SOA Governance in Healthcare

This chapter depicts the gradual development of a conceptual SOA Governance Framework tailored for healthcare organisations. The proposed framework presented herein is based on the authors' previous research and includes nine SOA Governance elements that need to be considered during the SOA process. The identification and conceptualisation of the elements were grounded in the normative literature and further developed to include healthcare specific aspects. This comes as a method to overcome the limitations identified in normative literature and enhance the elements' conceptualisation. Besides, the authors propose a unique design combining nine elements of SOA Governance with SOA Critical Success Factors (CSFs) and Healthcare Information Systems (HIS) challenges. This proposal aims to pinpoint attributes and guidelines for each element, required to successfully govern SOA and tackle longstanding HIS challenges. The framework is intended to be used as a decision supporting tool for SOA Governance in a healthcare setting.

Constructive eHealth Evaluation

Despite the existence of an extensive body of knowledge about best practices and factors that contribute to the successful development and adoption of eHealth, many eHealth development-projects still face a number of problems - many of them of an organizational nature. This chapter presents a new method: “The Constructive eHealth evaluation method” aimed at supporting real end-user participation - a well-known success factor in eHealth development. It provides an analytical framework for achieving real end-user participation during the different phases in the eHealth lifecycle. The method was developed and used for the first time during the evaluation of an EHR planning process in a Danish region. It has proven effective for providing management at more levels on-going information and feedback from end-users, allowing management to change direction during eHealth development in order to achieve the most successful adoption and implementation of eHealth in healthcare environments.

A Transaction Cost Economics Perspective for Pervasive Technology

Numerous mobile technology solutions are being developed and implemented today to address a myriad of healthcare problems. However, it remains unclear what the true cost/benefit of these solutions is and who benefits from them. To investigate this we apply a transaction cost economics framework to a pervasive mobile solution that has been designed and developed to enhance diabetes self-care. Diabetes is one of the leading chronic diseases and its prevalence continues to rise. The solution examined in this paper relies on pervasive wireless technology and is designed to facilitate the effective management of diabetes in the context of gestational diabetes, a conditions that affects up to 8% of pregnant women. A transactions cost assessment of this solution is provided.

Healthy 3.0

Over the past few years, healthcare practice has evolved to include new forms of information and communication technologies, and healthcare providers have begun to leverage IT solutions and the internet to reach consumers in transformative ways. There is a common thought both in business and academia that the technology adoption process is a key component of success and allows firms to achieve and sustain competitive advantages. Therefore, this research attempts to reinforce the assessment of ICT impacts on healthcare, analyzing it from two different perspectives: 1) firm performance, which is measured as a combination of induced and intangible benefits beyond the traditional financial benefits; and 2) healthcare providers' acceptance and adoption of ICT tools. To assess the first perspective, a structural equation model was applied to a large database sample covering firms from 17 European countries. The results reinforce the importance of induced and structural benefits in firms' overall performance. The second perspective was analyzed only for the Portuguese healthcare providers sample. These results can be a starting point for rethinking the healthcare models emphasizing the perspectives of Healthy 2.0 and considering that patients' technological pattern evolution will lead to Healthy 3.0 in the short term. Nevertheless, some questions remain unanswered regarding the impacts of the ICT acceptance process on overall benefits; therefore, future research will focus on this domain.

Waseda University's E-School

In 2003, the School of Human Sciences, Waseda University (Japan), established the e-School, Japan's first complete undergraduate program enabling students to earn their bachelor degrees solely through e-learning. Supported by the availability of high-speed Internet connections, it has become possible to economically transmit high-quality videotaped lectures across Japan and throughout the world. Waseda's e-School has many features that contribute to its success, among these are that lecture contents are transmitted with an image quality that allows students to easily read what is written on the blackboard. In addition, online classes are relatively small—21 students on average—and new classes are created to respond to students' needs and interests. This chapter outlines the e-School's first 10 years of operation: Its history, curriculum, administration, and management learning system. Data are also presented for student engagement with the e-School system for the first ten years of operation (2003-2012).

Evaluating and Managing Electronic Commerce and Outsourcing Projects in Hospitals

Despite the huge popularity of outsourcing in electronic commerce/IT in the past two decades, many hospitals have failed to realize the expected benefits from their outsourcing projects. Not surprisingly, the management of electronic commerce/IT outsourcing contracts has become one of the top management issues for hospitals executives in recent years. Hence, the purpose of this study was to provide an overview of outsourcing in electronic commerce/IT investment evaluation and benefits realization processes and practices in Australian and Taiwanese hospitals. Inherent in this study was the opportunity to compare such practices between a developed economy (Australia) and a newly industrialized economy (Taiwan). Several key electronic commerce/IT investment evaluation and outsourcing issues and challenges faced by Australian and Taiwanese hospitals will be presented. The results will assist hospital executives to develop their own approaches and strategies to better manage the opportunities and threats that exist in undertaking electronic commerce/IT outsourcing projects in Australian and Taiwanese hospitals.

Expanding Role of Telephone Systems in Healthcare

The telephone systems in healthcare settings serve as a viable tool for improving the quality of service provided to patients, decreasing the cost, and improving the patient satisfaction. It can play a pivotal role for transformation of the healthcare delivery for embracing personalized and patient centered care. This chapter presents a systematic review of new developments of healthcare telephone system operations in various areas such as tele-health. Current research on topics such as tele-diagnosis, tele-nursing, tele-consultation is outlined. Specific issues associated with the emerging applications such as underreferral, legal issues, patient acceptance, on-call physician are discussed. Meanwhile, the architecture and underlying technologies for healthcare telephone systems are introduced, and the performance metrics for measuring the system operations are provided. In addition, challenges and opportunities related with improving the healthcare telephone systems are identified, and the potential opportunities of optimizing these systems are pointed out.

Semantic Interoperability-Enabled Architecture for Connected Health Services

With the increasing availability of connected health organisations, key medical information is expected to be accessible at the point of care. However, the high sensitivity of the clinical data and the large heterogeneity in health information systems pose a great interoperability challenge, including solutions that rely solely on the use of data exchange standards. Due to low adoption of these standards, such solutions will not sufficiently scale to achieve this objective. This chapter presents a service-based approach that utilises domain models combined with extensible problem models, enriched with domain terminology and knowledge services to enable autonomous data governance and semantic interoperability. The chapter addresses the resulting requirements, describes the proposed a solution and reports the results from the prototype of the approach.

From Healthcare Services to E-Health Applications

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.

The Benefits and Challenges of Using Mobile-Based Tools in Self-Management and Care

An effective intervention tool in self-management and care is the patients' use of mobile-based devices. This tool reflects a paradigm shift in many areas of health management from healthcare professionals to the patients themselves. These mobile devices contribute to a growing public interest in self-care. This new use will save patients not only expensive hospitalization costs and doctor visits but will also save the US treasury millions of dollars. To successfully empower the patients who use these mobile-based tools to manage their own health as well as to see positive health outcomes, Mobile app developers need to consider many things when developing these mobile apps such as an engaging and easy-to-use interface, relevant content, and more. In addition, the developers must secure patient data and ensure user privacy.