Suzana Brown

State University of New York | SUNY · DTS

Data collection in resource-constrained environments, particularly in the Global South, is challenging for a variety of philosophical, theoretical, methodological, and ethical reasons. Challenges may involve using research approaches designed in the Global North that are not appropriate when using data from the social and cultural contexts in the G...

Collecting relevant and appropriate data when conducting research in the Global South and other resource-constrained environments can be challenging. This is particularly true when the researcher originates from a different country and has different social, cultural, and political beliefs to the research participants. Data collection in such contex...

To better understand the mobility needs of Rohingya refugees with physical disabilities, specifically lower limb impairments, members of the Mobility Aid project team visited Rohingya refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Interviews and gait analyses with 14 participants were conducted over a three-week period in September 2021. Interviews cove...

Examining disability within the context of displacement is a vital area of study. Additionally, further study of assistive technology devices for refugees with disabilities and those in low-resource settings presents the opportunity to dramatically improve the safety and medical welfare of people with disabilities. Mobility Aid project is a pilot s...

This article explores how after almost two years of government-imposed work from home (WFH) for the purpose of curbing the spread of COVID-19, South Korean managers’ general attitudes towards WFH may have been reconstructed and if this change influenced their expectations that WFH would persist for the long run. Before COVID-19, WFH was rare, and t...

Artificial intelligence is becoming more widely available in all parts of the world. This has created many previously unforeseen possibilities for addressing the challenges outlined in the Sustainable Development Goals in the Global South. However, the use of AI in such contexts brings with it a unique set of risks and challenges. Among these are t...

Using a case study structure, this research-in-progress paper elaborates the struggles of working on a humanitarian project during the Covid-19 period. The authors identify six specific challenges and propose innovations to address each of these challenges. The challenges are the following: supply chain, design of solutions, human resource developm...

It is widely claimed that information and communications technology (ICT) enables entrepreneurship among refugees. However, the specific impact ICT has on refugee entrepreneurship is not fully understood. This study addresses the research gap by investigating the role ICT plays in enabling entrepreneurial activities among refugees in the Dzaleka re...

Artificial intelligence is becoming more widely available in all parts of the world. This has created many previously unforeseen possibilities for addressing the challenges outlined in the Sustainable Development Goals in the Global South. However, the use of AI in such contexts brings with it a unique set of risks and challenges. Among these are t...

Enhancing gait stability in people who use crutches is paramount for their health. With the significant difference in gait compared to users who do not require an assistive device, the use of standard gait analysis tools to measure movement for temporary crush users and physically disabled people proves to be more challenging. In this paper, a nove...

The goal of this project is to remotely analyze the gait of people walking with crutches. To that objective, the use of video analysis based on the open-source software OpenPose is compared with the data collected from a sensor mounted on a human subject. The results show that the average value of acceleration between the video analysis and the sen...

This paper examines business entrepreneurship in the Dzaleka refugee camp in Malawi. In particular, the research seeks to discover the underlying causal mechanisms that both enable and restrain entrepreneurship in this context. We leverage a critical realist-based philosophical research approach and methodology to hypothesize these causal mechanism...

This paper aims to investigate whether ICT technologies can have an enabling impact by creating opportunities for self-reliance and self-employment for refugees while they rebuild their lives. In the process, we explore the challenges refugee entrepreneurs in Dzaleka refugee camp in Malawi face. Drawing on 25 structured interviews with successful r...

The goal of this project is to remotely analyze the gait of people walking with crutches. To that objective, the use of video analysis based on the open-source software OpenPose is compared with the data collected from a sensor mounted on a human subject. The results show that the average value of acceleration between the video analysis and the sen...

The goal of this project is to analyze the gait of people walking with crutches remotely. To that objective, the use of video analysis based on the open-source software OpenPose is compared with the data collected from a sensor mounted on a human subject. The results show that the average value of acceleration between the video analysis and the sen...

This research explores whether addictions around mobile phones should be treated more as a physiological or a psychological problem. A new survey about mobile addiction and time use (MATU), constructed from several studies, tests to what degree time use on mobile phones (a physiological cause) is correlated with four behavioral factors predicting p...

The integrated coordination of the components of the lower urinary tract is mediated by the complex neuromodulatory system of the brain, spinal cord, and peripheral ganglia. Therefore, the central nervous system plays a crucial role in the storage and output of urine. The purpose of this review article is to present the key aspects of the structure...

This study aims to address the need for improving low-tech and low-cost assistive technology for the population in low and middle-income countries and bridge an assistive technology access divide. In general, the assistive technology industry is extremely specialized and typically designed for high-income settings. This can be inferred from the var...

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that a small enhancement in a low-tech assistive device can potentially have a significant impact in low-income countries. The motivation for addressing this problem is the atrocious state of the disabled population in low and middle-income countries. Assistive devices can help ease the burden for many. H...

The goal of this paper is to identify existing literature in the field that encompasses one contemporary crisis and one prevailing developmental implement: refugees, and the use of ICT in the development arena. A total of 35 research studies were identified that address these two topics. In the process, several main themes that dominate the field a...

In this study, the pattern of depressive mood in patients following radical prostatectomy (RP) for localized prostate cancer (PCa) was determined. A total of 30 patients (aged 68.03±6.1 years) who were diagnosed with localized PCa and underwent RP within 1 month entered the study. Evaluations included body mass index, prostate-specific antigen, tes...

Beck depression inventory (BDI) subscales according to their characteristics

Remote areas with sparse population, disaster areas in the aftermath, and refugee camps all require communication that is not forthcoming from commercial vendors. Numerous communication system options are available, but with widely varying cost and efficacy. The goal of this work is to discuss a framework in which to consider appropriate telecommun...

In this paper, we test two forecasting models, Fisher- Pry and Gompertz, to predict IoT maturity level, and find that Fisher-Pry is the most suitable model. We also compare the maturity level across 5 top countries in IoT technology and discover that China is the driving force of IoT technology development with the most number of patents filings an...

Information Ecology represents a system of people, values, and technologies in a specific local environment. What makes Information Ecology different is that the spotlight is not on the technology but on human activities that are served by technology. As such it could be a powerful lens for understanding, evaluating, and eventually guiding South-So...

This work presents results from a project using smart phones as a data collection tool for medical record keeping in low-resource settings. Those devices were used to collect medical data and store it as an Electronic Health Record (EHR). Background: In community care, EHR could be a bridge from untrained Community Health Workers (CHWs) to healthca...

This paper explores the opportunity of a cooperation and knowledge sharing among the two developing yet promising countries, Bangladesh and Rwanda. Using our own comparative framework and field research data, we critically analyze two specific ICT infused community health services in Bangladesh and Rwanda, and explore whether, under a common compar...

Objectives We evaluate and compare manually collected paper records against electronic records for monitoring the weights of children under the age of 5. Setting Data were collected by 24 community health workers (CHWs) in 2 Rwandan communities, 1 urban and 1 rural. Participants The same CHWs collected paper and electronic records. Paper data conta...

The term 'mHealth' refers to the various ways mobile devices are being used to facilitate health services. In limited-resource settings mHealth could be the only way to offer services that would otherwise be unavailable. We postulate that adding patient consultation from a distance, using mobile technology for triage, remote diagnostics, and other...

Given the enormous reach of mobile devices and other modern communication, mHealth significantly expands access to healthcare to more people. In developing countries where the health sector experiences serious shortages, mHealth could be the only way to offer services otherwise unavailable. In developed countries the cost of healthcare is climbing...

Mobile phones are becoming a new platform to offer health services throughout the world, particularly in developing countries where the health sector experiences serious shortages. Diabetes is a metabolic disorder that refers to the condition created by the body's inability to regulate glucose levels. It has been labeled the "silent epidemic" for i...

SMS has the potential to support time-sensitive applications that provide access to information and services in developing countries. In this paper we present a series of tests of SMS air interface delay in strong and weak signal environments. We initially establish time delay baselines for three different sizes of SMS messages. Comparing different...

Diabetes is a metabolic disorder that refers to the condition created by the body's inability to regulate glucose levels. It has been labelled the 'silent epidemic' for its insidious and chronic nature. The medical profession has postulated that patients could benefit from a system providing continuous glucose readings. All over the worldparticular...