- UK
Lampros Stergioulas
Brunel University, Math and Computer Science, Faculty Member
Globally the implementation of information and communication technology (ICT) in the healthcare sector has brought about significant improvement in the delivery of healthcare services, yet such transformation is still under way or in its... more
Globally the implementation of information and communication technology (ICT) in the healthcare sector has brought about significant improvement in the delivery of healthcare services, yet such transformation is still under way or in its infancy in many developing countries. Pakistan is a lower middle-income country (LMIC) where the health status of population and management of health systems data are very poor. In Pakistan, healthcare services are being provided by public and private sector organisations as well as by individual practitioners. Healthcare delivery and disease monitoring and evaluation are supported by health information systems (HISs) and district health information systems (DHIS). However, like in many other LMICs, implementation of HIS and DHIS is under-deployed in Pakistan mainly due to non-integration of public and private healthcare providers’ information systems. Thus there is a pressing need for exploring and facilitating the effective use and integration of public sector DHIS with the private healthcare sector in Pakistan (as well as other similar LMICs) – not only for the diagnosis, monitoring and healthcare delivery in general but also for planning and decision-making processes. Such a systemic change will usher in a new era of increased availability of high-quality accessible and relevant health information, which will be of great benefit to the population’s health.
Research Interests:
Background The immunization uptake rates in Pakistan are much lower than desired. Major reasons include lack of awareness, parental forgetfulness regarding schedules, and misinformation regarding vaccines. In light of the COVID-19... more
Background The immunization uptake rates in Pakistan are much lower than desired. Major reasons include lack of awareness, parental forgetfulness regarding schedules, and misinformation regarding vaccines. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic and distancing measures, routine childhood immunization (RCI) coverage has been adversely affected, as caregivers avoid tertiary care hospitals or primary health centers. Innovative and cost-effective measures must be taken to understand and deal with the issue of low immunization rates. However, only a few smartphone-based interventions have been carried out in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) to improve RCI. Objective The primary objectives of this study are to evaluate whether a personalized mobile app can improve children’s on-time visits at 10 and 14 weeks of age for RCI as compared with standard care and to determine whether an artificial intelligence model can be incorporated into the app. Secondary objectives are to determine the p...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
BACKGROUND Digital health is well-positioned in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) to revolutionize health care due, in part, to increasing mobile phone access and internet connectivity. This paper evaluates the underlying factors... more
BACKGROUND Digital health is well-positioned in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) to revolutionize health care due, in part, to increasing mobile phone access and internet connectivity. This paper evaluates the underlying factors that can potentially facilitate or hinder the progress of digital health in Pakistan. OBJECTIVE The objective of this study is to identify the current digital health projects and studies being carried out in Pakistan, as well as the key stakeholders involved in these initiatives. We aim to follow a mixed-methods strategy and to evaluate these projects and studies through a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis to identify the internal and external factors that can potentially facilitate or hinder the progress of digital health in Pakistan. METHODS This study aims to evaluate digital health projects carried out in the last 5 years in Pakistan with mixed methods. The qualitative and quantitative data obtained from field surve...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Engineering and DDC
This is an electronic reprint of the original article. This reprint may differ from the original in pagination and typographic detail. Author(s):
Research Interests:
The paper presents future visions of technology enhanced professional learning as expressed in a pan-European roadmapping activity. A new approach is introduced and employed to develop a roadmap for technology enhanced professional... more
The paper presents future visions of technology enhanced professional learning as expressed in a pan-European roadmapping activity. A new approach is introduced and employed to develop a roadmap for technology enhanced professional learning. Interesting findings from the first phase, which identified the future visions are presented and their analysis using conceptual mapping is proposed.
Research Interests:
In this paper, we present a Business Analytics (BA) framework, which addresses the challenge of analysing primary care outcomes for both patients and clinicians from multiple data sources in an accurate manner. A review of the process... more
In this paper, we present a Business Analytics (BA) framework, which addresses the challenge of analysing primary care outcomes for both patients and clinicians from multiple data sources in an accurate manner. A review of the process monitoring literature has been conducted in the context of healthcare management and decision making and its findings have informed the formulation of a BA conceptual framework for process monitoring and decision support in primary care. Furthermore, a real case study is conducted to demonstrate the application of the BA framework to implement a BA dashboard tool within one of the largest primary care providers in England. Findings: The main contributions of the presented work are the development of a conceptual BA framework and a BA dashboard tool to support management and decision making in primary care. This was evaluated through a case study of the implementation of the BA dashboard tool in London’s largest primary care provider. This BA tool provi...
Research Interests:
BackgroundChronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a heterogeneous group of lung conditions challenging to diagnose and treat. Identification of phenotypes of patients with lung function loss may allow early intervention and... more
BackgroundChronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a heterogeneous group of lung conditions challenging to diagnose and treat. Identification of phenotypes of patients with lung function loss may allow early intervention and improve disease management. We characterised patients with the ‘fast decliner’ phenotype, determined its reproducibility and predicted lung function decline after COPD diagnosis.MethodsA prospective 4 years observational study that applies machine learning tools to identify COPD phenotypes among 13 260 patients from the UK Royal College of General Practitioners and Surveillance Centre database. The phenotypes were identified prior to diagnosis (training data set), and their reproducibility was assessed after COPD diagnosis (validation data set).ResultsThree COPD phenotypes were identified, the most common of which was the ‘fast decliner’—characterised by patients of younger age with the lowest number of COPD exacerbations and better lung function—yet a fa...
Research Interests:
Brunel University has our authorization to reprint the article to the university's open access website.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID) PRR1-10.2196/30092
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This work was carried out as part of CRe-AM project, which is supported by European Commission (grant agreement n°612451).
Research Interests:
In this paper a comparative study of bilinear time-frequency (TF) transforms for Inverse Synthetic Aperture Radar (ISAR) imaging is presented. Following a concise presentation of the ISAR imaging method used in this work, as well as of... more
In this paper a comparative study of bilinear time-frequency (TF) transforms for Inverse Synthetic Aperture Radar (ISAR) imaging is presented. Following a concise presentation of the ISAR imaging method used in this work, as well as of the theory of the bilinear TF transforms involved in our numerical simulations, extended numerical results are presented for a reference simulated radar target and for various noise conditions. The constructed ISAR images are presented and analyzed quantitatively using an entropy cost function criterion, while corresponding run-time considerations have also been taken into account. As a result, it appears that the Smoothed Pseudo Wigner-Ville (SPWV) distribution provides us with images of superior quality. Furthermore, the analysis of the results demonstrates the usefulness of bilinear TF methods in ISAR imaging and showcases the relative performance advantages and disadvantages of the various distributions. Ill. 7, bibl. 22 (in English; summaries in ...
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Respiratory Medicine, Statistical Analysis, Asthma, Medicine, Identification, and 13 moreCOPD, Disease, Clinical Sciences, Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, Double Blind, Mild, R, Pulmonary disease, Airways Disease, Strengths and Weaknesses, Exacerbations, subtypes, and Cardiovascular medicine and haematology
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
In a world of openly communicated knowledge and collaborative innovation, the educational sector can no longer rely on a closed, linear educational innovation model, but should adopt an open, collaborative one. In recent years an... more
In a world of openly communicated knowledge and collaborative innovation, the educational sector can no longer rely on a closed, linear educational innovation model, but should adopt an open, collaborative one. In recent years an astonishing paradigm shift has occurred; user-driven, open and collaborative innovation practices have emerged and an increasing number of users mutually collaborate by openly communicating their ideas, sharing best practices, and creating new knowledge across various sectors.. However, there is lot of actions to be done for effective knowledge sharing, open and collaborative innovation. This paper discusses open and collaborative innovation in the context of open educational resources (OERs), proposes related innovation models and makes recommendations for adopting open collaborative innovation. The level of open collaborative innovation in the OER environment is assessed by examining a number of key initiatives in the field. Our analysis, conducted in terms of two dimensions - the orientation of the OER initiative (i.e., open content and open collaborative innovation) and the user orientation (i.e., users as participants and as creators/cocreators) shows that the initiatives under examination only partly meet the criteria associated with these dimensions, with the exception of only one initiative, namely, Open Discovery Space (ODS), which fully meets all criteria. The case study of ODS incorporated in the paper offers further analysis of the characteristics and potential of an initiative that combines the principles of “openness” and “collaboration”. Our findings indicate that with the integration of both principles, Open Educational Resources and Open Education (OE) have the potential to broaden the educational ecosystem beyond its existing boundaries.
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Engineering and DDC
Research Interests:
Modeling and simulation (M&S) studies have been widely used in industry to gain insights into existing or proposed systems of interest. The majority of these studies focus on productivity-related measures to evaluate systems’ performance.... more
Modeling and simulation (M&S) studies have been widely used in industry to gain insights into existing or proposed systems of interest. The majority of these studies focus on productivity-related measures to evaluate systems’ performance. This paradigm, however, needs to be shifted to cope with the advent of sustainability, as it is increasingly becoming an important issue in the managerial and the organizational agendas. The application of M&S to evaluate the often-competing metrics associated with sustainable operations management (SOM) is likely to be a challenge. The aim of this review is to investigate the underlying characteristics of SOM that lend towards modeling of production and service systems, and further to present an informed discussion on the suitability of specific modeling techniques in meeting the competing metrics for SOM. The triple bottom line, which is a widely used concept in sustainability and includes environmental, social, and economic aspects, is used as a...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Purpose Chest x-rays are a fast and inexpensive test that may potentially diagnose COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. However, chest imaging is not a first-line test for COVID-19 due to low diagnostic accuracy and... more
Purpose Chest x-rays are a fast and inexpensive test that may potentially diagnose COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. However, chest imaging is not a first-line test for COVID-19 due to low diagnostic accuracy and confounding with other viral pneumonias. Recent research using deep learning may help overcome this issue as convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have demonstrated high accuracy of COVID-19 diagnosis at an early stage. Methods We used the COVID-19 Radiography database [36], which contains x-ray images of COVID-19, other viral pneumonia, and normal lungs. We developed a CNN in which we added a dense layer on top of a pre-trained baseline CNN (EfficientNetB0), and we trained, validated, and tested the model on 15,153 X-ray images. We used data augmentation to avoid overfitting and address class imbalance; we used fine-tuning to improve the model’s performance. From the external test dataset, we calculated the model’s accuracy, sensitivity, specificity, po...
Background: Pakistan’s immunization uptake rates are still significantly lower than anticipated despite several initiatives. Lack of awareness, forgetting about vaccination schedule, and vaccine misconception/misinformation are a few of... more
Background: Pakistan’s immunization uptake rates are still significantly lower than anticipated despite several initiatives. Lack of awareness, forgetting about vaccination schedule, and vaccine misconception/misinformation are a few of the major drivers that mitigate the rates of immunization. The current COVID-19 pandemic emphasizes the importance of immunization. The significant reductions in regular childhood vaccination during pandemic have increased the risk of outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases. Concerns among parents over possibly exposing their children to COVID-19 during child visits may have contributed to the reported declines. Innovative and cost-effective mHealth interventions must be implemented in order to address the problem of inadequate immunization rates. In addition, it is also critical to understand the end user needs in order to reflect on the highly relevant essence of the customized healthcare experience. Objective: The aim of this study was to learn ...
Research Interests:
This paper explores the notion of the modular building construction site as an applied instance of redistributed manufacturing; in so doing, this research seeks to reduce the environmental footprint of building sites, treating them as... more
This paper explores the notion of the modular building construction site as an applied instance of redistributed manufacturing; in so doing, this research seeks to reduce the environmental footprint of building sites, treating them as small digitally connected subunits. In seeking to provide a whole lifecycle appreciation of a construction project, it is noted that the presence of a framework to provide guidance on the consideration of Internet of Things (IoT) data streams and connected construction objects is currently lacking. This paper proposes use of embedded IoT enabled sensing technology within all stages of a modular building lifecycle. An expanded four-phase model of intelligent assets use in construction is proposed along with an outline of the required data flows between the stages of a given building’s entire lifecycle that need to be facilitated for a BIM (Buildings Information Modelling) representation to begin to describe a building project as a sustainable asset with...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Ontologies are an important big-data analytics tool. Historically code lists were created by domain experts and mapped between different coding systems. Ontologies allow us to develop better representations of clinical concepts, data and... more
Ontologies are an important big-data analytics tool. Historically code lists were created by domain experts and mapped between different coding systems. Ontologies allow us to develop better representations of clinical concepts, data and facilitate better data extracts from routine clinical data. It also makes the process of case identification and key outcome measures transparent. We describe a process we have operationalised in our research. We use ontologies to resolve the semantics of complex health care data. The use of the method is demonstrated through a pregnancy case identification method. Pregnancy data are recorded in different coding systems and stored in different general practice systems; and pregnancy has its own complexities in that not all pregnancies proceed to term, they have different lengths and involve multiple providers of health care.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Abstract The National Programme for IT in England doesn't have a one-document strategy for its information security of the Care Records Service, which is the national EHR system. This paper provides a comprehensive... more
Abstract The National Programme for IT in England doesn't have a one-document strategy for its information security of the Care Records Service, which is the national EHR system. This paper provides a comprehensive understanding of the information security strategy of England's EHR system by presenting its different information security issues such as consent mechanisms, access control, sharing level, and related legal and regulations documents. Keywords: Electronic Health Records, Information Security, Strategy, NPfIT.
Educational Technology & Society 5 (3) 2002 ISSN 1436-4522. Adaptive Web-based Engine for the Evaluation of eLearning Resources. Lampros K. Stergioulas, Hasan Ahmed and Costas S. Xydeas Department of Communication ...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
ABSTRACT The purpose of this document is to define the priority areas for future research that respond to the needs of the emerging European Professional eTraining. The Roadmap for European Professional eTraining is based on the results... more
ABSTRACT The purpose of this document is to define the priority areas for future research that respond to the needs of the emerging European Professional eTraining. The Roadmap for European Professional eTraining is based on the results from the Gap-Analysis performed on the ...
Page 1. Total Quality Management for Electronic Educational Markets Lampros K. Stergioulas 1 , Hasan Ahmed 1 ,Costas S. Xydeas 1 , and Bernd Simon 2 1 Department of Communication systems, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YR, UK. ...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Simulation and Commerce
Authors Marco Kalz (OUNL), Rob Nadolski (OUNL), Erlend Overby (HYP), Dirk Börner (OUNL), Jan Pawlowski (JYU), Lampros Stergioulas (BRU) ... This project is funded under the eContentplus programme1, a multiannual Community programme to... more
Authors Marco Kalz (OUNL), Rob Nadolski (OUNL), Erlend Overby (HYP), Dirk Börner (OUNL), Jan Pawlowski (JYU), Lampros Stergioulas (BRU) ... This project is funded under the eContentplus programme1, a multiannual Community programme to make digital content ...
Research Interests:
ABSTRACT In recent years the value of the use of evaluation methods in all aspects of economic sectors, including the field of health care, has been increasingly recognized. The thrust of this paper is to explore the potential use of a)... more
ABSTRACT In recent years the value of the use of evaluation methods in all aspects of economic sectors, including the field of health care, has been increasingly recognized. The thrust of this paper is to explore the potential use of a) Cost-Benefit Analysis and b) Simulation and Modeling methods in estimating the value of Health Information System (HIS) projects. These methods were chosen for consideration as the most appropriate, primarily because CBA can measure delivered value of HIS interventions by weighting ...