• Rural Digital Europe
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<span class="fontstyle01"><span>Smart city is a strategy of supporting new way of living using data that are collected from different types of electronic devices, analyzed and utilized to enable efficient resource usability and service optimization. Applications of various nature are elaborated in the smart cities, such as traffic planning applications, crowd monitoring, public health care, security, economy and urban planning. Thus, various requirements are needed to incorporate and facilitate efficient development of these applications in the smart city design. Accordingly, smart city can be distinguished via the requirements that support these applications. In this study, the requirements of smart city in relations to the involved applications and its influence on the smart city design are discussed. A list of smart city requirements is concluded and the potentials of various network architecture to facilitate such requirements are discussed. </span></span><span class="fontstyle01"><span>Based on the requirements and the architectures, the existing smart city designs are evaluated and compared. </span></span>

Numerous studies have reported the rapid increase in the number of individuals who use smartphones. However, smartphones appear to be increasingly used by healthcare workers, particularly physicians and nurses. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the readiness of medical doctors and patients with chronic conditions in using and adopting smartphones for communication. This study employs the Technology Acceptance Model to examine the behavior of people in using smartphones from the perspectives of trust and rural areas. To realize our objective, we conducted a questionnaire survey that involved medical doctors and patients with chronic conditions. Our particular focus was Al Qunfudhah City in Saudi Arabia. More than 200 questionnaires were distributed to people belonging to different healthcare sectors in the rural areas of Al Qunfudhah City. Our aim was to include every possible scenario and to obtain excellent perspectives. The results that we eventually analyzed indicated that trust factor and rural areas significantly influence the readiness of people belonging to the healthcare sector toward using smartphones. The results of our study concur with the findings of other studies. Our results indicate that smartphones and other high-technology gadgets are now necessary and accepted devices in the different healthcare fields. However, further studies should explore the challenges and effects of smartphone use in the healthcare sector.

Rural communities in developing countries, due to its geographical and demographic conditions, are faced with many challenges. One of the most pressing challenges which affect the life and welfare of citizens in these communities are health awareness and health services. It is essential to research efficient and cost effective methods to tackle these challenges and be appropriate for developing countries with limited resources. In this paper, we report our findings from implementing a number of ICT interventions to promote maternal-child health care status in rural areas of Jordan. Collected feedback demonstrates the benefits of such system in supporting government activities.