A Framework to Investigate the Role of Mobile Technology in the Healthcare Organizations

The technology acceptance model (TAM), and the modified technology acceptance model (MTAM) will be evaluated to measure the acceptance of mobile technology in a healthcare scenario. Based on the results of the study, a user behavioral model in regard to mobile technology adoption in healthcare will be proposed

Research Model to Identify the Characteristics of an Effective Medicine 2.0 Application

This research in progress paper proposes a research model to identify the characteristics of effective Medicine 2.0 applications. The research will be carried out in two phases. First, the research will focus on investigating the empirical effect of using Med 2.0 Applications on Patient Outcomes. Second, those patients whose outcomes improved will be surveyed to determine what characteristics of the Med 2.0 Application they found useful. This phase will concentrate on examining the effect of Med 2.0 principles on the intention to use a Med 2.0 application. Underlying theoretical explanation of these results may be found in the Technology Acceptance Model and/or IS Success Model. For a research model we propose, if a Med 2.0 application improves patient outcomes the improvement is “caused” or at least explained by the Med 2.0 application mediated by Med 2.0 Principles used in the Med 2.0 application and further moderated by the Patient Demographic

An empirical study of the technological, organisational and environmental factors influencing South African medical enterprises' propensity to adopt electronic health technologies

Information and communication technologies can be used to deliver healthcare services and improve the healthcare system. Any electronic healthcare system whose usage results in the efficient and enhanced quality of healthcare is an eHealth system and can be beneficial for medical enterprises. Despite the advantages that eHealth systems offer, medical enterprises are often reluctant to abandon their paper-based systems and embrace eHealth solutions. Through a review of existing eHealth literature, this study identified generic technologies used within South African medical enterprises. Fourteen (14) technologies, that represent a basket of eHealth systems for supporting the business management, professional clinical informatics, patient information storage and consumer health informatics functional areas, were identified. The study then aimed to determine the state of adoption of these technologies as well as the factors influencing adoption. The technological, organisational and environmental (TOE) factors that contributed to the current state of adoption were identified through a review of existing TOE literature. A model that explores the effects of these pre-determined TOE factors on the propensity to adopt eHealth was developed and tested. A cross-sectional, quantitative study was carried out and survey data was collected from a sample of 130 medical enterprises in South Africa. Data was collected using a structured questionnaire. Correlation analysis was used to test the model’s hypotheses and hierarchical regression was used to test the overall TOE model. By using the TOE framework, the study has provided a theoretical contribution and addressed a gap in the literature into the barriers and determinants of the adoption of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in healthcare. The results of the study show that South African medical enterprises use systems that range from simple electronic fund transfer systems to more complex electronic record and clinical decision support systems. Of the 14 technologies that were identified, business information systems such as medical aid claims submission systems and electronic record systems for patient and fee related information were the most adopted while a steady, but continued increase in the adoption of clinical health information systems was observed. Specifically, the study reveals that electronic fund transfer systems are the most adopted systems while ePrescription systems are the least used. Furthermore, the study shows that in addition to the enterprises’ operating period, perceived benefits, IT infrastructure, senior clinician involvement, resource commitment and external pressure are correlated with the propensity to adopt while system complexity is a barrier to technology adoption

Wireless Sensor Networks in Support of E-Health Applications

Nowadays, with the smart device developing and life quality improving, people’s requirement of real-time, fast, accurate and smart health service has been increased. As the technology advances, E-Health Care concept has been emerging in the last decades and received extensive attention. With the help of Internet and computing technologies, a lot of E-Health Systems have been proposed that change traditional medical treatment mode to remote or online medical treatment. Furthermore, due to the rapidly development of Internet and wireless network in recent years, many enhanced E-Health Systems based on Wireless Sensor Network have been proposed that open a new research field. This research work has reviewed the E-Health Care System development and limitations in recent years and proposes a novel E-Health System based on Wireless Sensor Network by taking the advantage of the latest technologies. The proposed E-Health System is a wireless and portable system, which consists of the Wireless E-Health Gateway and Wireless E-Health Sensor Nodes. The system has been further enhanced by Smart Technology that combined the advantages of the smart phone. The proposed system has change the mechanisms of traditional medical care and provide real-time, portable, accurate and flexible medical care services to users. With the E-Health System wieldy deployed, it requires powerful computing center to deal with the mass health record data. Cloud technology as an emerging technology has applied in the proposed system. This research has used Amazon Web Services (AWS) – Cloud Computing Services to develop a powerful, scalable and fast connection web service for proposed E-Health Management System. The security issue is a common problem in the wireless network, and it is more important for E-Health System as the personal health data is private and should be safely transferred and storage. Hence, this research work also focused on the cryptographic algorithm to reinforce the security of E-Health System. Due to the limitations of embedded system resources, such as: lower computing, smaller battery, and less memory, which cannot support modem advance encryption standard. In this research, Rivest Cipher Version 5 (RC5) as the simple, security and software or hardware deployable encryption algorithm has been in-depth studied. As the Logistic map has good cryptographic algorithm properties, like unpredictable, random, and sensitive to the initial parameters it has been investigated. In this thesis, an enhanced RC5 cryptographic algorithm has been proposed that uses 1-D Logistic mapping in the random sub-key generation during each encryption round, which increases the unpredictability significantly. In addition, an effective cipher feedback model has been combined to further increase the cipher security. After in-depth research of the 1-D Logistic map, a 2-D Logistic map has been proposed that provides more complex chaotic behaviors than the 1-D Logistic map and further improves the security. Another novel RC5 cryptographic algorithm with 2-D Logistic map has been proposed in this thesis. The proposed algorithm uses a 2-D Logistic map to generate the sub-key and modified RC5 operations to encrypt data. Appropriate experiments have been carried out to evaluate the performance. The results show the proposed algorithms are better than standard RC5 or other modified RC5. The contributions and innovation of this research project are summarized: • Build up a Wireless E-Health Care System based on Wireless Sensor Network. • Create the Cloud Management System for E-Health Care System. • Proposed RC5 cryptographic algorithms based on Logistic Map to increase the randomness and security of cipher data