Papers by Professor Robert Steele
New smartphone technologies for the first time provide a platform for a new type of on-person, pu... more New smartphone technologies for the first time provide a platform for a new type of on-person, public health data collection and also a new type of informational public health intervention. In such interventions, it is the device via automatically collecting data relevant to the individual’s health that triggers the receipt of an informational public health intervention relevant to that individual. This will enable far more targeted and personalized public health interventions than previously possible. However, furthermore, sensor-based public health data collection, combined with such informational public health interventions provides the underlying platform for a novel and powerful new form of learning public health system. In this paper we provide an architecture for such a sensor-based learning public health system, in particular one which maintains the anonymity of its individual participants, we describe its algorithm for iterative public health intervention improvement, and examine and provide an evaluation of its anonymity maintaining characteristics.
Proceedings of 2016 49th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-49), Jan 2016
Public health interventions consisting of information dissemination to affect behavior have long ... more Public health interventions consisting of information dissemination to affect behavior have long been a significant form of public health campaign. These interventions can be considered ‘push-based’ as they push information out to a population. New smartphone technologies for the first time provide a platform for a new type of informational public health intervention, which can be referred to as ‘pull-based’ interventions. In such interventions, it is the device via automatically collecting data relevant to the individual’s health that triggers the ‘request’ for and receipt of the informational public health intervention. This will enable far more targeted and personalized public health interventions than previously possible. Such techniques do however also pose privacy and security challenges. In this paper we introduce the architecture for pull-based public health interventions upon smartphone devices that also provides strong privacy support. We also evaluate its performance and scalability benefits relative to non-pull-based interventions.
Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 66 (12), pp 2596-2608., Apr 2015
The pervasive availability of smartphones and their connected external sensors or wearable device... more The pervasive availability of smartphones and their connected external sensors or wearable devices can provide a new public health data collection capability. Current research and commercial efforts have concentrated on sensor-based collection of health data for personal fitness and healthcare feedback purposes. However, to date there has not been a detailed investigation of how such smartphones and sensors can be utilized for public health data collection purposes. Public health data have the characteristic of being capturable while still not infringing upon privacy, as the full detailed data of individuals are not needed but rather only anonymized, aggregate, de-identified, and nonunique data for an individual. For example, rather than details of physical activity including specific route, just total caloric burn over a week or month could be submitted, thereby strongly assisting non-reidentification. In this paper we introduce, prototype, and evaluate a new type of public health information system to provide aggregate population health data capture and public health intervention capabilities via utilizing smartphone and sensor capabilities, while fully maintaining the anonymity and privacy of each individual. We consider in particular the key aspects of privacy, anonymity, and intervention capabilities of these emerging systems and provide a detailed evaluation of anonymity preservation characteristics.
Proceedings of 48th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-48), Jan 2015
Public health campaigns seek to positively affect health-related behaviors and/or raise awareness... more Public health campaigns seek to positively affect health-related behaviors and/or raise awareness of various health-related issues. These campaigns have traditionally utilized such means as mass media broadcasting and distribution of physical or Web-based materials. In recent times, social media systems such as the microblogging platform Twitter have also been increasingly utilized for public health campaign delivery. This is a relatively recent phenomenon and as such is not yet extensively studied or well understood. In this paper we examine a case study of a significant global Twitter-based public health campaign, namely that involving the use of the #worldhealthday hashtag during and surrounding the 2014 World Health Day on April 7th 2014, involving a data set of over 160 million tweet deliveries. The characteristics of this public health campaign within the Twitter medium are explored via utilizing software tools that enable the capture and summarization of large-scale sets of micro-blog postings.
Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, 55(13), 2015
Significant benefits arise from being able to capture dietary or nutritional intake information a... more Significant benefits arise from being able to capture dietary or nutritional intake information automatically or semi-automatically. These include the ability for individuals to know and understand their nutritional intake and hence improve their diet and health. To date, only highly manual processes such as 24 hour recall, food diaries and food journals have been utilized which have been overly cumbersome for widespread adoption. Emerging informatics, computer vision, mobile computing and sensor-based approaches are likely to play a role in further automating the capture of dietary intake information and these are becoming increasingly utilizable through such advents as the rapid and ubiquitous uptake of smartphones with built-in digital cameras and other sensors. In this paper we review the state of the art of technologies for automatic capture of dietary intake information and identify significant outstanding research problems and promising directions.
Proceedings of 47th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-47), Jan 2014
The wide availability and sophisticated functionalities of current mobile devices or smartphones ... more The wide availability and sophisticated functionalities of current mobile devices or smartphones can provide a new form of data collection capability relevant to public health. However, current data that is collected is typically siloed on individual devices and/or specific proprietary systems, only intended for individual use, limiting possible utilization for public health purposes. Additionally, the current aggregate data collection approaches do not incorporate key public health components such as support for interventions and demographic data. To address these limitations, in this paper we introduce and evaluate a system to provide aggregate population health data via utilizing smartphone capabilities, whilst fully maintaining the anonymity and privacy of each individual. In this paper we provide a detailed architecture, a method for local processing of aggregate population health data utilizing adaptive privacy thresholds to create a multi-party flexible approach to participatory data submission and evaluate its privacy properties at large scale.
Health Systems, 3(1), 60-73., 2014
Health information system architectures inherently include distributed systems and data repositor... more Health information system architectures inherently include distributed systems and data repositories across multiple organizations, health providers and with potentially some data stored with the health consumer. This is part of the shift to more fully integrated electronic health systems. Due to the varied stakeholders of these systems, it will become more important to provide a high level of query quality assurance for the parties utilizing these distributed and shared data repositories. A core consideration of health records is providing data confidentiality, including to protect against insider security threats. As such, it will often be desirable that electronic health information be stored in an encrypted format. In this paper, we present and describe the implementation and evaluation of a query assurance model that implements the three requirements of query assurance across sources of searchable encrypted health data. Further, we consider the issue of freshness and data persistence in a multiple data-owner environment, including a discussion of the characteristics of consumer interfacing health information systems.
36th Annual International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC'14), 2014
Nutritional information is increasingly available in a digital or structured form due to a number... more Nutritional information is increasingly available in a digital or structured form due to a number of developments: (1) digitized nutrient component databases, either national or commercial initiatives (2) databases of consumer packaged foods indexed by Universal Product Codes (UPCs) or barcodes; (3) survey databanks of food items actually sold or purchased indexed by UPC or other food identifier; (4) increasing use of and more detailed food package nutrition labelling; (5) increasing use of electronic point-of-sale systems; and (6) the rapid emergence of health and diet-related mobile “apps” and mobile device-based food intake information capture tools. While these developments have emerged somewhat independently, there is now the potential to move towards further integration and processing capabilities arising from these developments. Such integration, even where partial, has the potential for significant impact upon the efficiency and sophistication of the food supply chain, and the diet and health of individuals and population-wide health – we refer to the underlying and enabling field of study as Nutrition Informatics.
Mobile Information Systems, 10(3), 229-242. , 2014
The use of participatory sensing in relation to the capture of health-related data is rapidly bec... more The use of participatory sensing in relation to the capture of health-related data is rapidly becoming a possibility due to the widespread consumer adoption of emerging mobile computing technologies and sensing platforms. This has the potential to revolutionize data collection for population health, aspects of epidemiology, and health-related e-Science applications and as we will describe, provide new public health intervention capabilities, with the classifications and capabilities of such participatory sensing platforms only just beginning to be explored. Such a development will have important benefits for access to near real-time, large-scale, up to population-scale data collection. However, there are also numerous issues to be addressed first: provision of stringent anonymity and privacy within these methodologies, user interface issues, and the related issue of how to incentivize participants and address barriers/concerns over participation. To provide a step towards describing these aspects, in this paper we present a first classification of health participatory sensing models, a novel contribution to the literature, and provide a conceptual reference architecture for health participatory sensing networks (HPSNs) and user interaction example case study.
Healthcare Informatics and Analytics: Emerging Issues and Trends, 2014
Healthcare Informatics and Analytics: Emerging Issues and Trends, 2014
Applied Mechanics and Materials. 411-414, 115., 2013
While much research work has been carried out in relation to the expertise of individuals in the ... more While much research work has been carried out in relation to the expertise of individuals in the domains of Q&A portals, special interest group portals, Wikipedia, blogs, and conference reviews, very little research has been done in relation to expertise measurement, based upon online professional social networks such as LinkedIn. Existing approaches have been based on evidence-based analysis from textual sources and communications. In this paper, we propose an expertise model based on expertise vectors composed of attributes and values derived by integrating information obtained in the two following ways: semi-automatic calculation utilizing online professional profile information collected from diverse online sources such as professional social network sites and some level of manual expertise identification by individuals. Unlike past approaches focusing on expertise measurement based on analysis of ‘secondary’ evidence such as textual communications and/or social network activities, this is a novel approach to identifying expertise based on real-world work experience, qualifications and other skills indicated via information found in online professional profiles, often from professional social network sites. Given contemporary professional social network sites can have 100s of millions of participants such automated expertise measurement approaches are a step towards fine-grained, up-to-date and population-wide expertise capture and quantification.
Food, nutrition and dietary-related information are increasingly available in a digital or struct... more Food, nutrition and dietary-related information are increasingly available in a digital or structured form at various stages of the food production and consumption supply chain, including: (1) identifier systems and inventory systems present at primary producers, processors, distributors and retailers; (2) digitized nutrient component databases of tested foods, either national or commercial initiatives; (3) databases of consumer packaged foods indexed by Universal Product Code (UPC) identifiers or barcodes; (4) survey databanks of food items actually sold or purchased indexed by UPC or other food identifier; (5) increasing use of and more detailed food package nutrition labeling; (6) greater use of digital systems at the point-of-sale; and (7) rapid emergence of health and diet-related mobile “apps” and information technology-based dietary intake information capture tools. While these developments have emerged somewhat independently, there is now the potential to move towards further integration and processing capabilities arising from these developments. Such integration, even where partial, has the potential for significant impact upon the efficiency and sophistication of the food supply chain, diet and health of individuals and society-wide, statistics gathering and the further environmental, materials and energy optimization within the food supply chain – we refer to the underlying, enabling field of study as Nutrition Informatics. In this article we discuss the technological underpinnings of such integration, analyze the implications and applications of this increasing digitization of food, nutrition and diet-related information and systems integration; and identify seven priority directions required to further advance the role of informatics-based systems in achieving an integrated ‘paddock to plate’ food supply system.
Communications and Network, 5(3B1), 5-9., 2013
The Internet of Things has particularly novel implications in the area of public health. This is ... more The Internet of Things has particularly novel implications in the area of public health. This is due to (1) the rapid and widespread adoption of powerful contemporary smartphones; (2) the increasing availability and use of health and fit-ness sensors, wearable sensor patches, smartwatches, wireless-enabled digital tattoos and ambient sensors; and (3) the nature of public health to implicitly involve connectivity with and the acquisition of data in relation to large numbers of individuals up to population scale. Of particular relevance in relation to the Internet of Things (IoT) and public health is the need for privacy and anonymity of users. It should be noted that IoT capabilities are not inconsistent with maintaining privacy, due to the focus of public health on aggregate data not individual data and broad public health interventions. In addition, public health information systems utilizing IoT capabilities can be constructed to specifically ensure privacy, security and anonymity, as has been developed and evaluated in this work. In this paper we describe the particular characteristics of the IoT that can play a role in enabling emerging public health capabilities; we describe a priva-cy-preserving IoT-based public health information system architecture; and provide a privacy evaluation.
46th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-46), Jan 2013
There has been a rapid uptake of the use of online social networking services, and more recently ... more There has been a rapid uptake of the use of online social networking services, and more recently their usage for health-related communication is also being researched and trialed. Twitter, a widely used micro-blogging service, has significant potential for thecommunication and sharing of up-to-date health information particularly with health consumers. In this paper a sample of 114 Australian health-related organizations’ Twitter accounts were identified, that matched inclusion criteria of a significant number of followers and activity. The 114 accounts’ micro-blog postings over a defined period of time are systematically analyzed, with a total of over 4,700 tweets retrieved, examined and manually categorized.This work analyzes Australian health-related micro-blog usage both in terms of health condition areas and types of micro-blog postings, including explanatory discussion of the outcomes and provides a case study in relation to re-tweeting of public health advice tweets. The work contributes to the literature by providing insights into the characteristics of community-wide health information dissemination via social media.
"The information and communication technology
infrastructure available in rural and remote areas... more "The information and communication technology
infrastructure available in rural and remote areas may often
not have the bandwidth to support all types of telehealth
applications; therefore, for example, some traditionally
envisaged videoconferencing-based telehealth applications
may not be able to be used or not used in their anticipated form
at this time. While the level of broadband services available
may impose limitations on these types of telehealth applications,
in this review article, we identify applications that allow
the maximizing of telehealth benefits in the presence of lowbandwidth
connectivity and have potential benefits wellmatched
to rural and remote area healthcare challenges. In
particular, we include consideration of how ubiquitous computing
might potentially bring non-traditional approaches to
telehealth that can also come into usage more immediately in
bandwidth-constrained rural and regional areas. In this article,
we review the benefits of ubiquitous computing for rural and
remote telehealth including social media-based preventative,
peer support and public health communication, mobile phone
platforms for the detection and notification of emergencies,
wearable and ambient biosensors, the utilization of personal
health records including in conjunction with mobile and
sensor platforms, chronic condition care and management
information systems, and mobile device–enabled video
consultation.""""
Applied Mechanics and Materials, Vols. 411-414, 110-114., 2013
Traditional forms of health information dissemination have previously involved a few key organiza... more Traditional forms of health information dissemination have previously involved a few key organizations originating health-related information and disseminating this to clinicians and the community. This information was typically disseminated via private, formalized and non-digital interactions between health information sources (HISs) and clinicians and consumers. With the introduction of the Internet, Web-based health information dissemination led to changes with greater availability of online health information. However, the recent adoption and uptake of social media has led to many more parties, both organizations of varying types, and individuals, participating in public health information dissemination; and this has also led to new forms of sharing health-related information, particularly involving a greater role for individuals. In this paper we introduce empirical findings in relation to how organizations and individuals are now using social media for sharing health information, and from this suggest themes to describe the changes from traditional to contemporary health information dissemination, as well as the new emerging roles and forms of interaction for health information dissemination.
Procedia - Social and Behavioural Sciences, Volume 147, 229-236., 2014
Social media technologies have a number of characteristics that potentially suit information acce... more Social media technologies have a number of characteristics that potentially suit information access and informal knowledge management by older adults, and there is a rapid uptake of these technologies by this demographic. Based on the characteristics of social media technologies and previous online knowledge management findings, we introduce a novel framework for achieving social media-based knowledge management for older adult communities. The framework involves several key aspects and requirements: public peer-to-peer sharing of information, evaluation of content amongst peers, the “push” nature of these technologies, ease-of-use through simple interfaces, affordability, platforms that are extensible to support a wide range of information types, a self-organizing information dissemination network, and a human-based peer trust network. We conducted a six-month trial of 150 participants utilizing Facebook, Twitter and Skype to determine their perceptions and preferences in relation to using these social technologies. We found that in the majority, the views of the older adult participants were well matched to the requirements for achieving social media-based knowledge management, identified in the framework. In addition, we discuss the implications of the findings for the implementation of future social media-based knowledge management systems.
Procedia - Social and Behavioural Sciences, Volume 147, 284-292., 2014
"The use of participatory sensing in health e-Research applications is rapidly becoming a possibi... more "The use of participatory sensing in health e-Research applications is rapidly becoming a possibility due to the adoption of mobile computing technologies and sensing platforms. Such a change
will have important benefits in the access to near real-time, large-scale up to population-wide data collection and analysis. However, there are numerous issues implied. Primarily of concern is how to ensure anonymity and privacy within these methodologies, and further the related issue of how to incentivize participants and remove barriers/concerns over participation. To address these concerns, in this paper we introduce a novel system to capture aggregate population health research data via utilizing smartphone capabilities while fully maintaining the anonymity and privacy of each individual contributing such data. A key and novel capability of this system is the support for customizable data collection; without the need to know specific details about an individual. The customized collection rules can be deployed on the local device based on detailed local data, and the resultant collection can be measured by the anonymous data collection network. In this paper we provide a conceptual architecture and describe a method for
local processing of aggregate e-Research health data utilizing adaptive privacy thresholds to create a multi-party flexible approach to participatory data submission to support this novel health e-Research capability."
Uploads
Papers by Professor Robert Steele
infrastructure available in rural and remote areas may often
not have the bandwidth to support all types of telehealth
applications; therefore, for example, some traditionally
envisaged videoconferencing-based telehealth applications
may not be able to be used or not used in their anticipated form
at this time. While the level of broadband services available
may impose limitations on these types of telehealth applications,
in this review article, we identify applications that allow
the maximizing of telehealth benefits in the presence of lowbandwidth
connectivity and have potential benefits wellmatched
to rural and remote area healthcare challenges. In
particular, we include consideration of how ubiquitous computing
might potentially bring non-traditional approaches to
telehealth that can also come into usage more immediately in
bandwidth-constrained rural and regional areas. In this article,
we review the benefits of ubiquitous computing for rural and
remote telehealth including social media-based preventative,
peer support and public health communication, mobile phone
platforms for the detection and notification of emergencies,
wearable and ambient biosensors, the utilization of personal
health records including in conjunction with mobile and
sensor platforms, chronic condition care and management
information systems, and mobile device–enabled video
consultation.""""
will have important benefits in the access to near real-time, large-scale up to population-wide data collection and analysis. However, there are numerous issues implied. Primarily of concern is how to ensure anonymity and privacy within these methodologies, and further the related issue of how to incentivize participants and remove barriers/concerns over participation. To address these concerns, in this paper we introduce a novel system to capture aggregate population health research data via utilizing smartphone capabilities while fully maintaining the anonymity and privacy of each individual contributing such data. A key and novel capability of this system is the support for customizable data collection; without the need to know specific details about an individual. The customized collection rules can be deployed on the local device based on detailed local data, and the resultant collection can be measured by the anonymous data collection network. In this paper we provide a conceptual architecture and describe a method for
local processing of aggregate e-Research health data utilizing adaptive privacy thresholds to create a multi-party flexible approach to participatory data submission to support this novel health e-Research capability."
infrastructure available in rural and remote areas may often
not have the bandwidth to support all types of telehealth
applications; therefore, for example, some traditionally
envisaged videoconferencing-based telehealth applications
may not be able to be used or not used in their anticipated form
at this time. While the level of broadband services available
may impose limitations on these types of telehealth applications,
in this review article, we identify applications that allow
the maximizing of telehealth benefits in the presence of lowbandwidth
connectivity and have potential benefits wellmatched
to rural and remote area healthcare challenges. In
particular, we include consideration of how ubiquitous computing
might potentially bring non-traditional approaches to
telehealth that can also come into usage more immediately in
bandwidth-constrained rural and regional areas. In this article,
we review the benefits of ubiquitous computing for rural and
remote telehealth including social media-based preventative,
peer support and public health communication, mobile phone
platforms for the detection and notification of emergencies,
wearable and ambient biosensors, the utilization of personal
health records including in conjunction with mobile and
sensor platforms, chronic condition care and management
information systems, and mobile device–enabled video
consultation.""""
will have important benefits in the access to near real-time, large-scale up to population-wide data collection and analysis. However, there are numerous issues implied. Primarily of concern is how to ensure anonymity and privacy within these methodologies, and further the related issue of how to incentivize participants and remove barriers/concerns over participation. To address these concerns, in this paper we introduce a novel system to capture aggregate population health research data via utilizing smartphone capabilities while fully maintaining the anonymity and privacy of each individual contributing such data. A key and novel capability of this system is the support for customizable data collection; without the need to know specific details about an individual. The customized collection rules can be deployed on the local device based on detailed local data, and the resultant collection can be measured by the anonymous data collection network. In this paper we provide a conceptual architecture and describe a method for
local processing of aggregate e-Research health data utilizing adaptive privacy thresholds to create a multi-party flexible approach to participatory data submission to support this novel health e-Research capability."