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A prototype system for context sensitive communication in hospitals based on an Ascom/trixbox experimental platform
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Gironi, Lorenzo |
| Copyright Year | 2011 |
| Abstract | Purpose The aim of this report is to present a context-aware solution based on an Ascom/trixbox platform, targeted at reducing interruptions caused by wireless phones and improving awareness between users carrying these devices. The application, specifically thought to be used within hospital environment, reduces interruptions considering contextual information related to users such as location, availability status and personal committments. Motivation Hospitals are working environment where a large amount of information is constantly exchanged between workers over a complex communication infrastructure. In order to support the needs of hospital professionals, this infrastructure should provide the possibility to exchange important information as quickly as possible and at the same time contact colleagues without interrupting their working activities. Interruptions are unpleasant situations and are source of stress and distraction that may increase the probability of taking wrong decisions. Currently, hospital communication infrastructure relies on the use of pagers which create a large amount of unnecessary interruptions. Wireless phones are less utilized, mainly because can become more interruptive than pagers, but they provide text services and vocal services in the same device which, with a suitable context-aware system able to balance interruption, can be used to provide solutions able to efficiently support the work of hospital professionals. Methods The application has been developed by using the iterative software engineering approach Unified Process. Results The developed context-aware application is able to block the calls directed to a phone located inside a critical area (e.g operating room), offers the possibility to route such calls to the current on-call person on duty with a shift scheduled inside Zimbra calendar, is able to block the calls directed to a device switched to ‘visiting’ mode or calls directed to a recipient involved in a meeting recorded inside the calendar. It sends to the callers informative messages containing the location or availability status of an unreachable recipient and sends pending call messages collected during the unreachable status when users leave a critical area or switch the phone back to ‘available’ mode. It also provides a feature which model the behavior of a phone as a pager: with this functionality users can be paged on the phone through an interactive message which can be used to directly call back the person who put the page. Finally, it provides a user interface from where it is possible to look at the status and location of all the users enrolled in the system from a single panel. Conclusion A number of tests carried out after the develpment highlighted that the application must fill a large amount of gaps before being deployed in a real hospital. Some of them can be easily fixed but others, due to limits of the phone devices, not. Moreover, an analysis of performance highlighted that the system is not highly scalable and that however some strategies can be undertaken in order to improve this aspect. |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://munin.uit.no/bitstream/handle/10037/3525/thesis.pdf;jsessionid=8BBD60FE6E9B25B25412B0FFFFFE3BEA?sequence=1 |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
