Project Topics
If you are interested in any of the following projects, please email Dr Patrick Pang (see the homepage for my email address) to discuss further. Please attach your recent academic results in your email.
Touch-based Book Exploration App
Software Development Project
You will need to build an app for lay-users to browse and explore books in a touch-based environment. This project consists of two parts. First of all, you will need to design a touch-based user interface (UI) for browsing books. We have data about books and would display similar books adjacent to each other, but we haven't known yet the best UI for this. Next, you will need to implement this design in a touch-based environment. You can choose either implement this as a web app (e.g. HTML+CSS+JavaScript), or an iPad app.
Classifying Weibo Tweets based on People’s Health Information Needs
Software Development Project
This will be a software development project for building a research tool. You would need to build a software to classify Chinese Weibo tweets into different categories. Firstly, you need to find out the health-related tweets from all tweets (about 10 millions). Then you have to put them into different categories (e.g. health facts, news, advertisements, and questions). A bit of knowledge about NLP and classification algorithms is needed. Also you need to be capable to read Chinese to work on this project.
Web App for Timetable Scheduling
Software Development Project
This project is to build a web-based user interface for a timetable scheduling library. There is an open-source library to arrange a timetable based on classroom, teacher and time constraints, but it is hard for lay-user to input such data. Your goal is to build a web app for entering the data for scheduling a timetable, so that a lay-user can perform the scheduling by themselves. You need to use Python and Django as the backend, however, we are open to any front-end technologies to make the interface professional.
Health Service Providers in the Participatory Health Era: Current Research and Future Opportunities
MIS/MIT Health Capstone Project
This project looks at how health services providers (such as hospitals and pathologists) use social media and online technologies to work with patients. It will be a systematic literature review to understand the current research, and then you will have to critically propose how we can use the technologies better. This is a conventional research-typed project which is suitable for MIS/MIT students in the Health specialisation.
Facilitators and Barriers of the Use of Consumer Research Portals
MIS/MIT Health Capstone Project
Consumer research portals are websites that allow consumers to engage with research, get informed about the latest research results, and allow them to express their interests to participate in research. While this is a powerful tool to connect consumers with researchers, there are factors that make people willing (and not willing) to use such portals. We will work with Musculoskeletal (MSK) Australia to identify these factors in this project. This project will run from December to late February. You will conduct a comprehensive literature review of the current development of consumer research portals and how people use them. In late January, you will assist with focus groups and interviews at MSK, which will collect consumers and patients’ views on the use of the portals. Finally, you will perform the qualitative data analysis and produce a report of findings.
The Use of Online Information in Parenting: Current Status and Future Opportunities
MIS/MIT Health Capstone Project
This project will explore how parents currently use online information for their parenting tasks. The findings can reflect the lack of such information and services missing from the healthcare system, and therefore provide opportunities for reforming health policies, provisioning new services and adopting technologies to improve parent’s wellbeing. This study will involve a systematic literature review to survey how and why parent use online information instead of other formal sources. Also you will need critically propose the possibilities for using technologies to address parents’ needs.