Latest articles in english

• Detailed presentation of the AUTOMATE project

  3 January 2005, by Myriam Le Goff-Pronost

  The emergence of a large number of initiatives related to e-healthcare has marked the last years, especially with the implementation of specialized information networks (cancer, diabetes, cardiology, ...) or multidisciplinary information networks. However the real way these networks work and their socioeconomic repercussions (on the quality of life and the wellbeing of the patient in particular) have not been the subject of systematic analysises yet.

  This project therefore aims to put forward a group of indicators and methods to assess the use of health informatics (statistical, sociological and economical assessments), and this, based on a particular study of the shared medical file. This will eventually lead to recommendations improving the comfort of the patients, to a better sharing of the information and of the knowledge among the healthcare professionnals and to the reduction of the costs of these networks.

• Detailed presentation of the MAC project: the use of mobile phones in a professional context.

  2 January 2005, by Annie Blandin-Obernesser

  Based on a bi-disciplinary approach (sociology and law), the project aims at studying the uses of mobile phone in a professional context (among the executives) and in a familial context (relations between the generations) in order to determine how the new dialectic of autonomy and control is linked up and to identify the juridical evolutions required.

• Public service information. The project.

  18 December 2004, by Bertrand Cabedoche, Denis Ruellan

  This study deals with the public service information offer in Brittany using electronic media.

  This particular piece of information had several characteristics:

  – it is not necessarily due to an investigative process about what could be hidden (unlike the conception inspired by the usefulness of the “fourth estate” in democracy);

  – it is not produced only by professional journalists;

  – the main organised forces in the society are not only the people addressed but also the sources and the mediators (implying a circular and not linear scheme);

  – it coexists and adds further to the other kind of information;

  ► it can be conveyed by non-market media, especially the free ones; it is on any support, but mainly under electronic forms and the media.

  This information is increasingly offered by the public authorities and in particular by city councils.

• Final report on the e-commerce project and structure of the websites.

  13 September 2004, by Nicolas Guéguen, Thierry Pénard

  This project is divided into two parts:

  – first a study on the conditions of use of the Internet in Brittany: who are and aren’t the Net surfers, with the idea to bring a scientific clarification on what is called the « the digital divide »;

  – then, and concerning the Net surfers, we wanted to focus on a type of use, undoubtedly the most important in term of economic development: the use of Web sites, while considering the way to keep the visitor’s attention on a web site.

• Evaluation of the PAPI’s public policies: results of phase 2

  13 September 2004, by Myriam Le Goff-Pronost

  To give all the Breton people, whatever their ages, their activities and their cities of residence, the opportunity to get familiar with the information technologies, and so within 20 km from their homes, so was the intention of the Breton region when the project to public access points to the Internet (PAPI) was launched in 1998. The goal of this project was to open public spaces in 381 towns or communities of towns in which the access to multimedia tools such as PCs, Mac, printers, scanners, CD-Rom and to Internet is offered. Since the beginning of the project, more and more citizens have been frequenting multimedia spaces and got attached to their spaces and hosts. Public access points to the Internet are now part of the Breton landscape.

  However, such a success implies other issues: are these spaces used the way it was expected? Do they have any social utility? Is the use of e-towns linked with the development of the Internet in Brittany? Why are new technologies rather used in public spaces than at home? Eventually, as far as regional development is concerned, does the familiarization still have to be while the goal is reached? This last question also leads us to consider a possible continuation of the “e-town” operation. Those few issues are attempted to be solved through the second phase.

• [Rapport] Results of the project ergonomics of reading

  13 September 2004, by Nicolas Guéguen, Yannis Haralambous

  This questioning raises research issues in the fields of cognition, psychosensory analysis, digital documents structure and presentation, competitive environments in the value chain and distribution of written documents. We have followed two research dimensions, corresponding with the two teams having brought to fruition the project:

  characterization of the action of page turning in a traditional book which will serve as basis for the implementation of automated page turning (ENST Bretagne, more precisely: Frédéric Miras’ thesis),

  concerning interaction between men and machine, the definition of critical points in the interaction with an electronic book through a functional analysis of traditional and electronic books (GRESICO).

  These two dimensions converge towards a specification of the intelligent and user-friendly e-book, whose functionalities, if not its architecture, we already suggest establishing.