BACKGROUND To address three methodological challenges when attempting to measure patients' experiences and views of a system of inter-related health services rather than a single service: the feasibility of a population survey for identifying system users, the optimal recall period for system use, and the mode of administration which is most feasible and representative in the context of routine...

premenstrual syndromes (pms) are a group of menstrually related, chronic and cyclical disorders characterized by emotional, behavioral, and physical symptoms in the second half (luteal phase) of the menstrual cycle. several line of evidence point to a significant role of the serotonergic system in the course of the luteal phase in women with pms/ premenstrual dysphoric disorder. it has been rep...

We describe the development of an R&D recognizer for several Spanish applications, starting from an existing recognition system for American English and modest language-speci c resources. The experiments emphasize achieving phonetic accuracy on telephone speech without vocabulary speci c training. We use our basic recognition engine, and simple grammar-building tools for predicting word sequenc...

BACKGROUND The implementation of the 58th World Health Assembly resolution on e-health will pose a major challenge for the Member States of the World Health Organization (WHO) African Region due to lack of information and communications technology (ICT) and mass Internet connectivity, compounded by a paucity of ICT-related knowledge and skills. The key objectives of this article are to: (i) exp...

This paper describes the implementation of a system that reminds the user of the telephone number of a given list, even if the user only remembers part of it, or if the given number contains a series of exchanged digits. The system’s input consists of a telephone number (composed by digits from 0 to 9), containing from zero up to several generic digits (asterisks, in this case). The system proc...

The history of mobile communications started with the work of the first pioneers in the area. The experiments of Hertz in the late 18th century inspired Marconi to search markets for the new commodity (to be). The communication needs in the First and Second World Wars were also supporting and accelerating the start of cellular radio, especially in terms of utilisation of ever higher frequencies...

M-government is an emergent area for mobile applications, where citizens and organizations can interact with government and municipal agencies through mobile devices. One promising area for m-government is complaint and problem management, where mobile applications using the integrated functions of a cellular telephone can offer citizens convenient ways of rapidly reporting problems. The proble...

The cellular telephone has become one of the most common consumer devices. Yet, there are very few published studies about their usability. We performed a small usability study involving nine people using their own telephones. While the study was too small to be statistically significant, we found no evidence that either of the tested brands, Nokia and Siemens, were easier to use. Our study did...

Mobile technology has the potential to revolutionize how physicians practice medicine. From having access to the latest medical research at the point of care to being able to communicate at a moment’s notice with physicians and colleagues around the world, we are practicing medicine in a technological age. During recent years, many physicians have been simultaneously using a pager, cellular tel...