Here you will find a list of some recent projects in chronological order.
2018→
An Interoperable and Blockchain-based Model for Electronic Health Records in the scope of uHospital
Grant: 
DT Call 2017
Partners: 
Electronic Health Records are digital repositories that store people’s health-related data. Typically, these records contain a partial view of the patient relation with a specific health provider, such as clinics, hospitals, and laboratories. A great trend in this area is to allow a unified view of persons’ health, since their birth, including all the relations with assorted professionals and providers. With the advent of the Internet of Things, these unified registers could also include data obtained from sensors or wearables, complementing the stored information. This integrated view of a person’s health, generally referred as Personal Health Records, presents many challenges, including the management of the big volume of produced data and the guarantee of the interoperability with assorted formats and legacy systems. In this context, the present project proposes a distributed architecture, based on Blockchain technology, to allow the store and access of electronic health records in a scalable and secure way. Furthermore, the project models the information using a collection of ontologies, based on the OpenEHR standard, fostering the semantic interoperability with other health records. To evaluate the model efficacy, we will develop a prototype, using anonymized data of real patients from the Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre. The project is part of the uHospital effort, which employs many mobile and ubiquitous computing concepts to efficiently manage health in hospitals.
2017→
Future Hospital Wards: a ubiquitous model for analysis and correlation of patients’ vital signs using intelligent algorithms
Grant: Universal Call – MCTI/CNPq Nº 01/2016
Partners: 
Nowadays, we perceive in hospitals that lots of patient related data, including their vital signs is collected manually or automatically by isolated medical devices. This data is stored in spreadsheets, not being part of the patients’ electronic health record, and therefor impossible for health professionals to combine and specifically analyze. Moreover, particularly in Brazil, due to bidding processes for acquiring assets and economic fluctuations, medical devices found in hospital wards are typically heterogeneous, from assorted manufacturers and with different interconnections. One possible solution to overcome these limitations is the interconnection of devices to the internet using a distributed platform, typically employing cloud computing, that has been called Internet of Things. In this context, this project proposes the integration of several data sources, collected in a hospital ward, using an intelligent algorithm for identifying and correlating patients’ vital signs, detecting possible risks to their health and anticipating possible actions. One expected impact of this work is related to efficiency, allowing the optimization of available resources, besides trying to minimize risks to patient’s health. The proposed solution is based on a combination of hardware and software, which will allow the integration of many patients’ data in hospital wards. The model will use machine learning techniques, cloud computing and ubiquitous computing, in a way that the technologies will be seamlessly integrated with the real environment.
Analyzing Resources and Applications to Improve the Performance of Dell Systems
Grant: 
Partners:
Today, Dell Computers is a company in charge of host and execute a set of applications, which vary, for instance, in terms of human resources, comercial area and scientific applications, running in distributed computers and resources. In this context, we see the opportunity of improving the management of companies’ applications resources, using the cloud and providing monitoring tools. The project aims at the following research question: how to manage server resources (memory, energy, bandwidth, disk usage, databases and CPU load) in assorted types of applications (IO-bond, CPU-bond) to support real-time communication and scalability requirements. In this process we seek to maintain, or to improve, the user experience in the execution/use of the applications.
2016→
Technological Innovations in Hybrid Rooms: Procedures Improvements and Optimization in Surgeries
Grant: 
Partners:
This project constitutes a partnership for applied research among Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos (UNISINOS), Siemens Healthineers company and Friedrich-Alexander-Universität (FAU). The project aims at technological development, research and innovation regarding hybrid operating rooms. Hybrid rooms are operating room with advanced image devices including MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) scanners, angiography and CT (Computed Tomography) scanners. These image-based devices enable minimally-invasive surgery, which are less traumatic for the patients. In this context, the project aims at improving the procedures and optimize processes inside a operating room. Many technologies are being combined to achieve this goal, including the use of RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification) and RGB-D cameras.
2015→
uHospital: A Model for Managing Ubiquitous Healthcare in Hospitals
Grant: DT Call 2014
Partners: 
The inefficiency of the healthcare sector in Brazil can be reinforced by the current use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in health providers. A factor that corroborates with this statement is that only a quarter of those providers employ fully electronic health records. In this way, this project consists in propose a model to manage healthcare in hospitals, called uHospital. The focus is on the Electronic Health Record (EHR) using the concepts of mobile and ubiquitous computing applied to the health area. These ideas have been defined by the scientific community using two denominations: ubiquitous health, the monitoring of patients health anywhere and anytime, and ubiquitous healthcare, convenient services to patients that allows the clinical diagnosis. To employ these concepts, the model proposes the development of a Personal Health Record (PHR), storing all individual information related to a person’s health. This PHR should include exams, diagnoses and also data inserted manually. One possibility in this area, from the popularization of mobile devices and the growth of body sensors use (wearable computing), is to allow people to interact with their PHR, using tablets and smartphones, combining the stored information in their health record with vital signs that have been constant monitored. Particularly, this project proposes the use of situation awareness to combine the patients’ context, including data being constantly monitored, with information already available in their electronic health record. To fulfill this goal, uHospital employs ontologies based on international and established healthcare standards. In this way, the proposed model allows the management of ubiquitous healthcare in hospitals, centered in a PHR, which permits the inference of patients’ risk situations.
Unisinos Smartcard Observatory
Grant: 
Partners:
The Unisinos Smartcard Observatory aims at doing research, development and innovation related to the University Smartcard (from the Spanish TUI – Tarjeta Universitaria Inteligente). This technology is developed by Santander Universities and it is used by hundreds of academic institutions worldwide. The smartcard uses contactless and contact technologies to allow access to a diversity of services in the universities scope. Particularly, the Unisinos Smartcard Observatory project has focus on developing services and products related to social networks, mobile computing and ubiquitous computing. The results directly reflect improvements to Unisinos academic community and are shared with the worldwide community that uses TUI. Finally, the Unisinos Smartcard Observatory is part of an international network of 5 universities that develop applied research in partnership with Santander Universities.
A complete list of projects can be found in the 
curriculum vitae.
