Three Essays on the Empowerment Role of Information Technology in Healthcare Services

Information technology (IT) is empowering consumers, service providers, and inventor teams with superior services. Various IT innovations are enabling diverse groups of people to search, exchange, and learn from information. In healthcare services, the context of the three essays of this dissertation, information resources are often not equally accessible to consumers, not transparent between patients and physicians, and hard to locate across technological domains that may be relevant to the development of breakthrough innovations. Focusing on empowering roles of IT in healthcare services, I develop a three-essay dissertation to study how IT can enable information access to (i) address health inequalities in developing regions of the world, (ii) strengthen the physician-patient relationship where patient trust in the physician has atrophied, and (iii) energize inventor teams in the development of medical device innovations. Essay 1 examines consumers’ awareness and use of mobile health that can empower consumers to access health advice information. Essay 2 investigates how online health consultation communities can empower physicians to build trust with patients, and gain social and economic advantages in competitive healthcare services. Essay 3 studies the role of digital capabilities to empower inventor teams in medical device companies by converting expertise of inventor teams into broad and deep knowledge capital and expanding knowledge production regarding medical device innovations. I adopt a pluralistic approach to collect data (surveys administered in multiple languages for Essay 1, scraping web data from online communities for Essay 2, and constructing a multisource archival panel dataset for Essay 3) and analyze data (multivariate analysis for Essay 1, multilevel modeling and econometrics for Essay 2 and Essay 3). The essays contribute to our understanding about the acceptance of empowering IT innovations, the empowering role of user-generated content in online communities for providers of credence services, and the empowering role of IT for inventor teams of healthcare innovations

IoT in healthcare: A scientometric analysis

This paper reviews scientific articles and patents about Internet of Things (IoT) in healthcare. The aim is to explore both the domain of research and the one of practice simultaneously. We compare the annual growth, the country production, and the trend topics of publications and patents, by focusing on the most relevant themes concerning the IoT in the healthcare industry. The analysis started with the selection of the publications and patents for the period 2015–2020. Since this comparative analysis between scientometric data in healthcare is new, the findings of this study can represent the basis for future studies to determine novel research opportunities on IoT. The study provides scholars with a better understanding of IoT research in healthcare and simultaneously extends knowledge of entrepreneurship in this field. Practitioners may benefit from this review to understand new and underexplored opportunities

Asia in the ageing century: part III - healthcare

With total health spending in the region worth over a trillion dollars in 2010 and demand for healthcare continuing to grow, Asian governments will have a tremendous challenge meeting and funding this demand.Summary• This is the third research brief in a three-part series that looks at Asia in the ageing century, with a particular focus on the countries of East and South-East Asia.• The context is outlined in the first brief, which describes population, urbanisation and social trends in the region. Specifically, it notes that population ageing in East and South-East Asia is happening faster and at a lower level of economic development than in the West. Many Asian countries now have a decade or so to prepare for the final stages of demographic transition. Parts II and III of the series focus on two areas of economic activity which are both pertinent to population ageing and have enormous scale: provision of retirement income (covered in Part II) and of healthcare (outlined in the present brief).• As Asian societies become wealthier and older they will demand more of their health systems. This translates to extending health insurance coverage to a broader cross- section of the population, and offering reimbursement for a greater proportion of costs on a larger package of benefits. China has enrolled 1.2 billion people into the health insurance system within the last decade but in some provinces benefit packages are lacking. Malaysia achieved universal health coverage in the 1980s, but in 2004 key medicines were only available in a quarter of public health facilities.• East and South-East Asian governments currently have the fiscal capacity to keep expanding health systems, but to avoid the excessive cost growth seen in the West they will need to employ various micro, macro and demand-side measures – heeding the successes and failures of reforms within the region and elsewhere.• An important area for healthcare is the epidemiological transition that comes with ageing societies, where the relative prevalence of non-communicable diseases increases. Health packages in Asia are yet to take a full account of this change.• Health spending in the region was worth over US$1 trillion in 2010. On the financing side, private health insurance is still a niche market making up US$50 billion of spending, but recent growth has been high (e.g. 100% p.a. in China). On the provider side, the size and growth of the market will result in opportunities for pharmaceutical, medical device manufacturing and consumer health companies, as well as for operators of hospitals and specialised facilities. Some of that demand will spill over into the growing medical tourism market.• At the level of the macro-economy, stronger welfare provision offers an opportunity to rebalance growth in the region by reducing excessive precautionary savings. So far, East and South-East Asian countries have been taking this opportunity but much remains to be done for healthcare systems to be fully ready for an ageing population.&nbsp

Regulating Black-Box Medicine

Data drive modern medicine. And our tools to analyze those data are growing ever more powerful. As health data are collected in greater and greater amounts, sophisticated algorithms based on those data can drive medical innovation, improve the process of care, and increase efficiency. Those algorithms, however, vary widely in quality. Some are accurate and powerful, while others may be riddled with errors or based on faulty science. When an opaque algorithm recommends an insulin dose to a diabetic patient, how do we know that dose is correct? Patients, providers, and insurers face substantial difficulties in identifying high-quality algorithms; they lack both expertise and proprietary information. How should we ensure that medical algorithms are safe and effective? Medical algorithms need regulatory oversight, but that oversight must be appropriately tailored. Unfortunately, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has suggested that it will regulate algorithms under its traditional framework, a relatively rigid system that is likely to stifle innovation and to block the development of more flexible, current algorithms. This Article draws upon ideas from the new governance movement to suggest a different path. FDA should pursue a more adaptive regulatory approach with requirements that developers disclose information underlying their algorithms. Disclosure would allow FDA oversight to be supplemented with evaluation by providers, hospitals, and insurers. This collaborative approach would supplement the agency’s review with ongoing real-world feedback from sophisticated market actors. Medical algorithms have tremendous potential, but ensuring that such potential is developed in high-quality ways demands a careful balancing between public and private oversight, and a role for FDA that mediates—but does not dominate—the rapidly developing industry

Wearing the Future-Wearables to Empower Users to Take Greater Responsibility for Their Health and Care:Scoping Review

BACKGROUND: Wearables refer to devices that are worn by individuals. In the health care field, wearables may assist with individual monitoring and diagnosis. In fact, the potential for wearable technology to assist with health care has received recognition from health systems around the world, including a place in the strategic Long Term Plan shared by the National Health Service in England. However, wearables are not limited to specialist medical devices used by patients. Leading technology companies, including Apple, have been exploring the capabilities of wearable health technology for health-conscious consumers. Despite advancements in wearable health technology, research is yet to be conducted on wearables and empowerment. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to identify, summarize, and synthesize knowledge on how wearable health technology can empower individuals to take greater responsibility for their health and care. METHODS: This study was a scoping review with thematic analysis and narrative synthesis. Relevant guidance, such as the Arksey and O’Malley framework, was followed. In addition to searching gray literature, we searched MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO, HMIC, and Cochrane Library. Studies were included based on the following selection criteria: publication in English, publication in Europe or the United States, focus on wearables, relevance to the research, and the availability of the full text. RESULTS: After identifying 1585 unique records and excluding papers based on the selection criteria, 20 studies were included in the review. On analysis of these 20 studies, 3 main themes emerged: the potential barriers to using wearables, the role of providers and the benefits to providers from promoting the use of wearables, and how wearables can drive behavior change. CONCLUSIONS: Considerable literature findings suggest that wearables can empower individuals by assisting with diagnosis, behavior change, and self-monitoring. However, greater adoption of wearables and engagement with wearable devices depend on various factors, including promotion and support from providers to encourage uptake; increased short-term investment to upskill staff, especially in the area of data analysis; and overcoming the barriers to use, particularly by improving device accuracy. Acting on these suggestions will require investment and constructive input from key stakeholders, namely users, health care professionals, and designers of the technology. As advancements in technology to make wearables viable health care devices have only come about recently, further studies will be important for measuring the effectiveness of wearables in empowering individuals. The investigation of user outcomes through large-scale studies would also be beneficial. Nevertheless, a significant challenge will be in the publication of research to keep pace with rapid developments related to wearable health technology