Envisioning a National E-Medicine Network Architecture in a Developing Country

Poor infrastructures in developing countries such as Ethiopia and much of Sub-Saharan Africa have caused these nations to suffer from lack of efficient and effective delivery of basic and extended medical and healthcare services. Often, such limitation is further accompanied by low patient-doctor ratios, resulting in unwarranted rationing of services. Apparently, e-medicine awareness among both governmental policy makers and private health professionals is motivating the gradual adoption of technological innovations in these countries. It is argued, however, that there still is a gap between current e-medicine efforts in developing countries and the existing connectivity infrastructure leading to faulty, inefficient and expensive designs. The particular case of Ethiopia, one such developing country where emedicine continues to carry significant promises, is investigated and reported in this article.

Cultural Effects on Technology Performance and Utilization

Research to date on information technology (IT) adoption has focused primarily on homogeneous single country samples. This study integrates the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) and the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) with Hofstede’s (1980, 1983) Masculinity/Femininity (MAS-FEM) work value dimension to focus instead on post adoption attitudes and behaviors among a mixed gender sample of 366 United States and Canadian users of a specialized supply chain IT. We test 11 hypotheses about attitudes towards IT within and between subgroups of users classified by nationality and gender. Consistent with the national MAS-FEM scores and contrary to the conventional consideration of the U.S. and Canada as a unitary homogenous cultural unit, we found significant differences between U.S. men and women, but not between Canadian men and women. These results support the importance of the MAS-FEM dimension—independent of gender—on user attitudes and help to clarify the relationship between culture and gender effects. Implications for managers responsible for technology implementation and management are discussed and directions for future research are offered.

GlobalMind

The need for more effective communication between people of different countries has increased as travel and communications bring more of the world’s people together. Communication is often difficult because of both language differences and cultural differences. Attempts to bridge these differences include many attempts to perform machine translation or provide language resources such as dictionaries or phrase books; however, many problems related to cultural and conceptual differences still remain. Automated mechanisms to analyze cultural similarities and differences might be used to improve traditional machine translators and as aids to cross-cultural communication. This article presents an approach to automatically compute cultural differences by comparing databases of common-sense knowledge in different languages and cultures. Global- Mind provides an interface for acquiring databases of common-sense knowledge from users who speak different languages. It implements inference modules to compute the cultural similarities and differences between these databases. In this article, the design of the GlobalMind databases, the implementation of its inference modules, as well as an evaluation of GlobalMind are described.

Cross Cultural Adaptation in E-Learning

This chapter introduces the concepts of culturally aware systems (CAWAS), a new family of adaptive systems that try to adapt learning contents and pedagogical strategies according to learners’ cultural background. CAWAS is based on the notion of cultural intelligence and on the representation of a culture as both a static system, that is, a “relatively stable system of shared meanings, a repository of meaningful symbols…” and a dynamic one, that is, “a process of production of meanings.” A methodology for cultural evaluation and selection of appropriate resources is described. A system implementing this methodology is finally introduced. The aim of this work is to develop systems that will be better accepted by learners and de facto will work more efficiently by showing a cultural proximity with learners during a learning session.

Digital Divide

In this chapter the authors introduce the digitaldivide concept to the reader, bring its different definitions, and describe the short history of the problem. The basic figures and facts, which characterize the information and communication technologies’ usage in different countries and regions, are given as well. Also, basic indicators that allow the monitoring of the country’s advancement on the way to bridging the digital divide are stated. The main purpose for the authors was to show that the digital divide is not only (and not as much) a technical problem, but rather a social and political one. Hence, the approaches to this problem decision, both in the world community as a whole and in separate countries, are described.

Balancing Local Knowledge within Global Organisations through Computer-Based Systems

This article investigates how, and with what success, global organisations design computer-based systems for knowledge sharing which aim to balance centralised and standardised approaches against more diverse local needs. The empirical basis for the article is provided by an analysis of two different global organisations, each with its own knowledge-sharing infrastructure in place. We use third-generation activity theory as the theoretical basis for our analysis. The contributions from this article are twofold. The first is our theoretical lens, where activity theory is applied to the domain of global information systems and their organisational context. This analysis provides a new approach in addressing both the mediation of and motivations behind knowledge-sharing activity. The second contribution concerns the theoretical and practical insights this gives on the problems and challenges of achieving a balance between global and local priorities within highly distributed work contexts, and the role of computer-based systems in this arena.

Challenges in Building a Culture-Centric Web Site

This chapter discusses the challenges in constructing a culture-centric Web site. The Internet has expanded business opportunities into global marketplaces that were virtually unreachable in the past. With business Web sites reaching international audiences, cultural differences are an important issue in interface design. Global Web sites must be culture-centric, taking into account the attitude, technology, language, communication, sensibility, symbolism, and interface usability of targeted communities. Site design and development also should follow the Unicode standard for multilingual support with implementation done on UTF-8-enabled operating systems and applications. Globalization has led many people to become more sensitive to cultural diversity. The author hopes that understanding and awareness of international user needs, limitations, and expectations will lead to global Web sites with improved usability and sensitivity.

Cultural Impact on Global Knowledge Sharing

This chapter introduces how culture impacts global knowledge sharing. Effective knowledge sharing (KS), one of the four interdependent dimensions of knowledge management (KM), is particularly important in today’s global environment in which national cultural differences are negotiated all the time. Knowledge sharing is described along six dimensions and national culture along four dimensions. A model is presented, which provides guidelines for effectively sharing different types of knowledge within different cultural environments. Several examples are presented to illustrate the model’s effectiveness. Using the model as a guide, the authors believe that decision makers will increase the chances that information and knowledge will be shared successfully.

Digital Literacy and Cultural Mediations to the Digital Divide

This chapter discusses the digital divide from the perspective of education and culture and highlights the forms in which the problem is presented in Brazil, understanding that it is not exclusive to this context. Given the complex challenges to digital inclusion in the context of globalization, the chapter emphasizes that for children and young people to be able to appropriate new technologies and languages in a significant manner, the promotion of digital literacy should be realized with respect to the concept of multiliteracies. Digital inclusion means much more than access to technologies and is understood as one of the fronts in the struggle against poverty and inequality. The authors propose that the understanding of the digital divide be enriched with the valorization of cultural mediations in the construction of digital literacy. In this sense, a culturalist perspective of media education can promote digital inclusion that is an experience of citizenship, belonging, and critical and creative participation of children and young people in the culture.

A Time Series Analysis of International ICT Spillover

This article studies the role of international spillover of information and communication technology (ICT) in economic growth. We examine the performance of ten countries from 1982 to 1999. By empirically analyzing the relationship between total factor productivity (TFP) and domestic and foreign ICT investment with time series analysis tools, we find limited evidence that there exist international ICT spillovers for a group of countries. Further, we discuss the possible ICT policies to improve productivity and balance out a win-win situation for both ICT spillover sending and receiving countries.