Medical devices design challenges

Assignment on medical devices design challenges

This assignment is an individual research project that requires a demonstration of the knowledge and skills acquired in by solving research problems related to human-computer interaction. This assignment builds on the literature review from Assignment 1 and the research problem formulated in the scope of that assignment.

 

Timeline

You need to send the complete research methodology of your project to your course instructor for review. A complete description of what to include in your research paper (including what to put into your research methodology) is provided below. Please note that your research methodology must be 0.5 long. Your methodology should provide information such as a description of the steps you have taken so far, the problems you have faced, and the steps you have to take to address these problems.

You must also explain any further problems you anticipate, such as the availability of research tools and instruments; however, you cannot use the lack of availability of tools as an excuse not to complete the project. You need to realistically estimate the tools that can be used in your project, and set up a research environment in which you can complete the activities of your research project within the time allowed for this assignment.

 

Medical devices design challenges Problem Formulation

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The problem formulation needs to be fully based on the research literature review from Assignment 1. Please note that formulating a research problem does not involve taking a standard technique and applying it to a company’s problem. That would be an exercise of a certain technique or standard, suitable for undergraduate education or professional certification, but it is not research. Your formulation needs to be fully grounded in the research problems reported in previously published peer-reviewed publications, and covered in your Assignment 1paper. Of course, the problem can also be formulated on your own by evaluating the solutions presented in the literature, articulating the present research challenges, and describing the research goals.

Please bear in mind that your research problem needs to be focused and properly narrowed down to be achievable within the time allowed for Assignment 2.While formulating the problem, you should keep in mind the technology you will need. Moreover, you also need to know how you are going to evaluate your proposal. The best way to do this is to check how other research papers from the literature evaluated their solutions, and explore whether those techniques will be suitable for your problem. Finally, you need to plan how you are going to compare the contribution of your project to the present body of research knowledge in the area you are researching (i.e., compare your work to related solutions from your literature review in Assignment 1) and explain the novelty of your work.

Elements of the Medical devices design challenges Research Project

 

With the methodology of your problem defined, you will have to start conducting the research that will address the problem under study. The following components must be included to fully address the research problem.

  1. Define the research approach proposed by your project. This research approach should explain the main research challenges in the research problem under study. Having those issues precisely defined, you need to provide a detailed explanation of the research approach you are going to take, including:
    1. The set of methodological steps that are going to be taken in your project. For each step, explain why it is needed, how it contributes to the proposed solution by addressing the defined problem, what alternatives are possible for that particular step, and why it was selected.
    2. The artifacts and/or research instruments (e.g., questionnaires, interviews, etc.) to be produced for each methodological step. If your project needs ethics approval (e.g., if it includes human subjects), you will need to write an ethics application. To get an idea of how to write an ethics application, you are encouraged to visit:
    3. An evaluation framework to be used in your approach, and the reasons why that evaluation is suitable for your problem.
  2. Describe the activities you undertook in each of the research steps in the previous bulleted points. This means that you need to explain each of those steps in detail, and completely explain your approach. Include the following elements for each component of your research approach.
    1. Define each of the components of the proposed solution to the studied problem.
    2. Describe the framework used for data collection including, for example, field study.
    3. Describe the evaluation framework along with all metrics used for evaluation, and explain the processing strategy for the data collected in 2b. It is imperative that, as a part of the evaluation process, at least some method involving human subjects is performed. The techniques preferred for this purpose are introduced in Articles below:

 

  1. Geertz. “Thick description: Toward an interpretive theory of culture,” inInterpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays.New York, NY: Basic Books, 1973, pp. 3-30. Option 1: http://www.ics.uci.edu/~corps/phaseii/Geertz-ThickDescription.pdfAlternative: http://www.wcas.northwestern.edu/projects/globalization/secure/articles/geertz1.htm
  2. Randall and M. Rouncefield. “Introduction: The theory and practice of fieldwork for systems development,” in CSCW2006 Tutorial: Supplementary Notes: Fieldwork for Design. Available from: http://archive.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/STSE-Handbook/Other/MakingEthnoAccessible/CSCW2006Tut.pdf.
  3. Dourish. “Responsibilities and implications: Further thoughts on ethnography and design,” in Proceedings of the 2007 Conference on Designing for User Experiences (DUX ’07). Available from the ACM Web site: http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1389941,2007 [March 30, 2011].

 

You will also need to explain, in detail, how your solution performed (e.g., using diagrams); critically analyze its pros and cons; and formulate research questions for future work.

 

  1. Compare your proposed solution (and the results you obtained from your evaluation) to other relevant research results in the area, building on your literature review from Assignment 1. Compare the research contributions of your proposal to the research solutions available in the peer-reviewed research literature. This could, for example, be a tabular comparison of your proposal with other solutions (e.g., where rows are different approaches and columns are features/characteristics of the problem being studied for each of the features analyzed). This needs to be done in a methodological way. No one expects that any paper will be a breakthrough and superior to all other solutions in all possible aspects, but you must demonstrate some improvements in certain aspects, even if some of the solutions from the literature are superior to your own in some respects. Objectivity is the key to any successful research project!
  2. Conclude with a summary of your research methodology, the research results you obtained, an explanation of how your proposal can be applied, and a description of the open research challenges and activities to be done in future work (e.g., by comparing your work to the literature (#3), and evaluating the results (#2)).

 

Medical devices design challenges research paper

Each paper must be formatted using the ACM SIG Proceedings template. The final paper must be 7 full pages in length, with a half a page margin of error. The paper must have

all the descriptors typical of a research paper

including title,

category and subject descriptors,

general terms, and keywords. The paper must contain the following elements (these also can be used as headings for the sections of the paper):

  1. Abstract – cannot be longer than 150 words. The abstract answers the following questions: What is the problem under study? Are there other relevant solutions, and what do they fail to address (i.e., what is the motivation to study this problem)? What is your proposed solution to the problem under study? How did you evaluate the proposed solution? What are the observed results and contributions of your paper?
  2. Introduction – the abstract, introduction, and other descriptors of the paper (e.g., author’s name, address, etc.) should not be longer than 1 page. The introduction expands on the abstract, and provides a detailed introduction to the problem under study. This section builds on the problem formulation from Assignment 1, but now makes sure to also answer to all the questions from the abstract (of course, they are now elaborated in much greater detail).
  3. Background – typically 1 pagein length. The background introduces the basic concepts needed for the target group to properly understand the proposed solution. However, this section should not introduce basic well-known concepts; it should introduce a specific technique, metric, formal method, and/or a class of solutions in the particular area of the problem being studied. Feel free to repurpose or reuse parts of your review paper from Assignment 1for this section.
  4. Methodology – typically 5 pagesin length. The methodology explains the elements of the proposed approach, as per item 1 of ‘Elements of the Research Project.’
  5. Details of the Proposed Solution – typically 2 pagesin length. These details explain the proposed approach, as per items 2a and 2b of ‘Elements of the Research Project.’
  6. Evaluation – typically 5 pagesin length. This section explains the results of the evaluation, as per item 2c of ‘Elements of the Research Project.’
  7. Related Work – typically 5 pagesin length. This section is used to compare your project with related research, as per item 3 of ‘Elements of the Research Project.’ You are more than welcome to reuse parts of your literature review, but you must compare them to your own contributions and the results you obtained through your evaluation.
  8. Conclusion – the conclusion and the Literature Cited are typically 1 pagein length. This section concludes the paper, as per item 4 of the ‘Elements of the Research Project.’
Medical devices design challenges quoting

Should you need to use part of someone else’s work (e.g., sentences or paragraphs), it is a matter of a good ethical practice to both quote the information used, and cite the source of the quoted material. However, you are ONLY allowed to quote the definitions of key concepts for the topic of your paper. No more than five such definition quotes are allowed per paper, provided that each definition is up to a sentence long, and no more than 15-20 words per sentence.

Do not quote whole paragraphs that are not definitions. The purpose of this course is to help students further develop/improve critical discussion, synthesis, and research skills. By quoting someone else’s critical discussion or comments, you only demonstrate the ability to locate the proper literature; there is no evidence of the critical discussion, synthesis, or advanced research skills that are expected at the graduate level of education.

 

Medical devices design challenges format

Each paper must be formatted using the ACM SIG Proceedings template (if you prefer to use LaTeX, please use Option 1: ‘Strict’ style). For example, take a look at this paper:

  1. König, N. Lohmann, S. Moser, C. Stahl, and K. Wolf. “Extending the compatibility notion for abstract WS-BPEL processes,” in Proceeding of the 17th International Conference on World Wide Web (Beijing, China, April 21 – 25, 2008). New York, NY: ACM Press, 2008, pp. 785-794. Available: http://0-dl.acm.org.aupac.lib.athabascau.ca/citation.cfm?id=1367497.1367603&coll=DL&dl=ACM&CFID=541190212&CFTOKEN=21622127[March 30, 2011].

The formatting of your paper must look exactly like the formatting of the paper above. This includes elements such as the title, names, affiliation, headings, paragraphs, figure captions, references, and spacing. Any deviations from this formatting style may lead to deductions from your mark.

The final paper must be 5 full pages, with an additional margin of error of half a page. This paper length includes title, name of author, the text, references, and any other required material. Papers longer than six pages will not be considered in the review process, and will automatically receive a grade of 0%. Shorter papers will be reduced by 20% for each page less than five (i.e., a three page paper will automatically lose 40%).

WRITING YOUR REVIEW PAPER

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Each paper must include the following components.

  • Title
  • Abstract
  • Category and Subject Descriptors
  • General Terms
  • Keywords
  • Introduction
  • Research Problem Formulation
  • Conclusion
  • References

Each paper must also include a number of sections between the Introduction and Research Problem Formulation, where you will analyze the topic of your review. Use the following list as a guide to writing this part of your paper.

  • An overview of the major challenge(s) faced in this area of research.
  • A review of the approaches used in the past to overcome these challenges.
    • For each approach: discuss the problem(s) it addresses, how it is used as a solution, its current status and the results of this approach, and any unresolved problems.
  • A summary of the status of the field.
  • A description of the challenges for future research.
  • The formulation of the research problem to be addressed in TMA 4.

You are advised to consider the following articles, as they clearly explain how a research paper should be written.

  1. Milutinovic. “The best method for presentation of research results.” IEEE TCCA Newsletter, pp. 1-6, Sept. 1996. http://poincare.matf.bg.ac.rs/~stasa/OUPR/The%20Best%20Methods.pdf.
  2. Shaw. “Writing good software engineering research papers: Minitutorial,” in Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Software Engineering. Los Alamitos, CA: Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, 2003, pp. 726-736. Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ICSE.2003.1201262[March 30, 2011].
  3. Widom. “Tips for writing technical papers.” Internet: http://infolab.stanford.edu/~widom/paper-writing.html. Available from the Stanford University Web site: http://infolab.stanford.edu/~widom/, Jan. 27, 2006 [March 30, 2011].
  4. Levin and D.D. Redell. “How (and how not) to write a good systems paper [Electronic version].” ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review, vol. 17(3), pp. 35-40, 1983. https://www.usenix.org/conferences/author-resources/how-and-how-not-write-good-systems-paper.

The Literature Reviewed

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Your review must cite 8-18 peer-reviewed articles. Every article you use must appear in the reference section, and be formatted according to the ACM SIG Proceedings template. A paper must not appear in the reference section if it is not explicitly cited in the main body of the paper. Remember that citations are not permitted in the abstract. Your description of the approaches used in the literature should primarily be from peer-reviewed research papers published since 2004 (i.e., from 2004 until present); although, citing older references may be necessary to strengthen some of your arguments.

Depending on the topic of your paper, you may need to refer to publications (journals and conference proceedings) that are listed in the Study Guide, or other publications that you have found to be relevant to your topic. Non-peer-reviewed publications (e.g., technical news and popular articles) can be cited once or twice, but they should not be considered a reliable or objective source of information.

Non-peer-reviewed publications should only be used for specific purposes (e.g., to demonstrate that a particular human-computer interaction technology has attracted the attention of an industry that might adopt it in the near future). Similarly, you can only cite up to two books or book chapters. Up to 20% of your references can be taken from the list of Required Readings and the rest must be peer-reviewed papers that you have found on your own.

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