beneficial to a large number of people. There are basically four categories of users which are being benefited to a larger extent in such a scenario :  Physicians : For physicians, mobile computers are gaining more and more popularity as point of care tools. Since the introduction of Personal Digital assistants (PDAs) in the early 1990s, they have become increasingly popular for a large variety of medical applications. They could be used as offline reference tools, like drug reference databases, tools for risk estimation of specific diseases, medical calculators and formulae, offline mobile patient records or diagnosis codes databases. Now data entered into the PDA mostly had to be asynchronously synchronized with a network computer ( Peter, 2004).  Care team: In an emergency and a treatment of a patient admitted to a hospital, it may be required for the hospital to embed the context of the patients health history by querying information from the patient’s doctor’s database and the pharmacy that issued the medicine. Thus mobile computing would prove beneficial to the care team who deal with medication and ensue that the right medication, the right dose, is administered at the right time to the tight patient via the right route.  Laboratory Staff: Mobile computing enables the laboratory staff in a hospital to keep track of different type of samples related to a patient. They also have the access to patients history and a keen track of all he patients records and samples enable them to perform a high quality job. This implies optimum utilization of labor skill in the given cost.  Administrative Staff: Similar is the case with the administrative staff who needs to collect the data and track information about the patients, staff and resources. Advances technology would enable them to perform their work in a more effective and efficient manner. 4.3 : Technical Requirements : Introduction of mobile computing devices and wireless networking to clinical practice creates opportunities to overcome a large number of problems, especially their portability and availability at the point of care, have led to a large number of medical applications, mainly drug information databases and patients tracking systems. A large number of users are involved and thus greater care must be taken to the technical considerations while implementing the mobile computing to solution in a hospital. To complement the rather simple network structure we have to add some global communication instances like servers for medical or administrative databases, knowledge retrieval software or mailboxes. Fig 1: Central resources provided within the network. This ideal structure looks very simple but has to be corrected in reality. Requirements for communication not only deal with standards and simple structured functions but with concrete features like bandwidth, performance and security. The required bandwidth of network segments is co related with the intensity and frequency of data communication. Switches are able to process data transmission simultaneously for all configured inputs yielding an internal bandwidth of n*b where n is the number of inputs and b is the bandwidth of each input. In order to overcome the technical barriers high speed network technology like Fast Ethernet, FDDI or – continuing switching – ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) can be used. The implementation of security features is essential in a hospital environment where confidential patient information is transmitted. First of all the installation of network has to take into consideration the protection of cables and concentrators. Further more each-user accessible workstation should only grant the presentation of data which are necessary to perform the required tasks. Thus, the network has to support remote booting which can be accomplished by dedicated servers. 4.4 : Design : The architectural model of a mobile computing environment in a large hospital complex is shown in Fig 2: and consists of stationary and mobile components. Fixed hosts are connected via a fixed high speed network (Mbps to Gbps). Some of the fixed hosts are special computers equipped with wireless interfaces and are known as base (radio) stations (BS). They are also known as mobile support stations (MSS).Base stations which are placed in the center of a cellular coverage areas, act as access points between the mobile computers and the fixed network. Mobile computers can be in of three different states. The first state places a mobile computer within a cell and capable of communicating. The second state places the mobile computer out of range of any service cell and not capable of communication. The e third state places a mobile computer in a cell, but just ready to cross a cell boundary. All these three states are reflected in the diagram given below. Fig 2: Architectural Overview of Wireless System. The figure is a generalized architectural overview of a typical wireless system which could be implemented in a hospital. In the background, the wireless part of the network would be integrated into the wired backbone network. Assuming a large number of hospital premises are connected to the network. The network topology is based on three main nodes (Ethernet multiport repeaters).These nodes represent the backbone of the network. Workstations are not directly attached to the backbone but to particular Ethernet segments within connected buildings as shown in Figure 3. Fig 3 : Backbone structure of network ( LB = Large Building; SB = Small Building) Each large building with a (with a more complex network structure) is separated from the backbone by a local bridge. Within the connected buildings a hierarchically structured wiring concept is used to attach a workstation to the network : Fig 4: In-house structure for a large building. Besides, the following figure illustrates the flow of network among different entities in a hospital application. Fig 5: E-R diagram of a simplified hospital application 4.5 : Devices : A complete network solution consists of more than just client computers and servers. Devices are needed to connect the clients and servers together and to regulate the traffic between them. Devices are also needed to expand this network beyond simple client computers and servers to include yet other devices such as wireless and other hand held devices. Devices come in many forms and with many functions, from hubs and switches, to routers, wireless access points, and several other special purpose devices. Each of these devices has a specific network function, and each has a role in maintaining network infrastructure security. Besides these there are few more devices which are very useful in building a mobile computing solution to a hospital system. These include :  Wearable Small Information Appliances: Their most important benefit is that personal information stays with its owner in an encrypted form – they practically extend the reach of information to anyplace, anywhere and anytime. More intelligent devices may act as intelligent personal agents that may present the right information at the right time.  Smart Badge Application : A smart badge can be one of the mentioned mobile computing devices. It is smart, context-aware, serves different users, and provides user- dependent access to the wireless hospital system. All users in the hospital (doctors, nurses, orderlies, technicians, and even guests, visitors and patients) would wear a smart badge that knows what is going on around the user (provided by the mobile computing system).In that setting, the wireless hospital would recognize a doctor when he/she entered the patients room and relevant charts would automatically pop up on the computer screen. If someone approached the screen who was not authorized to see the patient information, it would go blank. The smart badge would know when the doctor put it down and, if someone else picked it up, it would have a whole different set of e- services personalized for that person.  Medicine Cabinet : A smart medicine cabinet monitors and controls drugs consumption in hospitals and retirement homes. Smart medicine cabinets identify tagged drugs and measure their consumption (e.g., by measuring their weight).By identifying users and (user-dependent access to drugs), it can track the use of medicine relative to users or patients. Smart connected devices can be of great help in crisis management and emergency situations. They would be used for coordination and control of operations and groups, and would allow real time information exchange between coordinators and executors Example Applications : Clinical Documentation : Patient information is entered at the point of activity; range checking on data entry for intake or output measurements takes place directly at the bedside. The wireless hospital can immediately alert the care provider to gather additional information or to confirm or re evaluate the information they collected for it is out of range. 4.6 : Critical Evaluation/ Conclusion : An in-depth knowledge deprived from reading a large number of books related to networking and mobile computing enable me to present a literary review on implementing a mobile computing solution a large hospital complex. It has been a great learning and understanding whereby I felt how efficiency in services could be gained from deploying new technology in the most cost-effective manner. Time had been a major constraint while working on this project. If I had to rework on the project, I would definitely prefer more time which I would be utilizing in more field work which would give me more visibility to the real –live environment. Besides, technical constraints included lack of knowledge and experience in providing large network solutions. 5. REFERENCES  Alexander Joseph Huber & Josef Franz Huber, 2002 : Umts and Mobile Computing, Artec House Publishers.  Imad Mahgoub & Illyas Mohammed, 2004: Mobile Computing Handbook, CRC Press.  Peter Langendoerfer, 2004 : Wired/Wireless Internet Communications, Springer Publications.  Umar Amjad, 2004 : Mobile Computing and Wireless Communications, nge solutions inc. Read More