Lean Thinking: Theory, Application and Dissemination

This book was written and compiled by the University of Huddersfield to share the learnings and experiences of seven years of Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) and Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) funded projects with the National Health Service (NHS). The focus of these projects was the implementation of Lean thinking and optimising strategic decision making processes. Each of these projects led to major local improvements and this book explains how they were achieved and compiles the lessons learnt. The book is split into three chapters; Lean Thinking Theory, Lean Thinking Applied and Lean Thinking Dissemination

Improving Quality and Achieving Equity: A Guide for Hospital Leaders

Outlines the need to address racial/ethnic disparities in health care, highlights model practices, and makes step-by-step recommendations on creating a committee, collecting data, setting quality measures, evaluating, and implementing new strategies

Do it Right or Not at All: A Longitudinal Evaluation of a Conflict Managment System Implementation

We analyzed an eight-year multi-source longitudinal data set that followed a healthcare system in the Eastern United States as it implemented a major conflict management initiative to encourage line managers to consistently perform Personal Management Interviews (or PMIs) with their employees. PMIs are interviews held between two individuals, designed to prevent or quickly resolve interpersonal problems before they escalate to formal grievances. This initiative provided us a unique opportunity to empirically test key predictions of Integrated Conflict Management System (or ICMS) theory. Analyzing survey and personnel file data from 5,449 individuals from 2003 to 2010, we found that employees whose managers provided high-quality interviews perceived significantly higher participative work climates and had lower turnover rates. However, retention was worse when managers provided poor-quality interviews than when they conducted no interviews at all. Together these findings highlight the critical role that line mangers play in the success of conflict management systems

RFID Localisation For Internet Of Things Smart Homes: A Survey

The Internet of Things (IoT) enables numerous business opportunities in fields as diverse as e-health, smart cities, smart homes, among many others. The IoT incorporates multiple long-range, short-range, and personal area wireless networks and technologies into the designs of IoT applications. Localisation in indoor positioning systems plays an important role in the IoT. Location Based IoT applications range from tracking objects and people in real-time, assets management, agriculture, assisted monitoring technologies for healthcare, and smart homes, to name a few. Radio Frequency based systems for indoor positioning such as Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is a key enabler technology for the IoT due to its costeffective, high readability rates, automatic identification and, importantly, its energy efficiency characteristic. This paper reviews the state-of-the-art RFID technologies in IoT Smart Homes applications. It presents several comparable studies of RFID based projects in smart homes and discusses the applications, techniques, algorithms, and challenges of adopting RFID technologies in IoT smart home systems.Comment: 18 pages, 2 figures, 3 table

The organizational implications of medical imaging in the context of Malaysian hospitals

This research investigated the implementation and use of medical imaging in the context of Malaysian hospitals. In this report medical imaging refers to PACS, RIS/HIS and imaging modalities which are linked through a computer network. The study examined how the internal context of a hospital and its external context together influenced the implementation of medical imaging, and how this in turn shaped organizational roles and relationships within the hospital itself. It further investigated how the implementation of the technology in one hospital affected its implementation in another hospital. The research used systems theory as the theoretical framework for the study. Methodologically, the study used a case-based approach and multiple methods to obtain data. The case studies included two hospital-based radiology departments in Malaysia. The outcomes of the research suggest that the implementation of medical imaging in community hospitals is shaped by the external context particularly the role played by the Ministry of Health. Furthermore, influences from both the internal and external contexts have a substantial impact on the process of implementing medical imaging and the extent of the benefits that the organization can gain. In the context of roles and social relationships, the findings revealed that the routine use of medical imaging has substantially affected radiographers’ roles, and the social relationships between non clinical personnel and clinicians. This study found no change in the relationship between radiographers and radiologists. Finally, the approaches to implementation taken in the hospitals studied were found to influence those taken by other hospitals. Overall, this study makes three important contributions. Firstly, it extends Barley’s (1986, 1990) research by explicitly demonstrating that the organization’s internal and external contexts together shape the implementation and use of technology, that the processes of implementing and using technology impact upon roles, relationships and networks and that a role-based approach alone is inadequate to examine the outcomes of deploying an advanced technology. Secondly, this study contends that scalability of technology in the context of developing countries is not necessarily linear. Finally, this study offers practical contributions that can benefit healthcare organizations in Malaysia

London SynEx Demonstrator Site: Impact Assessment Report

The key ingredients of the SynEx-UCL software components are: 1. A comprehensive and federated electronic healthcare record that can be used to reference or to store all of the necessary healthcare information acquired from a diverse range of clinical databases and patient-held devices. 2. A directory service component to provide a core persons demographic database to search for and authenticate staff users of the system and to anchor patient identification and connection to their federated healthcare record. 3. A clinical record schema management tool (Object Dictionary Client) that enables clinicians or engineers to define and export the data sets mapping to individual feeder systems. 4. An expansible set of clinical management algorithms that provide prompts to the patient or clinician to assist in the management of patient care. CHIME has built up over a decade of experience within Europe on the requirements and information models that are needed to underpin comprehensive multiprofessional electronic healthcare records. The resulting architecture models have influenced new European standards in this area, and CHIME has designed and built prototype EHCR components based on these models. The demonstrator systems described here utilise a directory service and object-oriented engineering approach, and support the secure, mobile and distributed access to federated healthcare records via web-based services. The design and implementation of these software components has been founded on a thorough analysis of the clinical, technical and ethico-legal requirements for comprehensive EHCR systems, published through previous project deliverables and in future planned papers. The clinical demonstrator site described in this report has provided the solid basis from which to establish "proof of concept" verification of the design approach, and a valuable opportunity to install, test and evaluate the results of the component engineering undertaken during the EC funded project. Inevitably, a number of practical implementation and deployment obstacles have been overcome through this journey, each of those having contributed to the time taken to deliver the components but also to the richness of the end products. UCL is fortunate that the Whittington Hospital, and the department of cardiovascular medicine in particular, is committed to a long-term vision built around this work. That vision, outlined within this report, is shared by the Camden and Islington Health Authority and by many other purchaser and provider organisations in the area, and by a number of industrial parties. They are collectively determined to support the Demonstrator Site as an ongoing project well beyond the life of the EC SynEx Project. This report, although a final report as far as the EC project is concerned, is really a description of the first phase in establishing a centre of healthcare excellence. New EC Fifth Framework project funding has already been approved to enable new and innovative technology solutions to be added to the work already established in north London