3G Mobile Medical Image Viewing

Tele-radiology is the technology of remote medical consultation using X-ray, computed tomographic, or magnetic resonance images. It was commonly accepted by clinicians for its effectiveness in making diagnoses for patients in critical situations. Because of the huge size of data volume involved in tele-radiology (American College of Radiology [ACR], 2003), clinicians are not satisfied with the relatively slow data-transfer rate. It limits the technology to fixed-line communication between the doctor’s home and his or her office. In this project, a mobile high-speed wireless medical image viewing system using a 3G (third-generation) wireless network (Collins & Smith, 2001), virtual private network, and one-time two-factor authentication (OTTFA) technologies is presented. Using this system, tele-radiology can be achieved by using a 3G PDA (personal digital assistant) phone to query, retrieve, and review the patient’s record at anytime and anywhere in a secure environment. Using this technology, the patient-data availability can be improved significantly, which is crucial to timely diagnoses of patients in critical situations.

Reliability and Evaluation of Health Information Online

This chapter discusses the problem of how to evaluate online health information. The quality and accuracy of online health information is an area of increasing concern for healthcare professionals and the general public. We define relevant concepts including quality, accuracy, utility, and popularity. Most users access online health information via general-purpose search engines, therefore we briefly review Web search-engine fundamentals. We discuss desirable characteristics for quality-assessment tools and the available evidence regarding their effectiveness and usability. We conclude with advice for healthcare consumers as they search for health information online.

IDEF3-Based Framework for Web-Based Hospital Information System

This chapter presents a framework for a Web-based hospital information system to manage the surgery-management process (SMP). The framework can be used to manage any other hospital information system processes. The developed framework challenges the traditional hospital Web strategies with a dual aim: first, to improve customer satisfaction in an environment that often imposes unexplained deviation from planned activities, and second, to create a system that is an effective decision-support system for SMP. The chapter identifies factors affecting SMP decisions and employs a descriptive modeling technique known as IDEF3 to map the information flow within and between elements of SMP. The IDEF3 process mapping becomes part of an integrated Web-based system of multiple stages. Each stage has three levels of accessibility. The first level of the Web system is accessible to the public, the second level is accessible to patients and their designated representatives, and the third level is accessible only to hospital professionals.

Healthcare Organizations and the Internet's Virtual Space

For some years now, the opportunity of innovating business models has basically been linked to continual progress in ICT. Healthcare is no exception; information and communication technologies are generally considered the most effective driver for changing organizations, improving quality, optimizing resources, and so forth, at least in theory. In practice, it is not clear which and how many of these opportunities are really exploited by organizations operating in healthcare. This chapter presents the results of a research project aimed at understanding to what degree and how Italian healthcare organizations make use of the virtual space made available to them by the Internet.

Rescheduling Dental Care with GSM-Based Text Messages

The Internet has opened new avenues for customer communication, even for public services. In this chapter, we propose a framework for an integrated electronic health platform. Most of the platform is still at the planning stage, but the first applications are already up and running, among them, dental-service appointment rescheduling. In this application, new patients to fill canceled dental-service appointments are searched from an existing waiting list using GSM SMS messages. The first few months of operation have already shown that the new application, in conjunction with other methods in use, could limit the share of time slots that dentist completely lose through cancellations to under 10% percent of all canceled times.We present and analyze the function of the SMS-message-based dental-service appointment-reservation system, which is being implemented in Lahti, Finland. This analysis contains a description of the system functions, as well as some assessment of the success from a service-provider and customer point of view.

Conceptual Framework for Mobile-Based Application in Healthcare

The significance of aligning IT with corporate strategy is widely recognised, but the lack of an appropriate framework often prevents practitioners from integrating emerging Internet technologies (like Web services and mobile technologies) within organisations’ strategies effectively. This chapter introduces a framework that addresses the issue of deploying Web services strategically within a mobile-based healthcare setting. A framework is developed to match potential benefits of Web services with corporate strategy in four business dimensions: innovation, internal healthcare process, patients’ pathway, and management of the healthcare institution. The author argues that the strategic benefits of implementing Web services in a healthcare organisation can only be realized if the Web-services initiatives are planned and implemented within the framework of an IT strategy that is designed to support the business strategy of that healthcare organisation.The chapter will use case studies to answer several questions relating to wireless and mobile technologies and how they offer vast opportunity to enhance Web services. It also investigates what challenges are faced if this solution is to be delivered successfully in healthcare. The healthcare industry globally, with specific emphasis on the USA and United Kingdom, has been extremely slow in adopting emerging technologies that focus on better practice management and administrative needs. The chapter elaborates on certain emerging information technologies that are currently available to aid the smooth process of implementing mobile-based technologies into healthcare industry.

Intelligent Agents Framework for RFID Hospitals

When dealing with human lives, the need to utilize and apply the latest technology to help in saving and maintaining patients’ lives is quite important and requires accurate, near-real-time data acquisition and evaluation. At the same time, the delivery of a patient’s medical data needs to be as fast and as secure as possible. One possible way to achieve this is to use a wireless framework based on radio-frequency identification (RFID). This framework can integrate wireless networks for fast data acquisition and transmission while maintaining the privacy issue. This chapter discusses the development of an agent framework in which RFID can be used for patient data collection. The chapter presents a framework for the knowledge acquisition of patient and doctor profiling in a hospital. The acquisition of profile data is assisted by a profiling agent that is responsible for processing the raw data obtained through RFID and a database of doctors and patients.

Bringing Secure Wireless Technology to the Bedside

Wireless technology has broad implications for the healthcare environment. Despite its promise, this new technology has raised questions about security and privacy of sensitive data that is prevalent in healthcare organizations. All healthcare organizations are governed by legislation and regulations, and the implementation of enterprise applications using new technology is comparatively more difficult than in other industries. Using a configuration-idiographic case-study approach, this study investigated challenges faced by two Canadian healthcare organizations. In addition to interviews with management and staff of the organizations, a walk-through was also conducted to observe and collect first-hand data of the implementation of wire-less technology in the clinical environment. In the organizations under examination, it was found that wireless technology is being implemented gradually to augment the wired network. Problems associated with implementing wireless technology in these Canadian organizations are also discussed. Because of different standards in this technology, the two organizations are following different upgrade paths. Based on the data collected, best practices for secure wireless access in these organizations are proposed.

Behavior Change through ICT Use

New communication technologies have made an impact on several areas of our everyday life, including the areas of health and health promotion. The Internet provides opportunities for personalized interactive health communication at a much larger scale than is possible in face-to-face communication. It has been suggested that only interactive health-behavior-change Web sites that advise, assess, assist, provide anticipatory guidance, and arrange follow-up have the potential to lead to successful behavior change. Additional factors that may affect the success rate of behavior-change programs are the reach of and the exposure to such programs. This chapter elaborates on all of these factors.

The Development of a Web Strategy in a Healthcare Organization

Many writers have described the advantages that the Internet can bring to a health-care organization in terms of consistent improvements in efficiency and efficacy, the reduction of access time to services, and an improved awareness of these. Bankruptcy costs and devastating failures of investments in technology would have us believe that the go-to Internet has taken place, at least in the healthcare field, with a certain improvisation and without a thorough knowledge of the full potential that the Internet offers. This chapter presents a way to define a Web strategy by aligning a company’s corporate strategy, in which there is an acceptance and awareness of the possibilities that the Internet offers by the principal company stakeholders, with a general strategy of utilization of information and communication technology.