Pallet pooling is regarded as a sustainable and cost-effective measure for the industry, but challenging to advocate due to weak data and pallet authentication.In order to establish trust between end-users and pallet pooling services, we propose an end-to-end, bidirectional authentication system for transmitted data and pallets based on blockchain and Internet-of-things (IoT) technologies. In addition, secure data authentication fosters the pallet authenticity in the whole supply chain network, which is achieved by considering the tag, location, and object-specific features. To evaluate the object-specific features, the scale invariant feature transform (SIFT) approach is adopted to match key-points and descriptors between two pallet images. According to the case study, it is found that the proposed system provides a low bandwidth blocking rate and a high probability of restoring complete data payloads. Consequently, positive influences on end-user satisfaction, quality of service, operational errors, and pallet traceability are achieved through the deployment of the proposed system.

An End-to-End Bidirectional Authentication System for Pallet Pooling Management Through Blockchain Internet of Things (BIoT)

Smart technology in nursing home settings has the potential to elevate an operation that manages more significant number of older residents. However, the concepts, definitions, and types of smart technology, integrated medical services, and stakeholders' acceptability of smart nursing homes are less clear. This scoping review aims to define a smart nursing home and examine the qualitative evidence on technological feasibility, integration of medical services, and acceptability of the stakeholders.Comprehensive searches were conducted on stakeholders' websites (Phase 1) and 11 electronic databases (Phase 2), for existing concepts of smart nursing home, on what and how technologies and medical services were implemented in nursing home settings, and acceptability assessment by the stakeholders. The publication year was inclusive from January 1999 to September 2021. The language was limited to English and Chinese. Included articles must report nursing home settings related to older adults ≥ 60 years old with or without medical demands but not bed-bound. Technology Readiness Levels were used to measure the readiness of new technologies and system designs. The analysis was guided by the Framework Method and the smart technology adoption behaviours of elder consumers theoretical model. The results were reported according to the PRISMA-ScR.A total of 177 literature (13 website documents and 164 journal articles) were selected. Smart nursing homes are technology-assisted nursing homes that allow the life enjoyment of their residents. They used IoT, computing technologies, cloud computing, big data and AI, information management systems, and digital health to integrate medical services in monitoring abnormal events, assisting daily living, conducting teleconsultation, managing health information, and improving the interaction between providers and residents. Fifty-five percent of the new technologies were ready for use in nursing homes (levels 6-7), and the remaining were proven the technical feasibility (levels 1-5). Healthcare professionals with higher education, better tech-savviness, fewer years at work, and older adults with more severe illnesses were more acceptable to smart technologies.Smart nursing homes with integrated medical services have great potential to improve the quality of care and ensure older residents' quality of life. 

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Defining the concepts of a smart nursing home and its potential technology utilities that integrate medical services and are acceptable to stakeholders: a scoping review


 
 In a hospital, to provide quality healthcare to a patient, it should be imperative in maintaining an optimal environment. Another important factor is also monitoring the temperature of cold storage equipment such as refrigerators and freezers, as these are crucial in maintaining a constant temperature for medicines, vaccines, blood banks, tissue samples, surgical equipment, etc and if any of these are affected by the change in temperature, it would also lead to a negative impact on the patient’s healthcare. For this purpose, we are going to monitor the environmental conditions such as temperature and humidity of key areas in the hospital as well as cold storage equipment and analyse the number of times an alarm has been raised if the room temperature, as well as cold storage equipment, has not been maintained within a specific range.
 
 
 
 The methodology involves the installation of the devices in key areas within the healthcare facility for environmental monitoring. The gateway is used to communicate real-time data to an IoT Platform called Ubidots. API keys are used for integrating another platform called Zoho Creator into an IoT platform, which also allows for viewing the real-time environmental data in KPIs and dashboards via Analytics.
 
 
 
 The data collected was displayed in reports and analysed with the help of pictorial representations such as graphs and dashboards. Zoho Analytics, another platform under Zoho, allows us to visualize the data and understand the environmental effects of temperature & humidity.
 
 
 
 From this paper, we can see that as the temperature and humidity have been detected to be out of range for a certain time interval, alarms are activated and a telegram message is delivered to the individual in charge of maintaining the appropriate temperature, to address the critical issue as soon as possible. Hence this highlights the importance of environmental monitoring, even more so strengthening the purpose that incorporating IoT technologies in healthcare systems will not only benefit but also revolutionise the methods of addressing other issues related to healthcare in real-time.


https://doi.org/10.2174/18741207-v17-e230110-2022-ht28-4371-4

IoT-Enabled Solutions for Environmental Monitoring in Hospitals

This paper proposes a new scheduling problem for patient visits with two objectives: minimizing patient waiting time and travel time. It also presents a novel encoding method for Genetic Algorithms (GA) that is well-suited for this problem. Experiments demonstrate that the proposed encoding method reduces optimization iterations by 17% compared to conventional methods, and the GA can decrease waiting time by up to 58.2% and travel time by up to 89.3% for specific examples. The novel scheduling problem and the encoding method are two main contributions of this work. 

A novel scheduling method for reduction of both waiting time and travel time of patients to visit health care units in the case of mobile communication

Background: Integrated care is an important initiative to respond positively to the ageing of society and information and communication technology(ICT) plays an important role in facilitating the integration of functional and normative health and social care. The scoping review aims to synthesize evidence on the experience and practice of ICT-based implementation of integrated care for older adults. Methods: This study followed the research framework developed by Arksey and O’malley for the scoping review and systematically searched for relevant studies published between 1 January 2000 and 30 March 2022 from nine electronic databases, three specialist journals, three key institutional websites, 11 integrated care project websites, google scholar and references of the studies to be included. Two reviewers independently screened and extracted data and used thematic analysis to sort out and summarize the core elements, hindrances and facilitators of ICT-based integrated care. Results: A total of 77 studies were included in this study, including 36 ICT-based practice models of integrated care with seven core elements of implementation including single entry point, comprehensive geriatric assessment, personalized care planning, multidisciplinary case conferences, coordinated care, case management and patient empowerment, which generally had a positive effect on improving quality of life, caregiver burden and primary care resource utilization for older adults, but effectiveness evaluations remained Heterogeneity exists. The barriers and facilitators to ICT-based implementation of integrated care were grouped into four themes: demand-side factors, provider factors, technology factors and system factors. Conclusion: The implementation of ICT-based integrated care for the elderly is expected to improve the health status of both the supply and demand of services, but there is still a need to strengthen the supply of human resources, team training and collaboration, ICT systems and financial support in order to promote the wider use of ICT in integrated care.

https://storage.googleapis.com/jnl-up-j-ijic-files/journals/1/articles/6979/642a846ea7c7f.pdf

Information and Communication Technology Based Integrated Care for Older Adults: A Scoping Review

With the ageing population all over the world, long-term care services, such as nursing care, are essential to provide care and treatments to elderly patients in the community. During the nursing c...

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/18479790211019526

HC Wan

Papers

Exploring internet of healthcare things for establishing an integrated care link system in the healthcare industry