The definition of an adequate charging scheme for reservation-based multi-service networks and internetworks is one of the key factors destined to influence the wide use and deployment of these networks in the next decades. This paper presents some of the authors' ideas on this subject and is intended to be a framework on which future works in this area can be based. It comprises an approach to...

The process of applying for National Committee for Quality Assurance recognition as a Physician Practice Connections--Patient-Centered Medical Home (PPC-PCMH) can enrich even those practices already solidly committed to providing patient-centric care based on evidence-based medical guidelines. The goal is to leverage information technology to transform both operational and patient care procedur...

Rubber agroforests in the mostly deforested lowlands of Sumatra, Indonesia are threatened by conversion into monoculture rubber or oil palm plantations. We applied an agent-based model to explore the potential effectiveness of a payment for ecosystem services (PES) design through a biodiversity rich rubber eco-certification scheme. We integrated conditionality, where compliance with biodiversit...

The quality and availability of positional information (location, orientation) is a key resource that strongly influences the way in which ambient services can be provided to nomadic users. In this article, we propose a number of mechanisms that tackle resource restrictions related to positional information on two levels, the application level and the positioning level. We introduce a generic m...

Location based services (LBS) are a specific instance of a broader class of Internet services that are predicted to become popular in a near future: context-aware services. The privacy concerns that LBS have raised are likely to become even more serious when several context data, other than location and time, are sent to service providers as part of an Internet request. This paper provides a cl...

Location-based services, such as finding the nearest gas station, require users to supply their location information. However, a user’s location can be tracked without her consent or knowledge. Lowering the spatial and temporal resolution of location data sent to the server has been proposed as a solution. Although this technique is effective in protecting privacy, it may be overkill and the qu...

In online services, making anonymous transactions is a crucial need in order to ensure the user’s trust towards a particular service. In this context, anonymity quantification is required to provide at which level the e-service respects the user privacy regarding the link between his/her identity and actions. Most of the existing researches are limited to the anonymity quantification in a stati...

Today, many industries are coined by fundamental and sustainable environmental changes. Firms have to adapt their strategies, organizational structures and processes to the new environmental conditions continuously. In this context, researches depict that so called dynamic capabilities of firms may become a source of competitive advantage. This contribution shows that social responsible actions...

Coordination in healthcare networks becomes increasingly important to enable integrated care scenarios, to enhance patient satisfaction and to reduce costs of the treatment processes. A process-oriented approach for coordination in healthcare networks is introduced. It shows how interorganizational treatment processes can be supported by the concept of process-based e-service-logistics. The all...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE Although trials continue to emerge supporting the role of telerehabilitation, implementation has been slow. Key users include older people living with disabilities who are frequent users of hospital rehabilitation services but whose voices are rarely heard. It is unclear whether the use of technologies and reduced face-to-face contact is acceptable to these people. We r...