Toward a process theory of entrepreneurship: revisiting opportunity identification and entrepreneurial actions

This dissertation studies the early development of new ventures and small business and the entrepreneurship process from initial ideas to viable ventures. I unpack the micro-foundations of entrepreneurial actions and new ventures’ investor communications through quality signals to finance their growth path. This dissertation includes two qualitative papers and one quantitative study. The qualitative papers employ an inductive multiple-case approach and include seven medical equipment manufacturers (new ventures) in a nascent market context (the mobile health industry) across six U.S. states and a secondary data analysis to understand the emergence of opportunities and the early development of new ventures. The quantitative research chapter includes 770 IPOs in the manufacturing industries in the U.S. and investigates the legitimation strategies of young ventures to gain resources from targeted resource-holders.Open Acces

Harnessing Openness to Transform American Health Care

The Digital Connections Council (DCC) of the Committee for Economic Development (CED) has been developing the concept of openness in a series of reports. It has analyzed information and processes to determine their openness based on qualities of "accessibility" and "responsiveness." If information is not available or available only under restrictive conditions it is less accessible and therefore less "open." If information can be modified, repurposed, and redistributed freely it is more responsive, and therefore more "open." This report looks at how "openness" is being or might usefully be employed in the healthcare arena. This area, which now constitutes approximately 16-17 percent of GDP, has long frustrated policymakers, practitioners, and patients. Bringing greater openness to different parts of the healthcare production chain can lead to substantial benefits by stimulating innovation, lowering costs, reducing errors, and closing the gap between discovery and treatment delivery. The report is not exhaustive; it focuses on biomedical research and the disclosure of research findings, processes of evaluating drugs and devices, the emergence of electronic health records, the development and implementation of treatment regimes by caregivers and patients, and the interdependence of the global public health system and data sharing and worldwide collaboration

Systematic review of communication technologies to promote access and engagement of young people with diabetes into healthcare

Background: Research has investigated whether communication technologies (e.g. mobile telephony, forums, email) can be used to transfer digital information between healthcare professionals and young people who live with diabetes. The systematic review evaluates the effectiveness and impact of these technologies on communication. Methods: Nine electronic databases were searched. Technologies were described and a narrative synthesis of all studies was undertaken. Results: Of 20,925 publications identified, 19 met the inclusion criteria, with 18 technologies assessed. Five categories of communication technologies were identified: video-and tele-conferencing (n = 2); mobile telephony (n = 3); telephone support (n = 3); novel electronic communication devices for transferring clinical information (n = 10); and web-based discussion boards (n = 1). Ten studies showed a positive improvement in HbA1c following the intervention with four studies reporting detrimental increases in HbA1c levels. In fifteen studies communication technologies increased the frequency of contact between patient and healthcare professional. Findings were inconsistent of an association between improvements in HbA1c and increased contact. Limited evidence was available concerning behavioural and care coordination outcomes, although improvement in quality of life, patientcaregiver interaction, self-care and metabolic transmission were reported for some communication technologies. Conclusions: The breadth of study design and types of technologies reported make the magnitude of benefit and their effects on health difficult to determine. While communication technologies may increase the frequency of contact between patient and health care professional, it remains unclear whether this results in improved outcomes and is often the basis of the intervention itself. Further research is needed to explore the effectiveness and cost effectiveness of increasing the use of communication technologies between young people and healthcare professionals

A case study in open source innovation: developing the Tidepool Platform for interoperability in type 1 diabetes management.

OBJECTIVE:Develop a device-agnostic cloud platform to host diabetes device data and catalyze an ecosystem of software innovation for type 1 diabetes (T1D) management. MATERIALS AND METHODS:An interdisciplinary team decided to establish a nonprofit company, Tidepool, and build open-source software. RESULTS:Through a user-centered design process, the authors created a software platform, the Tidepool Platform, to upload and host T1D device data in an integrated, device-agnostic fashion, as well as an application ("app"), Blip, to visualize the data. Tidepool's software utilizes the principles of modular components, modern web design including REST APIs and JavaScript, cloud computing, agile development methodology, and robust privacy and security. DISCUSSION:By consolidating the currently scattered and siloed T1D device data ecosystem into one open platform, Tidepool can improve access to the data and enable new possibilities and efficiencies in T1D clinical care and research. The Tidepool Platform decouples diabetes apps from diabetes devices, allowing software developers to build innovative apps without requiring them to design a unique back-end (e.g., database and security) or unique ways of ingesting device data. It allows people with T1D to choose to use any preferred app regardless of which device(s) they use. CONCLUSION:The authors believe that the Tidepool Platform can solve two current problems in the T1D device landscape: 1) limited access to T1D device data and 2) poor interoperability of data from different devices. If proven effective, Tidepool's open source, cloud model for health data interoperability is applicable to other healthcare use cases

A Priority-based Fair Queuing (PFQ) Model for Wireless Healthcare System

Healthcare is a very active research area, primarily due to the increase in the elderly population that leads to increasing number of emergency situations that require urgent actions. In recent years some of wireless networked medical devices were equipped with different sensors to measure and report on vital signs of patient remotely. The most important sensors are Heart Beat Rate (ECG), Pressure and Glucose sensors. However, the strict requirements and real-time nature of medical applications dictate the extreme importance and need for appropriate Quality of Service (QoS), fast and accurate delivery of a patient’s measurements in reliable e-Health ecosystem. As the elderly age and older adult population is increasing (65 years and above) due to the advancement in medicine and medical care in the last two decades; high QoS and reliable e-health ecosystem has become a major challenge in Healthcare especially for patients who require continuous monitoring and attention. Nevertheless, predictions have indicated that elderly population will be approximately 2 billion in developing countries by 2050 where availability of medical staff shall be unable to cope with this growth and emergency cases that need immediate intervention. On the other side, limitations in communication networks capacity, congestions and the humongous increase of devices, applications and IOT using the available communication networks add extra layer of challenges on E-health ecosystem such as time constraints, quality of measurements and signals reaching healthcare centres. Hence this research has tackled the delay and jitter parameters in E-health M2M wireless communication and succeeded in reducing them in comparison to current available models. The novelty of this research has succeeded in developing a new Priority Queuing model ‘’Priority Based-Fair Queuing’’ (PFQ) where a new priority level and concept of ‘’Patient’s Health Record’’ (PHR) has been developed and integrated with the Priority Parameters (PP) values of each sensor to add a second level of priority. The results and data analysis performed on the PFQ model under different scenarios simulating real M2M E-health environment have revealed that the PFQ has outperformed the results obtained from simulating the widely used current models such as First in First Out (FIFO) and Weight Fair Queuing (WFQ). PFQ model has improved transmission of ECG sensor data by decreasing delay and jitter in emergency cases by 83.32% and 75.88% respectively in comparison to FIFO and 46.65% and 60.13% with respect to WFQ model. Similarly, in pressure sensor the improvements were 82.41% and 71.5% and 68.43% and 73.36% in comparison to FIFO and WFQ respectively. Data transmission were also improved in the Glucose sensor by 80.85% and 64.7% and 92.1% and 83.17% in comparison to FIFO and WFQ respectively. However, non-emergency cases data transmission using PFQ model was negatively impacted and scored higher rates than FIFO and WFQ since PFQ tends to give higher priority to emergency cases. Thus, a derivative from the PFQ model has been developed to create a new version namely “Priority Based-Fair Queuing-Tolerated Delay” (PFQ-TD) to balance the data transmission between emergency and non-emergency cases where tolerated delay in emergency cases has been considered. PFQ-TD has succeeded in balancing fairly this issue and reducing the total average delay and jitter of emergency and non-emergency cases in all sensors and keep them within the acceptable allowable standards. PFQ-TD has improved the overall average delay and jitter in emergency and non-emergency cases among all sensors by 41% and 84% respectively in comparison to PFQ model

Enhancing pharmaceutical packaging through a technology ecosystem to facilitate the reuse of medicines and reduce medicinal waste

The idea of reusing dispensed medicines is appealing to the general public provided its benefits are illustrated, its risks minimized, and the logistics resolved. For example, medicine reuse could help reduce medicinal waste, protect the environment and improve public health. However, the associated technologies and legislation facilitating medicine reuse are generally not available. The availability of suitable technologies could arguably help shape stakeholders’ beliefs and in turn, uptake of a future medicine reuse scheme by tackling the risks and facilitating the practicalities. A literature survey is undertaken to lay down the groundwork for implementing technologies on and around pharmaceutical packaging in order to meet stakeholders’ previously expressed misgivings about medicine reuse (’stakeholder requirements’), and propose a novel ecosystem for, in effect, reusing returned medicines. Methods: A structured literature search examining the application of existing technologies on pharmaceutical packaging to enable medicine reuse was conducted and presented as a narrative review. Results: Reviewed technologies are classified according to different stakeholders’ requirements, and a novel ecosystem from a technology perspective is suggested as a solution to reusing medicines. Conclusion: Active sensing technologies applying to pharmaceutical packaging using printed electronics enlist medicines to be part of the Internet of Things network. Validating the quality and safety of returned medicines through this network seems to be the most effective way for reusing medicines and the correct application of technologies may be the key enabler