Browsing by Author "Karunarathne, D."

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    Cultural beliefs and practices of Sri Lankan public as experienced by clinicians
    (Sri Lanka Medical Association, 2017) Chandratilake, M.; Jayarathne, Y.G.S.W.; Karunarathne, D.
    INTRODUCTION & OBJECTIVES: Sri Lankan society is culturally diverse. Cultural beliefs and practices impact heavily on health seeking behaviour of the public, their compliance with treatment and the ultimate health outcome. The aim of this study was to explore the cultural practices of the Sri Lankan public as experienced by clinicians. METHODS: The topic warranted a qualitative design. Individual face-to-face interviews were conducted with 30 clinicians, who represented a range of specialties and subspecialties, and worked in teaching hospitals at Ragama and Anuradhapura. They were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. The transcripts were thematically analysed using Richie and Spencer framework. RESULTS: Key aspects (themes) of cultural practices among the public were identified. Although they are not exclusive the origin of healthcare-related cultural practices included religious beliefs and societal norms in the community one lives in, personal experiences and traditional medicine. Cultural issues originating from all the above sources were observed across specialties and subspecialties. The existence of beliefs and practices has been influenced by personal conviction, the family and society. The cultural beliefs and practices are related to nutrition, physiological events and disease conditions, which include the origin, the manifestations and the prevention of such diseases. The response of clinicians toward such beliefs and practices appeared to be passive or negative. CONCLUSION: The origin of cultural beliefs appears to be the community. The collectivist nature of Sri Lankan culture appears to facilitate their existence. Cultural beliefs and practices affect both health and disease which could be dealt with more positively by clinicians for a better patient outcome.
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    Improving geospatial data discovery by enhancing public metadata catalog search services
    (University of Kelaniya, 2011) Careem, M.; Karunarathne, D.
    The increase in the number of readily accessible Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and web mapping Application Programming Interfaces (APIs), coupled with the increasing importance of spatial data in many domains has shifted the focus towards the searchability of the appropriate regional geospatial data. The growth in geospatial data has resulted in a large number of public geospatial data sources which have to be searched and filtered in order to obtain data that is relevant, accurate and up-to-date. In short, people from various backgrounds without technical knowledge in Geographical Information Systems (GIS) should be able to easily find, integrate and utilize spatial data as and when required. Most public geospatial data is served via standard compliant Web Mapping Servers and Web Feature Servers available globally. However, it is quite complicated to search for and locate the relevant data if the exact data source name and other parameters are unknown. Catalog servers, which store metadata and search protocols, provide a standard way to handle this problem. However, due to a shortage of meaningful metadata stored on the web, functionality provided by the catalog servers are limited to ad-hoc geospatial data discovery. This paper looks at the advantages of catalog servers for ad-hoc geospatial data discovery and the limitations when searching geospatial data, using Web Mapping Servers and Web Feature servers and search engines such as Google; and presents a case for the need for enhancing the existing capabilities of catalog servers. It then looks at a novel way of building metadata from existing Web Mapping Servers which could lead to a sufficient collection of metadata elements in catalog servers, thus leading the way to better and more efficient Geospatial Data Discovery. Finally, it looks at the ways „laymen‟ users can use catalog clients to search for the required geospatial data easily.