Associate Professor Valerie Gay

Ahad, M.T., Dyson, L.E. & Gay, V.C. 2012, 'An Empirical Study of Factors Influencing the SME's Intention to Adopt m-Banking in Rural Bangladesh', Journal of Mobile Technologies, Knowledge and Society, vol. 2012, pp. 1-16.
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This research empirically studies the factors that influence the intention of SME owners and managers to adopt m-banking in rural Bangladesh. The study specifically focuses on business oriented m-banking, such as paying suppliers or receiving payments from customers, and on person-to-person use of m-banking. Although over the last ten years a wide spectrum of mbanking frameworks has emerged in various countries, very few research have focused on SMEs m-banking adoption and acceptance of the service. Another rationale for undertaking such a study is that m-banking has not yet been extended to rural Bangladesh. To fill the gap this research surveyed 550 SMEs owners/managers in four (4) rural villages. The survey indicates that poor banking facilities, cost, credibility, gender, education and SME business type are the main factors that significantly influence the intention to adopt m-banking. The analysis focuses on the three factors that have been largely overlooked in prior literature, that are banking satisfaction, m-banking advantages for SMEs, and SME business type. The study broadens our understanding of m-banking and provides insights into developing m-banking strategies in Bangladesh. This research will be of potential value in accelerating the development of m-banking in Bangladesh.

Leijdekkers, P. & Gay, V.C. 2012, 'User Adoption of Mobile Apps for Chronic Disease Management: A Case Study based on myFitness Companion', Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol. 7251, pp. 42-49.
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Health and fitness apps for smart phones and tablets are changing the way we look after your health. This paper analyses the usage of such an app called myFitnessCompanion for chronic disease management. The analysis is based on data collected from 5000* users over a period of 7 months. Highlights of the study show that blood glucose, weight and blood pressure are teh main physsiological data being monitored. Americans and Germans are the front-runners in adopting mobile health apps and are willing to pay for it. Most users choose to enter data manually instead of using automated wireless Bluetooth sensors. Users prefer to store the collected data on the phone rather than exporting it to Personal Health Record Systems

Leijdekkers, P., Gay, V.C. & Barin, E. 2009, 'Feasibility study of a non invasive cardiac rhythm management system', International Journal of Assistive Robotics and Systems, vol. 10, no. 4, pp. 5-14.
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Gay, V.C. & Leijdekkers, P. 2007, 'A Health Monitoring System Using Smart Phones and Wearable Sensors', International Journal of Assistive Robotics and Mechatronic, vol. 8, no. 2, pp. 29-36.
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Ahad, M.T., Dyson, L.E. & Gay, V.C. 2012, 'Towards an M-banking Framework for Rural SMEs in Bangladesh', 19th IBIMA Conference on Innovation Vision 2020, Barcelona, November 2012 in Proceedings of the 19th IBIMA Conference on Innovation Vision 2020, ed K. S. Soliman & S. de Juana Espinosa, International Business Information Management Association, USA, pp. 1153-1164.
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This research aims at discovering factors which impact on the intention of rural SME owners and managers to adopt m-banking in Bangladesh. Over the last ten years, a wide spectrum of mbanking frameworks has emerged that offers new insights into the adoption and acceptance of mbanking. However, m-banking has still not been extended to rural Bangladesh. To fill the gap this research surveyed 550 SMEs owners/managers in four rural villages. The result indicates that poor banking facilities, cost, credibility, gender, education and SME category are the main factors that significantly influence the intention to adopt m-banking. The analysis introduces three factors which have been largely overlooked in prior literature. The study broadens our understanding of m-banking and provides insights into developing m-banking strategies in Bangladesh. This research will be of potential value in accelerating the development of m-banking in Bangladesh

Gay, V.C. & Leijdekkers, P. 2012, 'Personalized Mobile Health and Fitness Apps: Lessons learned from myFitness Companion', 9th International Conference on Wearable Micro and Nano Technologies for Personalized Health, Porto, Portugal, June 2012 in 9th International Conference on Wearable Micro and Nano Technologies for Personalized Health, ed Bernd Blobel, Peter Pharow, Filipe Sousa, IOS Press Inc, Amsterdam Netherlands, pp. 248-253.
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Smartphone and tablets are slowly but steadily changing the way we look after our health and fitness. Today, many high quality mobile apps are available for users and health professionals and cover the whole health care chain, i.e. information collection, prevention, diagnosis, treatment and monitoring. Our team has developed a mobile health and fitness app called myFitnessCompanion (R) which has been available via Android market since February 2011. The objective of this paper is to share our experience with rolling out a mobile health and fitness app. We discuss the acceptance of health apps by end-users and healthcare industry. We discuss the acceptance of health apps will be distributed in the near future, the use of Personal Health Record (PHR) systems such as Microsoft Health Vault and impact of regulations (FDA) on the future of mobile health apps. The paper is based on seven years of experience by the authors as mobile health and fitness application developers and we discuss the challenges and opportunities for app developers in the health industry.

Gay, V.C. & Leijdekkers, P. 2011, 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly About Social Networks for Health Apps', Melbourne Australia, October 2011 in 2011 IFIP 9th International Conference on embedded and Ubiquitous (EUC), ed IEEE, IEEE Computing Society, Melbourne Australia, pp. 463-468.
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Mobile devices are blending into our lives and change the way we manage our social life but also how we look after our health. Hundreds of health apps are available for mobile devices and many use social network functionalities that allow users to exchange personal experiences and discuss their health with others. This has many positive results but also negative side effects. This paper discusses the good, the bad and the ugly about social network integration with mobile health applications. It is based on a comprehensive review of literature, social networking health forums, surveys, and our own experience with health apps for mobile devices.

Qudah, I., Leijdekkers, P. & Gay, V.C. 2011, 'Proposed Novel Solution to Improve Medication Adherence for Cardiac Patients', Jordan Amman, December 2011 in 2011 IEEE Jordan Conference on Applied Electrical Engineering and Computing Technologies (AEECT), ed Dr Gheith Abandah, IEEE Comptuting Society, Jordan Amman, pp. 310-315.
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In this paper we describe our approach to improve medication adherence. The issue of medication adherence is widely been studied. The paper discusses the differences between existing technologies/devices used to improve medication adherence and proposes a novel solution that links between technologty and behavious change model to predict and assess people tendency to make a change models to predict and assess people tendency to make a change models to predict and assess people tendency to make a change in their health behaviour towards adhering to their medication regimens. The use of technology in this intervention is aiming at assessing the effectiveness of using technology to motivate subjects and improve their medication adherence ratings.

Van, A., Gay, V.C., Kennedy, P.J., Barin, E. & Leijdekkers, P. 2011, 'Understanding risk factors in cardiac rehabilitation patients with random forests and decision trees', Ninth Australasian Data Mining Conference, Ballarat, Australia, December 2011 in Proceedings of the Ninth Australasian Data Mining Conference (AusDM'11), ed Peter Vamplew, Andrew Stranieri, KokÔ++Leong Ong, Peter Christen and Paul J. Kennedy, Australian Computer Society, Sydney, pp. 11-22.
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Gay, V.C., Leijdekkers, P. & Barin, E. 2010, 'Feasibility Trial of a Novel Mobile Cardiac Rehabilitation Application', International Conference on E-Health Networking, Application and Service, Lyon, France, July 2010 in 12th International Conference on E-Health Networking, Application and Service, ed Scientific Committees, IEEE Communications Society, France, pp. 86-92.
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A trial with a cardiac rehabilitation centre is in progress where we test a novel cardiac rehab application using a standard mobile phone and wireless sensors. The goal is to obtain insight how remote monitoring compares to conventional rehabilitation methods in terms of adherence to cardiac rehabilitation programmes. In this trial we seek feedback from patients and health professionals regarding usability and practicability of the software and hardware used and we investigate whether the use of the novel mobile rehabilitation application provides clinically meaningful reassurance to patients during their cardiac rehabilitation. The trial also investigates whether physical and psychological measures improve using the system. This paper describes the mobile cardiac rehabilitation application as well as the setup of the trial.

Qudah, I., Leijdekkers, P. & Gay, V.C. 2010, 'Using Mobile Phones to improve Medication Compliance and Awareness for Cardiac Patients', ACM International Conference on PErvasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environment, Samos, Greece, June 2010 in The 3rd ACM International Conference on PErvasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environment, ed Programme Committee, ACM - Association for Computing Machinery, Samos, Greece, pp. 1-7.
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Improving cardiac patients' medication compliance is a major factor in reducing mortality rate and reducing hospitalization rate. This paper describes a novel medication compliance management system. Its novelty lies in the combination of functionalities that helps the patient to comply with their medication regimen, together with a personal health monitoring system that monitors their health and collects vital signs data using a mobile phone and wirelss bio sensors. The system is designed to collect and analyse medication compliance, side effects and symptom responses and transfers the collected data in real time to a web based system for remote monitoring by caregivers and health professionals. Health professionals can use the system to assess the effect of the medication regimen on their patients' health and adapt it to reduce side effects and maximise the patient's wellbeing.

Brakel, J., Gay, V.C. & Leijdekkers, P. 2009, 'From The Hippocratic Oath To Electronic Data Storage: Ethical Aspects For M-Health Projects In Australia', International Association for Development of the Information Society International Conference, Algarve, Portugal, June 2009 in IADIS International Conference e-Health 2009 - MCCSIS 2009, ed M+írio Macedo, IADIS Press, New York, pp. 115-122.
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This paper discusses the issue of ethics when it comes to trialling m-health applications in a hospital environment in Australia. Our team has developed a personalised health monitoring application for smart phones using wireless biosensors to monitor and instruct patients. This paper discusses some of the Australian guidelines regarding ethical aspects of running technological trials of such mobile health projects on cardiac patients. Ethical issues regarding mobile health projects can be generally divided in two parts. The first one concerns any potential dangers to the patientÔ++s health. Although testing can also be done on healthy test subjects, the best way to acquire real-life test-data is to perform tests on actual cardiac patients. The second one is the privacy aspect in the doctor-patient relationship as some patients do not want to be identified as having a disease or do not want to have their records kept on file and used in scientific publications. Nevertheless, to show the benefits of this personalized m-health monitoring, a technical trial has to be conducted and research data needs to be published in a verifiable way. This paper gives an introduction into ethical regulations, organizations and issues in Australia. It describes, in detail, the issues involved in conducting technical trials in Australian hospitals. The paper gives several recommendations on how to deal with ethics in personalised m-health monitoring projects

Gay, V.C., Leijdekkers, P. & Barin, E. 2009, 'A Mobile Rehabilitation Application for the Remote Monitoring of Cardiac Patients after a Heart Attack or a Coronary Bypass Surgery', International Conference on PErvsive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments, Corfu, Greece, June 2009 in Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on PErvsive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments, ed NA, ACM International Conference Proceeding Series, New York, USA, pp. 1-7.
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This paper describes a personalised rehabilitation application using a smart phone (PDA) and wireless (bio) sensors. It instructs and motivates patients to follow their exercise programme and keeps track of their progress. It also monitors the relevant biosignals and provides immediate feedback to the patient. Sensors transmit data to the mobile phone where it is analysed locally and the data can also be instantaneously transmitted to a healthcare centre for remote monitoring by a health professional. The rehabilitation application is personalised for each cardiac patient and provides tailored advice (e.g. exercise more, slow down). A trial with a rehabilitation centre is in progress in which we investigate whether the personalised rehabilitation application improves the success of the rehabilitation programme in terms of patient compliance with recommended life style changes (such as increase physical activity or lose weight) and whether use of the system brings peace of mind to cardiac patients.

Jones, V., Gay, V.C., Leijdekkers, P., Rienks, R. & Hermens, H. 2009, 'Personalised mobile services supporting the implementation of clinical guidelines', Workshop on Personalisation for e-Health, Verona, Italy, June 2009 in 4th workshop on Personalisation for e-Health, ed F. Grasso and C. Paris, AIME 2009, Verona, pp. 10-14.
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Telemonitoring is emerging as a compelling application of Body Area Networks (BANs). We describe two health BAN systems developed respectively by a European team and an Australian team and discuss some issues encountered relating to formalization of clinical knowledge to support realtime analysis and interpretation of BAN data. Our example application is an evidence-based telemonitoring and teletreatment application for home-based rehabilitation. The application is intended to support implementation of a clinical guideline for cardiac rehabilitation following myocardial infarction. In addition to this the proposal is to establish the patientÔ++s individual baseline risk profile and, by real-time analysis of BAN data, continually re-assess the current risk level in order to give timely personalised feedback. Static and dynamic risk factors are derived from literature. Many sources express evidence probabilistically, suggesting a requirement for reasoning with uncertainty; elsewhere evidence requires qualitatie reasoning: both familiar modes of reasoning in KBSs. However even at this knowledge acquisition stage some issues arise concerning how best to apply the clinical evidence. Furthermore, in cases where insufficient clinical evidence is currently available, telemonitoring can yield large collections of clinical data with the potential for data mining in order to furnish more statistically powerful and accurate clinical evidence.

Leijdekkers, P., Gay, V.C. & Barin, E. 2009, 'Trial Results of a Novel Cardiac Rhythm Management System using Smart Phones and wireless ECG Sensors', International Conference On Smart homes and health Telematics, Tours, France, July 2009 in Proceedings of the 7th International Conf. On Smart homes and health Telematics. ICOST 09, ed Mokhatari,M et al, LNCS Springer, berlin Heidelberg NewYork, pp. 32-39.
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This paper discusses the trial results of a personalised Cardiac Rhythm Management (CRM) system using a smart phone (PDA) and a wireless ECG sensor. The system is used in a trial to record and diagnose abnormal cardiac arrhythmias. This novel approach uses standard mobile phones, off-the-shelf ECG sensors and personalised feedback to the patient when compared to a conventional clinical Holter and event monitor systems. The preliminary results are discussed of an ongoing trial conducted with the Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney Australia. The results indicate the viability of the system for commercial purposes.

Leijdekkers, P. & Gay, V.C. 2008, 'A self-test to detect a heart attack using a mobile phone and wearable sensors', IEEE International Symposium on Computer-Based Medical Systems, Jyvaskyla, June 2008 in 21st IEEE International Symposium on Computer-Based Medical Systems, CBMS 2008, ed NA, IEEE, New York, pp. 93-98.
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Duflos, S., Kervalla, B. & Gay, V.C. 2007, 'Considering Security and Quality of Service in SLS to improve Policy-based Management of Multimedia Services', International Conference on Networking, Sainte-Luce, Martinique, April 2007 in Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Networking, ed Dini, C., Smekal, Z., Lochin, E., Verma, P., IEEE Computer Society, USA, pp. 1-6.
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This paper proposes to improve policy-based management by integrating security parameters into the Service Level Specification (SLS). Integrating those parameters in the QoS part of the Service Level Agreement (SLA) specification is of particular importance for multimedia services requiring security since QoS is negotiated when the multimedia service is deployed. Security mechanisms need to be negotiated at that time when sensible multimedia information is exchanged. In this paper we show that including security parameters in SLA specification improves the negotiation and deployment of security and QoS policies for multimedia services. The parameters this paper proposes to integrate have the advantage to be understandable by end-users and service providers.

Fokkenrood, S., Leijdekkers, P. & Gay, V.C. 2007, 'Ventricular Tachycardia/Fibrillation Detection Algorithm for 24/7 Personal Wireless Heart Monitoring', ICOST, Nara, Japan, June 2007 in Proceeding of ICOST 2007: Pervasive Computing Perspectives for Quality of Life Enhancement, ed Okadome, T., Yamazaki, T., Makhtari, M., Springer, Heidelberg, Germany, pp. 110-120.
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This paper describes a Ventricular Tachycardia/Fibrillation (VT/VF) detection algorithm that is specifically designed for a 24/7 personal wireless heart monitoring system. This monitoring system uses Bluetooth enabled bio-sensors and smart phones to monitor continuously cardiac patients vital signs. Our VT/VF algorithm is optimized for continuous real-time monitoring on smart phones with a high sensitivity and specificity. We studied and compared existing VT/VF algorithms and selected the one which suited best our requirements. However, we modified and improved the existing algorithm for the smart phone to achieve better performance results. We tested the algorithm on full-length signals from the physionet CU, MIT-db and MIT-vfdb databases [16] without any pre-selection of VT/VF or normal QRS-complex signals. We achieved 97% sensitivity, 98% accuracy and 98% specificity for our implementation which is excellent compared to existing algorithms.

Leijdekkers, P., Gay, V.C. & Lawrence, E.M. 2007, 'Smart Homecare System for Health Tele-monitoring', International Conference on Digital Society, Guadaloupe, French Carribean, January 2007 in Proceedings of First International Conference on the Digital Society (ICDS 2007), ed Dini, P, IEEE Computer Society, Los Alamitos, CA, USA, pp. 1-5.
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An increasing aged population worldwide puts our medical capabilities to the test. Research and commercial groups are investigating novel ways to care for the aged and chronically ill both in their own homes and in care facilities. This paper describes a prototype we have developed for remote healthcare monitoring. This personalized smart homecare system uses smart phones, wireless sensors, web servers and IP webcams. To illustrate the functionality of the prototype we describe a series of typical tele-health monitoring scenarios

Gay, V.C. & Leijdekkers, P. 2006, 'Around the clock personalized health monitoring using smart phones', International conference on smart homes and health telematics, Belfast, UK, June 2006 in Smart homes and beyond - ICOST 2006 4th International conference on smart homes and health telematics, ed Nugent, C; Augsto, J.C, IOS Press, Belfast, UK, pp. 82-89.
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Leijdekkers, P. & Gay, V.C. 2006, 'Personal Heart monitoring and rehabilitation system using smart phones', International Conference on Mobile Business, Copenhagen, Denmark, June 2006 in Proceedings of the International Conference on Mobile Business ICMB 2006, ed N/A, IEEE Computer Society, Copenhagen, Denmark, pp. 29-36.
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Leijdekkers, P. & Gay, V.C. 2006, 'Personal heart monitoring system using smart phones to detect life threatening arrhythmias', IEEE Symposium on Computer-Based Medical Systems, Salt Lake City, UT, June 2006 in 19th IEEE International Symposium On Computer-Based Medical Systems, Proceedings, ed Lee, DJ; Nutter, B; Antani, S; Mitra, S; Archibald, J, IEEE Computer Soc, Los Alamitos, USA, pp. 157-164.
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This paper discusses a personalized heart monitoring system using smart phones and wireless (bio) sensors. We combine ubiquitous computing with mobile health technology to monitor the wellbeing of high risk cardiac patients. The smart phone analyses in r

Duflos, S., Gay, V.C., Kervalla, B. & Horlait, E. 2005, 'Improving the SLA-based management of QoS for secure multimedia services', International Conference on management of multimedia networks and services, Barcelona, Spain, October 2005 in Management of Multimedia Networks and Services - Lecture Notes in Computer Science - 8th International Conference on Management of Multimedia Networks and Services, MMNS 2005, ed Dalmau Royo, J; Hasegawa, G;, Springer, Barcelona, Spain, pp. 204-215.
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his paper proposes to integrate security parameters into the Service Level Specification (SLS) template proposed in the Tequila project to improve SLA-based management of QoS [8], [21]. Integrating those parameters in the QoS part of the Service Level Agreement (SLA) specification is essential in particular for secure multimedia services since the QoS is negotiated when the multimedia service is deployed. Security mechanisms need to be negotiated at deployment time when sensible multimedia information is exchanged. In this paper we show that including security parameters in the SLA specification improves the SLA-based management of QoS and therefore the negotiation, deployment and use of the secure multimedia service. The parameters this paper proposes to integrate have the advantage to be understandable by both the end-users and service providers.

Duflos, S., Gay, V.C., Kervalla, B. & Horlait, E. 2005, 'Integration of security parameters in the service level specification to improve QoS management of secure distributed multimedia services', International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications (was ICOIN), Taipei, Taiwan, March 2005 in IANA 2005, ed Bugmeyer, A., IEEE, Taipei, Taiwan, pp. 145-148.
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This paper proposes to integrate security parameters into the Service Level Specification (SLS). Integrating those parameters in the QoS part of the Service Level Agreement (SLA) specification is essential in particular for secure multimedia services since the QoS is negotiated when the multimedia service is deployed. Security mechanisms need to be negotiated at that time when sensible multimedia information is exchanged. In this paper we show that including security parameters in the SLA specification improves the negotiation, deployment and use of the secure multimedia service. The parameters this paper proposes to integrate have the advantage to be understandable by both the end-users and service providers.

Leijdekkers, P. & Gay, V.C. 2005, 'Personalised service and network adaptation for smart devices', Asia Pacific Conference on Communications, Perth, Australia, October 2005 in APCC 2005 Asia-Pacific Conference on communications, ed Chung, K; Nordholm, S., IEEE, Perth, Australia, pp. 867-871.
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Lubonski, M.M., Gay, V.C. & Simmonds, A.J. 2005, 'A conceptual architecture for adaptation in remote desktop systems driven by the user perception of multimedia', Asia Pacific Conference on Communications, Perth, Australia, October 2005 in APCC 2005 Asia-Pacific conference on communicatuions, ed Chung, K; Nordholm, S;, IEEE, Perth, Australia, pp. 891-895.
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Lubonski, M.M., Gay, V.C., Simmonds, A.J. 2005, 'An adaptation architecture to improve user-perceived QoS of multimedia services for enterprise remote desktop protocols', Next Generation Internet Networks Traffic Engineering, Rome, Italy, April 2005 in 2005 Next Generation Internet Networks, ed Bugmeyer, A., IEEE, Rome, Italy, pp. 149-156.
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Limitations in the contemporary best effort WAN combined with an increase in demand of the business users for multimedia are the main challenges for remote desktop solutions. Thin client remote desktop protocols are now mature enough to work efficiently over low bandwidth and low quality links for normal office applications. However, they face significant challenges when working with more demanding data flows such as multimedia streams. This paper introduces the server-side component of the architecture for remote desktop environment aiming at improving user perception of the more demanding and network sensitive multimedia applications and services. Our component maps of user-perceived Quality of Service (QoS) onto network-level performance parameters in order to improve overall end-to-end QoS. The set of perception rules defined for each application and type of user triggers the adaptation mechanisms to change the transmission parameters in order to meet end user expectations. The adaptation mechanisms can optimize the usage of the available network resources within a dedicated network link both for different flows within single client connection and for all clients connected to the same server module. The result of such an optimization is a new set of connection parameters adjusted to network state changes and user perception of remote desktop. In the paper we discuss requirements of such QoS control mechanisms and respective adaptation mechanisms, followed by the detailed description of the proposed component architecture.