Enhancing trust in dental care recommendation systems : using trust-enhanced information from social networks to improve the matching between patients and dentists

University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology.The recent growth in social media has impacted the way users are searching and sharing health information online. Crowdsources, such as review and rating websites, provide an outlet for consumers to share their opinions on healthcare professionals. Yet, faced with the enormity and diversity of information across multiple online sources, finding the right information can be a challenge for users, particularly when there is no consistency in the evaluation criteria across various sources. This difficulty is manifested when existing review and rating websites do not take patient information into consideration. Extremely biased views – positive or negative – are capable of skewing recommendations and thereby compounding the situation. This makes it important to filter trustworthy information from health social networks and dental crowdsources. In the case of dental care, the invasive nature of many dental treatments highlights the importance of selecting a suitable trustworthy provider for many patients, who may be anxious or reluctant to visit a new dentist. By analysing, from multiple perspectives, the trustworthiness of information available to patients, this study proposes a new trust-enhanced information model for dental care recommendation systems. In this model, dentists are profiled based on subjective information extracted from dental crowdsources. Subjective qualities are also used to profile patients. Currently, online social network data cannot be used for profiling purposes due to privacy and identification concerns. Instead, one of the popular personality tests, the DISC personality test, is used in this study. The importance and suitability of subjective qualities for recommendations is explored. Two matching algorithms are evaluated based on the responses to an online survey. When the patients are classified based on their levels of fear, preferred search methods and other attributes, their list of recommended dentists changes. The subjective characteristics of both patients and dentists are important factors which need to be incorporated to improve the matching capability of dental care recommendation systems. Including the subjective qualities of users could change the way that recommendations are provided in the future, especially in the health sector where the wrong information can lead to adverse impacts on health. Although patients’ discussions about their health are sensitive and private, they can benefit from more accurate recommendations in relation to health care providers

The Effect of the Social Media Tools on Virtual Team Performance: The Mediating Role of Transactive Memory System Mapping with the Feature Richness

The communication tool is an important component of a virtual team, and virtual teams are highly dependent upon the communication tools for accomplishing their tasks and fulfilling their needs effectively. This research in progress builds upon the existing literature and employs the concept of feature richness of social media tools and a Transactive Memory System (TMS) approach to develop a conceptual framework for understanding the impact of social media tools on virtual team performance. Thus, a conceptual research model which postulates that TMS mediates the relationship between social media tools and virtual team performance, is developed. This research tries to establish an appropriate component-level mapping between the components of TMS construct and the feature richness factors to provide a deeper understanding about the effect of social media tools on TMS and consequently, the impact on virtual team performance

Examining the Effect of Social Media Tools on Virtual Team Conflicts: A Process Model

This research investigates how the use of social media tools affects virtual team conflicts. The novel concept of “feature richness”, which is understood as affordances of social media tools, is theorized. Feature richness distinguishes social media tools from other commonly used communication tools in virtual teams. The researchers propose a process model which suggests that operationally, feature richness is understood as the process nature of social media tools. The primary data was collected at corporate organizations in form of a Likert questionnaire. The research findings reveal that social media tools lead to effective communication, which encourages the development of trust, team cohesion and satisfaction in virtual teams. This further reflects in form of reduced virtual team conflicts

An investigation of factors affecting initial trust in Internet banking services in Jordan

University of Technology Sydney. Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology.Despite the rapid growth in technology and the research effort given on investigating the adoption of Internet banking services (IBS), both banks and academic researchers in developing countries perceive the problem of low-level adoption of IBS. The vast majority of studies which have investigated the adoption, acceptance, or intention to use IBS, have agreed that customers’ trust is one of the most important impediments that have frustrated the success of the adoption process. Therefore, in developed countries, customers’ trust became the pivot of research studies that investigated the electronic dealings between customers and new IT/IS innovations. Recently, a few researchers have started investigating online trust in developing countries. However, existing research studies on online trust lacks a comprehensive view that addresses the issue from multiple perspectives (technical, psychological, and cultural) and offers more knowledge and understanding of the problem. To fill this gap, this study has conducted an intensive review of the literature (on online trust and on the adoption of new technological innovation). Consequently, building and examining a comprehensive unified model of initial trust in IBS adoption has been the main aim of this study. The model constructs are developed using trust antecedents, national culture, and the diffusion of innovation theory. The study model was then verified and examined using a rigorous research design that employed a sequential mixed approach that consist of: (i) a quantitative method that involved both a pilot study and a large-scale survey, and (ii) a qualitative method that adopted semi-structured interviews to collect data from nine academic and industry experts. Teachers were surveyed and 540 questionnaires were identified as valid. The obtained quantitative data of the study was analysed using manifold statistical techniques including: Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA, measurement model), and the Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) using the AMOS software. Moreover, a content analysis was used to analyse the qualitative data in order to confirm the quantitative results, validate the initial trust model in IBS, and provide recommendations for future research. The results of this study show that organizational structural assurance, banks’ reputation, perceived relative advantages, and uncertainty avoidance are the most important determinants of customers’ initial trust in IBS in Jordan. In addition, the results indicate that initial trust in IBS positively influences intention to use IBS. The obtained results underpin the claim that national culture has a significant role in forming customers’ initial trust in IBS, particularly in developing context. The current study provides a cornerstone for the intention to use new technological innovations in developing countries, especially IBS. Furthermore, the study provides a set of academic and practical implications, and discusses the research limitations and future directions

Criteria to measure social media value in health care settings : narrative literature review

Background: With the growing use of social media in health care settings, there is a need to measure outcomes resulting from its use to ensure continuous performance improvement. Despite the need for measurement, a unified approach for measuring the value of social media used in health care remains elusive. Objective: This study aimed to elucidate how the value of social media in health care settings can be ascertained and to taxonomically identify steps and techniques in social media measurement from a review of relevant literature. Methods: A total of 65 relevant articles drawn from 341 articles on the subject of measuring social media in health care settings were qualitatively analyzed and synthesized. The articles were selected from the literature from diverse disciplines including business, information systems, medical informatics, and medicine. Results: The review of the literature showed different levels and focus of analysis when measuring the value of social media in health care settings. It equally showed that there are various metrics for measurement, levels of measurement, approaches to measurement, and scales of measurement. Each may be relevant, depending on the use case of social media in health care. Conclusions: A comprehensive yardstick is required to simplify the measurement of outcomes resulting from the use of social media in health care. At the moment, there is neither a consensus on what indicators to measure nor on how to measure them. We hope that this review is used as a starting point to create a comprehensive measurement criterion for social media used in health care. © 2019 Chukwuma Ukoha, Andrew Stranieri

Practicing and factors infuencing the effective implementation of Strategic Information Systems Planning in public agency

Strategic Information Systems Planning (SISP) guided organization in achieving its target. The importance of SISP increases proportionately with the uncertainty of business requirements. Failures in implementing SISP may affect organizational service delivery and reputation. This paper discusses on the evaluation of the practice and influencing factors of SISP implementation in a public sector. The Human Organization Technology-fit framework was used to evaluate the effectiveness of SISP from human, organization and technology perspectives. A qualitative case study was conducted using interview and document analysis method. The study identified 25 influencing factors of SISP implementation including knowledge and expertise, stakeholder engagement; governance, top management support, financial allocation and infrastructure capabilities. These influencing factors can guide other agencies to identify the risks of SISP implementation at an early stage; subsequently, mitigation plan can be developed to minimize the risk