Digital Economy and Innovative Practices in Healthcare Services

Author(s):  
Riccardo Spinelli ◽  
Clara Benevolo

In this chapter, the authors analyze the impact of the new ICT-driven economic paradigm—the digital economy—on healthcare services. The increasing adoption of ICT in healthcare has been very fruitful and has led to the innovative approach to healthcare practice commonly known as e-health. Here the authors first propose a framework, consisting of six elements, whose mutual interaction outlines the structure and the dynamics of the digital economy. Then, a classification scheme of services is presented, which considers their characteristics and their delivery modes; this scheme supports understanding the way in which the adoption of ICT impacts healthcare services. Finally, an overall explanatory outline is constructed that allows one to analyze and understand the origins, implications, and future perspectives of the changes that ICT has brought to healthcare services. Examples of e-health applications are traced back to the building blocks of the framework, isolating the impact of each driver on their structure, configuration, and delivery modes.

F1000Research ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Roberts ◽  
Anna Middleton

The first human genome project, completed in 2003, uncovered the genetic building blocks of humankind. Painstakingly cataloguing the basic constituents of our DNA (‘genome sequencing’) took ten years, over three billion dollars and was a multinational collaboration. Since then, our ability to sequence genomes has been finessed so much that by 2017 it is possible to explore the 20,000 or so human genes for under £1000, in a matter of days. Such testing offers clues to our past, present and future health, as well as information about how we respond to medications so that truly ‘personalised medicine’ is now a reality.   The impact of such a ‘genomic era’ is likely to have some level of impact on all of us, even if we are not directly using healthcare services ourselves. We explore how advancements in genetics are likely to be experienced by people, as patients, consumers and citizens; and urge policy makers to take stock of the pervasive nature of the technology as well as the human response to it.


Author(s):  
Riccardo Spinelli ◽  
Clara Benevolo

The increasing adoption of ICT – and especially Internet-based technologies – in healthcare has been very fruitful and has led to the innovative approach to healthcare practice commonly known as e-health. However, the boundaries of this new approach to healthcare are not clear, as it is reflected by the various properties and taxonomies of e-health applications which have been proposed. In this chapter, we first review the definition of e-health and the main taxonomies for its constituents. Then we propose an original taxonomy for e-health applications, based on the structural features of the delivery system of the services which are digitalized: the need for a physical interaction between the subjects involved in the service provisioning and the possibility of delivering the services through Internet-based technology.


F1000Research ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Roberts ◽  
Anna Middleton

The first human genome project, completed in 2003, uncovered the genetic building blocks of humankind. Painstakingly cataloguing the basic constituents of our DNA (‘genome sequencing’) took ten years, over three billion dollars and was a multinational collaboration. Since then, our ability to sequence genomes has been finessed so much that by 2018 it is possible to explore the 20,000 or so human genes for under £1000, in a matter of days. Such testing offers clues to our past, present and future health, as well as information about how we respond to medications so that truly ‘personalised medicine’ is now moving closer to a reality.The impact of such a ‘genomic era’ is likely to have some level of impact on an increasingly large number of us, even if we are not directly using healthcare services ourselves. We explore how advancements in genetics are likely to be experienced by people, as patients, consumers and citizens; and urge policy makers to take stock of the pervasive nature of the technology as well as the human response to it.


2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 39 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emina Hadziabdic ◽  
Gina Higginbottom

Introduction: Effective communication between patients and healthcare staff is important in all healthcare services. Previousstudies investigating criticism and complaints concerning treatment reported by patients and relatives in a healthcare context pointto the most common complaints were unsatisfactory information, unsatisfactory respect and unsatisfactory empathy, but furtherinvestigation is needed. Objective: The aim of this study was to explore complaints reported by patients and relatives in a countycouncil area in the context of communication between patients and healthcare staff, and to investigate the impact complaints canhave on the safety and quality of healthcare.Methods: An exploratory descriptive design was used with a participatory approach. 115 complaints from patients and relatives,collected from various contexts relating to healthcare, were analyzed through qualitative content analysis.Results: Four categories emerged from the analysis of complaints: 1) inadequate communication; 2) inadequate individualisticand holistic healthcare; 3) unprofessional attitude of healthcare staff; and 4) the complaints had both a negative and positiveimpact on the organization of healthcare. The study showed that complaints were related to a lack of adequate verbal and writtencommunication, the patients’ feelings that the healthcare staff did not taking their experiences seriously, and an unprofessional,indifferent and discriminatory attitude among the healthcare staff. The complaints had both a negative and positive impact on theorganization of healthcare.Conclusions: This study highlights how it is possible to learn from complaints about healthcare, and demonstrates that this is aprerequisite for improving healthcare practice. Knowledge about where healthcare practice is failing can be increased, and thiscan be fed into policies for patient safety and quality healthcare.


Author(s):  
Riccardo Spinelli ◽  
Clara Benevolo

The increasing adoption of ICT – and especially Internet-based technologies – in healthcare has been very fruitful and has led to the innovative approach to healthcare practice commonly known as e-health. However, the boundaries of this new approach to healthcare are not clear, as it is reflected by the various properties and taxonomies of e-health applications which have been proposed. In this chapter, we first review the definition of e-health and the main taxonomies for its constituents. Then we propose an original taxonomy for e-health applications, based on the structural features of the delivery system of the services which are digitalized: the need for a physical interaction between the subjects involved in the service provisioning and the possibility of delivering the services through Internet-based technology.


2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 445-460
Author(s):  
Mohd Imran Khan ◽  
Valatheeswaran C.

The inflow of international remittances to Kerala has been increasing over the last three decades. It has increased the income of recipient households and enabled them to spend more on human capital investment. Using data from the Kerala Migration Survey-2010, this study analyses the impact of remittance receipts on the households’ healthcare expenditure and access to private healthcare in Kerala. This study employs an instrumental variable approach to account for the endogeneity of remittances receipts. The empirical results show that remittance income has a positive and significant impact on households’ healthcare expenditure and access to private healthcare services. After disaggregating the sample into different heterogeneous groups, this study found that remittances have a greater effect on lower-income households and Other Backward Class (OBC) households but not Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled Tribe (ST) households, which remain excluded from reaping the benefit of international migration and remittances.


2020 ◽  
Vol 19 (12) ◽  
pp. 2225-2252
Author(s):  
E.V. Popov ◽  
V.L. Simonova ◽  
O.V. Komarova ◽  
S.S. Kaigorodova

Subject. The emergence of new ways of interaction between sellers and buyers, the formation of new sales channels and product promotion based on the use of digital economy tools is at the heart of improving the business processes. Social networks became a tool for development; their rapid growth necessitates theoretical understanding and identification of potential application in enterprise's business process digitalization. Objectives. We explore the role of social media in the digitalization of business processes, systematize the impact of social networks on business processes of enterprises in the digital economy. Methods. The theoretical and methodological analysis of social networks as a tool for digitalization of company's business processes rests on the content analysis of domestic and foreign scientific studies, comparison, generalization and systematization. Results. We highlight the key effects of the impact of social networks on the business processes of the company; show that the digitalization of business processes should be considered in the context of a value-based approach, aimed at creating a value through the algorithmization of company operations. We determine that social networks are one of the most important tools for digitalization of company's business processes, as they have a high organizational and management potential. We also systematize the effects of social media on company's business processes. Conclusions. We present theoretical provisions of the impact of social networks on business processes of enterprises, which will enable to model and organize ideas about the development of digital ecosystems and the formation of business models.


2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (10) ◽  
pp. 1960-1979
Author(s):  
N.A. Egina ◽  
E.S. Zemskova

Subject. The study focuses on the impact of the digital economy determinants of the education transformation. Objectives. The article provides our own approach treating the education capital as a specific asset of the digital economy, which has an acceleration effect and sets up new trends in education through integrative networks. Methods. The study is based on principles of the systems integration, cross-disciplinary and multidisciplinary approaches. Results. The socio-economic progress was found to be determined with properties of human capital, which are solely specific to the digital economy. In new circumstances, it gets more important for actors of global, national, corporate and social networks to more actively cooperate within distributed networks in order to train high professionals, who would have skills in information networks. Thus, they would raise a new form of human capital – the capital of network education (network-based education capital). We describe positive externalities that arise when the educational sector joins communication processes. We illustrate how educational forms evolves, which are typical of a certain phase of the socio-economic development. The education capital was discovered to grow into a specific asset generating the quasi-rent and working as a social ladder only provided more actors are involved into the network. Conclusions and Relevance. Studying the evolution of educational forms through the cross-disciplinary method, we discovered the need for a system approach, which would help substantiate its transformation in the time of the digital economy, and the emergence of network-based education. These are technologies and tools of the digital economy that become unique factors generating the acceleration effect of the educational capital and ensuring the use of diverse network effects for the formation of intellectual capital and their social transformation.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
María Camarasa-Gómez ◽  
Daniel Hernangómez-Pérez ◽  
Michael S. Inkpen ◽  
Giacomo Lovat ◽  
E-Dean Fung ◽  
...  

Ferrocenes are ubiquitous organometallic building blocks that comprise a Fe atom sandwiched between two cyclopentadienyl (Cp) rings that rotate freely at room temperature. Of widespread interest in fundamental studies and real-world applications, they have also attracted<br>some interest as functional elements of molecular-scale devices. Here we investigate the impact of<br>the configurational degrees of freedom of a ferrocene derivative on its single-molecule junction<br>conductance. Measurements indicate that the conductance of the ferrocene derivative, which is<br>suppressed by two orders of magnitude as compared to a fully conjugated analog, can be modulated<br>by altering the junction configuration. Ab initio transport calculations show that the low conductance is a consequence of destructive quantum interference effects that arise from the hybridization of metal-based d-orbitals and the ligand-based π-system. By rotating the Cp rings, the hybridization, and thus the quantum interference, can be mechanically controlled, resulting in a conductance modulation that is seen experimentally.<br>


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