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The purpose of this research is to analyze consumers’ post-purchase reviews of the Owlet Smart Sock (OSS) and investigate the factors influencing continued use and product recommendation.

The unified theory of acceptance and use of technology 2 and the privacy calculus model were used to focus both on technology and privacy aspects of OSS – a wearable technology product for baby monitoring. A sample of 450 online consumer review data was collected from Owletcare.com and Amazon.com. The data analysis was done by using NVivo 11.

Findings show that effort expectancy, price value and performance expectancy played the most striking role during adoption, continued future use and recommendation to others, whereas perceived privacy risk had the least importance.

Consumer empowerment through online reviews plays a crucial role in conveying their specific needs and desires to both manufacturers and other prospective consumers. The research is also expected to contribute research and development of technology-integrated products.

The research findings will provide valuable insights for manufacturers and retailers to understand consumers’ actual preferences and acceptance during the use of wearable technology.

This study extends research work on consumer use behavior by evaluating online reviews that provide them the opportunity to express their satisfaction and concerns. Insights from experience consumers’ reviews facilitate designers, developers and manufacturers to have a strategic focus during wearable technology development.

Wearables are gaining prominence in the health-care industry and their use is growing. The elderly and other patients can use these wearables to monitor their vitals at home and have them sent to their doctors for feedback. Many studies are being conducted to improve wearable health-care monitoring systems to obtain clinically relevant diagnoses. The accuracy of this system is limited by several challenges, such as motion artifacts (MA), power line interference, false detection and acquiring vitals using dry electrodes. This paper aims to focus on wearable health-care monitoring systems in the literature and provides the effect of MA on the wearable system. Also presents the problems faced while tracking the vitals of users.

MA is a major concern and certainly needs to be suppressed. An analysis of the causes and effects of MA on wearable monitoring systems is conducted. Also, a study from the literature on motion artifact detection and reduction is carried out and presented here. The benefits of a machine learning algorithm in a wearable monitoring system are also presented. Finally, distinct applications of the wearable monitoring system have been explored.

According to the study reduction of MA and multiple sensor data fusion increases the accuracy of wearable monitoring systems.

This study also presents the outlines of design modification of dry/non-contact electrodes to minimize the MA. Also, discussed few approaches to design an efficient wearable health-care monitoring system.

This paper aims to examine, through a focus on the practice of child caring, how three qualities of childhood preciousness, vulnerability and unpredictability, are nurtured by being brought together as rationales for product re-design, innovation and diversification. The new parent of today is confronted with a myriad of products that are designed to “safeguard”, “guide” and “monitor” the young child and ensure its well-being.

The paper draws on research into the organisation of encounter platforms that serve as communication forums for commercial practitioners and child carers, and includes insights derived from fieldwork and a cultural content analysis of the British retailer Mothercare, consumer exhibitions and brand–product websites.

After providing a brief outline of the research on which this paper draws, the author present three ways in which child safety is present in the market that caters for young children and their care. This is followed by a discussion of two case studies, which respectively expand on how vulnerability and unpredictability are nurtured in commercial narratives.

The author concludes by drawing out the implications of the risk-averse culture, which this creates.

Consumers' perceptions of product intelligence affect their willingness to accept smart offerings. This paper explores how people perceive various smart products based on their smartness profiles, composed of five distinct smartness facets. Additionally, the study investigates how these perceptions of product intelligence impact consumers' evaluation of factors that either promote or impede the adoption of smart products. These factors are examined as potential mediators in the adoption process. This paper aims to determine if the value-based adoption model can be applied to a broad range of smart service systems.

Consumers assessed one of 28 smart products in a scenario-based quantitative study. Multilevel structural equation modeling (SEM) is used to test the conceptual model, taking the nested data structure into account.

The findings show that product smartness essentially enhances usage intention via adoption drivers (enjoyment and usefulness) and reduces usage intention via adoption barriers (intrusiveness). In particular, the ability to interact in a humanlike manner increases the benefits consumers perceive, which in turn increases consumer acceptance. Only the smartness characteristic of awareness impairs usage intention, mediated by the perceived benefits of enjoyment and usefulness.

In contrast to previous research, which usually focuses on single smart products, this work examines a variety of different products, which allows for better transferability of the results to other smart offerings. Furthermore, prior research has mainly focused on single facets of product smartness or researched smartness on an aggregated level. By considering the consumer perception of each smartness facet, the authors gain deeper insights into the perceptual differences regarding product smartness and how this affects technology adoption via conflicting key acceptance drivers and barriers.

The purpose of this paper is to review the recent advancements in the development of wearable sensors which can continuously monitor critical medical, assess athletic activity, watch babies and serve industrial applications.

The paper presents an in-depth review of a number of developments in wearable sensing and monitoring technologies for medical, athletic and industrial applications. Researchers and companies around the world were contacted to discuss their direction and progress in this field of medical condition and industrial monitoring, as well as discussions with medical personnel on the perceived benefits of such technology.

Dramatic progress is being made in continuous monitoring of many important body functions that indicate critical medical conditions that can be life-threatening, contribute to blindness or access activity. In the industrial arena, wearable devices bring remote monitoring to a new level.

Doctors will be able to replace one-off tests with continuous monitoring that provides a much better continuous real-time “view” into the patient’s conditions. Wearable monitors will help provide much better medical care in the future. Industrial managers and others will be able to monitor and supervise remotely.

An expert insight into advancements in medical condition monitoring that replaces the one-time “finger prick” type testing only performed in the doctor’s office. It is also a look at how wearable monitoring is greatly improved and serving athletics, the industry and parents.

The purpose of this monograph is to present the first English translation of a unique French colonial report on women living under colonial rule in West Africa.

The issue begins with a discussion of the contribution this report makes to the history of social development policy in Africa, and how it serves the on‐going critique of colonisation. This is followed by the English translation of the original report held in the National Archives of Senegal. The translation is accompanied by explanatory notes, translator’s comments, a glossary of African and technical terms, and a bibliography.

The discussion highlights contemporary social development policies and practices which featured in identical or similar forms in French colonial social policy.

As the report demonstrates, access to basic education and improving maternal/infant health care have dominated the social development agenda for women in sub‐Saharan Africa for over a century, and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future in the Millennium Development Goals which define the international community’s agenda for social development to 2015. The parallels between colonial and post‐colonial social policies in Africa raise questions about the philosophical and cultural foundations of contemporary social development policy in Africa and the direction policy is following in the 21st century.

Though the discussion adopts a consciously postcolonial perspective, the report that follows presents a consciously colonial view of the “Other”. Given the parallels identified here between contemporary and colonial policy‐making, this can only add to the value of the document in exploring the values that underpin contemporary social development practice.

Expert knowledge is an important organisational resource, and organisations need to retain the knowledge learned by experience, which can be shared as part of inter-professional learning. In a healthcare context, radio-frequency identification (RFID) and ZigBee technologies can be used together, to provide real-time information for decision support and to create a secure and reliable smart hospital management information system (SHMIS) that allows the dynamic control of objects and transforms operational processes, while minimising any potential risks to patients and staff. Currently, the RFID technology in Saudi Arabia is being solely used for the monitoring of newborn infants, and some difficulties have been encountered during the different stages of tagging and monitoring. The current system in Medina Maternity and Children’s Hospital (MMCH) uses battery-powered active RFID tags, which are expensive and require routine maintenance. This study aims to discuss the way in which the MMCH in Medina, Saudi Arabia, could be transformed into an SHMIS.

The extraordinary growth of RFID and ZigBee technologies has made it possible to identify, locate and track objects in various environments in real time. The RFID technology is a non-contact identification technology that is cheap and reliable but has limited range in the case of passive tags. ZigBee has greater range and lower power consumption, giving more precise location of the object’s movements (0.6 m). Passive RFID when combined with ZigBee technology can be used to improve services provided by healthcare organisations through continuous data collection and supporting real-time decision-making, by applying expert knowledge of domain experts to data produced by communication from electronic and sensor technologies.

A prototype object-tracking system using RFID and ZigBee was developed to support the knowledge transformation for knowledge reasoning for decision support (KRDS), and the outcome of this research was validated with domain experts in hospitals in Saudi Arabia. Two feasibility case studies were conducted at MMCH in Saudi Arabia, to evaluate the proposed system. A survey was also conducted to address the requirements at MMCH, and the researcher adopted a range of strategy techniques, including interviews and meetings with staff, and the setting up of communities of practise (CoPs) at the target hospital.

This paper has investigated the transformation process of an automatic healthcare tracking and monitoring systems for the purpose of developing a smart system in Saudi hospitals. For the scope of the project, the prototype implementation was restricted to a laboratory environment, to demonstrate the proposed proof of concept. The next phase will include conducting a scale up of the system, with implementation and testing done in a real hospital environment.

This paper proposes a prototype application of an (SHMIS that allows the dynamic control of objects and transforms operational processes, while minimising any potential risks to patients and staff.

The purpose of this paper is to utilize McKenzie’s two-dimensional model of information practices to situate child feeding practices as complex, socially situated information practices. Further, the authors examined a host of contextual factors (financial, physical, and social) that enabled and constrained information practices within the tightly controlled environment that defines the lives of young parents (YPs).

Methods of investigation were ethnographic in nature and data collection methods included naturalistic observation and interviews in two communities in British Columbia, Canada over a period of several years. Data collection and analysis was ongoing. During the initial stages of data analysis, a conventional approach to content analysis was used to identify key concepts, preliminary themes, and illustrative examples. Working within the broader category of child feeding practices, the authors used a constant comparative process of directed content analysis to identify sub-themes, namely, distinct physical, social, and financial influences on child feeding practices.

The YPs in this study described negotiating breastfeeding, formula feeding, and the introduction of solid foods within a heavily surveilled atmosphere with different and conflicting levels of support and information. The findings demonstrated that active seeking by YPs was often discouraged by authorities, and more passive practices of information encountering and receipt of information from proxies were accepted and expected.

This study used McKenzie’s two-dimensional model to paint a richer picture of YPs’ information practices and their physical, geographical, financial, and social contexts.

These findings suggests that child feeding informational support should, rather than being prescriptive, take into account the complexities of YPs’ relationships and daily lives, as well as the social structures that shape their experiences as parents.

Child feeding practices are influenced by a host of physical, financial, and social factors, and are situated within familial and education environments, as well as broader social and policy discourses.

This research utilized McKenzie’s two-dimensional model of information practices with a sample of YPs. Evidence suggested that child feeding practices were informed by active seeking, active scanning, non-directed monitoring, and by proxy, but these manifested differently for YPs than for the older expectant mothers upon whom McKenzie’s original model was derived. Using ethnographic methods, the authors situated child feeding practices as complex information practices that are informed by conflicting information, physical, social, and financial factors and intensive parenting ideologies. This reinforces the need for information science researchers to understand contextual factors that influence practices.

Approaches for the systematic evaluation of nursing practice are outlined. Practical methods and steps in auditing care at ward and individual patient level are discussed. Standard‐setting at ward level is systematically described and examples given. Monitoring and measuring outcomes and individual patient unit (IPA) are also described.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the impact of internet of everything (IoE) on marketing analytics, the benefits and challenges it presents and the implications of its policy and legal framework.

Qualitative research methods are used across privacy statements and consumer social media data to determine factors of concern for business and consumers.

The qualitative analysis of privacy statements and consumer social media data unveils factors of concern that are common for businesses and consumers, such as user consent and data security, as well as problems specific to the IoE, including the use of mobile devices and various service providers. The study also shows a differentiation in the levels of information privacy concerns for marketing practice, the use of personal information, sharing information with third parties and consumer consent and agreement to critical terms.

Recommendations for policymakers, practitioners and researchers, especially concerning the need for more studies related to the issues of data security, information privacy and personal information are addressed.

There is a need to assess the potential implications that the use of marketing analytics in the IoE can have for marketing policy, governmental regulations and industry self-regulation. The purpose of this research is to perform an exploratory evaluation of the impact of IoE on marketing analytics, the benefits and challenges it presents and the implications of its policy and legal framework.