Ontology for Data Quality and Chronic Disease Management

Improved Data Quality (DQ) can improve the quality of decisions and lead to better policy in health organizations. Ontologies can support automated tools to assess DQ. This chapter examines ontology-based approaches to conceptualization and specification of DQ based on “fitness for purpose” within the health context. English language studies that addressed DQ, fitness for purpose, ontology-based approaches, and implementations were included. The authors screened 315 papers; excluded 36 duplicates, 182 on abstract review, and 46 on full-text review; leaving 52 papers. These were appraised with a realist “context-mechanism-impacts/outcomes” template. The authors found a lack of consensus frameworks or definitions for DQ and comprehensive ontological approaches to DQ or fitness for purpose. The majority of papers described the processes of the development of DQ tools. Some assessed the impact of implementing ontology-based specifications for DQ. There were few evaluative studies of the performance of DQ assessment tools developed; none compared ontological with non-ontological approaches.

Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining Applications in the Healthcare Industry

The healthcare industry is one of the most attractive domains to realize the actionable knowledge discovery objectives. This chapter studies recent researches on knowledge discovery and data mining applications in the healthcare industry and proposes a new classification of these applications. Studies show that knowledge discovery and data mining applications in the healthcare industry can be classified to three major classes, namely patient view, market view, and system view. Patient view includes papers that performed pure data mining on healthcare industry data. Market view includes papers that saw the patients as customers. System view includes papers that developed a decision support system. The goal of this classification is identifying research opportunities and gaps for researchers interested in this context.

Sleep Disorder Diagnosis

Sleep disorders are a significant and growing problem, both for the economy of the nation and for the physical and psychological well-being of individual sufferers. Physicians are under pressure to find ways of dealing with the backlog of patients. The purpose of this chapter is to investigate the operational, administrative, and medical environment within which sleep physicians diagnose patients with sleep disorders and develop an online support system that would efficiently gather patient history data and improve the effectiveness of patient-physician consultations, the diagnoses, and patients' self-management of any subsequent treatment plans. Investigations confirm that the physicians spend a large portion of the available consultation time on routine questions. In the new system, the patient information is captured by the patient completing an online questionnaire. Due to the reduction in time given for data collection, the physician can spend time with the patients discussing patient-specific symptoms and life-styles.

User Behavioral Intention toward Using Mobile Healthcare System

This chapter introduces Mobile Healthcare Systems (MHS) and employs some theories to explore the behavioral intention of Smartphone users in Penang, Malaysia to use MHS. A survey was conducted in the form of questionnaire to Smartphone users in Penang, Malaysia for the duration of three weeks starting in September 2013. A total number of 123 valid surveys out of 150 were returned, which is equivalent to a response rate of 82%. The authors use Partial Least Squares (PLS) for analyzing the proposed measurement model. The factors that are tested are self-efficacy, anxiety, effort expectancy, performance expectancy, attitude, and behavioral intention to use. The results indicate which factors have a significant effect on Smartphone users' behavioral intention and which factors are not significant. The results assist in assessing whether MHS is highly demanded by users or not, and will assist in development of the system in the future.

Privacy Perceptions of Older Adults when Using Social Media Technologies

Social media technologies represent an emerging means by which older adults can access health and community information, engage in peer-to-peer information sharing, and also potentially decrease social isolation. Privacy concerns, however, have been consistently identified as a barrier for older adults' use of the Web and social media technologies. The authors conduct a preliminary study involving 150 older adult participants, investigating their use and perceptions of social media technologies. The trial involved first providing the participants with brief training in three common social media technologies: Facebook, Twitter, and Skype. The authors carried out a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the participant's use and privacy perceptions of these technologies. Overall, the results are promising as to the potential to address privacy concerns to enable older adults to further utilize these technologies for improved mental, physical, and social health. Implications for future research and usage within the older adult community are also discussed.

Use and Reuse of Electronic Health Records

Electronic Health Record (EHR) is a term with several meanings, even if its very definition allows distinguishing it from other electronic records of healthcare interest, such as Electronic Medical Records (EMR) and Personal Health Records (PHR). EMR is the electronic evolution of paper-based medical records, while PHR is mainly the collection of health-related information of a single individual. All of these have many points in common, but the interchangeable use of the terms leads to several misunderstandings and may threaten the validity and reliability of EHR applications. EHRs are more structured and conform to interoperability standards, and include a huge quantity of data of very large populations. Thus, they have proven to be useful for both theoretical and practical purposes, especially for Public Health issues. In this chapter, the authors argue that the appropriate use of EHR requires a realistic comprehensive concept of e-health by all the involved professions. They also show that a change in the “thinking” of e-health is necessary in order to achieve tangible results of improvement in healthcare services through the use of EHR.

Don't Leave Me Untouched

Older adults want to live independently in their home for as long as possible, and technologies can support them with this goal. However, solutions to help with living alone are often designed from a technical perspective, ignoring the needs and preferences of older adults. This results in strong attitudes and feelings against, and limited adoption of, these technologies. In this chapter, the authors use ethnographic methods to inform the development of solutions taking into account the emotional needs of end-users. They present a three-staged approach by applying it in the domain of personal emergency alarms. First, the authors identify the shortcomings of current emergency alarm systems as perceived by older adults. Then, they develop a prototype that addresses some of the issues identified, focusing on emotional needs. Finally, the authors conduct a trial with the prototype. The results show that considering emotions during system design can improve user experience.

Informatics in Social Services

The aim of the chapter is to describe and analyse the conception of ICTs for social services on the basis of previous international and national research and a case study of Finnish experiences. The authors describe the concept of ICTs for social services and identify the main areas of interest and research findings in relation to the paradigm of social services informatics. The data for this part was collected by an integrated literature review of ICT research. Next, the authors review and evaluate the development phases of Finnish social services informatics. On the basis of national and international literature, they compare the similarities and distinguishing elements in the evolution of social care ICT in research and practice. On the basis of these findings on the main issues, challenges, opportunities, and trends, some recommendations for future research as well as for working practices are briefly described.

Twitter and Its Role in Health Information Dissemination

The utilization of micro-blog-based systems for the dissemination of health-related information offers a number of potential benefits. In this chapter, the authors describe a study of such micro-blog-based dissemination of health information by Australian health-related organisations through the manual categorization of over 4,700 tweets posted during a defined sample period. These tweets were analysed in relation to the sector of the tweeting organisation, health condition area, type of information in the micro-blog post, and level of retweeting. The particular category of public health-related tweets is also analysed in greater detail. This chapter differs from previous health and Twitter-related studies in that it: 1) seeks to characterize the overall and relative Twitter activity of health-related organisations for the sector across a whole nation, rather than collecting a sample matching a specific keyword or health condition; and 2) carries out a more semantically deep analysis of the content of those tweets, hence the manual analysis-based methodology adopted.

The Role of Knowledge Management (KM) in Aged Care Informatics

Aged care is projected to be the fastest-growing sector within the health and community care industries (Reynolds, 2009). Strengthening the care-giving workforce, compliance, delivery, and technology is not only vital to our social infrastructure and improving the quality of care, but also has the potential to drive long-term economic growth and contribute to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This chapter examines the role of Knowledge Management (KM) in aged care organizations to assist in the delivery of aged care. With limited research related to KM in aged care, this chapter advances knowledge and offers a unique view of KM from the perspective of 22 aged care stakeholders. Using in-depth interviewing, this chapter explores the definition of knowledge in aged care facilities, the importance of knowledge planning, capture, and diffusion for accreditation purposes, and offers recommendations for the development of sustainable knowledge management practice and development.