Paul Mccullagh

• BSc. PhD. Queens University
• Professor (Full) at University of Ulster

Mobile notifications have become ubiquitous in modern life, yet excessive volumes contribute to interruption overload. This paper investigates intelligent notification management leveraging user context. A three-stage methodology employed a focus group, survey, and in-the-wild data collection app. The focus group $$(n=12)$$ ( n = 12 ) provided prel...

Internet of Things (IoT) provides the opportunity for remote sensing in a smart home. This can benefit home security. A case study was devised to remotely sense, inform and actuate. The study developed a surveillance system using Raspberry Pi and camera to detect and recognize a door caller’s face from a live video stream and compare with an existi...

Sensor Data Fusion (SDT) algorithms and models have been widely used in diverse applications. One of the main challenges of SDT includes how to deal with heterogeneous and complex datasets with different formats. The present work utilised both homogenous and heterogeneous datasets to propose a novel SDT framework. It compares data mining-based fusi...

Sensor fusion algorithms and models have been widely used in recent times. Although research evidence has informed the use of sensor fusion models in diverse applications, there is room for improvement, especially in home-based health monitoring applications which require less supervision and technical knowledge of users. The present work compares...

Catching the attention of users, via their smartphone, is most often achieved through push notifications. Such an approach is already in place within applications such as Facebook, Google, Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter. Emails and messaging apps are also used to send notifications, which can assist users who may otherwise miss important events. As...

The relationship between indoor air quality and physical activity was investigated. An air quality sensing device (BME680) was used to measure temperature, humidity, carbon dioxide and volatile organic compounds in a classroom environment. Physical Activity of a person in the classroom was recorded concurrently using an accelerometer (ADXL335); dat...

It is widely recognized that interdisciplinary research (IR) is an important tool in facilitating the development of efficient solutions to address current societal challenges. Recent developments, compounded by the global covid-19 pandemic, have boosted the use of mobile technology to deliver health interventions remotely using digital technologie...

Notifications received on the smartphone have become a vital part of typical work and social life. Notifications provide information ranging from important incoming business emails and meeting prompts to home deliveries and social interaction. But they can also become burden some on the user as the average number of incoming notifications can be in...

Monitoring air quality is set to become more important at home, in the workplace and at social venues, particularly regarding promoting wellness and safeguarding social interaction. We present a didactic approach to implementing indoor air quality monitoring using an Internet of Things (IoT) solution, based upon low cost air quality sensors and edg...

The brain–computer interface (BCI) and the tracking of eye gaze provide modalities for human–machine communication and control. In this article, we provide the evaluation of a collaborative BCI and eye gaze approach, known as a hybrid BCI. The combined inputs interact with a virtual environment to provide actuation according to a four-way menu syst...

Life-logging utilises sensor technology to automate the capture of a person’s interaction with their environment. This produces useful information to assess wellbeing, but this information is often buried within the volume of data. In this chapter, we analyse a life-log comprising image data and contextual information and apply algorithms to collat...

Background: Home-based self-monitoring has failed to show intended savings to healthcare budgets yet it continues to emerge and gain popularity. Objective: We set out to verify stakeholders' perspectives of remote vital sign telemonitoring. Design: An observational design was adopted by devising a survey for distribution to service users and t...

Rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) based brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) can detect target images among a continuous stream of rapidly presented images, by classifying a viewer’s event related potentials (ERPs) associated with the target and non-targets images. Whilst the majority of RSVP-BCI studies to date have concentrated on the identific...

In Human Activity Recognition (HAR), supervised Machine Learning methods are predominantly used, making availability of datasets a major issue for research in the field. In particular, the majority of available datasets are collected under controlled conditions. Consequently, models trained under similar circumstances, generally exhibit a significa...

Introduction Unobtrusive metrics that can auto-assess performance during clinical procedures are of value. Three approaches to deriving wearable technology-based metrics are explored: (1) eye tracking, (2) psychophysiological measurements [e.g. electrodermal activity (EDA)] and (3) arm and hand movement via accelerometry. We also measure attentiona...

Data annotation is a time-consuming process posing major limitations to the development of Human Activity Recognition (HAR) systems. The availability of a large amount of labeled data is required for supervised Machine Learning (ML) approaches, especially in the case of online and personalized approaches requiring user specific datasets to be label...

Rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) combined with the detection of event-related brain responses facilitates the selection of relevant information contained in a stream of images presented rapidly to a human. Event related potentials (ERPs) measured non-invasively with electroencephalography (EEG) can be associated with infrequent targets among...

Nurses welcome innovative training and assessment methods to effectively interpret physiological vital signs. The objective is to determine if eye-tracking technology can be used to develop biometrics for automatically predict the performance of nurses whilst they interact with computer-based simulations. A total of 47 nurses were recruited, 36 nur...

Sedentary lifestyle and inadequate levels of physical activity represent two serious health risk factors. Nevertheless, within developed countries, 60% of people aged over 60 are deemed to be sedentary. Consequently, interest in behavior change to promote physical activity is increasing. In particular, the role of emerging mobile apps to facilitate...

Situation awareness may be inferred from user context such as body posture transition and location data. Smartphones and smart homes incorporate sensors that can record this information without significant inconvenience to the user. Algorithms were developed to classify activity postures to infer current situations; and to measure user's physical l...

Background In the United Kingdom, stroke is the single largest cause of adult disability and results in a cost to the economy of £8.9 billion per annum. Service needs are currently not being met; therefore, initiatives that focus on patient-centered care that promote long-term self-management for chronic conditions should be at the forefront of ser...

Introduction: It has yet to be determined whether visual attention, measured via eye tracking metrics (ETMs) can be indicative of performance level in coronary care nursing when interpreting patient vitals. Methods: This study captures the visual attention of nurses when interpreting five scenarios using simulated text and vital signs. Baseline per...

Brain-Neural Machine/Computer Interface (BNCI) has been used successfully as an assistive technology to restore communication, improve control and thus potentially enhance social inclusion. Recently BNCI technology and interfaces have evolved to become more usable, thereby allowing the recording of brain activity to become part of the wider self-qu...

Training is needed to exercise our most important organ: the brain, exploit its full potential and sustain it for our later years. Does a gap exist in our capacity for learning, a gap between what our brain could potentially achieve and what we are currently prepared to accept? The ‘prototype’ follows an ambitious undergraduate Computer Science stu...

Introduction: Patient monitoring is both a prevalent and critical nursing duty. Given that it requires the interpretation of vital signs and intricate decision-making, nurses could benefit from simulation-based training. Currently there is a lack of an open data structure for capturing training scenarios that can be used to augment simulation softw...

The electrical activity of the brain can be quantified by measuring the electroencephalogram (EEG), a technology that underpins emerging commercial Brain Computer Interface (BCI) devices. The EEG can be used to directly assess measures of brain function: sensory, motor and cognitive processes. In this paper we assess the readiness of this technolog...

Due to an extensive list of restraints, brain-computer interface (BCI) technology has seen limited success outside of laboratory conditions. In order to address these limitations, which have prevented widespread deployment, an existing modular architecture has been adapted to support hybrid collaboration of commercially available BCI and eye tracki...

Within a technological home-based self-management of dementia paradigm there exists a nexus between a person with dementia, personalised reminding technology, detection of the adherence to reminders and an additional human-in-the-loop, for example a caregiver. To date, much work has focused on either the reminding technology per-se or monitoring ad...

Contextual information within smart environments varies greatly. Whilst upper-level ontologies for contextual information relating to smart environments have been previously proposed, they have typically only been applicable to specific domains. As such, a wide range of entity names are used, overlooking other important relevant entities. This pape...

A dramatic shift in population ageing is taking place, which is subsequently leading to a rise in the prevalence of chronic conditions. COPD is one such condition that places a heavy burned on national Health Services. A healthier lifestyle can greatly reduce the speed of conditional decline in those with COPD and therefore provide a better quality...

In this paper we present a design, development and evaluation of a tool to facilitate the reminiscence of life-logged data intended for persons with dementia. Using off-the-shelf technologies such as a smartphone it is possible to effectively record and log a person's daily activates such as places visited and persons interacted with. We developed...

By 2030 it has been predicted that Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) will affect, on a global scale, over 64 million people and will be the third leading cause of death worldwide. This work discusses the development of a self-management system that records physiological and contextual information via a smartphone, a wrist worn accelerome...

GPS-enabled mobile devices can utilize location information to potentially provide a safer tracked environment allowing vulnerable people to continue with their daily activities, as much as possible. This paper presents the options for alert escalation. The aim is to provide a safety net, without triggering unnecessary alarms. The escalation proced...

There is growing interest in the development of ambient assisted living services to increase the quality of life of the increasing proportion of the older population. We report on the Night Optimised Care Technology for UseRs Needing Assisted Lifestyles project, which provides specialised night time support to people at early stages of dementia. Th...

A Multi Agent System that provides a (cared for) person, the subject, with assistance and support through an Ambient Assisted Living Flexible Interface (AALFI) during the day while complementing the night time assistance offered by NOCTURNAL with feedback assistance, is presented. It has been tailored to the subject’s requirements profile and takes...

Self-management is an approach to healthcare which aims to empower individuals to manage their own health conditions. This is of particular importance given the shifting demographics, increased prevalence of chronic conditions and financial austerity facing many countries. In this paper we present our current work on the development of a flexible,...

Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) is a neurodegenerative neurological condition categorized as an orphan disease and at present the primary treatment is managing symptoms. It leads to severe paralysis, resulting in the need for the patient to use assistive technologies to support them in their daily activities. When the condition is severe, mains...

A video electroencephalogram (EEG) is the gold standard test for the monitoring of long term epilepsy, differentiating types of epilepsy and investigations of non-epileptic seizures. The use of video EEG in current practice is significantly limited by cost and non-availability of resources, causing delays for patients. This development addresses wh...

A real-time activity monitoring system within an Android based smartphone is proposed and evaluated. Motion and motionless postures may be classified using principles of kinematical theory, which underpins hierarchical rule-based algorithms, based on accelerometer and orientation data. Falls detection was implemented by analyzing whether the postur...

Brain Computer Interface (BCI) technology offers potential for human augmentation in areas ranging from communication to home automation, leisure and gaming. This paper addresses ethical challenges associated with the wider scale deployment of BCI as an assistive technology by documenting issues associated with the development of non-invasive BCI t...

Feature selection is a key step for activity classification applications. Feature selection selects the most relevant features and considers how to use each of the selected features in the most suitable format. This paper proposes an efficient feature selection method that organizes multiple subsets of features in a multilayer, rather than utilizin...

In this paper we outline the design, development and evaluation of a smartphone based life-logging and social interaction reminder system intended for use by persons with dementia. By using a smartphone, the wearer's daily activities can be recorded in picture format, along with meta data providing activity levels and location data. In addition to...

The ability to communicate one’s intentions without speech or muscular engagement has been a topic of great scientific interest over the last 30 years.

In this paper, we look at how the early detection of health decline in those with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease can lead to earlier provision of intervention advice. Current tools to support the self-management of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease provide alerts only when a problem has been encountered. It is suggested that continuous m...

Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) aim to provide a mechanism by which individuals with severe forms of paralysis can communicate their wishes to others or gain control over devices in their environment. This paper describes the evaluation of an interface designed for use with BCI, which is dedicated to providing a flexible and extensible framework f...

Strategies to support people living with dementia are broad in scope, proposing both pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions as part of the care pathway. Assistive technologies form part of this offering as both stand-alone devices to support particular tasks and the more complex offering of the "smart home" to underpin ambient assist...

This fictional prototype appraises recent advances in the fields of intelligent glasses and brain computer interface technology to address possible impact on a more immersive style of teaching and learning. The former advance can be used to measure eye gaze and hence to assess whether a student is at least looking in the correct place and possibly...

Purpose: Technology could support the self-management of long-term health conditions such as chronic pain. This article describes an evaluation of SMART2, a personalised self-management system incorporating activity planning and review, feedback on behaviour- and acceptance-based therapeutic exercises. Method: The SMART2 system was evaluated ove...

A real-time fall detection system is proposed to distinguish various falls during daily activities. Falls are detected in two steps: first a hierarchical algorithm is used to classify the motion and motionless postures such as lying, sit-tilted, sit-upright, standing and walking; it then analyzes whether the current lying or sit-tilted postures are...

Brain Computer Interface (BCI) technology has been used successfully in neurophysiological research laboratories, but has had less success when used outside the laboratory and particularly for people with disability. The hybrid BCI approach offers the potential for a more robust solution, with potential better usability to promote greater acceptanc...

Science and design are two completely separated areas of expertise with their own specialists. Science analyses the existing world to create new knowledge, design uses existing knowledge to create a new world. This tunnel-vision mentality and narrow-minded approach is dangerous for problem solving, where a broad view on potential solutions is requi...

In this paper we present an Orientation Free Adaptive Step Detection (OFASD) algorithm for deployment in a smart phone for the purposes of physical activity monitoring. The OFASD algorithm detects individual steps and measures a user’s step counts using the smart phone’s in-built accelerometer. The algorithm considers both the variance of an indivi...

Purpose This paper describes the research underpinning the development and evaluation of a brain computer interface (BCI) system designed to be suitable for domestic use by people with acquired brain injury in order to facilitate control of their home environment. The purpose of the research is to develop a robust and user‐friendly BCI system which...

Demographic aging, as a result of people living for longer, has put an increased burden on health and social care provision across most of the economies of the developed and developing world. In order to cope with the greater numbers of older people, together with increasing prevalence of chronic diseases, governments are looking to new ways to pro...

Walking is often cited as the best form of activity for persons over the age of 60. In this paper we outline the development and evaluation of a smart garment system that aims to monitor the wearer's wellbeing and activity regimes during walking activities. Functional requirements were ascertained using a combination of questionnaires and two works...

With current advances in sensing technology, communication networks and software applications, the use of connected health technology within the home environment has become both more affordable and widespread. Nevertheless, the introduction of this new care paradigm has brought with it many challenges, with one of the most notable being assessing o...

Walking is cited as the best form of exercise for persons over the age of 60. In this paper we outline the development and evaluation of a smart garment system that is used to monitor the wellbeing of users in addition to their overall physical activity regimes. A technological solution has been produced offering the desired functionality and is de...

Technology has been adopted to mitigate adverse effects associated with aging. Ambient Assisted Living solutions provide user assistance and support which is potentially both efficient and effective. This paper describes initial evaluation results for a Multi-Agent system prototype that provides assistance and support during the day and night throu...

The health system in developed countries is facing a problem of scalability in order to accommodate the increased proportion of the elderly population. Scarce resources cannot be sustained unless innovative technology is considered to provide health care in a more effective way. The Smart Home provides pre- ventive and assistive technology to vu...

Brain Computer Interaction (BCI) has mainly been utilized for communication and control, but it may also find application as a channel for creative expression, as part of an entertainment package. In this paper we provide an initial investigation on how creativity can be supported and assessed. An art-based approach was adopted to investigate the e...

Physical activity, therapy and exercising are essential for the management of many chronic conditions. This is why human motion tracking for healthcare applications has received significant attention recently. In this chapter we describe the architecture in which we provide a person-centric healthcare solution for patients with chronic conditions b...

Altered activity patterns are often the general symptoms experienced by people with dementia. The quantity and quality of patient's daily activities such as their sleeping may be a reflection of their dementia condition and affect their quality of life. Monitoring patient's activity patterns over different periods of time may help healthcare profes...

Sleep disturbances are among the most distressing of all Alzheimer's disease-related symptoms, and may be a marker for early Alzheimer's disease in some cases. Assisted technologies have been applied in telecare services to provide care to people either in their own homes or in supported housing, via monitoring their activities, including sleep. In...

This section explores technology used to identify an individual in their environment, promote their safety and wellness at home and beyond and support rehabilitation. All three aspects need to be addressed if AAL is to flourish.

Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) solutions can potentially reduce the problems faced by vulnerable people living independently. Software for AAL solutions can be implemented using a Multi-Agent System. This can be both context and situational aware so that interventions offered may be specifically tailored to the individual and their environment. In p...

Computing systems comprise a surreptitious and intrinsic part of our daily life activities. Applications that support humans in daily life facilitate the development of the so-called Intelligent Environments. Like any technology Intelligent Environments can fail. This paper examines potential negative consequences of such systems if they are too na...

There is increasing interest in the development of ambient assisted living services to increase the quality of life of the increasing older population. Little consideration has been given to the specific problem of providing such services and systems at night. We report on the NOCTURNAL project which provides specialised night time support to peopl...

Multi-Agent Systems provide the software to analyse and understand the data emanating from sensor networks in support of Ambient Assisted Living. We report on the implementation of interfaces which are controlled and dynamically updated by such a multi-agent system. The system can respond to changes of context and tailor interventions and interacti...

Introduction: Self-management encourages a person with a long-term condition (LTC) to solve problems, take decisions, locate and useresources and take actions to manage their condition.Aims and objectives: The aim of this paper is to discover appropriate knowledge to facilitate the self-management paradigm. For use ina computing platform, such know...

Introduction: It is estimated that around 820,000 people in the UK have dementia. Telecare and assistive technology (AT) can support people with dementia living at home. Objectives: This research aims to monitor and study night time activity patterns of people with early dementia (PwD) at home using AT, to detect abnormal patterns and to investigat...

Location information can be useful to construct a profile of a person’s activities of daily living. This paper proposes an approach with the aim of improving the accuracy and robustness of a location recognition approach based on RFID technology. A method was introduced for the optimal deployment of an RFID reader network, which aims to minimize th...

In this paper, we consider two obstacles preventing widespread deployment of Brain Computer Interface (BCI) technology: the lack of standardization for the user interface and the applications interface. We suggest a structure for an intuitive graphical user interface (IGUI) and propose a methodology for usability testing. A universal application in...

A context-aware reminder framework, which aims to assist elderly people to live safely and independently within their own home, is described. It combines multiple contexts extracted from different modules such as activity monitoring, location detection, and predefined routine to monitor and analyze personal activities of daily living. Ontological m...

An ontology-based context-aware framework for behavior analysis and reminder delivery is described within this Chapter. Such a framework may be used to assist elderly persons maintain a healthy daily routine and help them to live safely and independently within their own home for longer periods of time. Behavior analysis associated with the deliver...

An activity monitoring and reminder delivery framework, referred to as iMessenger, is presented. iMessenger includes five independent modules and adopts a layered structure to assemble each of these modules: context sensing, context extraction, context management, context-aware reminders, and human–computer interactions. This paper presents the det...

Computing systems are now silently taking part in many of our daily life activities. Intelligent Environments refer to systems which are designed to support humans in daily life. Like any technology these one can fail too. This paper examines potential negative consequences of such systems if they are too naively developed and used and encourages d...

This paper investigates optimal model selection for posture recognition. Accuracy and computational time are related to the trained model in a supervised classification. An optimal model selection is important for a reliable activity monitoring system. Conventional guidance on model training uses large instances of randomly selected data in order t...

Adapting therapeutic practice from traditional face-to-face exchange to remote technology-based delivery presents challenges for the therapist, patient, and technical writer. This article documents the process of therapy adaptation and the resultant specification for the SMART2 project-a technology-based self-management system for assisting long-te...

Providing a usable domestic brain-computer interface (BCI) for persons with disabilities requires that the development team ensure ease of interaction for all the potential users. To do this for individuals with complex needs often requires that an approach is tailored to a specific user. However, in developing a domestic BCI it is necessary to con...

Ambient assisted living (AAL) services that provide support for people to remain in their homes are increasingly being used in healthcare systems around the world. Typically, these ambient assisted living services provide additional information though location-awareness, presence-awareness, and context-awareness capabilities, arising from the proli...

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology has been used in Intelligent Environments to track objects and people, but the technology is subject to reliability issues of sensor malfunction, sensor range, interference and location coverage. This paper discusses the optimal deployment for a fixed RFID reader network in an indoor environment with...

We describe the NOCTURNAL system which provides Ambient Assisted Living with a focus on night-time support. This paper explains the design principles, the technological infrastructure and the software intelligence which facilitates autonomous assistance in the form of therapeutic interventions.

Long-term chronic conditions pose a significant challenge in modern healthcare systems in terms of a reduction in quality of life and the increased costs associated with their management. The concept of self-management can help address these issues supported through the introduction of home based assistive and rehabilitation telecare technologies....

Sleep disturbances are among the most distressing of all Alzheimer's disease related symptoms. In some cases, however, the sleep disturbance may be a marker for early Alzheimer's disease. In this paper we present a sleep pattern detection and visualization system developed to support the monitoring of sleep patterns and assessment of sleep disturba...

In this paper, we explore the feasibility of integrating data gleaned from home-based sensors and information from self reporting to support the self-management of Chronic Heart Failure. Time spent sleeping, television usage and utility usage were recorded by sensor based technology within the home environment for one participant over a 30 day peri...

In this paper we investigate whether geometric features can potentially distinguish between classic lesions, occult lesions and areas of blood leakage in fundus fluorescein images. Initially 37 features were identified following consultation with ophthalmic graders. To test this concept, four test images, two classic and two occult, were analysed u...