Front-Line Physicians' Satisfaction with Information Systems in Hospitals

Day-to-day operations management in hospital units is difficult due to continuously varying situations, several actors involved and a vast number of information systems in use. The aim of this study was to describe front-line physicians' satisfaction with existing information systems needed to support the day-to-day operations management in hospitals. A cross-sectional survey was used and data chosen with stratified random sampling were collected in nine hospitals. Data were analyzed with descriptive and inferential statistical methods. The response rate was 65 % (n = 111). The physicians reported that information systems support their decision making to some extent, but they do not improve access to information nor are they tailored for physicians. The respondents also reported that they need to use several information systems to support decision making and that they would prefer one information system to access important information. Improved information access would better support physicians' decision making and has the potential to improve the quality of decisions and speed up the decision making process.Peer reviewe

Reader Response in the Digital Age. Letters to the editor vs. below-the-line comments. A synchronic comparison.

Heralded by some as the biggest revolution of the Internet, with great egalitarian and democratic potential, web 2.0 and social media are frowned on by others as sites where users constantly compete to take centre stage, more often than not by sharing everyday banalities, thus flooding the web with “tedious piffle”. While it is true that it has never been so easy to put in your two cents’ worth, the concept of user-generated content – one of the buzzwords of today’s participatory web – can look back on a long tradition in newspapers, where letters to the editor have always been a highly popular way for readers to make their voices heard in public. In their move online, most newspapers added comment sections to their websites, thus taking readers’ letters to the digital level and providing the basis for the present synchronic study, which compares 1,000 below-the-line comments posted on the websites of the Guardian and the Times to 1,000 letters to the editor written to the same newspapers by addressing, one by one, four common claims about, or (mis-)conceptions of, this form of user-generated content. The analysis begins on the micro-linguistic level, comparing the data sets in terms of their orthographic, typographic, lexical and syntactic features and addressing the claim that the language used to communicate on the Internet differs substantially from the language used in other contexts. The focus then shifts to the interactional structures found in the two genres and the question of whether below-the-line comments, as a form of web 2.0, are really more interactive than traditional letters to the editor, which are commonly perceived as a means of ‘talking back’ to the newspaper or journalist rather than a forum for interactive debates among users. The discussion then moves on to matters of face, (im-)politeness and identity construction by first investigating the face-threatening act of criticising others as well as the act of providing positive feedback. This analysis was inspired by the fact that the two genres, although clearly related, are perceived very differently: while comment sections are often associated with aggressive and uninhibited verbal behaviour and numerous calls for their closure can be found, such concerns have not been voiced about letters pages in newspapers. Moreover, it has been claimed that via online comments, more and more private topics are entering the public sphere, thus leading to an increase in subjectivity and personalisation. This last claim is addressed by exploring strategies of personalisation and the moves used to construct an expert identity. The comparative analysis is thus concluded with a focus on the domain of social behaviour, investigating the different means contributors employ to create their own identity and that of the people talked about or addressed

Exploring Written Artefacts

This collection, presented to Michael Friedrich in honour of his academic career at of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, traces key concepts that scholars associated with the Centre have developed and refined for the systematic study of manuscript cultures. At the same time, the contributions showcase the possibilities of expanding the traditional subject of ‘manuscripts’ to the larger perspective of ‘written artefacts’

Exploring Written Artefacts

This collection, presented to Michael Friedrich in honour of his academic career at of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, traces key concepts that scholars associated with the Centre have developed and refined for the systematic study of manuscript cultures. At the same time, the contributions showcase the possibilities of expanding the traditional subject of ‘manuscripts’ to the larger perspective of ‘written artefacts’

An evaluation of the challenges of Multilingualism in Data Warehouse development

In this paper we discuss Business Intelligence and define what is meant by support for Multilingualism in a Business Intelligence reporting context. We identify support for Multilingualism as a challenging issue which has implications for data warehouse design and reporting performance. Data warehouses are a core component of most Business Intelligence systems and the star schema is the approach most widely used to develop data warehouses and dimensional Data Marts. We discuss the way in which Multilingualism can be supported in the Star Schema and identify that current approaches have serious limitations which include data redundancy and data manipulation, performance and maintenance issues. We propose a new approach to enable the optimal application of multilingualism in Business Intelligence. The proposed approach was found to produce satisfactory results when used in a proof-of-concept environment. Future work will include testing the approach in an enterprise environmen